Symbols of Memory: Using Details to Establish Meaning
Purpose: This activity could be useful as a tool for exploring the use of sensory detail and memory to express emotions; it teaches students to read for multiple meanings, and it accompanies Helena Buonagurio's “Not So Perfect Pancake” or Na Tech's, “Red Hibiscus.”
Description: Students often find it difficult to successfully incorporate sensory detail to express emotions in their own writing. With this exercise, students will focus on a specific object and express their emotions using details about this object, while also considering the possibility for an object or place of significance to have multiple meanings and associations in one’s life experience. Helena Buonagurio's “Not So-Perfect Pancake,” reveals the power of metaphors in developing meaning: Helena compares her mother’s not so perfect pancakes not only to her overall life experience but also to her mother’s love. Na Tech’s “Red Hibiscus” provides a good example for how you can employ a specific object and describe it using sensory detail in order to show its connection to a meaningful relationship (i.e. the red hibiscus’s connection to the author’s past). Drawing on one of these examples, students will learn to craft meaning(s) from a single object.
Suggested Time: 35-50 minutes
Procedure:
After reading “Red Hibiscus” or ““Not So-Perfect Pancake” discuss, allowing students to explore the meaning that the author draws from this single image (red hibiscus) or have them underline metaphors used to convey multiple meanings (i.e. the metaphors for pancakes). Students should underline images/metaphors and evaluate the title’s meaning in relation to the narrative. Have them find places where the meaning and image merge.
After this discussion, have students, individually, choose an object important to them and free write for 15 minutes (total—5 minutes for each section) on each of the following: a specific person it is related to; a specific place it reminds them of; and a specific memory of an event that it conjures in their minds. *If students seem to be having trouble thinking of an object, ask them to remember an event or a place from childhood (or high school even). Then have them think about associated memories.
Students should be sure to use concrete sensory detail (describe the object using their five senses) in their descriptions: what does the object look like? Feel like? Smell or taste like? Where did it come from? Does it have other associations attached to it? For example, in “Red Hibiscus” the author describes what the hibiscus flower represents. Remind students that they need to connect these sensory details to larger themes or issues -- how are they metaphors for something in their lives (like the pancake) or how can we learn something about ourselves or society from interacting with these objects? This will help them begin to form the "so what?" element that readers need to engage with their writing.
Ask a couple of students to share their object and its associated descriptions/memories. Then ask students to respond with their own associations with those objects and memories, which the author’s free-writes may have sparked. This hopefully should lead to a discussion about meaning being relative and the importance of sensory detail in appealing to a reader’s emotions.