historical narrative essay

We’ve spent the last few weeks reading Milton Murayama’s Plantation Boy, examining how he uses the genre of historical narrative to tell the story of second generation Japanese-American Toshio Oyama and the difficulties he faced in achieving his American Dream in WW II Hawaii. Now, you’ll use Murayama’s work as a model for composing a historical narrative of your own. What is historical narrative? A historical narrative tells about a historical event or figure, blending historical facts with imagined characters and situations. Like nonfiction, a historical narrative describes people who actually lived and/or events that actually happened but also includes fictional people and details as imagined by the writer. A historical narrative should include the following characteristics: • Accurate historical events and details of actual people/places • Some characters and circumstances invented by the author, but anchored in the time period; no anachronisms (future things in the past) • Narrative elements o Setting: Establish the time and place where the story takes place o Characters: Characters may be fictional (completely made up) or actual historical figures o Descriptive language (show not tell): Use of vivid, descriptive words and sensory details o Elements of Plot ▪ Exposition: beginning of the story where characters and setting are introduced ▪ Rising action: where the main character faces a series of conflicts ▪ Climax: the most exciting part of the story; turning point; where we learn the outcome of the story’s conflict ▪ Falling action: the continuing action after the conflict has been resolved ▪ Resolution: the conclusion; end of the story o Point of view: The perspective that the story is told from. Should be either 1st person (“I”) or 3rd person (he/she/it/they) o Tone: The feelings portrayed by the characters o Inner thoughts and/or dialogue: inner thoughts are often expressed in italics, dialogue with quotation marks (“ ”) One example of historical narrative in film is Titanic, which tells the story of Rose, a seventeen-year-old aristocrat, who falls in love with Jack, a kind but poor artist (fictional) aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic (nonfiction). Neither of these characters were real people but the events of the sinking of the ship were. Other (more recent) examples include films like Hidden Figures, Victoria and Abdul, and Marshall. Your assignment (prompt): For this assignment, you are to write a short story in the genre of historical narrative that focuses on a specific time in history. We’re going to use this essay to help us “fill in the blanks” of the time periods that we aren’t getting to discuss in detail this semester. Therefore, I’m going to ask you to choose a historical figure and/or event from sometime in the 20th century (1900s). Whatever figure and/or event you choose, you must frame the story around the theme of the American Dream. Some examples include: • Using the landmark Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit, you could tell the story of Linda Brown’s first day at the previously all-white Sumner Elementary as an illustration of the African-American Dream for racial equality. • A story about soldier returning to the U.S. after fighting in the Vietnam War could be used as a vehicle to discuss how the War affected American patriotism. • You could discuss the American Dream of women by tracing women’s suffrage in the United States in the story of a woman voting for the first time. • You might draw from your own family history, using a story that one of your relatives may have told about their American Dream journey as inspiration for your historical narrative. Your story should be based on careful research so that readers get a true sense of the settings, customs, lifestyles, social strata, dress, economy, etc. Therefore, you will need to research and utilize a minimum of 5 sources about your person and/or event. This research will be combined with characteristics of narrative writing (see above) to build your story. A successful historical narrative will: • Add a human element to historical facts. • Develop characters and events through description of actions, appearances, feelings, and/or dialogue. • Be driven by an underlying American Dream theme. • Show evidence of researched historical facts in the time period and naturally embed these facts into the story. • Demonstrate correct MLA citation style (works cited).