Prof. Guarino,

           

            Sorry I got carried away with length and content. It’s a little longer than the 600-800 words required. Also, I meant to shake your hand last class and thank you for a great semester, so I’d now like to take this opportunity to do that. Thank you! It’s been a pleasure, it’s been enjoyable, and I’ve learned a lot. Have a splendid summer ma’am. See ya around.

            Sincerely,

                        James Mormile

When referring to certain genres of writing, namely fiction and creative writing, its intents and purposes of have always been pretty universal: its been a gesture that’s aesthetic in nature, serving to connect human beings to one another and helping to bring meaning and understanding to our lives. Essentially, writing chronicles ‘what it means to be human.’ Writing can be therapeutic for those who need it to be therapeutic; conversely, it can be equally remedial to readers and/or an audience seeking meaning and understanding in their own lives. The Bible, the Koran, and other timeless religious texts have served as a profound means of comfort for people worldwide, and a way to bring meaning and understanding in world that can be ruthless, cold, and chaotic. Another example is classic literature, regarded as timeless, capturing universal themes and truths that are fundamentally human, traits that are common and disregard the trivial and superfluous and superficial: skin color, ethnicity, sex, or preference. Women’s literature is simply a subcategory of literature that addresses and captures relevant issues to pertaining to the fairer sex. It captures what it is to be a woman living in the world, as we know it, and how different women have been personally affected by human experience.

The books studied in ENG 217 have been of a diverse variety, but all share very common characteristics and fundamentals that allow us to place them into the category known as Women’s literature. These books both celebrate and empower the female sex. Eve Ensler’s “I am an Emotional Creature” precisely displays this attitude in “Refuser.”

“Our mothers are the Pink Suri Gang.”

“We are the Liberian women.”

“We are Cindy Sheehan showing up in Crawford without a plan.”

“Don’t deny us, criticize us, or infantilize us.”

Ensler says LOOK! We are not a weaker sex or inferior to men. Hear me roar! Her “Monologues” and “Creature” empowered women by celebrating the female body and giving them a voice and renewed beauty that they can be proud of and rally behind. The benefits are unquestionable and to put it quite simply: these books did a lot of good to and for a lot of people. What more can you ask from pieces of literature?

Three books stuck out as being among my favorites, and I allow for further classification into a smaller sub-category of Women’s literature: “In the Time of Butterflies,” “The Shawl,” and “When the Emperor was Divine.” Each unique ‘voice’ told by the characters of each book had fatefully become caught up in the unfolding of factually horrific events with tremendous degrees and amounts of human injustice and war and oppression. Each book/story had elements of major historical events, making their particular stories even more significant in my own eyes. Alvarez’s “Butterflies” captures a tragic but ultimately uplifting and empowering story of revolution in the Dominican Republic. The heroics of the Mirabel sisters represent a human characteristic so admirable that it’s the very reason many of us even read narrative. Much like the bravery and ferocity, glory and greatness of Achilles in battle; even the allure of Harry Potter heroically defeating the dreadful Voldemort, as good overcomes evil, quite literally. The book’s story celebrates the contribution of the Mirabel sisters to the noble cause of freedom in the poor, corrupt, and impoverished country of the Dominican Republic. Their bravery and sacrifice and humility and selflessness serves as inspiration to women worldwide (to all people in general). At the same time, history reveals, exposes, and unravels itself in its compelling narrative. The surviving sister continues to live with both the good and bad memories, and through her roots she is forever bound to the past.

“When the Emperor was Divine” and “The Shawl” both worked differently and sought to achieve different goals; they were written for different reasons. Otsuka sought to expose and maybe find culpability and acknowledgement from the United States, in shining some light on the way Japanese American citizens were treated during WWII. Her mother and grandmother being sent to a camp at one point, and a desire to tap a writing source that was untapped, led her to put her readers in a first-person narrative that exposes inhumanities suffered by an uprooted a Japanese American family. Most significant were the long-term effects of such injustices, this also being the same case in “The Shawl.” In this most unusual and interesting narrative, Ozick details the horrors and after affects of the Holocaust. The protagonist is haunted by her past, unable to resume her life. Ozick introduces a sane and optimistic counterpart and rational perspective in Persky, who maintains, “I work from a different theory. For everything there’s a bad way of describing, also a good way. You pick the good way, you get along better.” Sound advice to adopt; almost necessary to make it in a world such as ours. The authors seek to find solace through their stories. In turn, they share and offer each to the world, hoping for others to find equal meaning in it. The universality of it exposes itself.

Other books in this curriculum share, in a general sense, themes of the same intents and purposes. Just like Ozick writes of a family who was uprooted from everything they knew (among many other horrible things), Nye’s “Gazelle” largely addresses issues and themes revolving around the severed roots from her own native Middle Eastern country. She says: “Love means you breathe in two countries.” Through her poetry, she describes the void from the disconnectedness she feels as a result of leaving the Middle East. It’s through poetry she is able to find a way to fill this particular void.

Danticat also attempts to preserve a Haitian identity. In her “Night Women,” she details the life of a prostitute, and the harsh reality of the Haitian struggle as the ‘night woman’ tries to earn a living in effort to give her young son a better life. In a lawless land where so many lives were lost and so many inhumanities were suffered, also a place that almost certainly makes citizens of the United States take an honest look at our own freedoms that may be taken for granted, Danticat makes an attempt to preserve the memory of some of her ancestors so they may not have died in vain:

“…and since you had written them down and memorized them, the names would come rolling off your tongue. And this was your testament to the way that these women lived and died and lived again.”

This preservation of heritage, culture, and identity is something that we are all familiar with, the United States being a home for refugees for the past hundreds of years. We all seek to understand ourselves through our roots. In all the ugliness and horror often associated with places like Haiti and the Middle East, forgotten are the large amounts of innocent people who have suffered tremendously at the hands of despotism.

          If I could sum up the purpose of the books in this course, along with the importance of Women’s literature and what it tries to accomplish, I am hard-pressed for a simple explanation. The absolute common denominator is that all books define and detail human experience. Most often, these experiences are profound struggles and the facing of great adversity. Although each book focuses on the perspective of women, the strength that can be found in each piece is fundamentally human. Each piece can be said to ‘reach out to others,’ a desire to not leave anyone behind in a fundamental human struggle which human beings endure a seemingly perpetual and endless pursuit for self-identity. Through words in literature and poetry, a fundamental human connectedness can be found, serving as solace for those in need. Fitzgerald finished “Gatsby” by saying “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The trick is to embrace the past and use it to serve you in trying to live a better future.

