The Extraordinary Will Take Care of Itself

Noah always embraced that no one welcomed him into any cultures, that he felt he SHOULD belong in. He was not accepted as a colored person by other colored people, because he was either too white for black people, or to black for white people, and at the end of the day, he still chose to identify as a black man. In chapter 16, Trevor was very oblivious to the fact that he was getting bullied. He was also very oblivious when he managed to get his bike stolen from a girl. I think when Noah was more so young, he cared a lot about fitting in, and belonging to a group, that he didn’t realize all the sacrifices he took trying so hard. In chapter 10, there was a Valentine’s Day dance, and a girl named Maylene who had a major crush on Trevor. There was huge talk amongst the friend groups about Trevor asking out Maylene, so he could take her to the dance. But the thought of him liking Maylene never actually crossed his mind. He said yes, but just for the wrong reason. Unfortunately, she broke his heart right before the dance for someone more “cool and better looking”, and Noah was devastated. I honestly can’t say that Noah’s writing impacted my own, because he uses a ton of humor and dialogue, and those aren’t techniques that I would refer back to when writing. I didn’t choose to use humor because I would consider myself just an intentionally funny person, and I feel as though when using humor in your writing, there’s a lot of brainstorming, because you try so hard to make the reader laugh. Furthermore, my goal wasn’t to make people laugh. I wouldn’t want people to laugh at my vignette at all. When my vignette is read, I want people to take the time to sit and think about what I just wrote. As an outsider looking in, which you are, the reader, I gave you points of views of other characters in my story who are ALSO outsiders to my culture.

The Extraordinary Will Take Care of Itself

Comments (2)

Lily Weston (Student 2024)
Lily Weston

I love how you are expressing your opinions and feelings so fearlessly to your family, even though they might not accept them, and then even after your family disagreed with you, you still stayed true to yourself. Also, that Cher quote is so timeless and amazing and powerful, I'm so glad you included that in your story.