Final Post: Relationships, Education, Body Image, Self-Identity, Progress, and Expression

     After reading all the pieces of literature for this class I found that there are many repetitive themes in all the books and short stories.  That is the themes on relationships, their education, their bodies and how they view them, their self-identity, their progress in life, and how they express themselves.  I'm going to focus on each topic and relate it to a book that expresses that theme the most and then tie it in to other happenings from the other books.
     A theme that is unavoidable in a piece of women's literature is relationships.  Whether they are good, bad, a family relationship, a romantic relationship, or just a relationship between them and other people it is present in women's literature.  One book we have read this semester that focuses on relationships the most is "2 or 3 Things I know for sure" by Dorothy Allsion.  In this book she has a hard time with the relationship between the men the women in her family got involved with.  She struggles to find a reason for why the women in her family are so tough and sympathetic towards the men.  They get used by the men who end up leaving them with a home and family to take care of.  She even quotes in her book, "The women i loved most in the world horrified me.  I did not want to grow up to be them."   She was afraid of what happened to them in their bad relationships would happen to her.  She didn't want to be barefoot and pregnant and supporting everything on her own.  She saw how her aunts, her sisters, and even her own mother choose the wrong men to be around.  She even was raped by someone her mother was in a relationship with.  After everything she experienced with her families relationships she didn't want anything to do with them.  She ended up sleeping around with women and getting into a bad habit and being bitter.  However although this story shows that women have a tough time and not every relationship is great towards the end things start to become more positive.  The book shows the signs of good and positive relationships as well.  Allison ends up with a woman whom she loves and has a son.  She has a happy family.  She also gets in contact with her sister more and begins to have an understanding relationship with her.  Through this piece of women's literature you can see all types of relationships and how all these relationships make who a women is and how she goes through life.  You can also see this in "Push".  Her mother and father were not good supporters.  The sexually, physically, and mentally abused her and made her feel fat, stupid, and ugly.  However, there were people like Ms. Rain and the students at the Each One Teach One that who helped her through everything so she could live a more positive life.
     Education is another important theme in these books.  I noticed that in a lot of these books education really made a difference in how each woman lived their life.  The more a women knew about herself and the world the more she was able to place herself in the world and face her realities.  You see this mostly in the book, "Push".  Precious the main character starts out not being able to read or express herself because of it.  She feels stupid and unable to do the things she wants to do.  When she finally gets into the Each One Teach One to get her G.E.D  she finally is able to put her life together.  She is able to stand up to her mother who mentally, physically, and sexually abused her and didn't stand up for her when her "father" was raping her.  She is able to come to terms with her childhood and come to how she is going to raise her children and live the rest of her life. I can also see this in,  "In the Time of Butterflies".  In this story the girls are well educated.  Especially Minerva who wants to go to college to become a lawyer.  I think without her knowledge of the world around her how would she have had the courage to stand up to Trujillo and stand up for what she believed was right.  
     When it comes to body image I have to use the book, "I Am an Emotional Creature".  I want to use this piece of women's literature because it is a book for young women when this issue is above all others in their lives.  Girls feel insecure and they view their bodies very negatively.  All the poems and short stories are expressing how a girl feels about herself.  They talk about body image as something that is a physical entity but also an emotional entity.  In one of the poems, I am An Emotional creature it says, "I am an emotional creature.  There is a particular way of knowing. It's like the older women somehow forgot. I rejoice that it's still in my body."  Girls are still coming to terms with how they look and how they feel inside.  They are wondering why they are having all these changes happening to their bodies and why it is causing them to be sensitive and more emotional.  You can see this theme carried on in Eve Ensler's, "The Vagina Monologues." You can see how older women have a hard time coming to terms and loving their bodies even after their adolescent years.  In the excerpt, "Because He Liked to Look at it"  You can see a women who is struggling with herself because she feels overweight until one day a man comes along and wants to have sex with her and calls her beautiful.  I think alot
     I think a concern that everyone has not only women is find self-identity.  Who are we?  Is a question that many women ask today and have in the past.  I think we can see this in the poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye's "19 Varieties of Gazelle."  She is a Pakistan-American who struggled to find who she was as a Pakistani and an American.  In this quote,  "There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,a tree with the largest, fattest, sweetest figs in the world."  You can see that she is trying to merge her two surroundings together and find who she is and where she belongs.  She also has a strong theme of 9/11 in her book.  You can see that she has a conflict with who she is around this time period and who others are.  She mentions a guy who just gets out of prison and is ready to start a new life but knows nothing of the attacks.  This guy is trying to find his identity as much as she is trying to hold on to hers.  Another story you find this in is in Danticant's short stories in "Krick?Krack!"  The women who traveled from Haiti to America found it very hard to adjust to a new type of life.  They held onto beliefs from their life before they came to America, but are trying to find where they fit in this new land.  
     I think every women goes through a progression in their lives.  There comes a point in time where we change as human beings and women from experiences we encounter.  I believe "Fun House" shows this theme the most.  She starts off as a little girl who knows that she is a tomboy and that her father is neat and tidy and likes things just so, but as she gets older realizes he was gay and was having affairs with young boys in his class.  She finds this out through life and events that happen to her.  She comes to the realization that she is lesbian and finds out her father was gay.  She also learns small things like a man's anatomy when she helps her father get a certain tool when he was working on a naked dead guy at the funeral home.  Her life just slowly progresses through out the book to meet a realization at the end of who she was and who her father was.  You can also see this in "When the Emperor was Divine."  The young girl and boy because of the experience they had in the internment camps made them change and develop new attitudes towards the world around them.  Many women change and see the world differently do to their lives experiences.
     I believe the theme of expression is the most important.  Without relationships and education we would never learn,  with out a good self-body image and an idea of our self-identities we wouldn't know who we were, and without progression we would never change and create new ideas.  However, without expression we wouldn't be able to share any of this with the world.  I believe the movie with the women in the penitentiary was a good end for the class.  It tied up everything we were trying to tie up at the end with.  The women talked alot about if their words could be heard and what they would want to say.  All the women had stories they wanted to share and messages they wanted to instill on others before it was to late for them like it was for themselves.  One women who was on drugs, became a prostitute, and then killed a 70 year old man because of her resentment towards the man who hurt her in her life showed her feelings in the video.  Their was regret, guilt, and sorrow.  She wanted to share her story so that maybe no one would have to live with the same shadow she is going to live with for the rest of her life.  All these women through the process of bad relationships before prison, to the education they received in prison. Then they formed good relationships.  Then they created a good body and self image for themselves, and they progressed to eventually they wanted to express how they felt about everything that had happened to them; to spread their message to other women out there so it won't happen to them. I think this whole chain is what this class was trying to tie together.  How all of this forms a woman and how this process is evident in each book we read this semester.

The Men and the Purpose for her writing this book

     I believe a lot of the problems not only Allison but the women in her family faced was due to the men in their lives.  She even begins talking about them by saying, "The tragedy of the men in my family was silence, a silence veiled by boasting and joke."  You can see her opinion of the men and how the women never talked about it they just dealt with it.  They were troubled people with bad reputations.  Her uncles went to jail, thy had a lot of women, and were not very free.  They were trapped in trying to be hard-faced and tough men, but they really weren't all like that on the inside.  Was it because of there social class?  Did they not feel like they completely provided for there family?  Then again a lot of the men involved like Allison's dad or her aunts husband leave and don't return and leave the women to grieve.  So maybe some of them do feel like they aren't providing for their families well enough and others don't even try.
     One of the men that Allison goes into to detail with is her uncle.  She says,  "I had woken up to her whispering and shifting on that creaky old sofa, the taint of whiskey and tobacco smoke telling me that someone was there, and the hoarse sobs that followed confusing me, for I had never before heard my uncle cry."  In this excerpt from her book you can see that not all the men in her family were truly bad a lot of them were just victims of a lifestyle that they lived in.  I think this is Allison's way of saying that she didn't hate them and she didn't completely blame all men for what happened to the women in her family.


