Short Story Essay Reflection

This week for our blog we were assigned to go over our Short Story essays and reflect back on the positives, negatives, and feedback given on them. For my short story I chose to analyze Fiesta, 1980, written by Junto Diaz. My goal was to examine how food as a symbol reflects the positive and negative dynamics between the main character, Junior, and the rest of his family. For each body paragraph I closely evaluated how junior acts and responds to food around four of the major characters in the story; Papi, Mami, Rafa, and Tia. Each paragraph focused on one of those characters and how each of them individual interacted with Junior when it came to food, and how Junior responded to each of them.

While writing this essay I had difficulty finding a strong “so what” to the major themes in the novel, and when I found one to analyze I had a hard time keeping to the true “so what” meaning throughout my paper. Looking back on it I see part of the essay where I should have connected my claim back to the whole thesis. In some of the situations taken strait from the stories I could have drawn it back to why this it connects with Junior’s relationship or how it show a certain dynamic within the family. I also now think I should have used clearer quotes and example to support my thesis and claims. There was also a comment saying that in some parts there needed to be stronger analysis, which that can be fixed with more practicing through rewrites and blogging. Looking back on my finished paper, it doesn’t seemed finished at all it still feels like I should add more detail and content. While I was writing this I never felt done with it whenever I looked away from writing it and came back to it, there was always something in my previous writing that needed to be changed? I also should have definitely taken more time reviewing and checking my work for grammatical errors. Next time I’ll do that.

Overall, this entire essay wasn’t too bad. For my first AP lit paper it was pretty nonchalant, but it did cause a lot of stress that last week we had to work on it. I had my prewriting done and rough draft done before then but it still felt like there was still too much to do. I think for my next essay I will take a little more time creating a full analysis before creating my full body paragraphs. I will also pay a little bit more attention to creating more fluid paragraphs and embedding my quotes more fluently. There is still a lot of improvement I would like to see in myself for writing these essays but it wasn’t a bad grade so I am on the verge of almost being pleased, but there is still a lot that I feel that I can improve on with practice.