Final

One of the main questions males ask is what are woman thinking? Now I’m a female and I still have no idea the wide variety of thoughts and emotions that dance around in my head any given moment of the day. Let alone make that stride outside of just one individual to a community, an entire society, and the entire Earth of woman. There is no science or tell all book that expands to that idea. There is no amount of Woman Literature’s classes that could even begin to tap into the true uncontested identity of a female. What defines us as females? What importance’s do we carry in every sector of our lives?

            Something that is important to a woman is learning to understand our fears. If we are unaware of what frightens us, we are unaware of knowing what to conquer and how we are suppose to handle events in our lives that frighten us. Women are bearers of life, an amazing and horribly frightening role. But through society through our knowledge of self, females understand and accept theses horrors. Even in the beginning of our semester when we examined The Vagina Monologue’s that ever-present fear of childbirth was accepted in a group’s workshop when they were asked to draw a picture of what they thought their vagina looked like " One woman who was pregnant drew a big red mouth screaming with coins spilling out." (Page 44).  This quote goes inside with another thing that is important to women, that we are unique. This is displayed in every book that was selected in this course. Every women’s’ story was unique, from their races, emotional ties, cultural bonds and everything in between. That is what striked me the most about the selection of stories, that everyone was vastly different but everyone illumined almost the same truths.

            Through this class I learned what the difference was between a fact and a personal truth. A personal truth is how “I” feel about how “I” think. A truth is sexuality because in some cases that may not always be a fact. In Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, no one told her she was a lesbian, it was her truth, no one told her how a lesbian has to act, she did it on her own accord. “I bought myself a present. (Swiss Army knife) A symbol of self-reliance? At any rate, it seemed like something a lesbian would have.” (Page 78) There is no fact out there that all lesbians have to carry around Swiss Army knifes but it is something Alison felt that she personally must do.

            Another importance women carry is their own personal goals. Take the story of Precious, one of which everything was against her in which she wanted to achieve. She wanted a better life for her and her child, but having no education and money makes that nearly impossible. But in Precious’s case in which she knew what her goals were and knew the strength that she now processed “I don’t know what “realism” mean but I do know what REALITY is and it’s a mutherfu____, lemme tell you.” (Page 83) She valued the knowledge in which she studied and in which she encountered. But Precious’s story was not the only inspiring one.

            I was the one who was inspired; I was the one who learned the ugly beauty that arises when a woman spills her story for others to learn from. In this course I learned history in which I never heard of. Something that I’m now fascinated by is the story of the Comfort Woman that we learned about in The Vagina Monologues. How could reading “What we weren’t allowed to do: Wash ourselves, move around, go to the doctor, use a condom, run away, keep my baby, and ask him to stop.” (Page 162) not inspire someone for further knowledge of history. I’m a proclaimed non-reader and I read ten books simply in this semester, that inspires me that I can read more, learn more.

            Things that are important to women, their minds, their bodies, their goals, their strengths, their independence and all these things embodied every single one of our books. So what is Women’s Literature? It’s stories of what’s important to women, differently by how very unique and connected we all are.

The End of Blogger

                Dorothy Allison struggled with the same idea that I personally, and many others struggle with. Is our life already predetermined by our family? Allison’s family was the towns’ white trash, and everyone in the community knew it. Allison felt as though even when she was a virgin no one would view her as such because everyone in town knew that single motherhood ran in her family and she would probably have to deal the same fate as well. Allison struggled with the desire she had to break the mold of a bitter unwanted woman that the rest of the woman in her family felt. As a reader we may only hear Allison’s side of the story, but if her family was the way they were portrayed they felt every bit of the anguish that Allison did.

                What’s one way to break the stereotype of your family? For Allison’s case she automatically broke the mold of being a lesbian. Since most of the woman in her family were viewed as loose woman because they all had children out of wedlock. Dorothy being a lesbian looked to escape that. (Yet now that I have finished this book I’m completely puzzled how she had a child.) Never the less she felt smothered by the idea that she would be forced to share the rest of the families’ fate of an unhappy life. The women in her family were only viewed as individuals with “birthing hips” and since that’s the only lifestyle that the woman knew that was the only thing they were confident in doing. When someone believes that their only real skills are what others tell them, then they too believe that those things are their only purpose. Such as Dorothy’s sister Wanda felt that same impact in her life. When Wanda went to visit Dorothy after she magically had a child she “Later she told me she’d only come to save herself another pregnancy.” (Page 88)

                I’m glad that we ended this class with this book. In a time as stressful as finals an easy and quick read like this was exactly what was needed. For being a Woman’s Literature class I appreciate that for the most part all the woman in the stories were strong willed and boisterous. These stories this semester were in some ways inspiring but for the most part I viewed them as something that got my mind thinking. A test of a good book is that once your done reading it, it still stays with you. And for almost all the stories we have done they have done exactly that. I take Two or Three Things I know For Sure as an example of this. An example of escaping the fate that our families and society try to instill on us, which is why as a student we stride for higher education.

