Or be a
teenager girl with the hopes of getting a green or yellow Volkswagen
bug for Christmas?
Nope.
Never.
But my
imagination has with the help of black words printed on ivory sheets
of pulp material.
Writing in the
first person enlivened what reading meant to me as a freshman in high
school.
I hated
reading.
I hated book
reports, and perhaps the coercive assignments lead toward hating
reading in general.
When I read
Diary of a Teenage Girl by Melody Carlson (2000), I felt it was my
own diary, er, “journal” - I refuse to be acquainted with the
tween, frou-frou privacy books.
I could relate
to the character so well that when I did begin documenting my life
before I turned 15-years-old, I used the book's format as a basis for
my writing (and discovered I love parenthesis).
There was
nothing particular about the passage, just someone similar in age
that allowed time to pass as I read – a rarity at the time.
That moment
sprung my love for reading.
Another first
person book I read in a matter of days is The Hunger Games (2010) by
Suzanne Collins.
Page six reads,
“In the woods waits the only person with whom I can be myself.
Gale.
I can feel the
muscles in my face relaxing, my
pace quickening
as I climb the hills to our place, a rock
ledge
overlooking a valley.
A thicket of
berry bushes protects
it from
unwanted eyes.
The sight of
him waiting there brings on a smile.
Gale says I
never smile except in the woods.”
Being in the
first person allows for more sensory images because the author needs
to make the reader become the character, as opposed to reading a
scene with sensory details.
Stories like
these engage me, challenging my stubborn self to cry or turn the page
with excitement because it feels like a personal experience.
Perception is
why the first person storyline is my favorite writing.
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