Kayla's Writing Self-Assessment

My writing process has developed greatly throughout the semester. At first, I was not a fan of how much drafting we were required to do as a class. However, my feelings changed when I realized how much easier it was to compose a final paper when I had already completed the majority of the research. The most enjoyable part of researching for my final paper was finding non-scholarly sources that helped me to develop my ideas in a deeper way. I found newspaper articles from the 1960s and Spotify playlists that helped me find my voice in what I was trying to portray. In my initial self-assessment, I wrote that my drafting was weak as I tended to just write a paper and turn it in without any revising or previous drafts. I have greatly improved upon that. One thing I noticed, however, was I felt like I was struggling to tie together all my sources in my final paper - something I had written was a struggle for me at the beginning of the semester. Clearly, I could have used more practice in that arena. The social aspect of writing was also heightened in this class as opposed to other English classes I have taken. Being accountable for another student helped me to manage my time wisely, and the feedback was generally helpful in further development of my ideas. I liked knowing I only had an hour before I had to report back to another student about how much work I had completed. Overall, I know that this class stretched me and especially my writing process. I had a lot going on in my life this semester, as we all did, and especially now with COVID-19. But the way this class was organized helped me to be able to keep up with the required assignments in a reasonable timeline.

Kayla's Annotated Bibliography of The Glass Castle and Ecocriticism

New York Times Newspaper Archive:

Appalachia - Poverty, Beauty and Poverty

By, REESE C. "Appalachia -- Poverty, Beauty and Poverty: Appalachia -- Poverty, Beauty and Poverty."
New York Times (1923-Current file), 1965, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times. Web. <https://search-proquest-com.erl.lib.byu.edu/docview/116730812?accountid=4488>.

I found this through the American Literature database on the HBLL website. It’s a New York Times article
from 1965 that focuses on individual families and their lifestyles in the same time period Jeanette Walls
lived there with her family. It connects the way their impoverished lifestyle is affecting the surrounding
land and fits perfectly within the context of my paper.

The Glass Castle Journal Review: 

Shirley Sealey

Sealy, Shirley. "The Glass Castle." Film Journal International 120.9 (2017): 79-80. Web.

I found this through the American Literature database of Performing Arts. This is a published review of
The Glass Castle that discusses the way the movie impacts the original published story and changes
certain dynamics and feelings as they were portrayed within the book.

Minds and Hearts: Using Jeanette Walls’s Memoir, “The Glass Castle”, to Teach Emotional Intelligence

Andrea Irvin

Andrea Irvin. "Minds and Hearts: Using Jeannette Walls's Memoir, "the Glass Castle", to Teach Emotional
Intelligence." The English Journal 102.1 (2012): 57-60. Research Library Prep. Web.

This is a scholarly article I found through JSTOR about a schoolteacher in poverty-stricken Appalachian
Mountains who teaches her students to recognize emotional cues between the Walls family. She points
out the way the family dynamics change as they grow older and move, which is the main focus of my
thesis.

Johns-Hopkins Guide: Ecocriticism 

https://litguide-press-jhu-edu.erl.lib.byu.edu/cgi-bin/view.cgi?eid=84&query=ecocriticism

The Johns-Hopkins guide to ecocriticism allows me to further understand and apply the different aspects
of ecocriticism including stewardship and protecting the environment. 

The Impact of Homelessness and Shelter Life on Family Relationships

Elizabeth W Lindsey

Lindsey, Elizabeth W. "The Impact of Homelessness and Shelter Life on Family Relationships." Family
Relations 47.3 (1998): 243-52. Sociological Abstracts. Web.

This is an article I found on Google Scholar that studies individual relationships between homeless family
members and how they evolve through their different situations. This is a point I want to focus on in my
paper as I suggest how having an unbalanced lifestyle led to the disintegration of the relationships within
the Walls family. 

The Glass Castle Soundtrack

https://open.spotify.com/album/4rG0gsoevGSZ0DF0lbfSd4

The Spotify soundtrack for the movie contains many insights into the beliefs of the Walls family and
directly relates to the settings in which they live. I will search the lyrics of these songs in order to gain
more understanding into how dynamics between the family and the land change throughout the movie.

Kayla's Current Research Questions

I'm focusing on the way setting and nature are reflected in family relationships in The Glass Castle. I'm emphasizing stewardship over the earth and within families as well as how relationships deteriorate within homeless societies.

Questions:

• Where can I find information about ecocriticism?
• Do I have access to historical newspapers from the 1960s?
• Where can I find literary criticism about The Glass Castle? 

Kayla's Reflection on Literary Analysis 2

Informal, online, or multimedia sources

I used a picture on a blog that I had found that talked about the different settings and the impact that had on the Walls family. The picture was of the night sky in the desert. This blog was what initially made me think of going with ecocriticism. I also read an article called “Love, Somehow, Shines Through the Glass Castle”. This helped me realize the connection between familial connection and how it was affected by the outside scenarios. They helped me begin the paper and start my ideas so I could develop them further. 

