Lillian Guzman

Ms. Alcaraz, Period 6

25 April, 2018

Non Fiction Response: “Pictures of You”

1. A girl’s brother dies when they are both young. Present day, she looks at pictures of her

brother and writes him a letter describing what life is like without him there.

2. A connection I can make between this text and other texts I’ve read is when I read a book

about a girl whose mother died; the girl would constantly look at pictures of her mom.

3. The author’s purpose is to describe her life to her deceased brother. I know this because

the author says, “Most of the time, we live as if you were never with us, and I was always

the oldest child in the family,”(Cheng 2).

4. Although the letter starts off, “Dear brother…” (Cheng 1), the letter is for the author,

Guang-Shing Cheng. I know because this is a very personal letter, addressed to someone

that will never read it. The choice of audience makes the letter more personal.

5. The most relevant details are the ways the author describes her life.

6. Pathos is the most prevalent in the writing. An example could be when the author writes,

“Can you hear me and know what I’m feeling?” (Cheng 1). Another example is, “You

left me with what some may call grief, or sorrow, or mourning, but there is no word to

describe it,” (Cheng 3). A last example would be, “Every time I look at them , I cry…”

(Cheng 3). The author exercises her credibility by speaking in first person.
7. A possible theme for the text is ‘you never know what you have until it’s gone’.

8. This text helped me understand grieving and death by explaining someone’s emotions in

the first person so as to make their experience more relevant.

9. The element that I would change is the tone of voice. The text almost feels apologetic. I

would make it less apologetic. This would change it by making the author seem less

weak.

10. OPTION 1: In “Pictures of You” by Guang-Shing Cheng, the author shows that you

never really know what you have until you lose it. For example, the author uses imagery

to show what her life is like after having lost her brother. The author says, “... I’m the

only one now who ever looks at those pictures,” (Cheng 1). The author uses the word

‘now’ to show what her life looks like after her brother died, demonstrating that she still

appreciates his existence despite having her brother be a taboo subject. We must learn to

appreciate what we have because it can be taken away at any moment.