Review Assignment

Review Assignment

A Show of Hands

By Mark C. Marino

A show of hands is an original adaptive hypertext novella written on the Literatronic (Literatronica) system developed by Juan B. Gutierrez.  This electronic narrative has two versions; one is called “a little show of hands” and the other is “a show of hands”.  For my review, I will focus on both. This story can be found in the ELC volume 2. A show of hands

This novella takes place at the time of the 2006 U.S reform protests.  During this time, millions of people marched across the streets of many cities across America in response to penalties for undocumented immigrants; these immigrants as well as those who helped them, were to be classified as felons.  The protests emerged as way for the public and government to reform the immigration laws and create a path for the undocumented immigrants toward citizenship. “A show of hands” is about the rallies that took place on May 1^st ,2006 in Los Angeles; this consisted of 400,000 people.

“A show of hands”

This story puts the reader in control and allows him/her to follow a customized plot

The first webpage of the story directs the reader to a mosaic of two holding hands; within this picture are hundreds of tiny images of more hands.  These images are representative of the hands of the upper-class in Los Angeles as well as those who marched in the rallies.   The reader is able to click on any image, in any order.  Once he/she does this, they are directed to a page with a short story about the de la Palma family, a Mexican-American family at the time of the immigration reform protests in 2006. 

After clicking on many ‘hands’ images and reading many different passages, I began referring to the links under the title “Recommended Next Pages”.  I thought that this means the story will go in some kind of order, however, it did not.  It continued to be a random selection of excerpts from the characters’ lives.  Now, I began jotting down some of the characters’ names I came across; which consisted of Madeleine, Santa Paula, Santa Rosa, Eduard, Sydney, and many others.  Each passage seems to be a scene focusing on one or a few characters at a time. 

 The ‘about’ segment of the site states: “Human connections are the pathways of grass-roots political movements and this electronic narrative environment encourages the readers to forge these ties or else experience their tangling. Hands are our means of building these connections and losing ourselves in the tangle”.  This statement is powerful and does an excellent job in explaining the overall message of the story.

“A little show of hands”

This narrative centers around one of the characters from the full version, Katrina de la Palma.  This version begins with a page titled: “tomorrow’s child [Katrina] and tells about a baby in an incubator in critical condition and her mother.  Some of the other characters in this series are Chino, Santa Maria, and Tony. 

The author, Mark Marino, is currently the Communication director for the Electronic Literature Organization and holds a Ph.d from the University of California.  His work has been published in a number of magazines and journals.  Personally, I admire Marino’s work and look forward to exploring some of his other e-lit creations and blogs.