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The Glissant reading made me think about how transparent I want to be in my writing for this project. My writing tends to be relatively revealing and vulnerable, to the point where people sometimes tell me I’m brave for sharing as much as I do. I don’t really think of it as bravery, since I tend to write as a form of catharsis and processing my feelings, and being open can help with that. However, I sometimes find myself not wanting to share certain personal stories and details with others, both out of fear of judgment and because I like some memories to just remain my own. There have been times when I intentionally wrote about certain experiences in a way that obscured the most vulnerable or shocking details. I felt like I was being cowardly or inauthentic at the time. Reading Glissant’s discussion of how we have the right to be opaque and obscure made me rethink that perspective, though. In this class, I think I will try to be as transparent and as opaque as I want to be, without judging myself for it. Everyone doesn’t need to perfectly understand what I’m writing about; I don’t even need to understand it entirely.

I enjoyed how the selections from Urban Exile were experimental and unique and opaque in their own ways. Gamboa wasn’t afraid to confuse the reader with wordplay and blank spaces and cryptic or absurd storylines. Still, I felt like his ideas and social criticism came through; for example, I thought there was a message about the violence experienced by minorities that is often ignored by broader society. I sometimes find experimental writing to be frustrating and struggle to understand it, and my writing tends to be more straightforward. However, I think it could be interesting to play with some weirder techniques in my writing for this class; I can see how they can be effective when employed purposefully.