Looking For Polaris Analysis

Looking for Polaris: A Memoir of Losing and Finding

Dawn Marie Nicole L. Marfil, author of the book “Looking for Polaris: A Memoir of Losing and Finding”, graduated cum laude from the University of Santo Tomas (UST) with a degree of Bachelor of Arts in Literature (AB Literature). She then earned her Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. She is currently working her PhD in the same university. She was a fellow at the 3rd Elizalde Navarro National Workshop for Arts Criticism, 2011 and at the UST Creative Writing Workshop, 2012. Her notification piece, “Roche’s Limit,” was previously published in Tomas, Volume 2 Issue 1 of the 1st semester 2012-2013, while a small collection of her poems was

Memoir is a kind of Non-Fiction genre of writing that deals with the biography, autobiography or memories of the Author. The memoir tells about the story of Dawn about her losing and finding experiences and circumstances in her life. It starts from her childhood days until her maturity age. It tells about her life as an only child, the way her parents treated her, when she joins beauty queen pageant, when she falls in love with a man and to a gay, when she teaches students, when her Father needs to work abroad and the story about writing the memoir of her life. The story emphasizes about why the author writes about the memoir of herself and what are the reasons why she wrote those events that are relevant and important to her life. From the word “Polaris”, which means the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor, it signifies the way Dawn experience about losing her father to work abroad when she was a child and it signifies the way Dawn finds about the truth and realities in her life. The author said that “As a writer, I know I should be appalled at the idea of losing words and broken, half-built narratives. But the idea of building a world of words around emptiness to give it some semblance of shape was simply beautiful to me.” It means that she emphasizes the way she writes and the way she lost and finds

These critical reading strategies help me to analyze the book well. The most significant reading strategy that I used is the Outlining and Summarizing. Outlining and Summarizing refers to identify the main ideas and restating them in your own words. I used this reading strategy because it is easier to understand the book. Also, this strategy helps me to understand well the chapters as I construct sentences and as I make the summary and outline of it. In the Memoir, it is divided into 9 different chapters namely, Confessions of Ex-Beauty Queen, Sewing Selves, An Order for Costumes, Something Different, Peachie, Roche’s Limit, Two Mountains that I climbed and the one I didn’t...sort of, Black Hole Heart, and lastly, Looking for Polaris: poetics of Losing and Finding. These chapters emphasizes the way discover about the losing and finding experiences in her life. In the Confessions of Ex-Beauty Queen, it tells about the story of Dawn when she joins beauty queen Pageant in Tarlac and Ilocos Sur. The Sewing Selves is about her ex-boyfriend Philip, and when she joins a Cosplay event. It is also about how she was able to mend her broken heart by creating costumes for her alters. These first two chapters symbolize the beauty and identity of Dawn. An order for Costumes is also about her ex-boyfriend Jeff and when she makes a costume for Him. Something Different is also about a love story which