In the introduction of “Reading on the Air,” Jonathan Kern says that “if you are on the air, or hope to be, you should be able to read your own writing effectively” (132). I think Rachel Yoder definitely pulls that off in her audio piece “I’m White and I’m Mennonite.” Though her vocal isn’t the best I’ve heard, it has an ordinary aspect to it that delivers her story in a way that emphasizes the content of the story over the performer herself. Yoder’s voice is so casual, it doesn’t come off as you’re hearing someone’s reading; it feels like you’re just listening to your friend talking about the friends she made while going to Georgetown.
There’s nothing special about the way Yoder sounds, but Sora Newman says that people with too much of a beautiful vocal can sometimes put you to sleep, whereas someone who isn’t blessed with a pretty voice can occasionally manage to “write for their own voice in a way that makes them good storytellers” (134). Besides sounding like your typical white girlfriend, Yoder also engages various types of music into her piece, from church carols to Jodeci’s “Freek’N You,” which accounts for specific moments in her story and describes how she feels about them. For instance, Garth Brooks “Friends In Low Places” lyrics comes in (5:15) as she’s telling her audience about her redneck teenager years filled with pick-up trucks and cornfields.
Whereas in Joshua Wheeler’s “Ugly Pew,” I feel like he tries to push too much of the same sort of “emotional soundtracks” into the story to make it more heartbreaking and dramatic then it’s already, which gives me a unpleasantly experience of being told how to feel. But overall, I think both Wheeler and Yoder do a good job in narrating and making quick pauses in between transitions that let me as a listener have a moment to take in, to “breath and stay aware of what [she’s] talking about” (136).