16-Stories @16-stories - Tumblr Blog

Character Edit A full year later, I made some changes to the original drawing. I like it even more.

Character Sketch, II I like this one. To me, his expression is a mixture of hope, sadness (suspicion, maybe), of someone who has learned the odds too young because he has to; his options are scant.

#baseball #baseball academies #black and white #boys #Dominican Republic #draft #drawing #major leagues #PBS #Stealing Home #sugarball

Character Sketch Yes. That was literal. For months I've had an overwhelming desire to visually represent some of the characters and events in the novel I will likely continue to work on for eternity.

Peace

Crossing Over

“They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú—generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of…

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#America #Dominican Republic #Haiti #immigration #Junot Diaz #New World #racism

Happy Earth Day! I actually made this last week for a different project that, fortuitously, involved a tree.

#apple tree #digital #drawing #Earth Day #Shel Silverstein

Stock Phrases in 100 Years of Solitude

Formulas or Stock Phrases (Essay Excerpt)

García Márquez employs the use of stock phrases throughout the novel. Clauses such as the much–discussed many years later continually emphasize the past of the future time not the events of a present. Likewise, other phrases, such as:

“Colonel Gerineldo Márquez was the first to perceive the emptiness of war.” (161); “Amaranta was the first to suspect tha…

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#100 Years of Solitude #distant afternoon #Gabriel Garcia Marquez #Luis Leal #Magical Realism #Many years later #repetition

The Abstraction of Time in 100 Years of Solitude

The Abstraction of Time (Essay Excerpt)

Look up the word “time” and one is confronted with sixty-four entries from the Random House Dictionary. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition includes no less than one hundred and twelve entries and subentries. Like the attempt to define magical realism, it seems that time can best be described instead of defined. One…

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#arrow of time #circularity #Gabriel Garcia Marquez #Magical Realism #One Hundred Years of Solitude #repetition #storytelling

Holy Thursday: On García Márquez's Death

Holy Thursday: On García Márquez’s Death

How do you mourn someone you’ve never met?

When I heard of Gabriel García Márquez’s passing I was struck by sudden, unexpected grief. My voice broke as I told my daughter, who knew García Márquez’s name before that of any middle grade author.

I was born in the Dominican Republic to Dominican parents from whom I inherited my love of reading. Culturally, One Hundred Years of Solitudewas practically…

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#bi-cultural #Dominican Republic #Garcia Marquez #Holy Thursday #Latin American literature #Magical Realism #One Hundred Years of Solitude #translation

Sunday Best I fell in love with the image of this girl instantly but it took me several weeks to build up the nerve to use it to work on my shading technique.

#batty #Dominican Republic #drawing #girl #Haiti #pencil #shading #sugar cane

Picking Up the Pencil (with the Non-Dominant Hand)

Dec. 6, 2013

First post in a long while but I decided to take out the graphite and do a little non-dominant hand exercise. It may be because I recently spent time with my sister-in-law, a fellow creative soul who inspires me every time I see her, which is far too little. (Please take a look at her beautiful, soul-bearing blog, The Not Me at http://thenotme.wordpress.com.)

In doing…

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