African Imperialism: Creative Historians
A Story From the Past Turning the chest upright, she heard something fall, inside she found a book. It had a leather cover, the pages yellowed with age, but no title and no author. Opening the book, the cracking of the spine could be heard in the silence of the attic. The first page is blank; quickly flipping through the pages, she sees handwriting, similar to calligraphy. Not finding a name by flipping through the pages, she started at the beginning again, this time looking carefully at each page. Finally she saw it, a name hiding in the bottom left hand corner of the second page. Federico Raimundo.
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Project Reflection
For this project we started out by learning about Africa as a whole. We learned where the countries were located. Next we recreated the Berlin Conference in small groups to divide Africa into the separate European countries. Then we learned about imperialism and how it affected Africa as a whole. Once we had learned all that we then chose a specific country to learn about. We began with broad research learning about the climate, government system, population information, etc., then chose a more specific time era either; before, during, or after the imperialism. To gather additional information an interview was conducted with a person who had lived in that country for an extended time. Once all the information was gathered we began writing our short stories and our art projects.
Of all the literary elements we learned about for the project I believe that my descriptive writing was the strongest element. “Turning the chest upright, she heard something fall, inside she found a book. It had a leather cover, the pages yellowed with age, but no title and no author. Opening the book, the cracking of the spine could be heard in the silence of the attic. The first page is blank; quickly flipping through the pages, she sees handwriting, similar to calligraphy. Not finding a name by flipping through the pages, she started at the beginning again, this time looking carefully at each page. Finally she saw it, a name hiding in the bottom left hand corner of the second page. Federico Raimundo.” This part of the story is strong because if you were to close your eyes you would be able to see the book, see the writing, and hear the cracking of the spine. Adding a piece of descriptive writing help brings the book to life, making the story seem more real than just reading what has happened without any descriptiveness.
I struggled with adding historical content into my story. There is little information about Western Sahara on the internet and I was unable to conduct my interview which also limited my recourses for information. I had to view many different websites and compare the websites to see where they contained similar information and where the information varied. I also changed the location of where my main character lived to Spain because the Spaniards were the first to imperialize Western Sahara. My main character then read journal entries from her great-grandfather from when he actually resided in Western Sahara. I did this so that my descriptions about Western Sahara would be more event-orientated seeing as there was better, more reliable information for the events.
Two major revisions that I made to the story were; the tense of the present day story and I deleted an extra scene. When I first started my story I intended for the modern day part to be in present tense, but after finishing and rereading the story I noticed I kept on switching between present and past tense. I decided to change it all to past tense and that made my story stronger. My second major revision was deleting an extra scene. In the middle of my story I had my main character sitting down for dinner and went into great detail. Going into the details of the dinner add “fluff” to my story which was not needed, so in my final draft I barely mentioned the dinner making my story stronger.
Of all the literary elements we learned about for the project I believe that my descriptive writing was the strongest element. “Turning the chest upright, she heard something fall, inside she found a book. It had a leather cover, the pages yellowed with age, but no title and no author. Opening the book, the cracking of the spine could be heard in the silence of the attic. The first page is blank; quickly flipping through the pages, she sees handwriting, similar to calligraphy. Not finding a name by flipping through the pages, she started at the beginning again, this time looking carefully at each page. Finally she saw it, a name hiding in the bottom left hand corner of the second page. Federico Raimundo.” This part of the story is strong because if you were to close your eyes you would be able to see the book, see the writing, and hear the cracking of the spine. Adding a piece of descriptive writing help brings the book to life, making the story seem more real than just reading what has happened without any descriptiveness.
I struggled with adding historical content into my story. There is little information about Western Sahara on the internet and I was unable to conduct my interview which also limited my recourses for information. I had to view many different websites and compare the websites to see where they contained similar information and where the information varied. I also changed the location of where my main character lived to Spain because the Spaniards were the first to imperialize Western Sahara. My main character then read journal entries from her great-grandfather from when he actually resided in Western Sahara. I did this so that my descriptions about Western Sahara would be more event-orientated seeing as there was better, more reliable information for the events.
Two major revisions that I made to the story were; the tense of the present day story and I deleted an extra scene. When I first started my story I intended for the modern day part to be in present tense, but after finishing and rereading the story I noticed I kept on switching between present and past tense. I decided to change it all to past tense and that made my story stronger. My second major revision was deleting an extra scene. In the middle of my story I had my main character sitting down for dinner and went into great detail. Going into the details of the dinner add “fluff” to my story which was not needed, so in my final draft I barely mentioned the dinner making my story stronger.