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.