Samar Normand

Assignment #1: Multimodal Language and Literacy Narrative

In my junior year of high school, our final assignment was to create a piece of art: poem, song, writing, etc, on topic of The Great Gatsby. I chose to make a mini booklet (2-4 pages) of different short poems relating to the different perspectives of Gatsby, Daisy, the Green light. I spend hours attempting to come up with a “good poem”, after speaking to my father who writes poetry in his own time, I became inspired and began to find a groove to my writing. When I take the subway in the city, I will often see short poetry at the end of the cart and I always stop to take a photograph. Reading these little words of wisdom, on a day where I feel down, truly is enlightening, encouraging and inspiring. A key moment language and literacy moment I had was during the summer of 2019. I was sitting alone in my grandmas apartment and thinking about how lonely I felt, especially due to social media. I sat on the corner of the bed and wrote my first short poem in 10 minutes. “Its a sick ailing feeling, opening these devices which should be used as tools of comfort but instead obliterate pure beauty. We gaze into the very souls of these instruments longing for acceptance, we crave synthetic validation, tangible moments become lost and passionate bonds are broken. It does more than destroy interconnection, but can shatter an innocent beautiful mind. Time is wasted scrolling mindlessly through distorted images and false personas. The touch between one and another is slowly fading. It will taunt your inner being and trick your mind into thinking you adore it, when you only ever admired the feeling of affinity.” — This is a poem I felt very overwhelmed but very proud of. It was very emotional writing about this as I have my fair share of struggles with social media and at times it is hard to accept the truth. Someone who contributed and connected to my language and literacy was my senior year high school English teacher. Mr. Abrams was always incredibly supportive and creative, he encouraged me to dig deeper and keep writing.