Tag: Will Alden

How the second person perspective utilizes distance as a way to tell traumatic stories, specifically from marginalized perspectives

Presenter(s): Hayley Schlueter—English

Faculty Mentor(s): Will Alden

Session 4: Let’s KIDD Around: KIDD Creative Writing Program

This project aims to understand the unique ways in which the second person perspective can be utilized for stories about trauma, and therefore, stories about marginalized identities and experiences—meaning people who experience some form of systemic oppression, such as women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people . The second person often creates a sense of discomfort in the reader by calling direct attention to the reader, essentially forcing them to become a part of the story by inhabiting the “you” and the life of the story’s character . At the same time that the “you” creates this often uncomfortable intimacy, it also creates a sense of distance . My research explores the ways in which the second person perspective utilizes these seeming contradictions between intimacy and alienation, discomfort and distance, as a method for telling stories about trauma and identity through the examination of short stories such as Michael Cunningham’s “Mister Brother” and Kiese Laymon’s “You are the Second Person .” I am interested in the ways in which marginalized authors and characters, who already experience the world as deeply alienating, are able to use the second person as a way to emphasize and control that alienation .

Suspending Disbelief in the Unreal: The Craft of Magical Realism

Presenter(s): Sophia Mick—Humanities

Faculty Mentor(s): Will Alden

Session 4: Let’s KIDD Around: KIDD Creative Writing Program

How do you get a reader to happily believe that your character’s husband has turned into an ape? Or that your narrator has developed a concerning but largely unimportant ability to fly? Why? Magical realism is often distinguished from other literary genres with a definition, however malleable, along these lines: a realistic narrative with surreal elements . These surreal elements are what fascinate me . This essay explores, on the micro scale, how understatement and detail help craft the suspension of disbelief necessary in the creation of magical realism, and on a macro scale, what magical realism means, both the term itself and the implications it has for author and reader . My research is composed of a close analysis of the micro techniques in works by authors Aimee Bender, Joseph O’Neill and Karen Russell, analysis of craft essays by Russell and Alice Munro, and a brief look at some of my own writing through the lens of Bret Anthony Johnston’s “Don’t Write What You Know .” As a lover of the magically real, I intend to examine and explain the literary craft of convincing magical realism and hopefully, to grasp at some understanding of why anyone would, or should, write it at all .