“I can tell you anything. All you have to believe is the truth.” Allison’s final sentence was quite a way to end the novel. At first, I was a little weary about the book and its stories and themes because like Allison brashly admitted to the reader: “I’m a storyteller. I’ll work to make you believe me. Throw in some real stuff, change a few details, add the certainty of outrage.” That wasn’t really what I wanted to hear. As a reader, I want truth; I don’t want to be manipulated and have my sincere and honest emotions played upon and messed with by the book’s author. Ultimately, I actually ended up finding plenty of truth in Allison’s book and her life lessons both served and satisfied me well. Very often, throughout the course of my life, there have been hundreds, thousands even (we’ll say countless), of things that I thought I knew for certain, of which, of course, I turned out to be completely wrong about; it is inescapable, part of growing up and growing old, hopefully bringing with it clarity.

                       

One thing Allison knew for sure was “that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.” This is difficult realization for Allison due to her upbringing. She was brought up in an environment in which men totally and selfishly managed to eradicate/shatter any inkling of self-confidence and self-appreciation that women had. Her sister “fell in love with a boy who got a bunch of his friends to swear that the baby she was carrying could just as easily have been theirs as his…By eighteen she was no long beautiful, she was ashamed: staying up nights with her bastard son.” Something is seriously f***ed up in your neck of the woods when a typical statement from boy to girl (age 12-60+) is “You think you pretty, girl? Ha! You an’t nothing but another piece of dirt masquerading as better.” Allison became a victim of both equally as awful abuse and abuse ten times worse; she was supposed to simply “have shrunk down and died….deeply broken.” In order for Allison to discover the life lesson “if we are not beautiful….know beauty in any form” she obviously needed to learn it elsewhere.

Karate helped foster this concept. “If there was love in the world, I thought, then there was no reason I should not have it in my life.” Here she was finally able to learn how to run without fear pushing her; finally began to appreciate her body and realize her abilities and potential to do anything in life as long as she worked at it. In a lot of ways, this was a turning point that opened doors that previously had been locked shut.

This is the story of Dorothy Allison. She possesses a very strong ambivalence toward her roots and origins. Their family has been plagued with poverty and misfortune, and it got gradually worse and more inbred from generation to generation, leaving Dorothy with her predicament. Growing up in its most stagnant and wretched lull, where “everything was rotten,” Allison dreams of better things for herself. “I did not want to grow up to be them. I made myself proud of their pride, their determination, their stubbornness, but every night I prayed a man’s prayer: Lord, save me from them. Do not let me become them.” Coming from an almost inescapable poverty, the family was isolated and had a great disconnectedness to the world: “…thumbing through magazines full of women so different from us they could have been another species.” They were left behind to devolve; especially the women.

As she tries to run from her past, throughout the course of her life, she finds that she is forever bound to it, as it reveals precious facts and details that are the only remaining clues that may help to define her. After all, she is who she is mainly because of how she was raised, and who raised her. She was able to use what she had learned to aid her escape and helped her stay gone: the ‘determination’ and that stubbornness; that “Nothing-gonna-stop-you look” about her.” And she was able to get away. But it would be only a matter of time before her past returns and entices her back and she seeks out answers. “No one told me that you take your world with you, that running becomes a habit, that the secret to running is to know why you run and where you are going – and to leave behind the reason you run.” She discovers that it cannot be left behind, or ran from, and that it follows you. This is why one of things she knows for sure is – “if we cannot name our own we are cut off at the root, our hold on our lives as fragile as seed in a wind.” A plant severed from its root will cease to exist; it becomes deprived of something that is vital to its existence.

In my two posts regarding ‘The Shawl,’ I have picked much of this story apart from beginning to end, made some inferences, and drawn some conclusions, now I’d like to see what others have to say and respond. I’d like to take a look at some of the stuff ‘Runesmith,’ whose blog ‘Give me your skin…” I tend to read and follow; I am rather a fan of it, not to mention based on the style and tone I can easily pin-point precisely whom it is written by. I have worked with this individual in our in-class group activities and I enjoy what he/she has to say.

“The Shawl is less a story and more an indictment.” Indictment! Runesmith begins. What a perfect term. This book has indictment written all over it; and it should, as it goes to show that there were those directly affected who suffered death immediately or shortly thereafter at the hands of the Nazis, and then there were those who supposedly ‘survived’ but may never escape its haunting memories because of a lingering and consuming ripple effect; possibly stemming to a wide array of people (friends, family, descendants, ancestors etc.). The magnitude of the terror spread by the Nazis is actually much worse than imagined; in addition to the death toll, we must add people like Rosa and Stella, who also lost their lives, but in different ways. So take how bad we deem it was and add an exponent of two. As part of this indictment, Runesmith includes the quote:

“To never forget to remember "my Warsaw is not your Warsaw." It's an indictment against Europeans…”

I have to disagree with the purpose of this statement. I don’t think Rosa is accusingly pointing the finger at everyone who fled before the terror and roundup, indicting Europeans for fleeing instead of fighting; even though that’s precisely what many did, this statement is important in other ways. Instead, here she ruminates and wallows in her loss, reminiscing of a time and place where life was perfect; where her family was cultured, bookshelves laden with thousands of books (“Polish, German, French her father’s Latin books; the shelf of shy literary periodicals her mother’s poetry…”) and lived in a refined, educated, and cultivated aristocratic lifestyle.

“The Warsaw of her childhood: a great light: she switched it on, she wanted to live inside her eyes….Cultivation, old civilization, beauty, history!” She glorifies Warsaw to a great extent, “Whoever speaks of Paris has never seen Warsaw…Whoever yearns for an aristocratic sensibility, let him switch on the great light of Warsaw.” Her Warsaw is blissful and the pure and unadulterated utopia of her childhood, before it was ruined and ‘stolen by thieves,’ getting back to the indictment. She was the perfect embodiment (a future Marie Curie even!) of holy Warsaw and “Americans couldn’t tell her apart from this fellow (Persky) with his false teeth and his dewlaps and his rakehell reddish toupee bought God knows when or where…” Preposterous! Ignorant Americans! (However ignorant, my history tells me that we saved the day). They may know “good material,” “she saw them walking with Tolstoy under their arms, with Dostoyevsky,” but it’s all phony, fraudulent; she was the real deal.

“The Shawl isn't so much a shawl as it is a symbol. To Ozick, the inactive Germans might as well have been Nazis themselves.” This idea is very insightful and Runesmith does an excellent job in elaborating on the indictment and implications of any and all Europeans who remained inactive while an entire race of people were persecuted. Just like Rosa’s Warsaw and the profound loss it represents for her, I believe the shawl is also important for other reasons. I think back to the “shawl” chapter, about the delirium and hysteria that dictated their thoughts, actions, and feelings, and I think I can come to the conclusion that the two most powerful and intense things they are suffering from are hunger and cold.  What I believe the shawl does, and why I believe Rosa sees it as being ‘magic,’ is that it brings warmth and comfort, a feeling they no longer know. This minuscule amount of warmth and comfort from a simple shawl or blanket is magnified to great levels having been non-existent for so long, then mixed with the hysteria and madness that has swept them up it is probably easy for Rosa to really believe its magic power has kept Magda alive. This is why Stella steals it: “I was cold.”

