I have always felt most comfortable reading and writing about fiction and non-fiction, and that was true in my writing this term. Writing about different works by Sherman Alexie cae relatively easily, and writing “The Thirteenth Night” by Ichiyo Higuchi was also not so hard, even though the story was written a long time ago, in a very different culture.

I would say that my paper about Sherman Alexie’s “This is What it Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona.” shows me at my best. I was able to use his biography “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir,” which I had read previously and really liked. And because I looked at the story through psychoanalytic theory, I was able to use many things that I know about his life. I know that Alexie is a complicated person, but I can relate to the many medical problems he has had throughout his life.

I have more trouble with poetry and drama because they’re more abstract. I do like the poetry of  Jimmy Santiago Baca, though, so didn’t mind so much analyzing “So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs From Americans.” The erasure poetry assignment was really hard for me, though. I couldn’t really get that.

 And drama was hard to analyze, both Chekhov’s “The Proposal” and Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s “Mine Eyes Have Seen. I like seeing plays performed on stage, but reading them is different, and harder.