I am writing about Poetics and Social Justice. Flannery O’Connor’s A Prayer Journal, as a theme to investigate poetics, is based on my observances from an ongoing study of my use of grammar to form language, with evidence from observations based in life story writing, a key characteristic of the methods of field study through journaling. A case study on thought processes of my own writing juxtaposes and prepares me to create a useful pedagogy as well as life study on the power of writing for cultural change, as I interpret the poetics of O’Connor.

O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925. A devoted Catholic, she lived most of her life on a farm. She wrote 2 novels, 32 short stories, reviews, and commentaries. Her southern gothic style uses regional settings and grotesque characters. She won the 1972 National Book Award for Fiction, after her death in 1964. Catholic revival and a Catholic theory of fiction as well as Christian realism of the “here and now” and postwar America are themes that highlight our quest for understanding of O’Connor’s writing.