On a side note: I am unable to include this in my post, but I have seen that no one is spared from Rosa’s contempt, even her own people. It’s odd because she carries a strange contempt for Jews. That they are….“her father, like her, mocked at Yiddish; there was not a particle of ghetto left in him, not a grain of rot.” She appears to possess a hatred for Jews even, and a feeling that they are dirty, unclean, impure, subhuman. This is rather peculiar. I will think more into it...

Persky could play a vital role in Rosa’s life. Let’s say he has the POTENTIAL to play a vital role, if Rosa allows it. So far, he hasn’t had much success. Persky is actually the perfect companion for Rosa. How coincidental that “two people from Warsaw meet in Miami, Florida.” Almost destined to meet. How fascinating and serendipitous!!!! Unfortunately, Rosa doesn’t see it that way. It shouldn’t take Persky, a seemingly observant fellow, very long to realize that something is up with Rosa, whose immediate response isn’t one filled with awe or joy or amazement but an indignant: “My Warsaw isn’t your Warsaw.” Not only are they both from Poland and relocated to Miami, but they are also close in age. Probably 999 out of 1,000 men would have beaten feet and gotten out of there as fast as possible. Persky is quite persistent, and on a regular basis throughout the course of the novel.

As the reader and a reader who reads with optimism I feel like Persky is the man for the job; the one who is finally able to pacify the demons. He is warm, good-humored, patient, and understanding. Sensing Rosa’s condition, he is completely honest with her about his past, and tries to relate as much as possible. “My son is over thirty, I still support him.” “If there’s one thing I know to understand, it’s mental conditions. I got it my whole life with my wife.” The empathy doesn’t have the desired effect as Persky had probably wished, but it’s as considerate as can be. She flees the scene, but he makes enough of an impression to warrant a second visit.

           

The second visit, Rosa finds Persky waiting in her hotel lobby, she reluctantly brings him up for tea. My optimism as a reader tingles when she actually agrees to bring Persky into her room. Will this lead to a transformation?!?! He starts off strong, trying to tell Rosa that it is a CHOICE, both for him and for her and for everybody. “I work from a different theory. For everything there’s a bad way of describing, also a good way. You pick the good way, you get along better.” Kind of like a favorite saying of mine: Optimists are right. Pessimists are also right. It’s up to you to choose which one you will be. Finding more Tree stuff in the box triggers a bad episode. What I hoped would be a time and place where these two made some kind of profound connection, instead she turns on him. “I’m not your button, Persky!…You took my laundry….you thief Persky!” Despite the extent to which Persky goes, his efforts have been fruitless. The book ends with probably the most senile act by Rosa the reader has seen yet. She really believes that she can see Magda. Not a good sign for this optimistic reader. It had potential too. Persistent ol’ Persky comes back the next day too, and Rosa calls him up, but I don’t believe he ever makes any progress in helping her; she seems too far-gone. Persky is quite persistent though, and perhaps, if he can convince Rosa to see Dr. Tree, maybe she can find a way to recognize that “all this” is a disease.

The tone is one of fear and hysteria, madness and delirium. The Shawl story represents her most vivid memory. Most are unable to comprehend the unfathomable horror suffered by Holocaust survivors but this is what haunts her mind most. Something so ordinary as a shawl, so simple an object so easily taken for granted, ended up prolonging the life of her child, and serving as a symbol of the preservation of life. It wrapped Magda, leaving her unexposed to the unbearable cold and to the mayhem and terror happening around them. It magically kept her safe like a protective shield; because“she should have been dead already, but she had been buried away deep inside the magic shawl”. It arouses feelings of envy and jealousy from Stella, feelings that a fourteen-year-old girl should never feel toward her baby niece keeping warm in a shawl. So much so that she takes away the shawl, killing Magda. Here Rosa becomes aware that Stella will now forever be cold to the world. “Stella wanted to be wrapped in a shawl, hidden away, asleep, rocked by the march.” At times Rosa is raving: imagining her niece with cannibalistic desires (“She was sure that Stella was waiting for Magda to die so she could put her teeth into the little thighs”), contemplating thoughts of giving away her child to some random village female (“Rosa, floating, dreamed of giving Magda away in one of the villages”). These were the particular events leading to Rosa losing her child, the most poignant of the nightmare in its entirety. She’s starving and mad. Like the studies had targeted, patients that had been exposed to “any extended period of stress resulting from incarceration, exposure, and malnutrition,” such exposures that Rosa had suffered from and continues to suffer from, resulting in the inability to escape from the past in order to resume and carry on some form of normal and stable existence.

She so romanticizes about her childhood in Warsaw, one that was “stolen” away from her by “thieves,” that she is unable to solider on. The difference was created because the actual story is about how she has been affected, how those human injustices had such a derailing effect on her life and it has spiraled out of control into an all-consuming and uncontrollable bitter form of cynicism, leaving no room for any kind of enjoyment. I am about halfway through the book. Perhaps she uses both of these different stories to concoct a way in which Rosa finally comes to terms with her existence and is able to move on with her life. Already she has been introduced to Mr. Persky who makes an honest attempt to reach out and infect her with a more positive outlook on life, letting her know that she isn’t alone with the hurt and the regret (She can go see Michael J. Fox, distinguished lecturer at SCSU and allow his “incurable optimism” to inspire her). Miami isn’t so bad he says, “Nazis we ain’t got, even Ku Kluxers we ain’t got.” Putting things into perspective, he makes a good point that evil is everywhere. He relays his own hardships: “I unloaded on you, now you got to unload on me.” She ends up retreating from Persky's company, but in introducing this relationship, along with this letter from Dr. Tree, the author opens up many possible directions for the novel.

Beneath the monotone surface of writing lurk powerful emotions, suppressed and bound to explode at any minute. I think Otsuka has great success using this writing technique because I can really connect her writing style – which is personified in personality of the family members - in its composed, calm, cool, collected, and almost unaffected nature to the nature of the Japanese people in general. This ‘suffer in silence’ type of being, in which a person is almost in complete control of his/her emotions, is very representative of the Japanese people. Although it appears that the family members become inured to it all, that they will be released from their ‘prison,’ and life will go back to normal. “We would join their clubs…We would listen to their music…We would never be mistaken for the enemy again!” But was just far too impossible; the magnitude of the entire situation and its side effects inevitably go on to affect each member in profound ways.

The repressed and bottled up emotion finally erupts in the final ‘Confession’ chapter of the book. We get our first exposure to the father from the 1^st person vantage point when he cries out that he has finally given up his futile defense and his resistances to admitting guilt to something he didn’t necessary do. Why does he admit guilt?…Because the truth didn’t even matter. Based on his nationality and appearance he would always be guilty until proven innocent. “I’m your worse fear – you saw what we did in Manchuria, you remember Nanking, you can’t get Pearl Harbor out of your mind.” In fact, every Japanese person was guilty by mere association, and this wasn’t short term, these were lingering effects that were to haunt all Japanese people living in America. The father would certainly never be the same and it’s accurate to say the second half of his life was ruined.

