Blog Post 1 - Response to I Once Was Miss America

In class today, it was said that this essay could be taken as a personal narrative, or not a personal narrative. As I read this, I found this comment very interesting. The author writes about her experiences reading Sweet Valley High and its sequel, Sweet Valley Confidential. She describes how the books affected her growing up and how it gave her a place where she felt she was accepted, one which she couldn’t find in the real world. At first it appears the essay is just about her individual feelings as she read the books, but as you delve further into the article you see it could also be taken as a more general commentary as to why young girls were so invested in the Sweet Valley books, and why so many women read the Sweet Valley Confidential despite its obvious shortcomings. What I also found interesting about this essay was how when she describes the main characters Elizabeth and Jessica, she describes them in present tense - unlike the rest of the author’s commentary, which is written in past tense. To me, this showed how these figures are ever present in her life, and stick with her in the present, rather than them being a distant childhood memory, which is further emphasized when the author describes how quick she was to buy and read the sequel.