Ficiton Subgenre: The Signette: House on Mango Street

In my original reading plan, I decided to read House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. It is a collection of....well, I'm not sure how you'd classify it (I'll get to that)...but together they all tell a story of a young girl living in Chicago, the people she meets there, her wish to escape, and her promise to come back for those she loves. I couldn't decide how to classify this book - definitely fiction, but what kind of fiction. It's almost poetic in its language at times, but it's not quite a collection of short stories either. I did some digging, and here's what I found:

vi·gnette  (vn-yt)

n.

1. A decorative design placed at the beginning or end of a book or chapter of a book or along the border of a page.

2. An unbordered picture, often a portrait, that shades off into the surrounding color at the edges.

3.

a. A short, usually descriptive literary sketch.

b. A short scene or incident, as from a movie.

tr.v. vi·gnet·ted, vi·gnet·ting, vi·gnettes

1. To soften the edges of (a picture) in vignette style.

2. To describe in a brief way.

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[French, from Old French, diminutive of vigne, vine (from the use of vine tendrils in decorative borders); seevine.]

This seems to be the perfect definition to me. It's a collection of vignettes. None alone are long or complete enough to be a short story, but it's a collection of snippets that ultimately tell a tale. Exploring more into this genre. When looking up common examples, this came up: a blog. So while I thought we were all writing informally this term, we've actually been practicing our vignettes. :)

Children's Fiction: Hans Christian Andersen

I try to read one fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen a day. Some of them are better than others ("The Flying Trunk" - good, "Little Shuteye" - not so good). The one I want to analyze for this post is "The Little Mermaid," which is actually nothing at all like the Disney movie. It's darker. She doesn't get her prince in the end, the sisters try to convince her to murder him, and instead of magically losing her voice, the witch cuts off her tongue. It has a gracious ending though, in which she basically gets to be an angel because of her selflessness and isn't cursed to hell like the rest of her kind.

There is a lot of rich language in the story, and I'm going to analyze it by highlighting the imagery,  anastrophe, and parallelism.

The little mermaid drew back the purple curtain from the tent door and saw the lovely bride asleep with her head on the prince's breast; and, stooping down, she kissed him on his beautiful forehead, looked up at the sky where the dawn was growing brighter and brighter, looked at the sharp knife, and again turned her gaze on the prince, who murmured in his dreams the name of his bride. She alone was in his thoughts, and the hand which held the knife trembled. But then all at once she threw it far into the waves, which shone red where it fell, as though drops of blood were trickling from the water. Once more she looked, with half-glazed eyes, at the prince; then she plunged into the sea, feeling her body melt into foam as she did so.

Historical Fiction: The Secret Life of Bees

In my original learning plan, I talked about wanting to read The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. As a preface to this review, I would advise anyone who's thinking about reading it not to see the movie first. Not because the movie isn't worth seeing (it is), but it is one of the rare movies that follows the book to a tee. Having seen the movie first, there really were no surprises or unexpected plot twists I found while reading, or even moments where I found myself thinking "hmmm that's so different from the movie."

One of the things I was impressed about with this book was the way that it tackles issues of the theme of racism head-on. No beating around the bush. There are moments when she uses language that makes us cringe in our modern day. There are moments when the characters are so ignorant it makes you facepalm. But there are almost moments of surprise for Lily as she tests the boundaries of what she has been raised in.

It was foolish to think some things were beyond happening, even being attracted to Negroes. I'd honestly thought such a thing couldn't happen, the way water could not run uphill or salt could not taste sweet. A law of nature. Maybe it was a simple matter of being attracted to what I couldn't have. Or maybe desire kicked in when it pleased without noticing the rules we lived and died by.

The author does a great job of remembering the character's voice. Lily wants to be a writer, and there are moments when she writes like it, such as when she speaks in metaphors about how "salt could not taste sweet" in terms of attraction. She's conscious of the character's development and acknowledgment of the rules of society. 

There is a great scene in Chapter 8 when August asks Lily a question she has never been asked before - what do you love? It's a question she is thrilled to answer, but it also reveals a lot about her character in the things she doesn't say but narrates in her first person dialogue.

Right off the bat I wanted to say I loved the picture of my mother, how she was leaning against the car with her hair looking just like mine, plus her gloves and her picture of the black Mary with unpronounceable name, but I had to swallow that back. "Well, I love Rosaleen, and I love writing stories and poems - just give me something to write and I will love it...This may be silly, but after school I love Coca-Cola with salted peanuts poured in the bottle. And when I'm finished with it, I love turning up the bottle to see where it came from...And I love the color blue- the real bright blue like the hat Mary had on at the Daughters of Mary meeting. And since coming here, I've learned to love bees and honey." I wanted to add, And you, I love you, but I felt too awkward.

Her hidden feelings are discoveries are in red and are her thoughts, but the author uses more direct language to convey these. More straight forward. The things that are superficial, like loving Coca-Cola, she describes with imagery.

Overall, I'd recommend this book. It's easy to read, but the complexity of the themes and issues can be hard to swallow if you're not prepared. It has heavy content, especially in terms of self-guilt, but it's also this part that is applicable to our own lives.

Genre. I mean Whoa Man!

After discovering that there was a sub genre of fiction called nonsense literature, I'm curious to find other sub genres of fiction that I've never heard of before. Here, I am having grown up reading Dr. Seuss and Alice in Wonderland, and nursery rhymes, never knowing that they were nonsense literature.  And now that I know, I'm much better equipped to understand and analyze them.

I never realized how helpful genre can be in analyzing literature. Once you know the genre and the techniques that, that genre implements it's so much easier to find those techniques and understand why they were used.

So here are some other sub genres of fiction that you might not have heard of before. I chose some books that I'm familiar with to describe them:

Glitz/Glamour romance- a typical romance novel focused on the jet-set elite and celebrity. Think Gossip Girl

Quiet horror- subtly written horror that uses atmosphere and mood to create suspense rather than graphic description. Think Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky

Technological thriller- in which technology has run amok. Think Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

Bangsian Fantasy- Stories speculating on the after life esp. of celebrities.  Think The Lovely Bones

Cozy mystery/crime- a mystery that takes place in a small town with all suspects present and familiar with one another. Think Lacy Steele mysteries like Morning Cup of Murder.

What I found most amazing about these subgenres that I've never heard of before is that I have read books that fit under each of the categories. Whoa Man! If you want to read about more subgenres, check out this website.