In the mother’s many fruitless attempts to get a job she was offered work in a dark and isolated room to keep her hidden from the population. She declines and remarks “I was afraid I might accidentally remember who I was and…. offend myself.” The son, originally wanting to identify with Americans, has no choice but to realize his true nature. “I’m a Jap, I’m a Jap,” he declares. If he didn’t fall back on his Japanese heritage then who could he be? He will now probably carry a strong anger and resentment toward Americans for the rest of his life. The Japanese people left their country, put all their stock in Americanism, were shunned, and now they really had nothing and nobody but themselves. The fact that none of their names are ever mentioned is because they represent the many thousands of other nameless individuals and families that are in the exact same situation. Any attempt to get any kind of closure from the injustices committed to the Japanese wouldn’t happen for a very long time, or maybe never at all.

With regard to emotions, Otsuka’s style is most definitely minimalist. It is minimalist-styled because it needs to be. It needs to be because of the subject content of the real-life events that the story follows. If emotion is included in the family’s perspective, then suddenly, what the United States government is doing becomes unquestionably wrong and abhorrent. Since what the Government is doing is for ‘their own good’ and for ‘their safety,’ there is no need for emotion to be thrown into the story because there is nothing upsetting happening in this novel. This is the technique Otsuka uses to convey the insidious nature of the Government and how they took something inherently wrong, put a spin on it, dressed it up a little bit, and CONVINCED/REASSURED everyone (including themselves) that what they were doing was beneficial for everyone. When reality sets in for the family: the fact that they have been unjustly uprooted from their homes, had their father taken away from them, had just about all their possessions taken away from them and brought into captivity like common criminals; once the emotions took hold of them like it MUST have when it actually happened in the 1940s, when the tears begin to flow, accompanied with sorrow and pain and loss and distress and misery, that’s when it becomes transparently obvious that what the indignant and always good-intentioned Government is doing IS WRONG; BUT! what the Government is doing is just fine and for the Japanese people’s own good, so there’s no room and no need for emotion in this novel.

Push was a novel in which the author wrote with a certain desired effect: to shock and appall the reader, probably hoping to raise awareness and to shed some light on certain aspects of life. Emotion NEEDED to be in that novel and leak out of each character to make it work.

Along with precisely how awful it was to be sent into internment camps, the Government actually was able to make things worse and poured salt on wounds by trying to sell something to the Japanese that told them ‘all of this’ was ‘for your own good.’ Otsuka is trying to do two separate things: tell a story that is unjust in and of itself and show the angle the Government took in justifying its actions. By writing with the ‘muted’ and ‘concealed’ emotion Otsuka accomplishes her goal in conveying how the Government took the insult a few steps further. 

I immediately took a liking to this book because it meshes two of my favorite subjects: English and History. A few years back I read a book titled ‘Snow Falling on Cedars,” which addresses many of the same themes attributed to “When the Emperor.” Reading “Cedars” on its own really introduced things like the strong sentiments of racism in the U.S toward Jap-Americans during and after WWII and the Japanese internment camps. The fact that I hadn’t already been aware of it bothered me a little because I am a huge history buff, and in a sense to where I have a strong desire to need a comprehensive knowledge of all of it in its entirety. They hadn’t covered it in high school, nor had they covered it in any of my few college history courses. It’s pretty scary to think of the government’s censoring abilities. It’s a good thing for literature and journalism to really call to attention and raise awareness to certain things/events that otherwise may just be swept under the rug. A little bit of irony exists too because the U.S. fought in WWII to eliminate oppressive dictators along with their oppressive governments, and tyranny, and despotism etc etc. Then we go about and commit some serious acts of civil rights violations to our own citizens. It was also committed by the administration of one of the United State’s most beloved presidents: FDR.

However, I don’t want to pretend that I intimately know the situation. The rounding up of tens of thousands of innocent Jap-Americans was extremely wrong and in violation of human rights, no doubt about it. December 7^th,  1941- “a day that will forever live in infamy.” On this day, an unprovoked attack by the Japanese killed 2,402 American citizens and wounded another 1,282; this obviously left Americans weary and suspicious of the Japanese living among us. So they assess the threat and their solution becomes these internment camps; a solution decided most likely out of hysteria and paranoia; not the best solution. I see a lot of this stuff just mentioned in the hardware store encounter. It is a very awkward encounter. For two people who have known eachother for so long, the encounter is far from personal, even considering the fact that her family is soon-to-be evicted to an internment camp. Joe Lundy offers what little sympathy he can muster up, which isn’t much; no ‘sorry,’ no ‘this is wrong,’ no nothing. I think this says a lot about precisely how American citizens felt at the time. The mere fact that she was Japanese meant that she was guilty by association. The Joe Lundys would certainly not protest against Japanese relocation because deep down he was upset and betrayed by what happened at Pearl Harbor; he wanted them to pay for it. The woman responds with a “Thank you, Joe.” I think what she is saying here is: “Joe, you know me. You know my family. This has nothing to do with us.” This is her last will and testament.

Is this an American Dream story or the opposite? Is it a story of hope or a story of despair? Or is it not that simple - and why?

It is NOT that simple. The story does have elements of a ‘story of hope,’ the American Dream so to speak, but also it contains elements that liken it to a ‘story of despair.’ The beginning of the book left me paralyzed with feelings of shock and horror. I am very grateful for everything I have and I understand that not everyone is lucky enough to have the same opportunities. With that being said, there is much compassion in my heart, and I make it a point never to judge anyone. But the beginning of this story was so bad that my own personal empathy could not seem to reach that far. The very first line “I was left back when I was twelve because I had a baby with my fahver” reveals horrifically that her father had an incestuous relationship with her, and she is uneducated to boot. Added to the horror is utter disgust when Precious describes some of those particular encounters: “I’m gonna marry you, he be saying…But I keep my mouf shut so’s the fucking don’t turn into a beating.” In addition to all this, we learn that her mother is actually MUCH WORSE than worthless, in her own way of ‘aiding and abetting’ her Carl’s behavior. She also makes Precious wait on her hand and foot because she hasn’t left the apartment in years (wow), nor does she even get off the couch. If this isn’t despair, then I don’t know what is. At this point she makes a decision that really affects the outcome of her future. Despite the hopelessness of her situation, despite the atrocities she has both seen and experienced, she decides to follow up on the alternative school and check it out for herself; and this is where the story morphs into a ‘story of hope.’ Sapphire leaves a quote before the novel begins: “Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.”- The Talmud. Perhaps this describes an innate trait we possess as human beings, a trait that enables us to ‘push’ through adversity to turn something from nothing.

