Diction and Tone: Reflection on The Mixquiahula Letters

As I read through The Mixquiahuala Letters, the element that struck me the most was Ana Castillo’s use of diction. Throughout the book, the author chooses words that create a casual, informal tone that gives the effect of a handwritten letter from one friend to another. Though the content and style of the letters is a bit more poetic than the typical “how are you?” type of letters, the letters fit what the reader already knows about Teresa. Because the reader knows that Teresa is a writer, the eloquent yet informal style of the letters seems appropriate to fit her personality.

One of the elements that contributes to the casual mood of Castillo’s book is her use of capitalization. I was distracted at first by her use of the lowercase “i” for the first person pronoun. My eyes are so accustomed to seeing the capital letter that I had to get used to the unusual technique, but the more I thought about her use of capitalization, the more I began to wonder why she had chosen that form. It certainly added to the casual tone of the letters, giving them a similar informality to an email or a text message. I also noticed that she always used a lower case “i” when referring to herself, even when she was starting a sentence, but when the pronoun “you” was at the beginning of a sentence, she capitalized it as usual. It seemed as if, by using the lower case “i”, she might have been trying to take the focus off of herself and put it on Alicia, the subject of her letters.

Whatever the author’s reasons for the lack of capitalization, I find it intriguing that such a small thing as capitalization can contribute to the overall tone of a book. Castillo’s use of capitalization seems appropriate for the mood of a friend writing to another friend. If she had rigidly adhered to standard rules of capitalization and punctuation, the book might have seemed more like a collection of business letters than a communication between two very close friends.

The technique that I think would be the most applicable to my own writing is Castillo’s use of words that mirror the tone she wants to create. The sounds, rhythms, and connotations of words can have a strong influence on the tone of a piece. When I write, I need to make sure that my diction is appropriate to the tone I want to convey so that I don’t unintentionally suggest something else by the words that I choose. Another good exercise I can try is to write something with a more informal tone. I usually tend to write in the third person, but it would be good for me to experiment with doing more writing in the first person with a more casual tone.

The Apple Tree Magnet

Matt looked up from his place at the kitchen table. Kelly was staggering down the stairs, her yellow flip-flops smacking against the wood, her arms circled around a cardboard box.

“Found another one,” she said. She stepped into the kitchen and set the box down with a thud in front of him. All morning long she had been bringing down boxes from the attic, some the size of a shoe box and some so large she looked like an ant struggling to carry a crumb twice its size back to the ant hill. Early that morning, before the sun had even had a chance to rise, she had announced that it was time for spring cleaning. She had suggested they finally tackle the project Matt had been avoiding for years: going through all of his mother’s things up in the attic.

Matt’s mother had kept everything: empty coffee cans, bits of string rolled into a ball, stubs of pencils and pens with dried up ink, even used wrapping paper carefully folded so it could be recycled again for another present. “Never throw away anything that could be useful,” she had always told him. “That’s what you learn when you grow up during the Depression. You never know when something might just come in handy.”

“Most of this stuff can probably go right into the ‘throw away’ pile,” Kelly said, peering into the box. “If we can’t use it for anything and if we can’t get any money for it, there’s no use having it lie around the house gathering dust and taking up space.” She turned and left the kitchen without waiting for a response.

Matt sighed and delved into the contents of the box. Dish towels, aprons, olive green measuring cups with broken handles, and a bag filled with enough magnets to cover the fridge from top to bottom. Matt emptied the bag out onto the table. His mother had collected magnets from every gift shop she had ever gone to. There was the one from the Grand Canyon. Right next to it was the one from Niagara Falls. And there at the bottom of the pile, half buried beneath the Statue of Liberty was the one shaped like an apple tree.

Matt had gotten this magnet himself back in the fall when he was five years old on an apple-picking excursion with his parents. He couldn’t remember the name of the orchard, but the day had been glorious with a sharp blue sky and warm, dry grass so faded it looked like painting that had been left out in the sun for too long. They had gathered a peck of apples, filling the bag with only the Cortlands and Macs. Those ones were the best, his mother had said.