     I believe there are a lot of reasons why she chose to write this book.  I think one was to come to terms with her life when she was a child to figure out how it all pieced together.  To find blame?  comfort? a reason? Probably all of these things.  You can see by the end of the book there seems to be a calming less angry feeling in her righting I think this is a great writing technique but I think it is more than that.  I think it had to do with her actually trying to figure this all out and you can see where she was having the toughest times voicing what she thought and what really happened.  Another reason why she could have wrote this book is to help people understand that you can't just deal with things.  You have to be who you are and if things are going wrong you need to break the bad cycles.  She did.  She started a family and is very happy.  She could be trying to send a message to everyone that it can be done and to not give up hope.

(Late) The Women

     I think a strong theme in this book is the women in Dorothy Allison's family and how they influenced her to be the woman she is today.  If you look at the picture on page 33 of the women in her family you can see that they all have a kind of scowl on their faces.  They look tough.  They are dressed roughly and unfeminine.  I think this look that they have in this photo is because of the lives they all lived.
  I think a lot of the way that the women lived the way they did is because of the influence of men in their lives.  If you look at Allison's mother she got pregnant as a teenager and the guy left her.  This is a similar story for most of the relatives in her family.  At an early age she learned to just deal with the way men were and to live with it rather than go against the grain.  On page 35 it says, "When she found me once, red-faced and tearful, brooding over rude boys who shouted insults and ran away, she told me to wipe my face and pay no attention."  In this line it could be making a connection to all the men who ran away and neglected there duties as fathers, brothers, and husbands and the way they treated these women when they were still around.  At this  young age Allison is learning to just deal with it.  As a human being there always shows the strains of just dealing with things and that is why the women look so worn and tired in that picture.
     How did this influence Allison's life?  Well she discovered the same kind of life from men.  She was raped by her step-father and her mother till the day she died wouldn't believe it.  She from the moment she was young knew she didn't want to end up like her mother, her aunt, and her relatives.  She says, "The women i loved most in the world horrified me.  I did not want to grow up to be them."
     I think a lot of this made her not want to love a man.  She didn't want to be used by a man so she fell in love with a woman.  She gained masculine traits to become strong.
     Although she tried to run away from the hurt men caused in her family she was already affected by a young age because of the rape.  You can tell because she went through a long process of coming to terms with it.  She slept with many women and was used by them.  Is this no different then the women in her family being treated badly by men?  However, I do find that she did do something different then the rest, and that is she turned her life around.  She was able to find happiness. This is is shown in  the picture of all the scowling women in contrast to her family photo with her son and partner is distinctly noticeable.  In her family photo she looks younger and happier then she ever did in most of the photos. She was able to piece it all together to build a desirable life for her and her family.

Last Scene in The Shawl

     I believe the last scene in the book is Rosa letting go.  I think it is very symbolic how she slowly moves on.  First she calls Stella who was part of her past before the camps and during and after.  I think this is symbolic because she is the first person she had through this ordeal and the first person she calls up.  Then she has a vision of Magda as a young teenage girl.  This is symbolic because Magda's death at a young age in the concentration camps had a huge impact on Rosa throughout her life.  The last stage of letting go is the interruption into the present reality.  This is when she gets a call from the receptionist saying a Mr. Persky was there to see her.
     When she calls Stella she does it to spark Magda's image in her brain.  You can tell from this conversation however that maybe Rosa's feelings towards Stella are changing a little.  Before all we heard was how horrible she thought Stella was and how cold she was.  Now you can see her more or less talking to her like a friend or companion.  For example on page 64, "In that case you come here," Rosa said.  "Oh my God, I can't afford it.  You talk like I'm a millionaire.  What would I do down there?"  "I don't like it alone.  A man stole my underwear."  "Your what?" Stella squeaked.""  This exchange between Stella and Rosa shows that maybe Rosa is lonely and wants Stella's company although she is trying to produce Magda from this conversation and almost seems that there may have been a need for Stella too.  You can also see after this quote that Stella also doesn't mind her coming back and caring for her aunt.
     After she hangs up the phone she envisions Magda as a young teen.   On page 65 it says, "And also she was always a little suspicious of Magda, because of the other strain, whatever it was, that ran in her.  Rosa herself was not truly suspicious, but Stella was, and that induced perplexity in Rosa."  You can see here that Rosa is beginning to listen to what people are saying especially Stella.  This is a start for her considering she wasn't listening at all.  Now the "suspicion" or thought of letting go of the past is sinking in and is helping her on the way to recovery.
     The last thing that points that she is starting to let go is the scene the receptionist is calling up to her to let her know Mr. Persky is down stairs and would like to see her.  Rosa Responds in these last lines, "'He's used to crazy women, so let him come up' Rosa told the Cuban.  She took the shawl off the phone.  Magda was not there.  Shy, she ran from Persky.  Magda was away."  Although you can clearly see that she is not completely over everything because it says that Magda just was away rather than gone, but you can see that reality or present reality is starting to sink in.  Whether it is because of finally just realizing or Mr. Persky entering her life it has made an effect.  She is starting to except an outsider into her life and she isn't so isolated anymore.  There is definitely a healing feeling at the end of this book.

Stella's Letter

   So far into the book Rosa is the main narrator of the story.  We see from an outside view but we get her opinions and her take on what is going on.  One thing she keeps bringing up is how cold-hearted Stella is.  An example of this on page 15 Rosa says, "Stella was cold.  She had no heart.  Stella, already nearly fifty years old, the angel of death."  So the readers only impression of this character is that she is cold and probably has no feelings towards other people.  When they were in the camps and even after Rosa describes Stella as cannibalistic.
     I think the truth comes out when we see a letter that Stella has wrote to Rosa with sending her the shawl she had asked for.  You can tell that there was probably an argument over giving Rosa that shall for her mental health.  It says, "All right I've done it.  Been to the post office and mailed it.  Your idol is on its way, seperate cover.  Go on your knees to if you want.  You make yourself crazy, everyone thinks you're a crazy woman."  You can tell from this beginning part of the letter that Stella did not want to send the shall to Rosa.  She was afraid because it relates to her being crazy.  One of the reasons why it may be a sign of her being crazy is because it relates to Magda.  We already know by this point in the book that Magda, her child, died in the concentration camps and now in the recent time in the book she is writing letters to the dead child.  These is an evident attachment still present in Rosa's heart that leaves her bitter and in a sense insane.  Stella not wanting to send her the shawl could have been to keep her aunt away from one thing that makes her look mad.
     You can also tell from this letter that Stella has moved on from her experiences in the concentration camps and is enjoying her new life.  She says, "I shouldn't lecture, but my God!  It's thirty years, forty,who knows, give it a rest."  You can tell that she wants her aunt to move on and in a way cares about her aunts mental welfare.  Considering that they are all they have for family left that she wants to take care of her, but I feel that Rosa isn't letting her become close because of her resentment and blame towards Rosa.
     This letter reflects what the real relationship between the two is.  I think this changes the perspective of the story from Rosa being a victim of the Concentration camps living in a poor "hotel" and only having a cold niece to support her.  To someone who isn't willing to recieve help and has gone a little crazy and her views on Stella aren't neccassairly true.