A glimmer of hope presents itself when she meets Miss Rain and begins attending the alternative school. She slowly begins to learn to read and write, and conversely, slowly begins to break free from the constraints that confined her to an assured abysmal future. Most importantly, her attitude begins to change. She reveals, “I’m alive inside. A bird is my heart. Mama and Daddy is not win. I’m winning.” Also, “I think how alive I am, every part of me that is cells, proteens, neutrons, hairs, pussy, eyeballs, nervus system, brain. I got poems, a son, friends. I want to live so bad.” The optimism is a great testimony to how much she has really begun to turn her life around. She has also successfully broken free from her mother’s chains, made new friends who genuinely care for her, and met people who can and want to help her. The future certainly looks bright for Precious. As a reader of this fictional story, I really WANT to believe that Precious will get educated, get some independence, get custody of her kids, and live happily ever after. I’d like to believe that this is, indeed, a ‘story of hope,’ the ‘American Dream.’ However, realistically, let me assess the situation. She needs a place to stay. Exactly how long is she going to be able to stay in the halfway house? How will she support herself and her kid, especially since she is uneducated? How is the fact that she carries HIV going to affect her? She must rely on so much support from government agencies that it almost seems impossible. She needs to give up her son for adoption, and try her best to balance going to school and getting a job; in other words, she needs to focus on herself, like Miss Rain said. This is precisely why it is hard to argue against this story being one of despair, because it seems like Precious is already so far in the hole that she no longer has much of a chance (she never really did to begin with). There is a glimmer of hope, however, and it certainly can be done, but it is going to take ALOT of help (is that help going to be a constant?) and ALOT of perseverance on Precious’ behalf. 

          The voice of Precious definitely changes the way she is seen by the audience. In the beginning, at a point in time where she is the least educated she is going to get, we get a very harsh, in-your-face type of exposure from her character. She is an exact product of her environment at the time. Her thoughts are very restricted only to what she knows; which is what she picks up at home. Her tone of voice suggests she is very alone and confused, confrontational, and angry. She cannot even begin to fathom anything outside of her small little world because she is in such isolation; there is nowhere to go and no means in which to learn and grow. It changes the way others in the community see her and it’s picked up immediately, within the first 2 pages, in her confrontation with the math teacher. But the confrontation stems from her ignorance: “But I couldn’t let him, or anybody, know, page 122 look like 152, 22, 3…all the pages look alike to me. ‘N I really do want to learn.” Because she can’t communicate with teachers in an ideal sense, she puts up a defensive wall, and ends up lashing out in anger. The teacher either doesn’t know the root cause of Precious’s problem, or, more likely, he doesn’t care, maybe because the reputation she already has for being hostile. Her voice also has affected how she is seen by Ms. Weiss, the social worker. Precious has much difficulty opening up and effectively communicating with Ms. Weiss, for obvious reasons. Weiss remarks, “My rapport with Precious is minimal.” Because of this, she is unable to understand that Precious actually has ambition and personal goals in mind (this is speaking in an ideal sense because there is also a huge possibility that Weiss just doesn’t care). Precious is furious when she learns that Weiss just wants to place her in a job taking care of elders.

          Language and emotion are directly connected in the book. Earlier in the book, Precious is just simply unable to convey certain emotions because she doesn’t possess the language skills to articulate certain emotion. As her language skills develop, the more in tune with her emotion she becomes. All these changes begin when she starts her at Each One Teach One. A trifecta of events occur (learning from Each One Teach One, Abdul, and her support group outside her Mama’s house i.e. the other students and Ms. Rain) that finally provide Precious with the means to grow and escape the confines of her past. When she returns home after childbirth she takes the first step in the right direction. She yells “Nigger rape me. I not steal shit fat bitch you husband RAPE me RAPE ME!” She is now able to understand and articulate the fact that none of that stuff was her fault and even mustered the courage to leave her Mama behind. All sorts of new possibilities and doors open up for Precious at her halfway house. Things begin to turn around for her, especially from within, as she finally begins to find some sort of happiness in life. She says toward the end, “I’m alive inside. A bird is my heart. Mama and Daddy is not win. I’m winning. I’m drinking hot chocolate in the Village wif girls- all kind who love. How that is so I don’t know. How Mama and Daddy know me sixteen years and hate me, how a stranger meet me and love.” Certain things she surely still cannot understand due to many years of being broken emotionally/physically/sexually broken down, but through language development and the comfort of friends and more exposure to the world, she is blessed with the ability to gather some form of self-worth and a sense of meaning and purpose, providing a 'foot-in-the-door' for a better future.

I’d like to speak about some things going on in the final chapter. At this point in the story, she speculates by beginning: “maybe I’m trying to render my senseless personal loss meaningful by linking it, however posthumously, to a more coherent narrative.” Here she suggests and tries to open the reader up to the possibility that her father was actually “a tragic victim of homophobia.” In fact, his life was actually a “narrative of injustice”, of repressed “sexual shame and fear.” She suggests that perhaps things would have been different if the times had permitted her father’s homosexuality; instead of condemning it. Maybe if her father had came out in his youth, and hadn’t kept everything bottled up inside, living two completely different lifestyles (externally/internally), than he’d have been spared and would have never had to result to pedophilia. This is really the first time I have seen Bechdel attempt to defend her father’s actions. She then sort of juxtaposes to different pictures of scenes in the 80s (freely hanging up gay-pride posters in NYC and a gay-pride parade revealing slogans like 'baster baby'/chelsea gym/GMHC) where homosexuality has become more of a social/cultural norm; these represent the time period in which she first comes out of the closet, a time where LOTS of people had come out, flaunting their gayness without shame or fear, for the first time in history, really. So, in fact, it was much easier for someone like her. Since her father wasn’t allowed this same luxury, he never came out, he dealt with it his own way, and the rest is history. Maybe here Bechdel is trying to emphasize with her father’s situation and ask “What If?” What if he felt it acceptable to be ‘true to his nature?’

Bravo Bechdel, Bravo. I must say. It’s an admirable attempt toward a defense of your father. Personally, I feel it’s unacceptable to excuse/exempt her father from personal responsibility like she may be suggesting. It’s her father, I understand, and for me to ‘emphasize’ I would need to imagine having to defend my own father under similar circumstances…perhaps I too would look in all conceivable directions and/or build up some kind of crafty rhetoric in defense of something so heinous.

          After this modest attempt, is really when the two begin to connect in some meaningful way, and it happens through ‘their currency’: literature. She writes: “Dad didn’t have much use for children, but as I got older, he began to sense my potential as an intellectual companion.” They use this ‘medium’ to fuel a relationship and here is when it reaches its most normal point between father-daughter. In the end, she takes what little she can out of the meager relationship, by comparing its consistency to the theme of Ulysses; that spiritual paternity can carry its own importance, and that particular importance is just barely enough to show some appreciation and gratification to her father the pedophile; because after all, “he was there to catch me when I leapt.”

Bechdel seems to use writing as a means of therapy and survival. In fact, many authors do, including the ones studied in this class. Ensler is actually able to physically help women survive through her creative genius. Her work and words empower women to stand up for themselves, and when oppressors are met with this resistance, a general decline in the oppression tends to follow; and it did; this was the story of Eve Ensler and how her work changed the female gender forever. This demonstrates a perfect example of something that may have originally been created simply for female expression, but ended up manifesting into something else entirely. Bechdel utilizes a similar strategy as she chronicles her life in her journal as Allison. I suspect the real Allison Bechdel uses the book itself in her own personal struggle with the ‘hand’ she was dealt.

