Click here for info on the Print Journal (and to purchase your copy)!

Week Four Homework Assignment:

We had three manuscripts to read for the next class.

Manuscript Number One: Gunjan, a thirty-five year old Indian woman who hadn’t yet spoken unless required since class began, handed out “We Are Not Alone.”
In the story, she described her dad’s bout with cancer and subsequent death, and the toll it took on her family. Though well written, the story averaged about one Indian recipe per page. Every time the doctor gave them bad news, her mom found solace in cooking Indian dishes “passed down from generation to generation.” We were treated to a play by play every time her mom entered the kitchen, and then to how tasty everything was due to the special ingredient – no, not curry…but love.

Though I understood the idea was to add flavor to the narrative and show the different ways people deal with hardships, it just didn’t resonate with me. While reading this I realized the only thing more boring than cooking shows on cable is reading about cooking. To me, anyway. On the bright side, I figured if she couldn’t get any agents or publishers to bite on it as a memoir, perhaps she might be able to market it as a cookbook.

Manuscript Number Two: Skeletor’s story, “Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These” was a somewhat humorous tale about a few odd dates she went on, including one with an ex-con.

It was a tough read. No, not because her writing was so complex nor because it written in Spanish. It was tough to read because it was handwritten. Skeletor didn’t own a computer or a typewriter. Many words, and some sentences, were crossed out making it difficult to follow.

I did enjoy her simple, easy-going style though saying, “I liked your simple style of writing” wouldn’t cut it as a positive comment. So after checking a thesaurus, I decided I liked her down-to-earth style of writing. There. Better.

Also, the ending fell flat. Going home after her latest disastrous date and complaining on the phone to her dad that “everyone is crazy but me” may have worked ten years ago when the modern chick-lit genre was in its infancy but by now, it’s beyond cliché. We get the idea. All men are crazy and/or jerks (or ex-cons) and the only guy a girl can trust is her daddy or her gay best friend. See? I get it.

But you’ve come a long way baby, and should be able to do a little better.

She also forgot to include a gay male best friend in her story.

Manuscript Number Three: By Jon, “My Wacky Urban Life” was an excerpt from his coming of age memoir about growing up in Queens.

As I mentioned in Part One of this series, we had two gay males in the class. One was Timmy. Flamboyant, stylish and a fixture at the Chelsea meat-market scene, Timmy was a combination of every star on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Jon, on the other hand, was none of those things. A schoolteacher in Astoria, he was tall, slightly overweight and seemed to sweat a lot. He rarely ventured into Manhattan and never to visit any of the gay bars that Timmy regularly frequented or danced at. If he weren’t gay, Jon might have played any of the “Straight Guy” characters on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The only thing he had in common with Timmy was a lisp - well, besides the whole homosexual thing.

At any rate, when I read Jon’s title, my hope was that he meant it ironically. He didn’t. (Then again, if he had, it would have been an admission that his story was boring, so that wouldn’t have made sense).

This excerpt focused on his attraction to a girl in his class and an incident with his crazy Christian Fundamentalist neighbor when he walked said girl home from school one day. It wasn’t bad. Not something I would read on my own time, but at least it didn’t have a porn scene.

We were also told to bring in a published memoir. I brought in Loser Goes First by Dan Kennedy.

Homework complete. Click here to return to class.