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.