FOR CLASS

Suspended Critique

Such moments displayed by Joy Harjo’s “Suspended” paper are always beautiful to visit. Awakenings stick with people, change burns new paths in their minds. When walking through such memories, however, it is easy to become dazzled in the reminiscence, and forget to grab the audience’s hand and pull them along.

One way to kidnap the reader is to use imagery to represent emotion. Instead of saying what the event did to the narrator; paint an image on the reader’s eyes instead. On page 83, Harjo explains that her experience of jazz “changed even the way I look at the sun.” Instead of using the abstract to enlighten, using imagery to evoke the idea of a new understanding might help her drag the reader into her world. For example, “when the sun’s gentleness tickled my face, the sound of jazz warmed my ears” would leave the audience with a sense of what she felt.

Feelings also hit a wall when the voice is too passive. If the objective is to force the reader to touch the experience with gloves, then this might actually be effective. In Harjo’s piece however, it is evident that she wanted the reader to leap into a memory filled with neon lights. Using more active words and avoiding comatose language such as “was” would more effectively kick the reader off the cliff into her own reality.

The last barrier between her world and the reader’s is the tendency for her sentence length to be longer then necessary. When the reader must reach the end of their breath then gasp through the rest of the sentence, a lot of the immersion is lost. The first sentence on page 83 demonstrates this. When reading “Once I was so small that I could barely peer over the top of the backseat of the black Cadillac my father polished and tuned daily;” the audience has to stop, gather their breath, then continue with the sentence. The reader’s mind might race ahead to other things, and lose interest in continuing reading.

Like any time a person looks back, it is easy to stumble, especially in the telling. Her piece was heartfelt, and that pushed through. It is a good piece, though like any other, a little bit of pounding could do it some good.

Harjo, Joy. "Suspended." In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction (1996): 83-85. Print.