The braid is complex in the way it uses imagery and motifs, the way it braids them together for an emotional or thematic impact. It juxtaposes these things in such a way that fragments the motifs and themes without sacrificing the forward thrust of the narrative. To do thism the braid breaks up our information into two or more sections of equal value. Sectioning is important in both forms, as this is how we fragment our topic into two or more sections for the reader to decipher.
A simple way to think about the braid is that we can weave two or three narratives together. I can take Story A, which features the dirty catbox that sits on my girlfriend’s bathroom floor, and weave it together with Story B, which is about the sandbox I used to play in when I was a young boy in Minnesota—and I can try to interlace them, bringing them to some kind of conclusion at the end. I am unifying this around the catbox, according to the project guidelines. Section by section, the skeleton of the essay might look something like this:
| Section One | (A) Description of my girlfriend Cyndi’s house—that awful catbox smell everywhere. |
| Section Two | (B) Playing in the sandbox with my cousin Ralphie when I was six. |
| Section Three | (A) Breakfast with Cyndi—she’s not happy about how she always has to be the one to empty the catbox. It’s really all her fault though, honest. |
| Section Four | (B) Description of the sandbox in the winter. Who really wants to play in a sandbox when it’s so cold out? Somewhere under the snow are some Star Wars figures that I will never find after the winter is over. |
| Section Five | (A) Cyndi goes to work at the Dentist’s office. Jeez, I hate that catbox smell. And that smelly cat. Someone should give that cat a bath. |
| Section Six | (B) The sandbox is long since gone. My stepfather had it removed after I moved away to college. Never did find those Star Wars figures. Shoot. |
| Section Seven | (A) I remember when Cyndi and I were in love. When we first met, and how we seemed to be perfect for each other. She has these great dimples when she smiles, and I haven’t seen those dimples in a long long time. |
Give me a break here. I’m making this up as I go along, and the experiment is artificial: I don’t have a real essay here—just an idea for one. Notice that I don’t necessarily have to have a catbox in both sections for the artifact to resonate, although I could if I wanted to. The fragmentation of the essay and the juxtaposition of the sandbox and the catbox forces an association between the two, and meaning is created as I alternate between the two strands The idea is that each strand stands alone as meaning is created through the intersection of the strands. Moreover, there are many opportunities for images and themes to echo back and forth between the two strands: coldness, sand, loss. Is the catbox and the sandbox too neat a parallel? Possibly, but this is not nearly as much a problem as having no resonance between the strands.
The essay might be further complicated if I add additional strands. Goldbarth’s “After Yitzl” feels so complicated because there are so many strands being juggled that it becomes hard to keep track of them. There are so many strands to keep track of: love, sex, death, reincarnation, creating life, Mormons, Unarians, Judaism. There is so much imagery that carries through the piece: family trees, houses, vans, the ocean, etc. At first, it seems as if there is too much to track, but I think we can simplify the strands into some basic threads that are revisited throughout the essay in different forms in order to write about all the different ways in which we invent our histories in order to help make sense of what is happening in the present. Once you figure out how “After Yitzl” is working, its elegance is quite mesmerizing in the way that it juggles these different strands.
To avoid reader confusion in your braid, make sure that the strands are identifiable. Here, I have two identifiable strands: the catbox and the sandbox. If I add a third strand, like something about the cats that belong to my mother and grandmother, I can begin to add more layers that will complicate and amplify the way that the essay works. The danger here is ending up with a text that is so complex that it’s hard to control—but often, the complexity is part of the fun of writing a braid.
Click here for an explanation of the collage essay.
"Night Light "by Melissa McCord (Click here)
Miller, Brenda and Suzanne Paola. Tell It Slant. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.