Some characteristics of narrative and descriptive writing is that a narrative essay or story is an explanation of the point the authors’ point they are trying to get across, whereas descriptive is describing the point the author wants to get across. Descriptive language helps to visualize the aspects of the writing, meaning in my opinion to create a mental picture.
The narrative piece is a good example, because of the vast detail the author uses in the writing. I believe the author went into grave detail when speaking about her being the eldest daughter meaning she took on the role as the translator for her parents. In the story she goes on to explain her Dominican father’s English which consists of “at best five words.”
The first paragraph was tough because she took her father to the doctors and of course her father barely knows any English and unfortunately he got diagnosed with lung cancer, so the author being the daughter had to translate that to him and I could only imaging how hard that would be to do. I definitely believe that the author successfully accomplished the purpose of the writing. The narrative structure goes on to accomplish this by the order the author chose to write this piece.
This descriptive essay was a good example because it explains a lot about her life growing up not knowing much about the world around her. She talks about how in beaver city she felt very isolated and that she was far from most of the action. She also goes on to explain how she couldn’t wait to grow up and to me her explaining this was a really good example of a descriptive piece. I feel this way because it allows you to in a way put yourself in her shoes and experience how she was feeling as she was writing this. To me the purpose of the author writing this was to explain specific events in her life and I definitely believe she accomplished this. The descriptive structure goes on to support this by painting vivid images of how she felt during this time.
The fact that Webb chose these pieces and put them under the table of contents as “culture and society” was a great choice. First of all “Loving Papi” is a great choice for culture, because it is about a Dominican American family where the eldest daughter takes the role as translator to her father that speaks little to no English. The excerpt from “The Middle Of everywhere” is a great example of society because it explains how the author felt and also lived during specific time in her life.
To conclude I believe that these pieces would definitely help as a guideline of descriptive and narrative writings a young writer as myself. When I write a narrative or descriptive essay I will definitely take these pieces into consideration and I will go back and reference the structures of these two diverse pieces to assist me in my writings.
