JUDITH POLITI: Midterm Portfolio – #2 Plain Language
PLAIN LANGUAGE
“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”
Serene is the best word to describe Brooklyn, New York. Especially on a Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1912.
The sun sets on Francie Nolan’s house, warming the surrounding areas. Francie thinks that the feelings she has when she looks towards the sun remind her of how she felt when she recited a poem in school.
This is the poem:
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring
pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green,
indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld.
The poem talks about a forest and its colors, as well as how different parts of the forest come alive as if with human elements. This is because the poem wants to give the reader an emotional understanding of the forest.
Francie had one tree in her yard. The tree is a tree that is common in this part of Brooklyn, New York. It has pointed leaves and opens up very tall and wide. Some people called it the Tree of Heaven. This tree is important to the neighborhood because it is representative of that area.
Every Saturday afternoon in the summer Francie imagined she lived in this type of tree.
In brooklyn, Saturday is a happy day because people get their paycheck and don’t have to go to church. Saturday was their free day.
On Saturdays Francie and her brother Neeley go to the junkyard. All of the kids in Brooklyn, New York, do this on Saturdays. The week before, all the kids collected pieces of trash that they melt. They take what the melt and get money at the junk yard.
Francie’s mother is a janitor so Francie and her brother, Neeley, get to go through the trash from their mother’s job.
Francie and her brother Neeley would carry the trash items they find in a bag and walk to the junkyard together. The other kids that lived in Brooklyn would also be doing the same thing.
Carney is the man that runs the junkyard. Francie and Neeley bring their junk to Carney and wait for Carney to determine how many pennies they will get. Carney gives Neeley an extra penny because Carney likes that Neeley does not get scared of Carney.
Neeley and Francie got 16 pennies. 8 of the pennies went to the bank for saving. 4 went to Francie and 4 went to Neeley.
Francie held onto her extra penny.
Francie and Neeley go to the candy store. Only boys are allowed into the candy store so Francie waits at the entrance of the store.
All of the boys in the candy store looked the same, and would be very similar to each other for their lives.
Some of the boys in the candy store had short hair cuts. The candy store sold candy and prizes, but Neeley wanted to get candy.
Francie thinks that when she will be able to enter the store, she will buy all of the prizes.
On Sunday, mass was filled with the people of Brooklyn. Some people would go to the 6 AM mass to get it out of the way, other people would go to the later one at 11 AM.
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Disability Visibility : First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
(reading response)
Emily Wong is the author of a book called Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the Twenty First Century. Emily Wong wrote the book to give people with disabilities a chance to share their stories.
Emily Wong shares people’s stories by making sure that their story will be read by people who share the same experiences inside of a book format. These people who share the same experiences create communities and feel comfortable in them. The people that read Emily Wong’s book are able to understand different stories.
I read Harriet McBryde Johnson’s “Unspeakable Conversations”. This story was about Harriet who debated with a man Peter Singer who had very opposing views. Even though Harriet did not agree with the Peter, she was able to understand and appreciate Peter’s opinions.
I liked to read this because I think it is important to understand and appreciate other opinions even when they don’t match your personal ones.
I am curious to know what people who heard Peter and Harriets debate were thinking.
Project Description
The Plain Language project “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is a plain language version of the longer and more complex piece of writing, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”
Documentation
The process of the plain language project was mainly brainstorming which words to use and the order of sentences. Diction and syntax became vital in this project and it took a couple of rereads and rewrites to nail it down.
Reflection Questions
- The theme of the work is to illustrate a complex piece of writing into plain text so that it is more accessible and easy to read and interpret.
- This theme is particularly expressed through plain text, aimed to articulate the same messages and ideas of the original text into something more comprehensible.
- Time increments are particularly expressed through plain text. I think it was important to express that the “Sunday” lines in the original text of “A tree grows in Brooklyn” was best to be at the end of the plain language so that a reader would not be confused by the days and time.
- It is very hard to do prose and maintain word connotation through the translation for plain language.
- This modality is not accessible for people who still might not be able to break down sentences, even though simplified and organized to be better simplified, the entire piece in plain text may still not be understood.
- It would be interesting to see the next step in breaking down a text, even visually maybe through more of a list style translation or visual text.
Additional Modality (N/A)