            Allison begins a journal for pretty standard reasons. Eventually, it becomes more of a coping mechanism; a way for her to vent. She makes first mention of her period: “I encoded the word menstruation.” She wasn’t able to talk about it with her mother, so here she was; talk therapy via a journal. I think that Bechdel felt like she needed to write this book as part of her own coping mechanism. She needs to take her own personal experience and make sense of it all; and with that, she hoped to gain some form of closure in growing up in the home of a pedophile.

Chapter  6

            I enjoyed reading chapter 6. I found it rich with literary technique; most notably, the juxtaposition of family events, Allison’s ‘coming-of-age’, the “Importance of Being Earnest,” and the Nixon scandal. She says it herself, that she was glad to be “taking notes...otherwise, I’d find the synchronicity implausible.” Lose of innocence is major theme, taking form in Allison’s own body, as she notices the very first signs of her womanhood. She pays little mind to it, hoping it’ll go away. She brushes it under the carpet, a little bit ashamed and embarrassed. Also during this period, on a side note, her journal entries begin taking a turn for the better, sentence fragments and incomplete thoughts gradually evolve into complete thoughts and structured sentences with better vocabulary, largely because she begins to take a liking to her mother’s play as she runs lines with her. But anyway, puberty begins encroaching on Allison’s innocence. At the same time, in his own way, Allison’s father’s innocence also becomes compromised after he is arrested for ‘furnishing a malt beverage to a minor.’ On a larger scale, good old-fashioned American values like honesty and integrity we also in jeopardy, and under a microscope, the whole world watching, as Nixon crashed and eventually burned (by stepping down) in public disgrace.

            Important allusions appear from the play as well, most importantly through Oscar Wilde himself. She shocked me personally by revealing Wilde’s own affinity for young boys (that explains a lot with regard to Dorian Grey, actually). Not simply that alone, but in the play lay plenty “covert references to homosexuality.” Perfect play, seemingly, for the situation. Irony?  In my last blog, I spoke about how Allison’s father lives vicariously through characters in his literature books. That’s superb, because Wilde offers great advice to someone with a condition like Allison’s father. Wilde offers: “the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” Get the kids inside.

            As Bechdel continues through womanhood, the groundwork is slowly laid for the book’s ending. She matures a lot, and at this point in time she experiences the “mystical pleasure” in wearing her father’s old clothes. Although she doesn’t realize she is a lesbian yet, the hints and feelings are there. Along with her own, her father’s are also being realized for the first time. Homosexuality plays a big role in how the two finally end up connecting with each other toward the end of the book. It was here in chapter 6, where Allison also took a liking to books and stories, and where her journal writing ability developed, both of which, combined with elements of homosexuality, help facilitate connected moments between father-daughter, ones which provide Bechdel with some comfort in her relationship with her father.

What I’d most like to do is analyze the story and its characters through a single quote from the beginning of the 3^rd chapter: “I’d been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents’ tragedy.”

This quote reveals a great deal. The daughter begins, in attempt to liberate herself, with her own shocking revelation, but is interrupted, overshadowed, and upstaged with more important and an even more startling testimonial. I see Bruce’s story here; everything else is just a conscious or an unconscious reaction to the effect Bruce has had on the other characters in this book.

 Bechdel carefully inserts words like their ‘tragedy’ and  ‘family tragicomedy’ when describing her story, purposefully alluding to Greek mythology. Her father is the tragic hero, living with his very own tragic flaw. Daedalus becomes Bruce’s Greek counterpart. Easily, the most important comparison drawn would be his consummate skill as an artificer. It wasn’t a mere hobby. “Historical restoration wasn’t his job, it was his passion. And I mean passion in every sense of the word.” Underneath this quote is a picture of Bruce carrying a carefully crafted wooden post with UNCANNY resemblance to the picture of Jesus carrying his cross. Next to this picture, instead of words like ‘holy, pious, humble, gentle, I am dying for your sins,” Bruce’s descriptive words read ‘libidinal, manic, martyred.” His passion would ultimately lead to his demise. The author even describes with careful words her father’s remarkable ‘legerdemain,’ hinting that his ‘cunning artfulness’ was used to add an element of ‘cunning artfulness’ to his deception and trickery he had partaken in.  His family paid the price; they were neglected, playing secondary roles in his life, mere pawns. But he was a slave to his passion. “Daedalus, too, was indifferent to the human cost of his projects.”

           More important allusions come from literature reference. Literature apparently played a big role in this family, both parents being English teachers. The first book we see is Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. It’s my understanding that Tolstoy wrestles with some deep, existential themes, as he did in War and Peace, which I think may have been weighing on Bruce’s mind i.e. social change (the life he led opposed to his secret life), adultery (sex with boys), family life (did it make him happy?), and farming (artifice in Bruce’s case; Levin and fulfillment and happiness through work). Did he believe that reality was more like the work of a fiction writer? Clearly, the answer is possibly a maybe, if we examine his attachment to Camus. He highlights one line in the book he was reading prior to suicide: “He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.” Camus argues the definition of absurd: ‘the universe is irrational and human life meaningless.”

          If he tangled with this notion before his death, that life is empty, meaningless, it’s no wonder he committed suicide. I believe he identifies with the characters of his books. The author even makes mention of his indulging in the works of Proust (also a homosexual) the year before he died. Being a funeral home director also may have added to the already volatile mix. “Maybe he felt that he’d become too inured to death,” Bechdel describes of her father, in his seemingly attempt to feel a reaction to death vicariously through her. So exposed to death and morbidity, living a life that was more or less meaningless altogether, and being a perfectionist with an inability to achieve fulfillment or gratification, Bruce made the decisions he did.

4) Why does Trujillo kill the sisters even though they’re no longer directly involved in the revolution? Were the women victims, martyrs, heroes, or something else? What about the men? Why doesn’t he kill them? What does he do instead?

Despite their current inactive roles in the movement, and the fact that they had been living withdrawn lives in relative isolation, it almost seems puzzling that Trujillo decides to murder the Mirabel sisters. I believe there were several reasons that contributing to Trujillo’s decision for killing. The most important of these factors is the damage that already had been done. The Mirabel sisters embodied the revolution. They represented inspiration. The girls had made tremendous sacrifices: time, energy, family, freedom, money, property; they were model revolutionaries, noble faces of the cause, loved by all their people. Dede comments on their popularity, “At the pharmacy, in church, at the mercado, Dede was approached by well-wishers. Take care of our girls, they would whisper. Sometimes they would slip her notes. Tell the butterflies to avoid the road to Puerto Plata. It’s not safe.”

