Narrative Visual Perspective in English

Introduction:

In this unit of English, we were asked to create a lyrical essay. A lyrical essay can be compared to an essay written like a poem, many of the techniques and devices used in poetry are also used in a lyrical essay. The reason for this is to create a unique essay that flows easily and sounds pleasant. Our inspiration for creating this came from the novel Citizen by Claudia Rankine who created a series of lyrical essays around the main theme of discrimination. She interviewed people and gathered information to create essays based on true events in order to create a narrative that can be both interesting and accurate. Like with Citizen, we interviewed one person and made a lyrical essay based on their answers to out questions.

 

Lyrical Essay:

In order to create this essay, I interviewed an immigrant from Finland at a young age. Their experience as an immigrant moving to America shaped them and I tried to capture this. The main point of this essay was to capture two selves: the American-self and the true-self. The true-self is as the name suggests, the truest representation of one’s self that holds their history, beliefs, and personality. The American-self is the self that has been influenced by American values and culture in a way that has changed the true-self. This theme was also captured in the accompanying image which was done by the artist Xu Bing, who creates art that looks Chinese but is comprised of English letters. For example, the art above is the song, Little Bo Peep.

Lyrical Essayist Study:

For the Lyrical Essayist Study, we were tasked with reading a collection of works by a lyrical essayist and then write a similar lyrical essay based on the essayist’s style of writing. I choose Tim Taranto, no not the football player, as my lyrical essayist and composed a short essay that emulates their style of detailing every action deeply and in a way that engrosses the reader into the short story.

SeanL – English Honors Lyrical Essay