Miss Adele and conflict

Conflict is prevalent throughout this story.  Whether it be between Mrs. Alexander and her husband or Miss Adele and both Mr. and Mrs. Alexander at the end of the story.  Mrs. Alexander was seen constantly fighting with her husband throughout the story. The real conflict came at the end of the story. Miss Adele confronts Mrs. Alexander's husband for not giving her respect. He wouldn't even look at her. I know almost everyone has felt this.  I for one hate it when I'm at work and if I'm talking to a child for being disrespectful and they won't even look at me.  Also, I was in shock when Mrs. Alexander went from a sweetheart at the beginning of the story to calling Miss Adele "sir" come the end.  To me, that was soooo disrespectful. I know Miss Adele's blood was boiling once she heard that for the first time.  Conflict is what drives this story to it conclusion.

Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets

This story mostly takes place in one setting.  The author truly uses great techniques to make this setting and characters come to life.  I enjoyed how the author chose to use the radio to break up the story as a radio sometimes does in real life.  I feel that at some point everyone has experienced that. Whether you are just on a drive having a conversation with someone and the next thing you know the radio just cuts off your conversation.  I felt this was a great tactic used to make this story sound so realistic.  Also, the imagery used to depict characters and their actions were great in this story.  An example is, "Sweat pricked her face for the first time in weeks." This line had me seeing sweat dripping down the face of Miss Adele.

Ms Zadie Smith made the story Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets come alive she describe the setting, used different characters, the dialogue used between the characters and the playing of the loud loud music and the people moving about very busy. The sensual detail that is favored in this story is the trying on and taking off the corset and the customers admiring themselves in the mirror  The noises Adele made behind the curtain while trying to fasten the corset could be sensual to someone passing by in the store.This story is more about city life because it demonstrates how people move about minding their on business focusing on the tasks that they have to accomplish throughout their day.  The loud music playing to drown out and distract us from whats happening in the city/store and life. Also the dialogue between the customers is similar to city life when individuals randomly talk to strangers to inquire or acquire needed information.  The British tourist are lost and asked a stranger for directions. The story is very busy like city life with a diverse group of people and still we are not tolerant of the differences we encounter everyday.  The owner of the store is Jewish, Miss Adele is African American and the sales person is Asian the city is a mixture of ethnic groups.  This story depicts how society prejudge individuals and mistreat them because of our own beliefs. The rudeness of the store owner towards his customer is despicable but real.  He ignores Miss Adele when she enters the store and refused to look at her when she had to pay for her corsets. The way Adele handles the situation was commendable. She knew what she needed and refused to leave the store without the corset ,she left the money on the counter ,took the merchandise and ran out the store.

Loretta Young that Miss Adele refers to is a beautiful actress in the twenties-fifties that was rape by Clark Gable . Miss Young had a baby out of wedlock from Mr Gable and kept it a secret. She refers to Mrs Alexander as Ms Young because she is beautiful and feel that she is preforming (pretending) as if she is happy with her life. Miss Adele states give her academy award for her role as a wife. I find this statement humorous ,because so many people are unhappy in their marriages/life and continue to perform everyday for their audience. Miss Adele thinks we should be true to ourselves.

Foreword

I wanted to share Stephen's foreword as I thought it was a really great example of one. Notice how he talks about the specific texts and his process of writing and revising. He also tries to make sense of why he wrote the texts he did. And finally, he tells his readers about how he feels about the different texts. Check it out:

Foreword:

This collection, “The Italian-American take on Love & Family” is strong because this collection incorporates and exploits my Italian-American heritage successfully. The four pieces of writing in this collection may not explicitly be about being Italian-American but the ones that don’t incorporate many ideals and morals I was taught by my family.  “Finding my Family” is the introduction to a fiction novel where a young boy experiences a traumatic event that changes his life.  The boy is from Prizzi, Sicily which is the town where my fathers’ family is from.  I chose this setting because I have visited this place in my life and some aspects of the setting are familiar to me. I am currently in the third draft of this story.  I plan on revisiting this character at a later point in his life and continue his story.  I wanted this introduction to depict the struggle he faced with losing his parents and the fact that you can find a family in the most unlikely places. This story clearly depicts the Italian aspect of my Italian-American heritage. This piece is probably my favorite piece of my collection.  I truly enjoyed every moment I spent on this piece.  As I was crafting my story I found myself getting more and more excited about where this story was headed.  This was my first attempt at creative writing and I couldn’t be prouder of the hard work I put in.  “My Disaster After Hurricane Sandy” is a nonfiction memoir of my Uncle Phil’s death.  This moment in my life was traumatic for me since my family and I were visiting him the moment he passed away.  Writing this story was a bit hard for me because it brought back memories and emotions from that day.  This memoir may not explicitly depict my Italian-American culture but it does explicitly depict the value that family always comes first and this was instilled in me by my parents and grandparents at a very young age.  “The Perfect Balance” is a poem I wrote based on my relationship experiences.  This is my second draft of this poem and it covers my definition of what love entails and also has some personal elements of my experiences in relationships.  I was told to delve deeper into my personal experiences but I decided to keep it the way it was because I felt that if I were to keep it more general I could reach a wider audience.  Also my reason for keeping it was that my idea of poetry is that its purpose is to be able to relate with almost anybody and if I were to make it more about me I felt many readers wouldn’t truly grasp the meaning behind this poem. This was honestly my first real attempt at poetry.  Sure I may have attempted it at a young age while in elementary school but that was before I truly understood the meaning behind writing poetry.  “Io Italiano” is a short-lined poem that I wrote based on my Italian-American heritage.  I chose to make the stanza on family and tradition the longest stanzas for the reason that those are the two most important aspects (from what I was taught by my family) of being an Italian-American. I think it was pretty obvious how this depicts my heritage.  I took straight from what my belief of what an Italian-American is to write this poem. We are loud-mouthed, family-oriented and tradition-oriented.  I didn’t just want to give the general look so in some aspects of the poem you will see me dive a bit deeper so I don’t only scratch the surface. Sure this poem gives a very stereotypical look at Italian-Americans, but I feel most stereotypes for us fit us well.  There are bad stereotypes for us but I did not want to dwell on that for this poem.  I felt that if I chose to prove the bad stereotypes wrong would have taken away from the pride I have in the good stereotypes.

Other ways to meet the Public Writing Project

I have discovered other ways of meeting the Public Writing Project (PWP). "Attend" one of the events at the Social Distancing Festival. You can go to any event labeled "STORYTELLING" or "THEATRE" to meet your requirement. (Non-literature events like MUSIC or TRIVIA NIGHT won't meet this requirement.) Other ways to meet the PWP:

• Go to a literary event through the Virtual Book Channel.
• Go to one of these events at the Antibody Reading Series.

 

 If anyone discovers other virtual reading series or literary performances, please share them on the blog (I'll give you blog credit for posting about them).

Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets (Part 2)

I think she can reliable as a narrator because she is telling us what she sees in the city and how she deals with it and describing goes on such as shitty pizza joints, the ugly students, delis, etc. He was listening to some AM channel on the radio. The owner of the shop was a racist. I don't think we should trust her by her assumptions because they can be wrong.