I'm Not Sure

                If we are so easily able to lose faith in people, is it just as easy to lose faith in an author? In the book Two or Three Things I know For Sure, right at the beginning of the book are we are made conscious of the fact that Dorothy Allison, the author, may not be telling the truth. This book is noted as a memoir. But the ways in which the stories develop you almost can lead yourself to believe that maybe this is just a story to be taken with a grain of salt. Allison is a woman in which she; herself doesn’t even know the whole truth. How would she then be able to relate to the reader that she is completely uncertain about many details herself?

                Personally I am enjoying the style she writes with. The take it or leave it attitude with a mix of ridged back story. But I still never the less find myself not really trusting her as an author. (Page 3) “I’m a storyteller. I’ll work to make you believe me. Throw in the some real stuff, change a few details, add the certainty of outrage.” That being displayed for all readers to see in the very first few pages of the story just automatically tinted my belief in what I am reading. Though I love that as a definition of a storyteller I’m slightly turned off that the author is telling me this when I’m trying to take her book to be a memoir.

                I guess this book is true reality. For when someone tells you something is the truth, there is never a way to be certain. Allison had to learn the hard truth about many things and many people. And this book is a depiction of it. That as a reader we have to learn the hard truth to believe what we are reading, that every and any single detail contains the real truth. Maybe I’m simply over thinking it. Or maybe I too realize that always beneath the truth does someone not want you to know their truths.   

Lost

            It pains me to know that even after grave tragedies that there is never any way to be able to completely bounce back. Horrible events happen every day around our earth. It may not be to someone we know. But every day never the less a person’s life is changed for the worse, and there’s a chance they will never recover. Since all of us are unique there is not a full proof way in which someone can easily recover from a physical or emotion hardship. If one loses a leg, there are physical therapies that can regain strength and actually give you a prosthetic leg. But still there are phantom limb pains, and the knowledge that your life will never be the same again.

            Horrible emotional hardships are much harder to resolve then physical pains. People like Rose, in our story, who had to deal with living through the holocaust will never be the same person they were before. Rose is struggling with understanding her current identity. Is she a survivor? Is she just a refugee in the United States? Should she just be dead? Since as a reader we aren’t completely clear on Rose’s emotional stableness, it’s hard to depict exactly how she feels. “Consider also the special word they used: survivor. Something new. As long as they didn’t have to say human being. It used to be refugee, but by now there was no such creature, no more refugees, only survivors.” (Page 36) Rose in this quote struggles with how she currently feels verse what others are trying to tell her how to feel. Stella her niece just simply thinks she is crazy, who she may be, but Stella is telling her to just throw out those memories. Something that Rose is completely unable to do, especially since the death of her child Madga haunts her every day.

            As humans we heal on our own time and in our own way. A woman like Rose is just one of the thousands of people that may just never be able to move on from a hardship. It’s been over thirty years for Rose, yet everyday she still suffers the same pain as she did in the Concentration Camps.

Human Nature is Evil, Love is our only Nuture

                The Shawl is a sub story in Cynthia Ozick’s novella. The story named The Shawl is the story of a single mother and her two young daughters. One named Stella who was 14 years old and jealous of her younger sister Magda who was only a few months old. The Shawl only happened to be a very brief seven page story about the short life of Magda.

                Magda from the little information in which we gathered about her life was a very unique child; because she never cried. Rose the mother and her children were in a Jewish war camp. There were very few details in the story but as a reader we were able to pick up the details on the Star of David that was sworn into their jackets and that they were imprisoned in cold barracks at a camp. Magda was forced to be hidden from the guards because if such a small child was found it would be instantly murdered. So in order to conceal Magda, Rose held her in her arms at all times under a shawl. In which Magda was able to keep warmness and suck on the shawl to keep quiet. It’s hard to hear that the family could conceal something like an infant child at the camp for as long as they had.

                There is always a debate on how a child grows up, is it nature that teaches the child or is it nurture. “Sometimes she laughed- it seemed a laugh, but how could it be? Magda had never seen anyone laugh. But still Magda laughed at her shawl when the wind blew its corners.” (Page 6) Magda was able to be hidden in the shawl for only a short time until the guards found her. They picked Magda up right in front of Rose and they threw little Magda into the electric fence. Rose and Stella were already becoming ghosts from the pain and mistreatment they received in the camps. Now Rose became even more of a ghost because she saw the murder of her young child she fought so hard to keep alive.

