Vignettes Assignment
 To be terrific, you must be specific!

Now that we’ve read and chatted about The House on Mango Street, it’s time to try writing our own vignettes. Compose two nonfiction vignettes (short, tightly focused literary sketches). Be sure to give each vignette a title. Use snapshots and thoughtshots, images, figurative language, and musical language. Connect your two vignettes to each other through a repeated pattern, or a suggested theme, or a character revelation, or . . . . How long should the vignettes be? How long are Sandra Cisneros’ vignettes?

Save all drafts. Add the draft designation (D1 or D2 or . . .) below the date in your heading. Every now and then, print a draft, so you can revise on the hard copy. Prepare your final work in best dress, following the MLA document format. When you submit your vignettes, put the final copy of each vignette on top of all its drafts, including the workshopped pages, in descending chronological order. Staple together each vignette with its drafts.

These prompts might help you start brainstorming. If you don’t like these, use one of the chapters as your inspiration and jumping-off point.

  1. Write about your home (or homes), using specific and colorful images that help your reader experience it and that suggest how you feel about it. (See “The House on Mango Street.”)

  2. Write about a member (or several members) of your family, using metaphors and images that recreate the person (or persons) and suggest how you feel about that person (or those persons). You might use a part of the body as inspiration. (See “Hairs.”)

  3. Write about your name. (See “My Name,” for example.)

  4. Write about one small though memorable moment or scene or event from your childhood. Make sure you choose something brief in time but vivid in your memory. Perhaps it was an embarrassing incident, or a time when you noticed something you didn’t previously know or understand, or a moment when you felt out of place, or a time when you felt ashamed, or your “best day,” or perhaps . . . you get the idea. Recreate that moment or scene or event in language that captures both what happened and how you felt. (See “A Rice Sandwich” or “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark.”)

  5. Write about an important object that you owned or wished you owned as a child. You might think about how you got that object or learned about it and why it was so important to you. (See “Gil’s Furniture Bought and Sold.”)

  6. Write about an element of nature or a childhood place, other than your house, that holds special meaning, either positive or negative. (See “Four Skinny Trees.”)

  7. Write about one childhood friend or neighbor who is especially memorable. (See “Cathy Queen of Cats” or “The Earl of Tennessee.”)

Exemplars

 Umma Who Makes Me Smile like the Happy Yellow Moon by Jin-ah Lim

 “ . . . Umma . . .” I mumble like a baby scared of thunder sounds.

Again, I mumble, “I need my Umma.” Light-purple, pearl-shaped tears fall from my eyes. And also from my heart.

It’s a night, a night with gray-black clouds. Little stars beside the clouds sparkle like a spread of diamond tears the sky made.

A cold wind blows outside the car. Trees, trees dance in the beat of the wind. Inside the car, I can hardly see the big road through the steamed window.

“Sorry, I didn’t know you were going to miss your mom so much. It was my mistake. I thought you were going to have fun with my daughter, sleeping over at my house,” my friend’s mother says.

I feel sorry for her, since I have made her drive the car late at night.

To see outside of the car, I wipe the window in a star shape with my finger. Unexpectly, the dark night is gone; instead the happy yellow moon smiles at me. Dazzling yellow moonlight spreads out through the dark, the golden angel powder which God has made to calm me.

While I am looking at the moon, the car stops. I recognize that I’m in front of my house. I get out of the car and run to it, yelling “Umma.” After my long journey, Umma gives me a really big warm hug.

Now, I smile like the happy yellow moon.

 

 Misconstrued by Rachel Follis

The classroom was quiet, more so than usual. The students had slipped into some sort of daze. My teacher droned on.

I’d given up trying to look polite and attentive; nobody else was. I sat slumped in my chair, staring at my school supplies arranged neatly on their tray beneath the desk. No one had told me fifth grade would be so dull. Yet, despite myself, I listened to everything she said. I knew better than to ignore her completely. This teacher couldn’t stand it when you didn’t pay attention.

"This coming Friday we will . . . "

. . . have a spelling quiz. Yes, you told us. Many times.

"It will cover . . . "

. . . lessons six through eleven. Honestly. Does she think we’re that brain dead? I glanced at my classmates. Well, maybe.

I picked up a pencil. This one was shiny and red. The point needed sharpening. The eraser was in good shape though. I picked up a ruler. It was plastic, and once white, though I had colored it blue. It had holes in it, in case I might want to put it in a notebook or something.

"Be sure to study . . . "

. . . the words with especially odd spellings.

I stuck the pencil point in the hole in the middle, though the pencil was too wide to stick all the way through the hole. I held the pencil vertically, the ruler suspended on the point.

"The quiz will consist of . . . "

. . . twenty questions and one bonus.

I gave the ruler a push. It spun in a slow circle, the pencil point at the center. Hm. It reminds me of --

"WOW!!! Look at that!!!"

I jumped and spun around, doing everything I could to hold back a scream of terror. My teacher was suddenly in my face, her eyes blazing. Her enraged visage seemed to stretch, consuming my entire field of vision.

"It’s a helicopter!!!" I couldn’t believe how much sarcasm she poured into that one statement. I moved my mouth, and managed a small "Urk," not sure of what I was really trying to say.

A few of my classmates stifled giggles. My teacher glared at me, then reverted to her incessant babbling.

I returned my stuff to the tray, stunned from the shock. After her reproof, I was sure to look her in the eye when she spoke, lest she think I wasn’t paying attention again.
 

Music Gets in the Way by Emmett Miller

 

I sit in my garage, a safe haven transformed into a cozy music lounge complete with a soft carpet, an immense bean bag, air conditioning, and dim lighting, optimally decked out for music with instruments, speakers, and recording equipment. I consider starting my work algebra while the Lydian jam in 7/8 time grabs me and says:

                Please don’t do the homework!

I think: why should I do tedious, mind-dulling mental labor with no reward other than a grade when I can learn to communicate in the most universal of all languages?

With my eyes closed, I master a polyrhythmic groove — playing in 2 separate time signatures simultaneously. The guitar chants:

                Ba ba-DING bup BA-dup!

I look and the clock on the wall, and I see that an hour has passed by. I zone out for an hour on the warm carpet floor of the garage and play that Enigmatic Minor scale until it lives in my fingers. It laughs exotically:

                Yeaadap bweeemg, sikkada doow-WAAH!

I should do Algebra, but I choose to develop the muscles in the left pinky, just for that one major 3rd stretch of the harmonic minor melody. It says with the voice of a slow, toneful Indian Raga:

                Don’t do that homework! Focus on the important things, abadda meeedinz deee-aaaaihm.

Triplets quietly dance through the sputtering speaker cone of a dilapidated practice amplifier, and all the time the clock continues to steal seconds, minutes, hours from me. I synchronize my tri-puh-lets with the ticking of the clock:

            TICK-da-da-TOCK-da-da-TICK-da-da-TOCK-da-da!  

I experiment with guitar effects: Why not try playing that with a fast delay with some flange on top? It howls with accord:

             Yeahhowww-eahhowww-eahhowww-eahhowww!

Can I make this instrument sound like howling robot monkeys? Hmm . . . Maybe I could make use of the guitar’s toggle switch!

Integrated Science lab report? My eyes finally rest on the drum kit after darting back and forth between the terrifying equations and the instruments scattered about. No thank you, Sir Isaac Newton, I would much rather practice conveying emotions without words or facial expressions. Music really does get in the way of schoolwork, and thank God it’s not the other way around.