A little bit into Rosa's Chapter

     The next chapter opens up and in the first little section I discovered that Stella was her niece.  Rosa still believes that she is canablistic and is out to get her and she still describes her as cold.  On page 15 it says, "Sometimes Rosa had cannibal dreams about Stella:  she was boiling her tongue, her ears, her right hand, such a fat hand with plump fingers, each nail tended and rosy, and so many rings, not modern rings but old-fashioned junk shop rings."  I think when she refers to the old rings she is saying that when she thinks or dreams of Stella doing this that maybe its tied to what she was like in the past and what she thought and fear when she was in the camps.
     I also noticed that she writes letters to not only Stella but her dead toddler Magda.  Besides she is writing letters to someone who died in the last chapter she writes them in Polish while her letters to Stella are in english.  Could this mean that she sees that Stella in modern and writes to her in english because she may not associate with her in the same closeness as before the camps, but at the same time writes these letters to Magda in Polish because she didn't speak english when she had her and maybe feels a closeness to her even though she is dead.
     I also noticed the mention of a furnace and not wanting to go near it in the first part of the chapter.  On page 14, "The streets were a furnace, the sun an executioner."  I think this is saying that no matter where she went her life in the concentration camps stays with her no matter where she goes and it haunts her.  Another thing that validates this claim is that she doesn't leave her house often to do her laundry and the letters she writes.  Everything she does is something connected to the past, but at the same time she tries to avoid it by not stepping outside and facing the reality she is living in.  She is no longer in the camps, Magda had died, and Stella has become a different person because of the holocaust, but she still makes references in her life about the camps, writes letters to her dead child, and calls Stella beautiful to cover up the fact that she is a cold person now.

1st story in, "The Shawl"

     I had to read it a couple times because I was confused as to what character was doing what in the beginning.  I figured out that Rosa is a mother to Magda and there is a fourteen year old girl with them maybe another daughter of Rosa.  The setting is in the concentration camps in Germany during World War II.  I also understand that Rosa is trying to hide her baby from everyone so they won't kill her.
     Magda is thin and is malnourished because they are in the concentration camps and all she has to feed on is this shawl that Rosa credits for keeping the baby alive.  On page 5 it says, "It was a magic shawl, it could nourish an infant for three days and three nights.  Magda did not die, she stayed alive although very quiet."  The mother Rosa is seeing her daughter not dying under almost unlivable circumstances as a miracle and is giving the credit to the shawl for feeding her while her own breasts couldn't.  It also mentions in this line about Magda's muteness that she seems to have from birth that keeps her alive throughout her infancy.  However, when the shawl blows away one day she cries out and it could have ultimately have lead to her death at the end of the first chapter.  This shows that the baby was attached to the shawl because it was wrapped in it so long.  The baby could have also seen it as a mother figure.
     Now Rosa's character in the first chapter seems to be scared for her baby's life.  When the baby runs off at the end she is questioning how to save the child, and if to save the child.  On page 8 it says, "A tide of commands hammered in Rosa's nipples:  Fetch, get, bring! But she did not know which to go after first,  Magda or the shawl?"  After she decides that she had to save her child she weighs out her options to get the shawl to get Magda back to it and safe or fetch the child who would scream anyway without the shawl and probably be killed.  She chooses to go after the shawl, but it is to late the baby has already hit the electric fence and died.
     In the rest of the book because it is titled Rosa I think it is going to talk about how she lived after her horrible experiences in the camps.  I also would like to know what happened to Stella who she described as being cold because of their situation and canabal like while in the camps.  Did she survive?  What I do know is that loosing the baby was probably the hardest thing that Rosa had to deal with.  Against the hunger and awful conditions it seems that the author emphasized on her loosing the baby because it had the most impact on her emotionally and mentally.

Identity Conflict

     Throughout the book so far I see a lot of symbolism especially with the little boy relating to the challenges he is facing with his identity as an American and as a person.  Like in class we discussed the horses that may have symbolized his identity and when they were running off into the night on the train may have symbolized that the boy was feeling a loss of identity.
     In the boys chapter however there are many more instances that show this conflicting identity the boy is feeling.  On page 64 it says, "One evening, before he went to bed, he wrote his name in the dust across the top of the table.  All through the night, while he slept, more dust blew through the walls.  By morning his name was gone."  This could be mirroring how when they left their home they were placed by numbers instead of names.  It could symbolize how when he got to the internment camp and experienced life there he was slowly loosing his sense of self.  At the same time by writing his name in the desk in the first place could mean that he wants to hold on to his identity and his self, but the internment camp and the way his family is being treated is slowly causing him to pull away from himself.
     Another instance is when the rumors start popping up on the camp.  It says on page 70, "Every week they heard rumors.  The men and women would be put into separate camps.  They would be sterilized.  They would be stripped on their citizenship."  This is mirroring the fear that is circulating around.  The people know what is going on outside the camp.  They know there is prejudice that could be dangerous and that it is possible for these conditions to exist.  It was happening with the Jewish people in Germany at the same time why could it not happen to them?  I think this paragraph is crucial to understanding the fear of the people and how they were treated.
     The last example is on page 75, "She burned the family photographs and the three silk kimonos she had brought over with her nineteen years ago from Japan."  The mother is burning in this scene everything that tied to their heritage in Japan.  She stopped packing rice balls in their lunch boxes and replaced it with PB&J and she tells her kids that if anyone asks they are Chinese.  In this scene they are obviously getting rid of their identity in fear that something bad might happen to them.  The boy then proceeds a couple pages after to question why he needs to lie about who he is.  A man asks him in the book, "Chink or Jap?" The boy answers Chink and the guy runs away.  Then the boy who feels guilty about lying and feels that being a Chink was worse starts yelling he is really a Jap.  The guy does not hear him.  I think this scene shows that the boy isn't ashamed of being Japanese and he wants to let people know who he is but he is questioning why its such a bad thing and why people don't see him as an American.

When the Emperor was Divine (First Post)

     When I dove into this book I was coming in with very minimal knowledge of the history.  I new the story of how the Japanese Americans got placed in internment camps and many of them lost their old lives they had before.  Including there reputation, friends, and property.  When I read the first chapter it was the first time actually reading about a fictional character and how her life continued until she was sent to go live in an internment camp with her family.  The first chapter is the thoughts and the events that had to take place before the initial leave.
     So far I can see that there is a woman who has a daughter and a son.  She has a husband however, he is in jail during the scene in the first chapter.  Woman seems to be calm and collected.  She wears neat clothes and has what was conceived at the time as a normal middle class life.  Then as we read deeper we see that the women has to make choices and act on certain things that she does not want to do, but must for her families sake.  She must pack, stay calm, and keep the kids naive to what is going on around them.
     The actions that stood out the most and had the most impact on her character was the getting rid of the animals.  She gave the cat to stay with someone else, killed the dog, and let the bird loose outside.  She must do this because she knows she can not bring them with her and they would only suffer without the family there.  Also, the kids have affection for the animals and its better to say they ran away then to say that they are dead, or starving at home because they aren't there to feed the animals.  I also think that the getting rid of the animals was symbolic.  I think by giving the cat to a neighbor it was as if she was trying to keep a part of her there in that neighborhood.  She doesn't want to give up the life she has and she wants to leave a "mark."  By killing the dog it is symbolizing how she is killing off her old life.  She knows that she can never return to her old life so she must "kill it" so that she is in less pain when she has to leave it and so her kids aren't phased by this ordeal.  Lastly, the bird I think is the most symbolic.   After leaving a piece of herself there in the old life and killing it off with the dog she now has to let it go. She releases the bird into the night and is trying to let it go.  At first the bird won't fly away and sticks around.  This is as if saying it wasn't easy and she had a hard time doing it, but the bird eventually flew away like the family must do the next day.
     The mother is distressed by the end of this chapter and after the kids are in bed she lets out all her emotions from what the day had put upon her.  This scene is showing that she is human and this ordeal is not something she is easily taking.  However, at the same time it is showing that she is strong and willing to put on a kind of composure to keep her kids happy and unaware.

