Blog 8 Bridget

 For our "Humans of New York" reading, I chose a five part series telling the story of Charell Star. It began with her experience at the boarding school she would attend as a young girl. She tells about how she was so nervous, how she felt that she didn't belong because the school was so expensive and she was there on scholarship. She talks about the girl that would bully her, making her feel worse and even more like she didn't belong there. The first section ends with a mentioning of the school dog that would roam around. Charell says that she's always been afraid of dogs, setting up another story for the next post. The second post centers around Charell's great-grandmother who raised her for some of her childhood. This section is filled with a lot of imagery, pieces of Charell's great grandma and her time there that she found important. She talks about the smell of her and the feeling of sitting in her great grandma's closet with all her dresses around her. When Charell's great grandmother got sick, foster care took her away, without even being able to say goodbye. This post ends again with the mentioning of a dog, she could hear the dog barking from the house she would soon move into. The third post centers around this one foster family, though later Charell tells that she was with six different foster families before she turned 11. She talks about the trauma she experienced there, describing, "My curiosity died. Because it got me in trouble". She explains the confusion of being constantly yelled at and being punished by being threatened with the aggressive dog. The fourth post gives more generally information about the different traumas that she experienced in each of her different foster homes. She explains that she only really felt cared about at school and a teacher recommended that she apply for a spot at the boarding school in AZ, returning the story to the first post. The fifth and final post tells about Charell's experience as she grows in boarding school, becoming very interested in fashion, something that she still works with today, as well as becoming very talented on the tennis court. She ends her story explaining how she feels sorry for the dog that she was made to be so afraid of at the first foster home. She explains that the dog was also angry and confused and scared. This end of the story really brought the piece together. 

This format was really helpful in telling this story. The way that each of the posts were broken up helped to emphasize different moments and details of the story, while still keeping it all tied together, especially at the end. The instagram medium is cool too because you get to see so many different pictures, really bringing the story to life. You get to see different pictures of Charell as she grows up, her as a young girl, her in her tennis uniform and her today. You also get to see pictures of her great grandmother. I think this medium worked well to tell the story. Seeing her portrait along with the story made it feel very intimate and close. The story was very powerful and emotional so I thought that the inclusion of her pictures and using her own words made it even more powerful.