literary response

Performing a public service as vital as it is gruesome, Sandra is one of Australia’s unofficial experts on the living aspects of death.

(The secret life of crime.) http://narrative.ly/cops-robbers/the-secret-life-of-a-crime-scene-cleaner/

This story was an excellent read, in my oppinion. The tittle alone was the first thing that captured me. This interview was on a woman named Sandra Pankhurst. Sandra is a transgender female who owns her own clean up company, not just ordinary house clean up but the kind of clean up we usually don’t think of when we see ads for services .Sandra cleans up crime scenes, deceased resident’s estates, houses where hoarders have overflowed with clutter and garbage for years. The job is very grueling and strenuous mentally and psychically.

“Sandra is one of Australia’s unofficial experts on the living aspects of death.”

This story was amazing to me because even though the jobs were gruesome, Sandra’s personality is so empathetic and sincere it brings admiralty to her job. As we read on Sandra’s story starts to show through the interviewer’s questions, Sandra states that she experienced a brutal and harsh childhood, consisting of starvation and random beatings, It makes you wonder if that is how she ended up in this field

“People do not understand about body fluids,” the brochure reads. “Bodily fluids are like acids. They have all the same enzymes that break down our food. When these powerful enzymes come into contact with furnishing and the like, deterioration is rapid.

, “It was like an imprisonment sort of lifestyle. So hence, now I have this need for compassion,” she says.

What made this piece so great was how the author gives such great detail to the surrounding areas of where the jobs where taking place, it made you feel like we were working the job with her and we could almost smell the ambiance she described. she explains that she no longer wheres the same outfits as her crew  to be more  respectful to the family's  in these situations.

“It’s because I’m meeting someone there — quite often a family member — I don’t want them to go into shock, like this person from out of space has come here. I grin and bear it and I go in.”I ask her how she maintains that level of compassion.

“Everyone deserves it — because I deserve it as well,” she says.

In her response I can feel the amount of compassion she has and it really makes you thankful that there are people like her to take care of business we could never fathom doing.

Assignment #5 (interview)

For my interview I had at first decided to interview my grandmother about her knowledge of some of the old time mobsters she grew up with. Upon my interviewing her I found it hard to make a good piece with being discreet about the name of men she knew, since most are incarcerated or infamous.

Over thanksgiving I  tried to seek out new potential candidates for my interview, coincidently during a conversation with my mom over her new business she's starting my new candidate was chosen.

My mother is going into the adult candle making business; if that's even a genre I don't know but, she is making Penis candles , boob candles, and other candles in erotic molds. This was extremely awkward hearing about and seeing over thanksgiving break but I felt this was perfect opportunity to find out what made her want to do this.

To learn more about her bussines follow the Instagram: Exotic_candles_and_soaps

Memoir Response Assignment #4

Throughout this semester I enjoyed most of the selected readings so far, too choose one reading was tough but I ultimately decided to go with Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation. I selected a couple of quotes from the passage that stuck out to me.

“I think that maybe it relaxed me so much that I was actually relaxed enough to think about my problems in an unhibited fashion” I suggest. “Which made me realize that my life is even worse then I even thought”.

To me this genuinely speaks to the author’s state of mind at the time of writing this book, It really drew me in. This book has a very raw and powerful approach to depression and other mental illnesses that are effecting many young people today. The way Elizabeth Wurtzel expresses her struggles with being in a prestige college, trying to understand her relationship with her significant other all while  dealing with this disorder is very honest and relateable to patient reports with these ailments.

“My main symptoms, Dr. Sterling believes, are anxiety and agitation in her opinion, even worse than the depression itself is the fear I seem to have about never escaping from it.”

This book shows young people there are ways to get through this and brings color to the black and white stigmas of depression; who and how it affects us. Many teens struggle with not understanding what is going on inside them; why they can’t stop crying or feeling sad, why they aren’t like everyone else. The statements in this book are very powerful because year after year many depressed people fall victim to suicide when the depression gets to overwhelming; I believe if this book made it to the right hands it could even have deferred that thought from some minds. 

This excerpt helps us understand more clearly why people become so dependent on prescription drugs, sometimes the disorders are so mentally debilitating they want everything to just go away and stop hurting them, one pill can take that away even if only for a short time.

“Somebody has to make this stop! I wonder if the Zanax will help, I wonder if there is any in my knapsack, wonder if anything will work or if there is no pill, no potion, no serum, no shot, nothing under the whole big black sun that can possibly penetrate a pain so deep”

It shows the extreme frustrations this disorder causes the people afflicted with it and brings to light that the appending epidemic of prescription drug use was upon us, which we all know now  is a major concern. I believe that made this memoir publishable. Elizabeth's journey helps the reader's  be more empathetic and optimistic for a healthy recovery  because they now have a story to reflect on and personalize to their own journeys through this disorder.

“After I hang up the phone, still crying like a rain storm, a nurse walks in and gives me a small brown tablet”.“She tells me be careful not to chock since she sees that I’m wheezing from so much crying… And amazingly, only a few minutes after I swallow the Mellaril, my tears and all my feelings completely subside. Just like magic, I am calm, care free, careless.”

While she is expressing her ups and downs with trying to understand and accept her disorder, find a cure or just something to subside her raging manic feelings. She explores different drugs, I think that this brings an educational factor showing  that one drug is not for all individuals and that they should not settle for unbearable side effects or give up on themselves after one drug fails.  I feel that moral of her story the true agony she felt through this time in her life is most clearly stated in this last quote.

          “Instead of depressed girl I’m just blank girl”