Reading Response Week 10

For my reading response, I chose the piece “Florida Lives.” This is the piece I’m going to use for the five page paper we have due on Thursday. I like how she started the story with “Roaches don’t die easy deaths; they can survive nearly anything.” This beginning sentence along with the title makes me want to continue reading. After I read this piece, I thought the statement about Roaches was an interesting parallel to the couple’s relationship.  This couple’s relationship should have been over a long time ago, but like the roach they carry on even after there have been so many reasons to end it. I thought Dionne Irving did a great job with specificity within this piece. My favorite piece of specificity is the description of the neighbors.  Also, I like how she used the neighbors as a way for the couple to stay together. They weren’t fighting so much and they were getting alone because they had another couple to focus on. Then, once the couple left, it all started to fall apart again. Like we discussed in class, she used dialogue so sparingly in comparison to how much detail she put into the scenes. Even when she used it, it wasn’t ever really a he said then she said thing. She usually just put in a line or two of dialogue before moving on to another scene. I really enjoyed this piece. This was definitely one of my favorite short pieces we’ve read in class.