Push (Last Post)

    Push as a book had a lot going on symbolically, emotionally, and thoughtfully.  It symbolically sent a message to people about pushing for your hardest and doing everything you can to be a perfect you.  Emotionally it sent the reader into so many emotions at one time.  The book was thought invoking and took the reading into a thought process that maybe we haven't been into.
    The book is called, "Push" and it about a girl who grows up in Harlem and is raped by her father who impregnates her twice and a crazy mother who lets this happen to keep her husband nearby.  I don't think it was an accident that the author named the book, "Push" and used it as a term for when giving birth, but also a verb to keep going and to keep fighting your way through life.  I noticed that Precious throughout her life has to face challenges like her abusive parents, not being able to read, people passing her on to the next person to handle, and her images of herself physically and mentally.  She has to push her way through and find how to get herself to a life she wants to live for herself, but more importantly to her for her children.  I think this can also be a message the reader can pick up on.  Its a message to keep trying no matter how hard or how long that journey may be.
    Emotionally the book triggers a lot of anger for the reader.  You start wondering why no one is helping her in the beginning?  Why her father rapes her?  Why her mother doesn't do anything about it and lets it happen? You feel sad for Precious and what she has to live through.  You feel even more pain, sympathy, and sorrow when she gets aids from her father.  From reading this book a whirlpool of emotions surface and its hard to come to terms with the story.  I think it makes it even harder because it isn't written in a third parties point of view but through her eyes.  To see Precious's thoughts on the whole situation is sad and the details are sometime disgusting and unhumane compared to how are lives are.
     Thoughtfully the book invokes a lot of thinking.  We start to question society and what are institutions are really doing to help people.  We start to ask is every case can be helped through government institutions and even the public school system?  Through this book you see that there has to be a lot of other people who need to step in to help and not just these institutions.  The book made me personally look around at my outside world.  I know that when I become a teacher I'm going to want to help every student I possible can even if I have a student like Precious.  Although it maybe hard to detect and hard to help a student like that I want to try my hardest to at least educate that person and not push them to the next teacher or person to handle.  Sometimes someone needs to step in and sometimes that person has to be you or me.

Push

     In this novel or story it is about a young girl who has been physically, mentally, and sexually abused since she was a young girl.  She can't read and has trouble in school and the kids make fun of her because she is fat.  In this blog entry I would like to address how she came out of this and what helped her become a different person by the end of the book.
     I believe out of all the people she came in contact with the one person that helped her the most was Ms. Rain.  Even through school no one seemed to want to help her out of the situation she was in they just passed her on to the next person to take care of her.  The hospital did the same thing when they found out that the father of her baby was her father they didn't place much of an effort into helping her.  Ms. Rain and the Each One Teach One helped her build herself into excepting who she was and discovering who she was and to confront those things that weren't making her who she wanted to be.  Ms. Rain taught her how to read she had always wanted to know how and now she could read and write and communicate that way.  Ms. Rain became her answers in her journal.  She responded to Precious and listened to what she had to say.   When Precious was in trouble like when she had the baby and she ran away from her mother she did everything in her power to get Precious a home to stay in while she was looking for a way to sustain for herself and her kid.  Ms. Rain was a role model for Precious and someone she could count on which she never had before.
     Besides Ms. Rain the other students in the school helped support her as well.  She learned that not everyone was perfect no matter how good or bad looking they were.  People weren't abused or lived bad lives because of the way they looked.  They also had her back and listened to her.  She had friends for the first time and people who really cared about her well being and didn't abuse her in anyway.  I think what she learns most from these students is compassion and caring that she never had before.  Some of them introduced her to support groups that would help her come to terms and resolve her past of sexual, mental, and physical abuse.  Here she is able to see more people with like problems that they have faced in there lives.  She can vent out her thoughts and listen to others and compare, think, and come to terms with what happened to her.
     By the end of the book she becomes Precious who is an independent girl with her own thoughts and feelings.  She is free and has a goal in life.  She can read and write and wants to get better at it and become something.  She wants to raise her kids and not be like her parents.  She sees what is wrong and what is right and is able to stand up for herself.  This is very different from the scared and scarred Precious in the beginning.  She is afraid to stand up to her parents and is afraid of what would happen to her if she rebelled.  She just thought she would live the life she was living forever.
     Precious is a strong and diligent character whose change is something we can all look up to and we can all think that like Precious we want the best for ourselves so we need to work hard like her.

"The Mother" from Fun Home

     The book Fun Home is mostly centered around Bruce and Alison.  How about the mother?  What is her character like?  What is her role in the whole story?  She seems to be behind the scenes during the whole story.  She is never really in the main scheme of things and seems to be a more minor character.  She seems to be to herself and involved with her studies.  You see her interacting with the family rarely and she seems to have a bit of tension between her and her husband because of his hidden homosexuality and the crimes he is commiting.
     Does this mean that she doesn't have a role?  I think she does.  She maybe put off from the main story or focus but her presence is important.  Firstly, because it is an autobiography and she needs to put all family members into her story who were involved with the authors life.  However, most importantly she is the main figure who opens Alison's eyes in the middle of the book after her father's death. She tells Alison that her father was gay and was preying on little boys and was hiding this fact from society.
     She also throughout the book lets loose about the tension building up between her and her husband.  There are scenes like the one where Bruce comes home late and she is arguing with him, but you can tell where he has really been.  I think she is important for these scenes because it shows what her father was up to and what her mother thought and was keeping to herself.
     I think the mother gets ignored because she seems like such a background character that was into herself but there are some scenes where she is with Alison that shows how Alison developed an understanding for her mother who was married to her father.  For example, the scene where she is rehearsing her mom's lines with her shows how she did spend time with her mom and maybe how she lived her life even living with this secret and how she coped with it.  In a sense her mom seemed very hard working and very courageous after reading the story and seeing what she had to put up with.
     I don't think the mother should be put off as a main character.  She was obviously important in Alison's growing up and understanding of her father.  Without her mother Alison wouldn't be able to understand the full understanding of her parents and her life.

"He Was There to Catch Me When I Lept"

     The book "Fun House had a lot going on within its story line.  I wasn't really sure where it was going and what major point the book was trying to make.  I had a hard time writing blogs because I wasn't really sure where to go with this book.  However, when I finished the book and I read the last line, "he was there to catch me when I lept."  Tied everything together.
     The book was about the author growing up with her gay father who preyed on younger boys, her mother who was busy with her dissertations, and he family who were so unique and filled with a lot of responsibilities and passions.  Her Father like interior and exterior designs, reading, art, and clothes.  He was a closet gay and was pretending to be someone he wasn't.  He never came out that he was gay but it showed through with the guys he was cheating on his wife with.  Her Mother also showed signs that he was gay by being angry when he did certain things like going on trips with the kids and a guy who worked with the family.  Throughout the authors childhood she never expected her father to be gay, but by her father being gay do to this last line in the book she was able to come out with her own sexuality.
     The author didn't come out till she was in college when she fully realized that she was lesbian.  She was the closest to her father at the time because they were intellectual companions and they wrote back and forth to each other while she was away.  When she mentioned that she was gay he hinted off that he was to but never fully came out.  However, in his letters and words and gave her good advice and kind of encouraged it without really encouraging it.  For example, he mentioned in one of his letters that when he was in college in the 50s that wasn't acceptable and that she was fortunate that she was able to go to college in that era where things were more open.
     Even after his death he helped her.  When she found out about her father's crimes and sexuality she kind of related to him more and took his mistakes to not create her own.  Knowing that her father bottled it up and could have led to his death she doesn't want to make the same mistake.  She was going to live her life to who she was and that was it she wasn't going to pretend that she was someone she wasn't.  In some ways he helped her come to terms with who she was.
     So the last words of the graphic novel, "He was there to catch me when I lept."  Encompasses what the author wanted to get across in the end to the readers.  That there was someone for her to look to.  She had advice and someone who listened to her to get her through the tough times of coming out and even afterwards.  Homosexuality isn't completely acceptable in societies eyes even today.  It could also be a message for those who live in the same predicament or the author could have been taking it deeper to say that when there is a problem because everyone is human you can have someone to turn to.