Things were bad off for Trujillo toward the end of the book:  OAS peace committees conducting investigations into prisons, sanctions imposed, South American countries (Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela) breaking relations, sights of an American warship. At this point, Trujillo is becoming pretty desperate, willing to do anything to turn the tide. Several blatant remarks by Trujillo himself reveal just how responsible he believes the Mirabel girls are for everything. First he says, indirectly, through his brother, “Minerva Mirabel was the brain behind the whole movement." Clearly he is pretty adamant in these beliefs, and it is no secret. This thought then follows: “So Trujillo was no longer saying Minerva Mirabel was a problem, but that all the Mirabel sisters were.” Taking this into account, Trujillo must surmise that if he eliminates that Mirabel sisters, it will eradicate other revolutionary ideas and actions. Possibly, and even maybe easier, Trujillo kills them, quite simply, because he believes that he can. It must have been hard for a man, whose rule was defined by depravity and despotism, whose power knew few limits or bounds, to imagine that some petty women could undermine his power, and that he couldn’t do anything about it. There is no way that his ego can allow this type of behavior to continue.

          The Mirabel sisters meet the requirements for being victims, martyrs, and heroes. The enormous sacrifices make them victims: time and energy, money, property lost, the imprisonment and the lost time; Minerva, Mate, and Patria even lost their lives; Dede lost her sisters and continues to live with pain and burden (these reasons also make them martyrs). The girls are also heroes for many obvious reasons, most important being how they are embraced, honored, and viewed by their own people. The men should also be seen as heroes of the revolution for their own respective roles. Based on what the book reveals, characters like Manolo, and even the other husbands, with Jaimito the sole exception (however, he did manage to contribute in his own way too), played vital roles in the movement. For these reasons alone, they cannot be forgotten and shouldn’t be overshadowed by the sisters. The book has always portrayed the men as ‘guilty by association.’ By this mere fact, the men don’t even pose a threat to Trujillo, and simply don’t carry enough weight to where it is necessary for Trujillo to rub them out; so Trujillo just keeps the men in jail; perhaps to add extra incentive for the girls to behave. After jail, Manolo is the only one that continues with his radical revolutionary behavior. He is dead within 3 years. The rest of the men scattered, going their separate ways.

Comprehensive Minerva Timeline

1938- Inmaculada Concepcion and Sinita’s stories about Jefe. Develops anti-Trujillo ideals.

1941- Lina’s relationship with Trujillo.

1944- Performance of Minerva/Sinita and bow-n-arrow pointing at Trujillo.

1948- Meets Tio and they become ‘comrades in struggle.’ Lio’s name starts to appear regularly in papers and eventually has to leave. He invites Minerva to take asylum with him.

1949- Discovery Day Dance. Dances with Trujillo. Speaks to him about a law degree. She winds up slapping him after he acts inappropriately. Leaves letters. Her father is taken into custody shortly thereafter. Minverva and Mama hunt Papa down and Minerva gets picked up for questioning. She is confronted with letters and lying. Eventually they rendezvous with Papa inside of Trujillo’s office where they appeal for his release. Here again she brings up law school to Trujillo.

1953-Studying law in capitol.

1954- Meets Manolo in capitol. Takes liking to Fidel and his revolution in Cuba.

1955- Marries Monolo.

1957- Graduates from law school. Gets law degree but not license to practice. Manolo begins heavy involvement in revolutionary doings. Manolo and Minerva recruit Mate into national underground.

1959- Involvement in revolution gets heavier for everyone, now including Nelson.

1960-January to March- Husbands get taken. Sisters get taken shortly after. Manage to get a note to Patria revealing whereabouts and requesting supplies.

1960-March to August- Minerva exposed to much interrogation and solitary confinement. Is the glue that holds her people together. Helps keep morale with songs; assigns chores and responsibilities in attempt to keep sanity. Turns down freedom for pledged allegiance to Trujillo. Tries to persuade Mate to embellish treatment of her in OAS interview.

1960-August to November- House arrest. Revolution, by now, out of her hands. Distanced from it at Mamas house with sisters. Newly found appreciation for family life. Resides in life, spending most of her time petitioning for and visiting her husband. Their husbands are relocated to another prison, one that is further and more out of the way. On November 25, 1960 Minerva, Patria, and Mate were killed.

2) By the end of the novel, how have the characters of Minerva, Mate, and Patria
changed? Have they changed the revolution or has the revolution changed them?
Is there a happy ending to this story at all?

The three women most certainly display character changes throughout the course of the book. In the final chapter of Minerva, who is also the strongest-willed, most fervent revolutionary of the group, begins to see her spirit weaken, her fire beginning to burn out. She chronicles this strange feeling of hers: “By then, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to stay home with my sisters at Mamas, raising our children.” And who could blame her? After all, she had been subject to seven months in prison, much of that time in solitary confinement. She saw the majority of her own family imprisoned; some even tortured. She questioned that maybe she was “ready for a new life, and this is how it starts.”

Mate also changes in her own way. In the beginning, she is often characterized as being ‘innocent’ and ‘naïve,’ and influenced deeply by her older sister Minerva. When she is thrown into jail, she suffers tremendously, and is forced to grow up fast. Many times in her journal, it appears as if she is on the verge of going insane. She endures, though, and comes into her own. When the sisters learn that OAS will interview Mate, Minerva tries to persuade Mate to embellish certain things in attempt to attract international attention. For the first time the reader can recall, Mate doesn’t simply concede and go along with Minerva. She says, “So I say to her the only thing I can say. I promise you this, I’ll be true to what I think is right. Minerva has never heard such talk from me. Fair enough, she says, fair enough.” Also, for the first time throughout her incarceration, Mate displays the first signs of inner-strength. This happens after she is tortured and proceeds to pick up her clothes. “Then Bloody Juan gathered up my clothes, but I wouldn’t let him help me. I dressed myself and walked out to the wagon on my own two feet.” She almost becomes hardened. This is how the revolution changed Mate.

As a person, Patria hasn’t changed much. She finds herself asking slowly recovering from the imprisonments via her usual venue: religion. Patria becomes consumed with freeing her husband and son. She even compromises certain principles in appealing to Captain Pena. She also appeals to Trujillo, in person, to get back her son. Unlike Minerva and Mate, who refuse their freedom (only if sworn allegiance to Trujillo), Patria, in way, gets in bed with the enemies (but for good reasons). The big change lies in the fact that the revolution, suddenly, is much less important then helping her family.

Minerva Mirabel is the celebrated hero of the Fourteenth of July movement. Her reputation speaks for itself and one would be hard pressed to support an argument saying that Minerva did not change the revolution. Mate and Patria also contributed in their own ways. Before the ‘prison roundups,’ the thrill and excitement of the revolution was a big contributing factor. The Mirabel sisters were swept up into the self-sustaining movement. After being jailed, it was all out of the Mirabel sisters’ hands, and instead of changing the revolution the revolution began to change them. The girls moved back home with their Mama after being released, and no longer held any active roles in the movement. Their sole prerogative now: petitioning for the release of their husbands and basically doing everything they could to free them. Perhaps now they yearned for the more simple things in life, those things they had been missing since the start of this whole thing. They didn’t want to see family in jail any longer; they wanted to be a family again.

