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Your Counterstory as a Descriptive Personal Narrative (First Draft)
Instructions
To synthesize what you’ve learned about description
, narration
, and reflection, you will write a descriptive personal narrative as a counterstory. This is generally a nonfiction, prose essay (similar to a memoir).
Your task is to identify an influential place, event, or person from your life experience about which you can tell a story. However, that story must be a counterstory. In other words, you are writing about a time in your life that most people know someone else’s story of but almost no one knows or believes your side. Your version of the story is not the dominant story also known as the prevailing story. For instance, sometimes in high school a rumor starts about someone and they wish their side of the story could be heard and believed as the true story. What is your side of the story of the life experience that you are choosing? That is your counterstory. It should not be the same life experience that you used for your fairy tale.
As you write your counterstory, consider the impact it had on you, your worldview, and/or your life path. Using model texts in the EmpoWord digital textbook as exemplars, you will tell a story (
narrate) using vivid
description and draw out meaning and insight using
reflection. You do not have to, but if you want, you can draw out a
rhetorical situation chart (click this link for the chart example) if that helps you organize your ideas before writing this counterstory.
As you’ll likely notice, descriptive personal narratives/counterstories have a variety of purposes. One important one is to share a story that stands in for a bigger idea. Do not be worried if you don’t know the “bigger idea” yet, but be advised that your final draft will narrate a focused, specific moment that represents something about who you are, how you got here, what you believe, or what you strive to be. All of that should be written about in your counterstory despite how the dominant or prevailing story that exists in the world might be trying to create obstacles to who you are, how you got here, what you believe, and/or what you strive to be.
Submission Guidelines: Submit a .docx or .pdf file in
MLA format that contains your counterstory as a descriptive personal narrative. This assignment should be at least 750 words long (approximately 3 pages long when double-spaced). You may write more than three pages if you need to.
