Analyzing Veitnamerica

For my Analyzing Vietnamerica project, I discussed how Veitnamerica is an autoehtnogrpahic text in many ways, yet can additionally stand by itself as an autobiography or ethnography. G.B. Tran employed many features from each of these genres to reveal to the reader the Vietnamese culture and the hardships they faced during the war as well as throughout the process of immigration to America. I personally enjoyed reading this graphic novel. Although the subject was unfamiliar to me, Tran’s use of graphics and style of writing were riveting in their affect on the reader.

My project is now complete. You can find my Analyzing Vietnamerica project here and the assignment page for the project here. Enjoy!

Sunday Funnies 7: A Human Document

Hummaner

For this week’s Sunday Funnies, I created a poem wiht a visual of a page taken from John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

My poem is:

But you get used to goin’ round with a guy, you get used to him
you cant get rid of bein’ used to him.
Well, he gets in trouble all the time.
You wont tell nobody? You wouldn’t tell?
He wants to touch everything he likes,
cause that’s the only thing he can think to do
I hear alll the yellin’, scared to death.
So what, so there we sit our heads sticking out.
That night we run
Hell no

Tracing Persepolis Revisionss

The revisions for my Tracing Persepolis project are complete. First I met with Professor Morgen and watched the video he made of himself going through my project. My revision strategy for the project was to follow his advice and dive deeper into the analysis I had already established. Many of my claims were extremely broad so I went back and examined the fine details of the pages to determine what they told me. I also inserted additional visuals into some of the pages and added a short passage connecting to one of my colleague’s project. This revised version of the project is superior to the draft I had previously published because I added more thorough analysis of the different aspects of the pages that helped me form a stronger argument.

Tracing Persepolis: Reflection

The Tracing Persepolis project helped me better understand how graphic novels can affect a reader’s experience and better their understand of the story. My main goals for this assignment were to analyze the sizing and placement of panels, facial expression of characters, and shading techniques used on two pages of the novel. I analyzed how these features created visual tension between the two. I found it challenging to pick two uniquely different pages that contained these three features of a graphic novel. After I choose my two pages, I found it challenging to choose which characteristics of the images to include in my tracings in order to emphasize my analysis. I tried to include parts of the image that stood out to me in a way that affected my interpretation of the page. What makes Marjane Satrapi’s, Persepolis, so unique is her decision to tell her story through a graphic novel format. I explored how three features of a graphic novel allow the reader to create new associations in and among the panels that would not have been possible through a traditional prose.

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