"Flipping the Script"

"Flipping the Script," by Nora McCarthy, is an essay about how Nora wrote about people's lives in a teen magazine named Represent. Nora talks about a teen named Natasha who sent in a story about her life. The first one is a third- person narrative about how she sits alone in junior high at the lunch tables. Another story she sent to Nora was what Nora called an "anger story," which focused on Natasha not being loved. Nora tried to push Natasha by getting Natasha to change the story to describe her strengths. For example, How did she get by even though she did not feel loved and what sort of strengths did she discover about herself? Another student was writing about how she was raped when she was younger. Nora asked the student what she wanted the readers to understand, feel, or know after reading this story.

I like how Nora pushes the students to write about their strengths and not just what happened or how they felt. I believe that since Nora is writing about these students in a magazine, it will be very influential to readers if they read a story that includes how students overcame their problems in life. It will also be helpful for the story tellers because they can learn how to cope with what happened and actually become stronger instead of weaker.