Response: Those Who Stay and Those Who Go

Something that happens in this particular piece is that the writer, Ann Daum, uses a certain, more clipped, blunt sentence structure. The effect that this has is that it lends itself to a more 'matter of fact' tone. She is, in fact, just stating what happens, and then elaborating very little on that. "Joy comes in small, daily pleasures. The incredible colors of the sunset here. Watching your son win a buckle at a 4-H rodeo. Neighbors helping your husband harvest wheat when he's laid up for a week with kidney stones. I could go on." She's explaining things in a very short tone, but rather than it seem emotionless or dull, it just comes off as run-down, like bleak acceptance of the fact that this is how life goes here. She still gets the idea across: this is the way of life, and it's either this way, or not at all (not at all being not the option that you die, but rather the option that you leave because you can't live there if you're going to live a different way from the rest of them.)
It works for when she continues to say that she doesn't fit into this dichotomy. She's in between, as she says, and the beginning helps set up the tone so that you know what that means for her, that you get the feeling about how it works out, or how the people of her community view her. That is also when the structure of the sentences changes; they flow better and it reads in a stark contrast to what she was writing before. In short, she accomplishes making you feel that same outsider's status that she did, and that's effective.