Literary theory

Ecocriticism turned out to be the perfect theory to use with this book, but I never would have realized it without my pre-writing. It was fairly easy to blend into each section of the formal analysis. I feel I effectively discussed the novel and applied this theory well in talking about the desert, the mountains, and the city and each places’ effect on the Walls’ family relationships.

Writing process

The pre-writing has been helping my writing process much more than I expected. It helps me not to procrastinate and to get all my thoughts and ideas in order before I begin writing the paper instead of figuring it out as I go along. I still need to strengthen my deepening of my ideas and opinions on the topics but I feel like I effectively applied ecocriticism to the paper.

Critical Approaches to The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle has been highly awarded in the past 15 years, even being adapted into a movie. It is a memoir by Jeannette Walls about her wild life growing up. From being constantly on the run in the desert to abuse and family connection, this story resonates with me on a deep level. The positive elements in the novel remind me of my own childhood, and the negative elements parallel with my mother’s upbringing. 

• Feminist: I studied the examples of assault against women as a feminist approach to The Glass Castle. Billy, the older neighbor kid, molests Jeanette as a child. As a teenager, Jeanette is sexually assaulted in a room above a roadside bar. Rex Walls frequently uses domestic violence against his wife in front of the children. Additionally, the mother teaches Jeanette that sexual assault is a crime of perception: that if she doesn’t believe she’s been hurt, she isn’t. 
• Critical Race Theory: When Jeanette and her family move to West Virginia, Jeanette befriends a black girl named Dinitia. One day after school, she brings her home to play. When her grandmother and uncle meet Dinitia, they warn Jeanette of her choice of friends and worry that people will think she is a n****r lover. Even though the Walls were self-described “the poorest of all the white trash”, they still viewed black people as lesser than themselves. 
• Biographical: Jeanette decided to write a memoir, instead of an autobiography of her life. This allowed her to add in details that were much more poignant and personal. Because she is still living, it also allowed her to write in detail about her childhood and upbringing instead of the birth - death as the typical biography contains. It follows a more narrow timeline that provides a closer look into what her life was really like. 
• Ecocriticism: The Glass Castle describes a very unique relationship between the family and nature. Rex Walls likes to live out in the open desert, teaching his children how to rely on the land for food and shelter. The children love the openness of the desert. The mother makes Rex pull over so she can paint an exceptional joshua tree they pass. Rex “gives” each child their very own star for Christmas. When they move to West Virginia, the earth they once cherished and protected becomes a trash dump as Rex falls into deeper alcoholism and other addictions. The way the family interacts with the earth could be symbolic of their relationships with one another, falling apart with time and neglect.

Kayla's Exploration Report

The first Google Image that caught my eye was a picture of the children standing with their parents, staring up at their new run-down home together. I was immediately interested in the picture, because it reminded me of my family - overpowered by girls. I clicked on the picture, which took me to a news article titled, “Love, Somehow, Shines Through in The Glass Castle”. This was interesting to me because despite Jeanette’s desperate and difficult family situation, the article focused on the love between the family. The picture was a scene from the film released in 2017. 

https://apnews.com/3e0c987436254bee96a0c722f30baff5/Review:-Love,-somehow,-shines-through-%27The-Glass-Castle%27

Another image that caught my eye was the night sky in the desert. A blog titled “Glass Castlez” described the scene of The Glass Castle, in which the desert and night sky are paramount details to explain Jeanette’s life. I’ve always felt a connection to this setting because the first half of the book takes place near my home. 

https://glasscastlez.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/setting/

Other images on websites show Frozen-esque castles or fan art depicting giant castles made of glass. Finally, many quotes have been made popular from the book. My personal favorite was at the top: “You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.” 

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2944133-the-glass-castle

Kayla's Reflection on Literary Analysis 1

Doing the pre-writing for this literary analysis paper helped me to break down the topics I wanted to focus on. It allowed me to spread the workload of the paper over a longer period of time, which gave me a better paper than if I would have just tried to read it and write about it immediately. Learning about Shelley allowed me to assign deeper meaning to the poem. Looking for other resources and information gave me more context to assign meaning to the poem. I was able to easily develop a thesis because I had already done a lot of the necessary research before beginning the paper. 

Kayla's "Ozymandias" Prewriting

General Literary Resources - Author Biography - Kayla Larson

My task is to find a specific type of resource to help in my study of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”. I'm to find more information about the author and his works. The idea is that if I know more about the author and his life, I will be able to understand this literature more fully. Here's what I found:

John R. Greenfield: Percy Bysshe Shelley 

• John R. Greenfield’s biography of Percy Shelley states the world thought Shelley was an obscure poet and many rebuked his lifestyle. However, one of his close friends, Lord Byron, claimed that the world was ignorantly mistaken about Shelley. Greenfield describes Shelley as passionate but distracted. He had many ideas and wanted to make changes in the status quo. Even college did not appeal to him at Oxford. Shelley says, “Oxonian society was insipid to me, uncongenial with my habits of thinking”. Shelley believed in free love, marrying Harriet Westbrook, but loving Mary Godwin and eventually marrying her instead. He suffered many tragedies in his life including the loss of several children. He believed in atheism and revolution, which likely contributed to his beliefs about kings and monarchs in Ozymandias.  This reference helped me to understand Shelley’s personality and beliefs in a way that highlights certain parts of the poem.
  
