Journey through "Journey Through the Fog"

In the multi-genre text “Journey Through the Fog”, Carbone is trying to share the hardships of having a family member with Alzheimer’s disease. It is inspired by her own family’s experiences, and the audience is anyone in a similar situation who needs help to understand what they can expect and what they are going through. Since having a family member with Alzheimer’s is such a different experience than any other disease, sharing her experiences is a way of helping others, and probably herself.
There were tons of genres in this project—collages, stories, letters, conversations, poetry, charts, quotes, definitions, scripts, puzzles, obituaries, short written excerpts, and more. Many of these genres made emotional appeals, such as the conversations that Carbone recalls from when she was a child, or the letters that her grandfather wrote to his wife before he completely lost his memory. Not only are these emotional for anyone reading, but they could especially trigger something in someone who relates to the situation. On the other side, having a prevention chart or definitions make the text go beyond emotional, to informational and helpful as well. The different genres also represent different ages and years and the steps of the family’s journey, which is an effective strategy for showing how Alzheimer’s can impact a person from the diagnosis to the end, and from childhood to adulthood for Carbone.
I think that the letters from Allie and Bill were the most effective genre in the text. Bill wrote his letter after he was diagnosed, and Allie wrote hers after Bill died. These letters showed how their lives had changed because of Alzheimer’s, from the moment of his diagnosis. I think that it is emotional, but also gives information about what happened in the family that you cannot get through photo collages and word searches. I think that all of the genres work together, but the piece as a whole would not function as well without these letters in it.
Since there were so many pieces to the text, I think that she did a good job breaking it up. There were not 6 poems in a row, or all of the letters, or all of the visual things. This kept me interested and wondering what was going to be next. Also, she would sandwich the more informational pages between little dialogue scenes or shorter pieces such as the “the many victims of Alzheimer’s” sequence that comes up a few times. Those were only a paragraph, and after a full page of information, it was refreshing. I think that this gained a lot from being a multi-genre project because it wasn’t boring medical information, but it wasn’t overly emotional to the point where it was unreliable. All of the pieces could appeal to someone different, and if you are looking at this text and going through a similar situation, no one can predict which one would stand out for you.
This text is vastly different from the examples we looked at in class. This looks like something that was years in the making, instead of a few weeks before a due date. I think that the fact that they had all of these different parts coming together really served their purpose, whereas the examples we saw in class seemed to be pushing it. Both of those started with an academic essay, which was useful to set up their topics but not the best way to get people interested in what they were doing. Then, some of their more creative pieces seemed out of place instead of furthering their argument or purpose. I definitely see the benefits of mixing genres like this, because it can be interesting if you choose wisely or do each part really well. Sometimes, though, finding all of these genres to go over the same point can either be difficult (for those with a lack of creativity, like myself) or overkill. Putting the same topic in 8 different genres might not necessarily make it better, it might just be stretching it too far.