The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray's Diary

by Jennifer Sinor

Taking as its centre the diary of Jennifer Sinor's great-great-great-aunt Annie Ray, a woman in 19th-century Dakota, this text provides a novel way of viewing ordinary writing, the everyday writing we typically ignore or dismiss.

Genres: Writing

254 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 2002

About the author

Jennifer Sinor is the author of Letters Like the Day: On Reading Georgia O'Keeffe, a collection of essays inspired by the letters of the American modernist Georgia O'Keeffe and Ordinary Trauma, a memoir of her military childhood told through linked flash nonfiction. She teaches creative writing at Utah State University where she is a professor of English. She is also the author of The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray's Diary, a book about the diary of her great, great, great aunt, a woman who homesteaded the Dakotas in the late nineteenth century. All of her books work to reveal the extraordinary possibilities that arise in the most ordinary moments of our lives.

Born into a military family, Jennifer has lived all over the United States. While she considers Hawaii her first home, she has come to love northern Utah, where the mountains remind her of the ocean in the way they crest all around her.

Jennifer graduated from the University of Nebraska, the University of Hawaii, and the University of Michigan. She is married to the poet Michael Sowder, and they have two boys as well as a passel of animals.

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being one who has been a faithful diarist, I thoroughly enjoyed the idea that Jennifer Sinor enhances upon by writing up her great-great-great Aunt Annie Ray’s diary. When I opened the book, I expected 200 pages of diary entries, with occasional incerpts by Sinor describing a situation, or clarifying details. However, I was greatly surprised to read not only diary entries of Annie Ray, but also of Jennifer Sinor herself, as well as ideas on what ordinary writing is. I loved the use of the word “diurnal” which literally means “of or during the day,” and how Sinor is able to expound on this word and use it to describe the way in which one writes a diary. A diary doesn’t foreshadow the future, it doesn’t have a climax, and it doesn’t have a grand finale at the end. Instead it lives in the moment, day by day. You never know when it will end because each day is written as if there is no tomorrow, but also as if tomorrow is inevitable. Sinor’s book is centered on the life of Annie Ray, who is living in the Dakotas in the late nineteenth century and who experiences every-day-life things. Sinor also connects her own life to that of Annie Ray’s. She has a lot of empathy and connection for her deceased relative, because they have experienced similar things (spoiler alert) such as an unfaithful husband. This connection, however, is what makes this book interesting and worth reading. Being able to draw on personal connections, to embrace every-day-and-ordinary tasks and to embark on the life of a woman in the nineteenth century through her personal and ordinary writing has been quite an adventure, and overall left me more determined to not take the ordinary for granted, to not be afraid to jot down simple things on paper and to keep them, for they are what makes me who I am, and they are used to better understand those who have passed on!

[Gwen Sargent · Rating 1 out of 5]

WHY. WHY. WHY. literally a monstrosity

[Katie Layton · Rating 1 out of 5]

0.5 this book tick, tick, ticked me off

[Mazy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a diarist and avid chronicler myself, I appreciated this work and some of points made by the author regarding the use/need of maintaining a diary, especially for an 18th century woman, alone on the Daokta plains in an attempt to anchor herself and create her own identity. The notion that everything, even--or perhaps, especially--the mundane and ordinary have value is woven through the text and anecdotes. However, I do have to argue that while everything may be important in its own right and to a point, not everything important is valuable, and not everything needs to be nor should be saved, especially if it lacks value. Humans, while they are creators, they are also most certainly consumers, and if everything were saved we would drown in our own creation and consumption. "In the ordinary, nothing is produced. Nothing is made to rest in the public. Nothing is erected. Nothing gets created...We eat, we wear, we toss, we clean, and we use the mundane that surrounds us. We save, we frame, we preserve, and we honor the nonordinary in our lives."

While this was an interesting read, I was left thinking, "Ok, but so what?"

[Michael Meeuwis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best academic books I've read in a long time--one that I genuinely couldn't stop reading, once I had started. In terms of the specific need that I had--that I'm writing about the diaries of non-celebrity Victorians--I can affirm that this is the smartest thing I've read about diaries, both in terms of theorising the genre and in terms of doing the work of reading (so, so carefully) this one particular diary. There's also a fascinating hook to it, which you (genuinely) need to read to the last page to get. This compulsive readability is not something you associate with, say, the work of Fredric Jameson; maybe Foucault, at this best, can be this compelling. But I would genuinely give copies of this to relatives, while making use of it in my own work.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although Sinor's writing is a bit wordy at times, I found her study of Annie Ray's Diary quite interesting. She makes a strong argument for not discounting the writing of ordinary women and reading such writing for what it is rather than from a literary point of view.