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.