  

Keats-Shelley Journal

• I found this resource through the BYU library database. It contains many of both Keats and Shelley’s individual works. As I read through Shelley’s works both before and after Ozymandias, I began to understand more clearly his style of writing and common themes throughout his works. The journal draws comparisons to current literature and poetry that helped me to further understand what Shelley believed and how his own personal life contributed to his poetry. It was also interesting to compare Keats’ works to Shelley’s. I recognized Shelley’s passion and strong opinions in his other writings. Seeing his work as a whole through this resource helped me to see him in a more full light.

These two resources helped me to get a broader view of Percy Bysshe Shelley and the events that occurred in his life to make him hold the beliefs he did. Understanding more about the time period in which this was written would lead to even more clarity. I’d like to further study the cultural norms at the time, especially involving politics and marriage.

Two Desert Children

by Kayla Larson

Growing up, the desert was my entire world. A change of scenery, some new courage, and a fellow desert child helped me to expand that world. 

I’m a desert child. Born under a blistering late afternoon sun in July, raised on a lake that turns to melted gold under pink skies. My childhood was spent wandering barefoot through sagebrush, always keeping a watchful eye for rattlesnakes. I always felt most comfortable wandering in the outdoors, but was just as likely to be found curled up on the floor with a book.

Growing up, there was a well-loved book on my family’s bookshelf: Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls. It tells of a strong-willed woman who grew up in the desert and eventually found her passion in teaching. It taught me my most important life lesson: “The place where you live - your home - is one of the most important things in a body's life.”

Kayla's Literary Moments

My Mother’s Childhood [Discussing Literature]

Educated by Tara Westbrook is one of the most insightful and eye-opening books I have read. Upon finishing it, I recommended the book to my mother. As we discussed the book together, she expressed how similar her own childhood was to Tara’s. She felt as though she had read a story about her own childhood and how she managed to escape that oppression. I realized how much my mother had overcome, as she doesn’t talk much about her situation growing up. It brought us closer together. 

Me in 100 Words [Creatively Composing] 

One of my English professors encouraged me to introduce myself to the class by way of a written piece containing 100 words. I realized that the thing that made me who I am was my hometown and rural upbringing. The beginning reads: “I’m a desert child. Born under a blistering late afternoon sun in July, raised on a lake that turns to melted gold under pink skies. My childhood was spent wandering barefoot through sagebrush, always keeping a watchful eye for rattlesnakes.” I felt a connection to my childhood while composing this short piece. 

Connecting With My Ancestors [Literary within Musical Experience] 

I often play a rendition of “Land of our Dreams” on the piano and sing it to my grandfather, who finds comfort and peace each time he requests I play it for him. The lyrics are a lullaby a mother sings to her child as they escape to America at the same time my family’s ancestors did. The song has deep meaning to my family. “May your sleep be as sweet as the wind on the waves / blowing gently toward far happier days. May each breath be a promise to help you believe / we’re off to the land of our dreams.”

Understanding The Glass Castle [Cinematic Literary Experience] 

My favorite book is The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. Recently, it was turned into a movie. The movie helped me to deepen my understanding of the family situation Jeanette endured and brought to life scenes I had difficulty picturing in my head from the book alone. 

Christmas Gifts [Literary Letters] 

My younger sister is serving a mission in Taiwan and this was her first Christmas away from home. For her Christmas present, I painted a series of Christ figures with different poems I had written for her as messages of encouragement, hope, and love. We FaceTimed on Christmas Eve to watch her open her presents. My gift of poems and art made both her and I cry. It was a special moment for my family.  

A trip to Amsterdam [Literary Travel] 

My mother and I share a favorite book, The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. We are traveling to Holland in March in order to visit her house that hid Jews during WWII. I am excited to see how visiting the place where the story is set will further connect me to the novel.

Kayla's Academic Writing Self-Assessment

Academic writing has always made more sense to me than creative writing. You do the research, you read the book, you write about it. It’s a simple formula; the steps are linear. Academic writing is laid out in front of me in a nice organized path of stepping stones. Except when it isn’t. Sometimes the stepping stones are laid out in twelve different directions in a lake of molten lava. 

My greatest strength in academic writing lies in literary analysis. I feel that I typically understand and can explain the text I am studying. I like having a solid source with which I can base my ideas upon. My weakness lies in my drafting habits. I tend to knock an entire paper out with one great swing, failing to review my work before submitting and hoping for the best. If I took more time to carefully craft each piece of my papers, I would be able to develop stronger main ideas. In my research paper about menstrual advertisements in China last semester, I was able to effectively explain and synthesize twenty scholarly articles, but I struggled to come up with clear main points between so many sources.

Kayla's Shelfies

Me in Powell's Books, my favorite bookstore in Portland

My Goodreads profile where I have rated 173 books