Can't Go Back

                The ordeal that this family had to ensue in the story When the Emperor was Divine, is something that I hope our country doesn’t inflict on another one of its citizens for the rest of our history. Since I didn’t live in the time surrounding Pearl Harbor, I can’t really begin to understand the fear that American citizens faced with their everyday lives. But I couldn’t imagine myself even for a split second thinking that every person of Japanese decent could be the ones directly responsible for the major attack. The family in the novel had to deal with the fact that their husband and father was one of the many Japanese men actually imprisoned because of the belief that he was directly connected to Pearl Harbor. And throughout the story are the family’s attempts at having the deal with the aftermath.

                The father was taken just months before the rest of the family was moved out to Utah. Sometimes the greatest way to get one’s mind off a great tragedy is through hope. And the only thing that this family had anything to be hopeful for is that one day they would see their beloved father and husband again. Throughout the families 4 year ordeal at the camps in Utah, the idea of their father was the only thing that held them together. And while it was a constant reminder that the rest of the family knew that their lives were forever changed after the camps they really didn’t take the time to consider that their father could never go back to being the man he was before his own personal ordeal. The travesties of thinking that imprisoning the entire Japanese population would save our nation are horrible enough. But invoking such fear in others is so much worse.

                Invoking massive fears in exactly what happened to the father in this story. When he was finally released even months after his family, he wasn’t even a resemblance of his old self. He lost the personality that the rest of his family craved. He lost his faith in people and the country in which he was so proud of. He couldn’t sleep through horrible reoccurring nightmares. And eventually he couldn’t even leave the house. “He’d get dressed and put on his coat but he could not make himself walk out the front door.” (Page 137) For I think the greatest sadness is that both the father and the rest of the family yearned to all be united again. But it could never be that way again. For in times of great tragedies there’s no hope for just going back to normal life.

Trying to Understand Emotionless Pieces

As I continue to read When The Emperor Was Divine, I continue to question various events wondering what exactly is there significance. So far the author has yet to even state the characters names, but she has also omitted out some other important details. Yet that’s why we continue to read a book, to see if all of our questions are answered.

                The author has a very quick to the point type of writing style. In which there may not be many interjections of emotions but there are various events that make the readers figure out how the characters must be feeling. The family has no idea to where there final destination is, but there isn’t an over whelming sense of worry on their parts. Even when you attempt to compare the Japanese being relocated verse the Jews being relocated the entire mind frame is different, and the two incidents aren’t even many years apart. The family isn’t worried about being separated; they’re not worried about a brick smashing through the window. Other then the mother’s worrisome face, no one even aboard the train is worried for their future.

                But yet what puzzles me is that the author went on a rant about how the girl had heard water in hear dream. And when she awoke they had already traveled past Utah’s Salt Lake. “When she woke she did not remember the sound of the rippling water but it was with her, without her knowing. The sound of the lake was inside of her.” (Page 46) This description goes completely over my head. For I can’t understand what the relevance of the passing the Salt Lake and her dream of water had to do with any events of the story. I continue to read to hopefully piece this description with other important events.  

May the pets not be reclassified too

           Our country has a sordid past. There are many incidents throughout our countries history, in which government officials especially wish could just never be spoken of again. During World War II one of our governments greats tragedies accorded to our citizens of Japanese ancestry. Thousands of Japanese United States citizens were forced from their homes in which to be displaced throughout the west. This was done in “fear” that these Japanese citizens were spies in which they were going to report back to the Japanese government all the secrets that the USA possessed. Such raciest acts of ignorance are shameful on our countries behalf. Not to mention that this is almost dubbed as a recent event. It hurts and sickens me that this ever happened and I’m glad to hear that this book is capturing what the USA has tried to bury for the last 69 years.

            Though there may not be names used to describe the characters in the book, their actions are used to form their character. In the first chapter the only character that is focused on is the mother. She has an 11 year old daughter, a 7 year old son and her husband is detained in jail. She is forced to pack up her family and have them be ready to be moved to an unknown location in a matter of a week. As readers we don’t hear about her emotions we know only of the actions in which she takes.

