I'm somewhere in between. Where do I belong? I certainly don't belong in Blanchester anymore, that's for sure. When I left home for college last year, it's like the whole world had opened up. No, literally, the whole world as I knew it has opened up. As soon as I set foot on campus, I had experienced a whirlwind of things that were new to me. People of all backgrounds, some from different states, others from different countries. I had encountered people of many different races, religions, sexualities, and political views within the first hour at OU. These were very interesting things for me, since where I grew up nearly everyone was white, Christian, conservative, and straight. If you didn't meet this criteria for social survival in farm town America, you didn't dare talk about it in Blan. And hearing different languages spoken there? Forget it. Here, I hear people speaking Chinese, Spanish, and even Arabic on a regular basis. I have no idea what they are saying, but it is interesting to hear nonetheless.
It was experiences like this that made me realize that the next time I went home that my mind had grown beyond the confines of that Blanchester birdcage where I was never able to fly. I hear my old friends from high school who stayed in town talk about hings that just aren't relevant to my life anymore, and every time I was bored by the end of the conversation. I have people ask me "Aren't you glad to be home?" and I must answer them truthfully, "no, not really." I had outgrown my hometown. I had been surrounded by closed-minded people my entire life, and while I thought that I didn't have much in common with them back then, I certainly knew that for sure now. Do I love my hometown? Of course I do. It's where I was raised, and I have fond memories of everything from jumping on top of hay bales at my grandparents' farm to marching halftime shows at the football games. However, it is not where I belong. It never really was, and it is not now. But where in the world do I belong? Is it Athens? Is it New York, Los Angeles? Cincinnati, Chicago, Kansas City? I don't know. Maybe it's not even in this country, and I belong some place like London, Paris, or Rome. I don't know where I may belong in the future, but for now, I know one thing is for sure. I belong right here.
Alicia, I respect your writing, I feel like I can hear you speaking through this piece. One thing that I think you could work on is how you define what it is like to belong somewhere because it seems you are unsure until the last sentence. Great job!
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
DeleteI really love this piece! I think it's an essay very good at conveying how it feels to be ostracized from those you've grown up around. I think it would be nice to get a bit more of an idea of how you feel about OU's changes other than the fact that they're interesting. Like Danielle said, the reader doesn't get much of an idea that you feel you belong at OU until the last sentence, so that would be good to get more of a sense throughout the piece. Talk more about why these things make you feel you belong, perhaps. I really like the brief flashes of concrete memories, like the football games and your grandparents' place!
ReplyDeleteI also love the concrete memories.
DeleteI hang on to two things here. The positive "jumping on hay bales" and the negative allusions to homogeneity. Can I get an example of how Blan didn't allow people to be different? Did you want to be different? Does belonging somewhere else necessarily mean that you don't belong in Blan?
Your writing is best when you notice-for-us-the-world in the specific ways that we notice-the-world-ourselves. We may know what it's like to have the world opened up, but we know it vaguely. We want to see how/where/with-whom. Because that's how we experienced our opened-up world.
DW
Good Job, Alicia. I like the mixed-up feelings in this piece and your reference to Blanchester as a birdcage. One thing that would be great to add in this piece is physical descriptions of people and places. A mix of short abstract sentences would spice up the story as well. Ranch sauce!
ReplyDelete"Blanchester birdcage," I absolutely love that! I can really sense your tension in this piece. I like how you talk about still loving where you are from because it was home for so long, but still having outgrown it. I think a good addition would be describing more in detail what it was like in Blanchester and what you were like in Blanchester. Good piece!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of outgrowing a hometown. I'm willing to bet we all wind up feeling that way at some point. I like how you end it as a bit of a cliffhanger to the next part of your life. The piece feels pretty complete, but as others have said, it felt like we need a bit more description.
ReplyDeleteI also loved the "Blanchester birdcage" comment, so hysterical and so true of many home towns. Another line I was very mesmerized by was, "If you didn't meet this criteria for social survival in farm town America" because you are very successful at conveying sarcasm and you made me laugh a lot while reading this.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to suggest changes I feel that it is a little repetitive and could use some variation towards the end. I think you repeated "I didn't belong" and "I don't know" to make your message stronger but, I felt that in such a short piece of writing it would be stronger without the use of so much repetition.