Alison Bechdel: Her and Her Father.

     I find it amazing how they really worked off of each other throughout there whole lives together.  Her father and her were both gay, but they mirrored each other and looked at each other for what they wanted for themselves.  The author wanted to be masculine and wanted that for her father.  However, her father was very feminine.  He liked to garden, flowers, home improvement, and nice clothes.  While at the the same time her father wanted to be feminine so he look at his daughter for that.  However, she was a tomboy and didn't like feminine things.
     In the book one example is she is wearing the least girly dress and he is wearing a velvet suit.  Right there is was an indication in her life that maybe their gender roles were switched.  However, she didn't notice it then like she does now.
     The author and her father also seem to be very similar.  They may be similar because they were father and daughter but they do have a lot in common.  They are both homosexual, the like to read, and both desired for living freely with their sexuality.  I feel that the author's father handled it differently then how she handled her sexual orientation.  While her father hid it from the world and secretly had affairs the author was open about it and joined rallies and read many books on it.  She was ashamed of who she was like her father was.  I think her father bottling up his feelings led to his death, if it was a suicide.
     I sense that the author feels like she connected with her father in some ways, but when it came to how they dealt with life she disagreed.  She looks down on him for what he did to her mother and with those young boys, but she feels bad at the same time because she knows what he was living with in his mind.  She might have had an easier time because of the two different decades they were living in.  She came out in the seventies when things were becoming more open while her father was from an era where homosexuality wasn't acceptable.
     Its interesting to see that because of the one factor that they were both homosexual led to many events in the author's life.  It led to a life with a father who held so much in that he almost was violent towards her mother and to her.  It led to her parents divorce and possibly her father's death.

Fun Home

     The title reads, "Fun Home:  A Family Tragic Comic"  My initial reaction was, how can something be fun, and tragic.  I figured the title was sarcastic when it said fun.  When I read into the book a little bit I think my assumption was right.
     The story is about the author growing up and figuring out that she is lesbian and then finding out later that her father hid the fact that he was gay.  She uses her families "odd" life to make a tragic story semi-funny.  She places the tragedies with in humor to lighten up the topic.  Her family owned a funeral home and to make it funny she would add in stories of them being kids and playing around, but also the lesson she learned at that time from her father.  She saw a dead person for the first time there and encountered her fathers work inside the funeral parlor.
     So far I think this book is going to be lessons and things she learns throughout her life from, about, and things around her father.  However, through her life experiences I think it is going to be about how she grew and changed especially through her father's secret.
     Maybe she will challenge the views on gay/bi/lesbian individuals and couples.  How maybe that held her father back from being who he was and maybe causing his "suicide."  Maybe also touching base on her own relationship with females and how people viewed her because of it and maybe understanding or not understanding how her father treated his own orientation.
     Another question that has popped up so far in the reading is did her father commit suicide or was it an accident?  It seems to me that is was a suicide because of all the clues he left behind in his books.  I just think the author and her family didn't want it to be so publicly known that he had committed suicide it might have been to much of a shock for them to handle so they just said it was a accident.
     I hope these questions are answered as a read further or are delved deeper into.  So far it is a story full of questions that need answers.

Analysis to Alvarez's "In the Time of the Butterflies"

     I believe Alvarez takes us beyond to the legend of these girls to teach us a lesson.  She wants us to get the insight that these females were normal woman of their time.  They got married and they had families, but they also had this connection for freedom and doing what was right.  I think what was great about this book is that she took us into each of the lives of each sister and then helped us place them together to see how their lives initially led to the revolution and their deaths.  She gets personal and mixes it in with the historical, more knowledge based parts of their time lines.
      Each sister has a personality and role in their story.  Patria the religious, nurturing, and motherly figure. Dede the more cautious, caring, and thinks things through character.  Minerva who is the strong willed, stubborn, and rebellious one.  Finally Mate who is the more romantic, girly, but sacrificing one.  I think Alvarez takes us deep into their lives as she can go to show us that they were human and to show that when their is a cause to stand up for woman can do it.  It is a sacrifice but you have to do what you want and what you believe in because no one else will.
     Besides sending the message to the readers about these four sisters and about being strong and standing for what you believe in I also think this book was written for Dede.  The book is dedicated to her and she is the only surviving sister.  Maybe Alvarez thought that Dede needed this story written down.  She felt that this story should be shared with more people because they were all amazing people, but to introduce another character into their story, Dede.  It seems that before this book was written it was all about the other three sisters but now Dede seems to have a role in there fate.  She was the one that was left behind to share the story and take care of their children they left behind.
    To be honest before reading this book I knew nothing about the Mirabal sisters.  I just find it fascinating how they risked family and their lives for this revolution.  It must have been a tough sacrifice for them.   I also think about Alvarez did she accomplish her goal of making this story to spread this story more?  I think she did.  I definantly wouldn't have known about them without being assigned to read the book.
     I also find that while most people when telling the story they focus a lot of Minerva.  I think it might be because she was the face she was the most involved physically, mentally, and spiritually.  She devoted her life to this revolution.  I find it interesting how Alvarez made her focus on the surviving sister.  I think by making the focus Dede it made more of an impact for her and for the people reading it. Its the perspective of the closest person to these three sisters their fourth sister Dede.   It is also showing that somebody had to take care of everyone that the sister's left behind.  They sacrificed everything for the revolution even Dede.  She lost three sisters and had to raise all their kids.  She was even left to deal with the press and ceremonies the rest of her life.  I think this is what Alvarez was trying to get across.  Dede was important even if she wasn't on the front lines with the sisters.

Minerva and Mate's Reaction to Their Father's Secret

         Enrique Maribal had a secret he tried to keep from his family in the book.  That secret was that he had another woman in his life with whom he had four children with.  The Mother of the Maribal sister's knew about this but tried to keep it away from her daughters.  Patria the oldest daughter had found out first by being intuitive and reading her mother and understanding what was happening by comparing it to what happened in her marriage life so far with Pedro.  However, I believe that Minerva and Mate's reactions though both negative were different.
     Minerva had found out by discovering the family first and when she got really mad she rammed her car into his and never really forgave him.  She lost all respect for him and things were never the same for their relationship as father and daughter.  However, Minerva accepted the fact pretty quickly and helped her four half sisters.  She wasn't rude to them she blamed her father for being a weak and stupid man not the woman.  This could be because of her attitude about women being independent and her wanted to be a lawyer.
     On the other hand Mate found out by discovering her other half sisters at her father's funeral.  She was already devastated by her father's death and then she finds out her father had a whole other family.  All this at once had to be a slap in the face.  However, unlike Minerva she gets angry at the half sisters.  I believe she thinks this way partly because her father isn't there.  However, she does mention that she hates men at the moment because of what her father did.  While she was jealous of the other children her father had she was also made at her father maybe because of Minerva?  Minerva is the sister Mate most looks up to so maybe she got this idea from her sister but she really felt the anger towards the half sisters.  So in Mate's reaction I feel like there was a combination of both her own feelings and Minerva's feelings.
     All the sister's found out the secret and hurt them and changed them as people.  They opened up to the real world that may have led them to look at men in a different light.  Was their father no different the Trujillo when it came to women?  They had to now see the true light of the culture and place they lived in.  It was an eye opener in the story.

Dede's Timeline

Circa 1925:  Dede is born

January 1938:  She is sent to school with her other two sisters.  (Mate is still to young to go yet)

1943:  The family is sitting outside and her father gives her a fortune of becoming a millionaire and burying them all.  It was the only real fortune he told and predicted the real future.