            The measures in which she takes while packing up her family are quite thought out and aggressive. She packs up the entire houses’ possessions and locks them in a sunroom, in fear that she has no idea who will enter her home. The mother then goes on to kill the family’s dog and let the family’s bird free. “White Dog’s body shuddered twice and his hind legs kicked out into the air, as though he were trying to run. Then he grew still. A trickle of blood seeped out from the corner of his mouth. She untied him from the tree and let out a deep breath.” (Page 11) Now the mother didn’t do this because she was violent or wanted to murder the dog. The mother had got rid of the pets because after her family had to move away, no one would take care of or feed the pets. Forcing them to die long painful deaths. Not to mention having the pets gone, her young children could not beg to take them with them. I’m sure it was a hard decision on the mother’s part, but in the long run it was sadly the right one.

Precious Couldn't Do it Alone

Precious had ambition, she had the power and desire to learn. But she would have never been able to make the great progress she did without the people that newly came into her life. One can only get so far in life having to do everything for themselves. It's the people that we meet throughout our lifetime that inspire us and help us to meet our goals. For without the assistance from loved ones, I don't think anyone can really live up to their full potential.

      Starting to live up to her full potential is exactly what Precious was achieving towards the end of the story. She went from not even being able to recognize numbers to the point that she was about to obtain her GED. And her great learning strides is to be accredited to Ms Rain. For Precious soon after being in the class found Ms Rain to be almost the role model in her life that she never had. It's for teachers like Ms Rain who inspire struggling students that we have inspirational stories like Push to be able to awe at their glory. Precious's first great accomplishment was getting herself into Each One Teach One a program in which I would say saved her life. Ms Rain also had a great part in saving her life because without Ms Rain after her mama kicked her out, Precious and baby Abdul would have been starving and homeless.
       The girls in the class; were the first friends that Precious really ever had. And the author tried to make sure that as a reader we understood that their story was almost as important as Precious'. Great travesties in our government systems don't just happen to one person like Precious. They happen to thousands but for the most part as citizens it's not always directly apparent that such horrors are happening. That is the reason why I think the other girls in class writing stories were posted in the back of the book. So that our final thoughts as a reader was that heartbreaking stories like Precious, isn't a rarity. But insufficient aid happens to thousands of people everyday.

Harm to Hate Who you are.

            Why would a young woman of Harlem hate her color? The main character Precious feels as though the reason why all of these horrible events that have happened to her are in result of the color of her skin. But why would she think this?

            Precious doesn’t idolize white people but she hates that she is African American. She feels as though if she was white or “butter colored” as she calls it, that she would have a different life completely. Precious feels as though if she was even a heavy white woman that she would have found a man to love her. But I can’t get past the idea why she hates her skin color so much. She has only grown up around African Americans, she praises Farrakhan who is black religious leader and is living in Harlem, New York in which African American’s are the main population of the city. But for what reason would such hatred of her own race be created or inspired? It wasn’t until her first few meetings with local support groups did she learn that problems of rape and incest are in other races as well. I think that was really the first big stepping stone in which she realized that her horrible childhood wasn’t the result of her being black.

            I get such a strong visual image of Precious when I read this book, especially since I haven’t seen the movie. Though it’s apparent that she is overweight she now carries herself proud. New newfound ambition and determination has given her something to live for, something to be prideful of. She said it herself she understands that she is young but she has learned things about horrible topics that are making her an old soul. “I don’t know what “realism” mean but I do know what REALITY is and it’s a mutherfu____, lemme tell you.” (Page 83)Precious is learning, she is becoming educated and though she may not match up with her age groups educational level she has made such a vast improvement.  One doesn’t have to know the definitions to all the words in the English language if they are able to use street smarts to put the pieces together.

First Horrors

       In a country in which we are suppose to protect all of our citizens, it sickens me that some unfortunate souls sneak through the cracks. But in Miss Precious's case, there was no sneaking but complete avoid meant. Push is a story of a young 16 year old who is currently impregnated with her second child, both of which her father is the child's father. Her story is brutal, the emotional pain as a reader you feel is undeniable. But never the less, painful stories like these are out there. Where in the only thought that crosses one's mind is that no person deserves to live a life in which they are beaten and raped by their own parents.
      Precious wants to learn, wants to be like the other kids. But is illiterate and her first child has down syndrome. Reality for Precious is quite grim but never the less she tries her best to fight through it. The style of writing in which the story is produced is through the writing of Precious herself. Since she is illiterate she is truly unable to spell, let alone build a proper sentence so the entire context of the writing is at first glance a little hard to read. But then you are drawn into the story. You realize when she says muther she means her horrible excuse for a MOTHER. And you begin to pick up on things like ax means ask. Then the story is a quick read.
      She may be illiterate but Precious is doing the best she can to cope with such a disability. She learns to find her own way. "I'm in the kitchen for two hours, I know that, even though I dont tell time so good, cause man on the radio say four o'clock, tell some news, play music, and by the time I'm fixing Mama's plate man says six o'clock." (Page 19) Being illiterate is one of the greatest disabilities that one can have in times such as our modern day. Not to mention Precious was facing this in the 1970's when there wasn't much support to fix such a problem. But Precious has the strongest gift of all, the desire to learn and for that I hope it leads her into a better end for this story.

