Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Sunday, September 11, 2022

My Chinese Marriage by Mae M. Franking and Katherine Anne Porter

Marriage by Mae M. Franking and Katherine Anne Porter

MY CHINESE
MARRIAGE

By M. T. F.

JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED
LONDON   MCMXXII


[Pg 4]

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London


[Pg 5]

TO MY CHINESE FATHER AND MOTHER
WITH THE GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION
OF THEIR AMERICAN DAUGHTER THIS
VOLUME IS DEDICATED


[Pg 7]


 
 In 1907, a seventeen-year-old Scotch-Irish girl named Mae Munro Watkins met nineteen-year-old Tiam Hock Franking of Amoy, China, while attending high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Their growing love intensified later while both were students at the University of Michigan, where Mae studied Latin and German and Tiam prepared for a career in international law. Because of the legal and social restrictions in the early 1900s, interracial relationships such as theirs were bitterly and publicly discouraged. Nevertheless, despite opposition to their relationship from both their families, Mae and Tiam married and later moved to China. There Mae raised three children, taught college English, and helped Tiam with his own teaching and legal work. And, by her own conscious choice, Mae also succeeded in becoming a proper Chinese wife and daughter-in-law. Working from interviews with Mae Franking and from material contained in Franking's original manuscript, Katherine Anne Porter ghostwrote Mae's story in 1920 for Asia: The American Magazine on the Orient. Asia published My Chinese Marriage as a four-part series, and subsequently Duffield and Company published it unchanged in book form. Mae Franking's original manuscript was lost, so there can be no direct comparison between Franking's manuscript and Porter's work. This annotated edition contains the full text of My Chinese Marriage as it appeared in Asia. In addition, the Franking's granddaughter, Holly Franking, provides a narrative account of Mae's life, as well as private letters and contemporary newspaper clippings (the marriage was deplored by racist editors in Ann Arbor and Detroit). This previously unavailable material will enable KatherineAnne Porter scholars to assess her stylistic and fictional contributions to the text.

 

CONTENTS

I       In America    3
II       In Shanghai    49
III      First Daughter-in-Law    97
IV      The Eternal Hills    141


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