1948:  She meets Lio in the store with her sister Minerva.  She seems to like him, but he seems to have an interest in Minerva.  Dede marries Jaimito.  She also hides a letter from Minerva from Lio asking her to come with him and join the revolution which affects her life.

October 12, 1949:  Discovery Day Dance (Where questioning begins and Trujillo's interest in Minerva begins.)

Circa 1949-1950: Jaimito and Dede's ice cream shop fails, predicted by Dede.  They decide to open a restaurant business instead.

1954:  Its mentioned that Jaimito and Dede are moving back to the farm with there family.

1959-1960:  Sisters come and want Dede to join the rebellion.  She seriously thinks about leaving her family and husband to join the rebellion.  She decides not to.

1960:  Her sister's die and her husband was the only one not arrested out of all their spouses.

1994:  She is the only living surviving sister.  She raised her sister's kids and is running a museum.  She takes interviews and takes part in many events pertaining to her sister's courage and what they did.

Minerva, "In the Time of Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez

     From reading the first four chapters of this book I found that the strong character in the book is going to be Minerva.  I feel like she has a lot of strong and rebellious scenes that leads me to believe so.  She finds out from a young age at the school that Trujillo has killed her friends family for speaking out against him.  She learns of the hard ships that speaking out against the government can get you.  One seen that particularly stands out to me that shows how Minerva learns young about how the reality in her country is the one where Trujillo comes to her school to court one of the students there.  She had heard stories from her new friend she had made that he is really bad.  She starts to doubt a little bit with the love that is growing in her friend Lina towards the man.  However, she finds out that he is married and the wife tried to kill Lina and sent her away.  It wasn't the happy ending that she thought.
     I believe that Minerva being exposed to all these wrong doings from this one guy to the people around her causes her to dislike him a lot.  Also, being the strong minded and outspoken person she is she seems like she isn't just going to stand there and say nothing.  When he comes to the school to see a play that Minerva and three other girls put together about their country gaining its freedom Minerva decides to change it up.  She changes their costumes to mens costumes to make more of an impact because women weren't considered menacing.  She also changed the play to aim it at Trujillo.  However, her friend gets a little heated:  "But when we got to this part, Sinita kept on stepping forward and didn't stop till she was right in front of Trujillo's chair.  Slowly, she raised her bow and took aim.  There was a stunned silence in the hall."  The scene continues and Sinita almost gets herself in trouble but Minerva saves her by saying it was part of the play and continuing her lines.  I think this action by Minerva might get her in trouble later on.  We know that she dies on this day that the other two sisters dies but we don't know why.  Maybe it is because of something rebellious against the government and maybe Minerva gets in trouble for sticking up for one of her sisters.
    

Thoughts on "Don't"

     I was drawn to this piece because it was so negative.  The title itself is, "Don't" which implies that the piece is going to be about not being able to do something.  I looked at where the story was taking place and that place was Cairo, Egypt.  I have to confess I don't know much about Egypt, but I could probably tell that women don't have the same rights as men there or even close to the rights on women in the U.S.  There were a lot of "normal" phrases that parents may tell their kids.  For example, "Don't shout, Don't fool around, Don't be long, Wake up."  However, there are others that were strange to the society I grew up in like, "Don't talk, Don't look out from the window, Don't fight it the razor, and Don't say no."  I feel that my idea that they didn't have the same rights there was correct based on these second set of phrases.  I think the most shocking of the lines was, "Don't fight it the razor."  Could this be a connection to female genital mutilation?  I thought so.  Before this piece there is a "Girl Fact" this fact states, "In Africa, about three million girls a year are at risk for female genital mutilation-more than 8,000 per day."  I was shocked that so many were happening each day!  This is also where I made the connection of Egypt being part of Africa and where Eve Ensler got the idea for this piece.
     A repeating line that is said in this piece is, "My mother keeps me in, my father kicks me out."  I feel that maybe these negative don'ts are mostly her father while her mother tries to console her and tell her that everything is alright.  I feel that the only reason why she has put up with all this was for her mother's sake.  It seems like the males in her family aren't nice to her because she is a female.  There is even a line that states her brother beats her.  I have a feeling the main character also wants to be educated and smart and wants to be a part of who she is and the people around her.  She seems to be repressed.  She mentions wanting to be able to read to better herself.  The last line struck me, "know the number of the bus I'm suppose to take when I one day leave this house."  The character wants out and new free independent life which is what Eve Ensler is trying to send to young girls.  She wants them to be independent and love themselves no matter what situation they are in.

Emotion in Ensler's "I'm an Emotional Creature"

     The minute I read the first entry of Ensler's book I knew it was going to be about young girls and their problems.  To maybe talk about the problems that occur early in life that could trigger the problems woman have later in life that are reflected in "The Vagina Monologues" by Ensler.  I feel like she is trying to get the younger generation to a point where maybe the "Vagina Monologues" won't really be needed.  If they conquer there issues of self-esteem, society, and life now that maybe they won't have these issues that seem to carry into adulthood.  I could relate to a lot of what Ensler is conveying in these stories.  When I was in high school I had lived through many of the emotions and still having a cousin and a sister in that age group it made me think of them and maybe what there emotions are and if they could relate to this book even more than I could.  The emotions are stated clearly and bluntly.  The author uses direct almost a yelling tone in her writing to convey the flow of emotions that these young girls really want to express.  I noticed that Ensler also played around with the punctuation in this book.  She left out all punctuation in some and made long run on sentences in others.  I think this is the girl speaking with out taking breaths.  I feel as if she is trying to convey that this girl feels so strongly about this particular subject that she is talking as if she is letting all her emotions out.  I think its also telling girls that it is ok to vent how they feel it is a confusing time.   She also used long pauses to emphasis the point she was trying to make.  She also repeated sentences and themes and made it more poetic so it was clear to who ever was reading these stories what the main point the author wanted them to take out of them. Whether it be to an adult, a friend, family, or in a journal it's good to let these feelings out because they are not the only ones.  I liked the little facts in between the stories.  The facts are for example, the amount of pregnancies of teen girls a year, sex trafficking, and everyday life and what every girl goes through.  I think it is important that girls know that these things do happen to educate them if they ever have an encounter with any of these topics.  Whether it be in real life, school, or in a movie its good to know the whole story behind a lot of these facts.
      

The Questions in "The Vagina Monologues"

     In "The Vagina Monologues" the author asks a variety of women different questions like "What would your vagina wear?" to hear different responses to better understand women and there view of themselves.
Answers to this question included "A beret, A leather jacket, silk stockings"  These are normal articles of clothing that could symbolize that maybe some women see there vagina like another body part that is dressed like those parts would be.  Other answers include, "A tattoo, ermine and pearls, sequins, emeralds, an evening gown"  This might be pointing out that some women view their vagina's as special.  It is deserving of all these jewels and fancy things to wear.  It is a precious part of the body.  One of the answers sticks out among the rest however and that is, "an electrical shock device to keep unwanted strangers away" Could this be the voice of those who have been abused and violated "down there"?  I think so.  This answer I think represents those who have been mistreated and have been through the horrific events of rape, mutilation, and etc.
     The other question mentioned is "If your vagina could talk what would it say?"  A lot of these answers had a sexual meaning like "More please, lets play, yes there, there" but there were also a lot of other answers that were kind of surprising.  For example, "Where's Brian?" could this be a husband that doesn't show affection anymore?  Is it someone who has not had intimacy with there husband for a while because of there insecurities?  Who knows, but I think it is representing a lot of women who feel this way in their lives.  Another example is "brave choice".  What does this mean?  Who made a brave choice and what could it be?  Someone who ran away so they weren't abused or mutilated?  Someone who ran away with a love because it was forbidden in some shape or form?  Another one is "enter at your own risk?"  How does this person feel about her vagina?  She must think it in a negative light.  Some women really can't appreciate the fact of having a vagina and really think it is a dirty thing.  Could this be the voice of women who are insecure and are put down by society?
     I think Eve Ensler posed these questions not only to get people talking about their vagina's for her monologues, but also to hear the voices of a variety of women and the best way to do that is to pose open ended questions that everyone can answer.  She is hearing from all different voices which was initially what she was going for.  She wanted a collective amount of different people and wanted to find similarities and differences between women and their answers.  I think she succeeded in doing that.