Masking the Internal

In pursuit of perfection it’s easy to lose grasp on reality. People often only see the external appearance of a family and family is often viewed as the most important thing to make viewed as perfection. When a marriage is going through turmoil the parents try to put on a persona to their children that everything is still intact. When a child struggles with an identity crisis they put on a persona for their parents so that they don’t see their child as anything less than perfect. In Fun Home, both of these personas’ were displayed in every page.

            Alison’s father struggled with trying to make his family be viewed as the perfect family even though he was a homosexual and family life was all a lie. Alison herself struggled with how to feel about the news that she herself was a lesbian. Alison’s mother struggled with trying to forget that her marriage was a sham. I almost feel the worse for her mother. Every day she was faced with the fact that not only had her husband had various affairs but in a small community she had no hope of having a new life. She instead throws her focus into her acting. “In a photo taken a week before the play opened, she’s literally holding herself together.” (Page 164) In the photo her eyes are sunken into her head and she has such a distraught face. It’s almost like the stress of the play’s opening was an excuse for her to show her true emotions about the stresses of her real life. Having to mask your disappoint in how your life played out is the hardest acting job.

Looking into Pictures

       With Fun Home being a graphic novel its impossible to not take substance away from the pictures. Bechdel decided to do the story of her childhood into adult life in picture form so that as readers we could be more enchanced in her story. Having the visual element helped me understand the horrors of all the times having to clean that giant marvalous house. When she spoke of her fathers quiet exterior, I see even in cartoons that his describution matches. Another reason why I think it being a graphic novel was benifical to Bechdel is because it created a flow in the text. Which without the picture element the text would be all over the place and we would be unaware if it was a flashback or current time.
       Something that puzzles me is if Bechdel thought the cartoon image of herself was a close resembalence. When I look on the back cover of the picture of Bechdel I feel as though she looks oddly remarkable like her cartoon. The sad eyes and the short hair cut are two similarities. But I have a feeling that the glasses were just left out so that the lens didn't consume the entire comic strip.
        Now that I have finished the novel I have learned the way in which Bechdel setup her texts around the comic strip. The text that is above the cartoons in Bechdel setting up the time and setting of the image. When theres bubble text its what the characters are saying aloud. When the bubble text has an arrow at the bottom when the text is in quotes that means that she is setting up whats going on in the scene. Like in (Page 225) "Heart and Soul" is the song in which Alison and her father are playing on the piano. And the way in which she describes her thoughts varies around the images. Having been my first graphic novel learning the way in which the text and images are both utilized is an important task for me.

Crew Cut Desires

                Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is the first graphic novel I have ever read. It took a little while to grow accustomed to the way in which I was suppose to read it. Fun home is a quick but difficult read. Bechdel uses a lot of words that I am completely unfamiliar with and struggle to put together there meanings. Though the idea of it being a graphic novel is intriguing because frankly who doesn’t love pictures, I just find that since the story doesn’t interest me the pictures can’t save it.

                Alison who is the main character and also the author speaks of her childhood upbringing. Her family was very estranged and Alison found herself to develop emotional problems especially in result of her father’s lack of emotional connection to her. Alison grew to have OCD symptoms and had a real difficult time trying to figure out who she was throughout her teenage years into her college years. Alison having revealing to her parent that she was a lesbian, even though she had yet to even experiment. Then found out that a few weeks later that her father mysteriously died. The term mysterious comes into accord because Alison and her mother believe that it was a suicide. While in the reports it simply just said that a truck had hit him. Alison’s father was a very troubled man; he himself was in a loveless marriage simply because he was gay and had various affairs. Alison believes that there was some connection in her father’s death to the suicide of his favorite author.

                Alison used information she found in books to piece together that she was a lesbian. But throughout the book there were various hints that not only was she one, but that both of her parents knew it all along. Even though it gravely upset her mother to find out she was gay, but her father only simply said that it’s healthy to experiment. Alison made herself out to be the stereotypical lesbian “I bought myself a present. (Swiss Army knife) A symbol of self-reliance? At any rate, it seemed like something a lesbian would have.” (Page 78) Alison attributed that she craved manly things because her father had craved for womanly things. Her father was obsessed with decorating, flowers and many other things that wouldn’t be deemed manly. “Where’s your barrette? It keeps the hair out of your eyes. Father says. Alison says, so would a crew cut.” (Page 96)