That day, Matt’s father had let him do all of the picking, hoisting Matt up onto his shoulders to reach the higher branches with the reddest, most sun-drenched apples. And then, just like his father, Matt had shined the apple with the front of his plaid shirt, rubbing it in a circle until gleamed. And then there was the crunch of the very first bite, the juice exploding from the crisp white centers, soaking the clean air with the aroma of cinnamon and sunshine and summer rain.

“That stuff’s all just junk, right?” Kelly said.

Matt looked up. He hadn’t even heard her come back into the kitchen. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. Most of it’s just junk.”

Once Kelly had left to go back up to the attic for another box, Matt put the aprons and dish towels and broken measuring cups into the junk pile. Then he brought the bag of magnets over to the fridge, placing the memories one by one onto the stainless steel, putting the apple tree magnet in the center, right at eye level where he could see it every day.

Snapshot, Coney Island: August 29th 1929

The world that August morning is almost completely drained of color. My mother’s gray eyes are nearly lost in the deep shadow cast over her forehead by her cloche hat, the one with the white band that matches her gray dress. Gray dress, black hair, white face – everything in somber shades of white and black and gray. My father, standing to her right, still hasn’t forgiven her for leaving the house yesterday morning with a head full of waist-length curls and coming back in the afternoon with her hair bobbed short in the new shingle style.

 Behind my parents, a group gathers near a popcorn stand, some rummaging through pockets and wallets for loose change, others cramming huge fistfuls of the white kernels into their mouths as if it were the last day before a famine. Off to the right, a roller coaster looms, a giant silver spider web, etching sharp shadows onto the ground.

My father isn’t looking straight at the camera. His smile is stiff. Maybe he’s checking to make sure my sister and I are still all right – we’re too busy riding the merry-go-round for the fifteenth time to come pose for the picture. Or maybe he’s still angry with Mother for ruining her hair. Or maybe, somehow, he knows already that the stock market will crash in two short months, knows that he will lose his job at the Ford factory, knows that we will have to leave our two-story house and move to a place outside of town that is little more than a shack. Maybe he already knows that a pot of chicken soup will have to last us for three nights or even more and that my sister and I will have to take turns bringing  food to school because there won’t be enough money for us both to have lunch on the same day. Maybe he knows that every day he’ll have to tell one of us, “I’m sorry, baby, I know you’ll be hungry, but you can’t have lunch today. It’s your sister’s turn.” And maybe he even knows that over and over again he will have to say, with aching eyes and a throat that burns as fiercely as if he had just swallowed acid, the three words he’s come to hate most in the world: “we can’t afford it. We can’t afford it. Oh, please forgive me, but we just can’t afford it!”  

Word Painting: Birds of America Reflection

As I read through Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America, the element of writing that struck me the most strongly was her use of details and imagery. Though her stories, for the most part, involve rather ordinary people in ordinary settings, Moore incorporates details in an unusual, often surprising, way, making her descriptions seem fresh and vivid and adding even more depth and realism to the everyday world she portrays.

Throughout the novel, Moore uses very specific, concrete words that leave strong images in the reader’s mind. Moore’s use of imagery includes descriptions of a baby’s abdomen being “stitched all the way across like a baseball” (240), a “tennis-in-Bermuda tan” (214), and a man’s face being “poppy-seeded with whiskers” (286). With these vivid images, Moore is able to convey a much stronger picture than abstract, general words would allow.

Moore also uses images in a fresh way that makes her comparisons even more striking. In one story, she talks about a “daughter’s frustrated artistic temperament bleeding daily on the carpet of their brains” (188). In another story, she compares Ireland to “a trip into the past of America,” reminiscing about “cow-country car trips through New England of Virginia – in those days before there were interstates, or plastic cups, or a populace depressed by asphalt and french fries” (30). With just a few well-placed, precise words, Moore is able to capture the essences of America’s past and present culture. Her images appeal to the reader’s senses, suggesting the sounds of cars speeding down the interstate and the crinkle of plastic cups, the salty smell and taste of french fries, and the sight of asphalt covering the ground, crowding out the dirt and the grass.  

Moore’s stories have reinforced in my mind the need for concrete imagery and details. Moore’s work has shown me examples of how one specific word can paint a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. Whenever I write, whether I’m writing fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, I need to remember the old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” As Birds of America has shown me, one well-placed image can leave a more lasting impression on the reader’s mind than a thousand abstract words ever could.