"I Was There In the Room"

     I think this monologue in, "The Vagina Monologues" stood out against many of the other monologues.  Most of the monologues center around accepting oneself as a woman, and horrible things that different cultures and societies put on women when involving their vagina.  This monologue had more of a positive spin and put a different perspective in what the author Eve Ensler is trying to say.
     Out of all the monologues this one seems to be the one that she almost looked over.  In her words she says, "I had been performing this piece for over two years when it suddenly occurred to me that there were no pieces about birth.  It was a bizarre omission."  The author herself almost looked over this important topic that is one of the main purposes of the vagina, giving birth.
     The story is about being present when her granddaughter was being born and the different view of the vagina that she got out of this experience.  In all the other monologues the vagina is seen as something sexual or abused.  Whether it be sex, rape, or mutilation all the monologues seem to move around these to themes.  However, in this monologue its about the sacrifice the vagina makes to create or give birth to a new life.  The way she describes the birth process and the changes the vagina goes through gives the vagina life.  "Saw the broken blue the blistering tomato red the gray pink, the dark; saw the blood like perspiration along the edges saw the yellow, white liquid, the shit, the clots pushing out all the holes."  The author doesn't glamorize the site she saw,  but tells it as it is.  She still thinks that this experience was a miracle but not of the beauty of the scene before her, but rather what she was bringing to the world and the sacrifices she was making to do it.
"The heart is capable of sacrifice.  So is the vagina.  The heart is able to forgive and repair.  It can change its shape to let us in.  It can expand to let us out.  So cant he vagina."  By comparing the vagina to the heart is saying that it is all part of women's beings.  We need to let our hearts take what others give us and also be able to give our hearts out to others.  The vagina takes in pleasure but in return will give a human life to the world.  This connection the author makes is very strong and gives the reader a sense of the birth experience no matter how gross it maybe is indeed a magic thing like the body part that helps produce it, the vagina.

The Vagina Monologues

     I just started reading The Vagina Monologues and I see that the author is trying to convey many themes through these monologues.  I believe the author is mainly focusing on women empowerment.  Being comfortable with yourself and be proud of being a woman.  At the same time however she is addressing women's issues.  For example, female genital mutilation, the sexism that still exists today and other issues that surround women.  The author does a good job stating facts about these different issues and then empowering the reader to feel good about themselves.  For example, she will state facts about  the vagina and women and then share a little story about herself or someone she interviewed to show that maybe these aren't just some women's problems, but maybe a lot more then maybe women think.
     What woman doesn't feel insecure and maybe a little scared to talk about "down there" even just typing it now is a little out of character for me.  However, the author uses humor to make her point in saying that once you realize that its nothing to be ashamed of and its what society and the world has put on us it is a lot easier to say.
     One of the stories I have read so far is "Because he liked to Look at it"  I think this was a very good story in esteeming women.  This woman was insecure and didn't like her body.  We all grow up in a society where people make us feel we need to be a certain image and if we aren't we aren't beautiful or sexy in anyone's dictionary.  It just makes a girl feel good when she can hear or read about someone finding someone who found they were beautiful even if society says they aren't.  Everyone is different and sees people in different ways.  Maybe you will find that bad seed in the bunch like the guy mentioned in "Hair" who cheated on his wife cause she wouldn't shave "down there" but there will always be someone like the guy in "Because he liked to Look at it" that will see the beauty and appreciate it.  I think this is a major theme that the author is trying to get across and I think it was important for her to bring it up in the beginning of the book.
    For the topic that the author is writing about she has to start off with a basic theme to bring us to the more in depth themes of embracing being a women and then taking it even deeper to maybe woman who aren't as free as those maybe in America.  I can't wait to read more I'm actually hooked on it and I want to see where the author goes with her interviews and her themes and how she builds upon them.

Connection to Edwidge Danticat's "Children of the Sea" and "Between the Pool and Gardinias"

     When reading both of these short stories I found a common link to both these stories that I would like to share.  First is the use of the color red in all the stories in "Children of the Sea"  The male character mentions:  "White sheets with bright spots float as our sail.  When I got on board I thought I could still smell the semen and the innocence lost to those sheets."  Also, in "Between the Pool and Gardinias" the dead child's name is Rose.  I think the color red symbolizes a loss of innocence.  Whether it be whoever's virginity was lost to those sheets or the poor innocent baby who lost its life by being abandoned.
     Second, the use of butterflies in these two stories symbolizes death.  At the end of "Children and the Sea" the female character is mentioning being surrounded by butterflies at the news of a ship her lover might have been on sinking.  This could be symbolizing her lover's death.  In "Between the Pool and Gardinias"  it has a line that says:  "The child was wearing an embroidered little blue dress with the letters R-O-S-E on a butterfly collar."  This could be symbolizing that the child that this women found is indeed a dead child.
     One of the big connections that I picked up in these stories is the connection between Celianne's baby in "Children of the Sea" and the dead baby found in "Between the Pool and Gardinias."  Celianne at the end of "Children and the Sea"  throws her dead baby out of the ship.  In "Between the Pool and Gardinias" the baby is found dead near a sewer opening and the main character describes:  "She was like baby moses in the Bible stories they read to us at Baptist Literary Class.  Or Baby Jesus,..."  The author I believe is making a connection between both babies one being lost to the water and one being found in it.  Also the main  character in "Between the Pool and Gardinias"  mentions wanting to name the baby and then lists a whole bunch of names one being Celianne the mother of the baby lost in "Children of the Sea."
    I believe both stories are stories of not only the loss of innocence but also hope and looking for companionship.  The female character in "Children of the Sea" is longing for the companion ship with the male character if they ever see each other again.  In "Between the Pool and Gardinias"  the main character who didn't have a great marriage longs for that husband and wife companionship and she longs for a mother daughter companion ship.  I found this theme to be very strong in both of the stories.

Reaction to the Krik?Krack! Epilogue

     After reading Krik?Krack! I believe that the epilogue held the most meaning.  It kind of gave more of a sense of who the author is and more about the culture from the place she comes from, Haiti.  Growing up I had a neighbor whose parents were from Haiti.  This whole book reminded me of that family who I was really close to when I was in middle school.  When I think back to being at there house I remember them always frying plantanes and eating sugar cane both were really good.  Then I dug deeper into the memory of going over their house over time.  Her mother was a nice and hard working woman.  The epilogue repeats the line,

      "You remember thinking while braiding your hair that you look a lot like your mother.  Your mother who looked like your grandmother and her grandmother before her."

     My friends mother would always talk about past relatives and my friend would just listen with that here she goes again face.  My friend appreciated her culture and even spoke creole, but she was raised in America so she didn't have the exact culture like her parents did.  She lacked that complete understand that only came with growing up in the country.
     In the epilogue it goes on to talk about a mother perhaps the authors mother being ashamed of her writing because of what it meant to write in Haiti.  It meant imprisonment or jail.  A fear that if her didn't follow the old ways the government would find a way to get rid of her or ruin her.  I feel as if the author is the next generation is finding a new light a new day and age kind of reminds me of my friends mother.
   Her mother had left Haiti for America, I really don't know the reason why, but I can assume it was to get out of the country for a better oppurtunity for her family. 
     A line in the epilogue mentions a women being quiet and I thought of my friend and she was never quiet.  She was loud and outgoing.  I guess like the author with the writing my friend went against the stereotype and moved on to a new day and age.
     I was originally going to do a full anaylsis of the epilogue but my thoughts kept going back to my friend and how much of this whole book sounded familar and reminded me of her family.  I remember her braiding my hair, speaking creole with her mom, eating Haitian food (although at that time we ordered a lot of pizza),  I remember looking at photo albums of when her mom was still in Haiti and old relatives.  Constant themes that come up in the book seem to hold true to their culture.  I guess my experience of having my friend as a friend helped me connect with the book a little more and relate it to my life and with my experiences over my friends house.

Reaction to "Nineteen-Thirty Seven" by Edwidge Danticat

     This short story stuck out to me when I read the first four short stories in Krick?Krack.  I believed the title Nineteen-Thirty Seven is representing a date in time that was very important to the characters in the story.  I did some research and found that the massacre that is mentioned throughout this short story had happened that year.  The character and her mother had a strong connection to this event.  She talked about how her mother had escaped the massacre by crossing the river but her mother was massacred and thrown in the river.  The main character and her mother returned to that river every year with many others who were family of the deceased during that horrible event.  "My mother would hold my hand tightly as we walked toward the water.  We were all daughters of that river, which had taken our mothers from us."  This sentence the author wrote displays the connection that these women have with this river and with each other.
     In the story her mother is in prison for witchcraft.  She is hungry and starved and the main character can't bring herself to talk to her mother, but you can tell she has such a connection with her that they understand each other even if she doesn't speak.  The main character brings a madonna with her when she visits her mother because it has shed a tear.  She was afraid her mother had passed away.  This is obviously something that her, her mother, and others use as some kind of fortune telling device.  It may even foreshadow her mothers death later in the story.
     At the end of the story she runs into a woman who tells her that she is a daughter of the river.  She knows that the main character's mother had passed away and is willing to take her there to mourn and collect her things.  This shows the connection that all these women had that one could tell that something was amiss with another.  Maybe another madonna in the story?  They both are signs of her mother's passing.
    A question that comes up towards the end of the story is when the main character asks the question:  Could her mother fly?  Did her mother know how to fly?  The answer she recieves is that in death she is flying to a better place.  This story holds so much symbolism and connection.  It was an interesting read and fun to connect everything together.

Response to "19 Varieties of Gazelle" by Naomi Shihab Nye

     I think from the introduction of the book there was a sense of strong belief and strong feelings that the author herself was trying to convey.  She made it clear that she was trying to combine her two worlds of Palestine and the United States.  The poem in the introduction talks of a prisoner that does not know the tragedy of 9/11 yet and how peace of not knowing could be bliss.  She is already bringing up a connection with 9/11 and kind of a division between where she is from and where she is.
     Throughout her book of poetry she has a strong connection of family especially her father and her grandmother.  They hold a special place in her heart and they are the continuous characters in her poetry.  In "My Father and the Fig tree"  she expressed her father's love for figs and how it reminded him of his home country in Palestine and how he found a piece of him with a fig tree in the backyard in there Dallas, Texas home.

"There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,

a tree with the largest, fattest,

sweetest figs in the world"

     In "My Grandmother Under the Stars" you can get a deep sense of how she honored and loved her grandmother very much.  She talks about missing her wisdom and stories as she does in many of the poems that she writes about her grandmother.  

" You and I on a roof at sunset,

our two languages adrift, 

heart saying, Take this home with you,

never again,

and only memory making us rich."

     I really enjoyed her poetry and it reminded me of my family.  My family didn't come from another country and we are so Americanized that we really don't don't have much of a family heritage.  It just makes me think if one day I will be telling my kids and grand kids that our family was so huge we use to have big picnics and at every party we had a pickle and olive juice.  I would tell them how my grandfather use to sing and my grandmother would hit him.  I felt that family connection in her poems and it stuck out to me.  

Response to "Stain" by Naomi Shihab Nye

     When I first read the poem I knew it was about her grandmother but I didn't quite understand the language in the poem and all I got was that there was some lady washing clothes and there were children running around and for some reason the woman got sad.  So, I read it again and decided the best way to get the full meaning was to dig a little deeper into the poem.  The first stanza:

"SHE SCRUBBED as hard as she could

with a stone.

Dipping the cloth, twisting the cloth.

She knew the cloth much better than most,

having stitched its vines of delicate birds."

     At first I was like so she washed clothes that maybe she had made on her own, but as a read something else came to mind when I got to the second stanza:

"The red, the blue, the purple beaks.

A tiny bird with head held high.

A second bird with fanning wings.

Her fingers felt the folded hem"

     This is when I started to think maybe the fabric she was washing was her children.  She is describing the fabric or clothes as "delicate birds" and putting metaphors to describe the fabric.  The one that caught me was "A second bird with fanning wings"  Could this be Naomi Shihab Nye's father?

     In the third stanza she mentions children and how, "She told the children, "Take care! Take care!"  Is she leaving?  Then it became clear that she died in the next verse when the author puts how old her grandmother was and how, "So many stains would never come out.  She stared at the sky, the darkening rim"  Her grandmother lived a long life and she used the laundry scenario to describe it and the darkening sky could mean that her life is ending.

     The last stanza:

"She called to the children, "Come in! Come in!"

She stood on the roof, tears on her face.

What was the thing she never gave up?

The simple love of her difficult place."

     I think it shows that she missed her family a lot, but she couldn't leave the place she lived back in Palestine.    

     I really liked this poem and even though I didn't really find the meaning in the beginning it was fun trying to put it together.  I like how she had that understanding and connection with her grandmother.  For having a grandmother that lived so far away from her its really interesting how to knew so much about her to write so many deep, loving, and caring poems about her grandmother.

Contemporary Women Poet

A Woman's Question

By Lena Lathrop

Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing

Ever made by the hand above--
A woman's heart, and a woman's life
And a woman's wonderful love?

Do you know you have asked for this priceless thing
As a child might ask for a toy,
Demanding what others have died to win,
With the reckless dash of a boy?

You have written my lesson of duty out,
Man-like you have questioned me;
Now stand at the bar of my woman's soul
Until I shall question thee.

You require your mutton shall always be hot,
Your socks and your shirt be whole;
I require your heart to be true as God's stars,
And as pure as heaven your soul.

You require a cook for your mutton and beef;
I require a far better thing.
A seamstress you're wanting for socks and shirts;
I look for a man and a king.

A king for the beautiful realm called home,
And a man that the maker, God,
Shall look upon as he did the first
And say, "It is very good."

I am fair and young, but the rose will fade
From my soft, young cheek one day,
Will you love me then 'mid the falling leaves,
As you did 'mid the bloom of May?

Is your heart an ocean so strong and deep,
I may launch my all on its tide?
A loving woman finds heaven or hell
On the day she is made a bride.

I require all things that are grand and true,
All things that a man should be;
If you give all this, I would stake my life
To be all you demand of me.

If you cannot do this -- a laundress and cook
You can hire, with little to pay,
But a woman's heart and a woman's life
Are not to be won that way.

WHY I CHOSE THIS POEM?

     While looking for contemporary women poets I had stumbled upon this poem and it gave me the impression of a strong woman or a woman with a head on her shoulders.  She doesn't want to be just a prize possession to her husband by cooking and cleaning for him she wants love.  She also mentions men liking young and beautiful girls, but what happens when they get old?  There has to be more then just thinking a girl is pretty and a good mother to marry her.  I wouldn't marry a guy who treated me like that  This poem I found empowering for women especially those who fall into the 1950s housewife stereotype and men who really think there wives should be there mothers.  This poem also reminded me of my mom a little bit and how she is independent and works hard and my father doesn't expect her to be a mother everything is on the same level.