          In many ways, a happy ending does not exist in this story. Dede personifies this notion as she reluctantly plays the sister of a national hero. She often questions her fate and wonders why she happened to be the soul survivor. Every year she goes through the motions, telling herself it’s “for the girls.” From her perspective, it isn’t difficult to understand why she desires to put it all behind her. After all, the events that unfolded had killed her three sisters and scattered her family. She is haunted by much of this. At the same time, she soldiers through, and is able to recognize and appreciate its legacy; everything that ‘it had been for.’ She can at least do that much.

The first four chapters revealed a little bit about the Mirabel sisters: Dede, Minerva, Maria, and Patria. The following four chapters, four through eight, each dedicate another chapter to each unique and individual sister. Throughout these four chapters, our profile of each sister gets richer, and a few more characters come into play.

Dede resumes her interview session with the American/Dominican woman. Before she begins recounting, the direction it takes is because of the presence of Minerva’s daughter. The story progresses like such: Minou talks to> Fela conjures Minerva who says > Virgilio Morales is alive. This is where the story picks up.

1948- Fate throws this political dissident Lio toward the Mirabel sisters via their cousin and future husband of Dede, Jaimito. Their (Jaimito and friends) impression of him says it all, “They were split between admiration and wariness of his dangerous presence among them.” Jaimito even squabbles with Lio and accuses him of “exposing us all.”

Lio stands firm by his resolve and reveals a little bit about himself by replying, “If I leave my country, it’s only to continue the struggle. We can’t let Chapita kill us all.” After the topic of conversation goes here, fear takes over and breaks up the party. Afterwards, Dede reveals, “She had never known an enemy of the state before. She had assumed such people would be self-serving and wicked, low-class criminals.” Until now, Minerva is the only one with political ideations. Perhaps Dede’s mind/fate has changed? Eventually, Lio must leave, and before he does, he requests Minerva to join him.

1949- The story picks up with Minerva. Again, it’s about Lio. She says, “When I met Lio, it was as if I woke up.” The two meeting was as perfect as two peas in a pod. The day of the Discovery Day Dance turns everything upside down. Minerva slaps Trujillo after he acts inappropriately while dancing with her. She also lies to him and denies knowing Lio. They manage to leave and go home. Eventually, Papa is picked up and brought in for questioning. He is gone too long. Mama and Minerva set out to the capitol to find him. Here they find Papa and they make formal apologies to Trujillo.

1953-1958- Maria Teresa chapter consists of more diary entries. Earliest ones tell of Papa’s death and funeral. Maria takes on the voice of the younger sister once again, along with her admiration of Minerva. She remarks, “ I don’t like this kind of thinking like Minerva likes, It makes my asthma worse. I want to know things I don’t even know what they are. But I could be happy without answers if I had someone to love.” This statement reveals an honest simplicity in Maria. > Always all about Minerva > meet Manolo >goes to capitol to study law> Maria follows> Minerva get law degree BUT no license to practice> Mariposa #2 goes underground

1959- Patria’s quotes that reveal: (Very critical of her sisters)

“Build your house upon a rock, He said, do my will. I had built my house on solid rock, all right.”

“My sisters were so different! They built their homes on sand and called the slip and slide adventure.”

"Minerva lived in a little nothing house - or so Mate had described it to me - in that Godforsaken town of Monte Cristi. It's a wonder her babies didn't both die of infections."

"Mate and Leandro had already had two different addresses in a year of marriage. Renters, they called themselves, the city word for the squatters we pity here in the country."

More Emo Creature

4. Look up some of the women or groups mentioned in Section 3 and explore the context a bit more. How does that enrich your understanding of the text itself?

Peshmerga (those who face death) women are an all female Kurdish army faction looking to oust Saddam Hussein.

Pink Sari gang protect Indian womens’ interests by violent attacks

Liberian women mass action for peace

Nigerian Chevron women took oil terminal demanding fairer share of oil revenue

Cindy Sheehan lost son in Iraqi war and protested at Bush ranch

Malalai Joya unleased three-minute hard-hitting speech accused alleged warlords of crimes and corruption

Aung San Suu Kyi house arrest 15 of 21 years, refused to leave country

Neda Soltani killed voicing opposition to Ahmadinejad

“Refuser” is the first piece of work in Section 3. It is the perfect title for its style. In many ways it’s like a rallying cry for women to stand up for themselves. It also gives tribute to certain real-life women who have made their own ‘statements’ and stood up for their cause in honorable ways. These modern day women have stirred things up and broken the norm in unprecedented ways. They no longer need men; they can stick up for themselves as stated in “Now we are the ones who walk our girlfriends home from school.”

Toward the end, the monologue goes on to mention some of the most influential women ever. Ironically enough, they had also been labeled in a way that seriously downplays their accomplishments. Joplin, regarded as one of the greatest female musicians ever, was also known for her sub-par looks. Joan of Arc, national heroine of France and Catholic saint, if often discredited as being hysterical and having hallucinations. Butterfly Hill can contribute her fame to the ‘tree sit.’ Instead of a staunch environmentalist she was an extremist freak.

The women of these latest generations seem to carry a new voice. They are leaping all the old boundaries and roadblocks of the past. Perhaps this passage tells of their plight:  “We know if you plan too long nothing happens and things get worse and that most everything is found in the action and instinctively we get that the scariest thing isn’t dying, but not trying at all.” No longer do women stand idly by on the sidelines, they are amongst the action; in the thick of things.

Emo Creature

Today I will take a look at You Tell Me How To Be A Girl In 2010. I think it’s relevant to speak a little about the similarities between what I have come across so far in I am an Emo Creature, and Vagina Monologues. From what I’ve read (pages1-37), this book seems to be something of an epilogue to Monologues. Ensler made such a positive impact on society with Monologues that she almost picks up right where she left off and addresses the tumultuous and turbulent adolescent years of today’s society. That same self-confidence/self-appreciation/self-worth that she brought women with Monologues, she hopes to bring to young girls.

In You Tell Me How To Be A Girl In 2010, the voice DEPRESSES the hell out of me! “Each town they bomb, each human they kill is done for “humanitarian” purposes.” I take it that with this quote she is speaking with regard to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Personally, her political statement gets under my skin. War should be avoided at all costs, yes, but we don’t live in a perfect world, and things aren’t so simple. For Ensler to just make this remark based on pure emotion is way too unfair and opinionated for my taste; it turns me off to this monologue immediately. “People don’t own the water in their own village and they certainly don’t own the diamonds and gold.” Unfortunately, this has been the course of human evolution. We claim valuable resources. It is probably not going to change.

“Why is everyone so much more afraid of sex than SCUD missiles?” STDs, high teen pregnancy, “kids raising kids.” How about the vast and countless amounts of kids brought up in broken homes and its effects because kids are having sex way too young. I would say that’s a valid problem and something to be afraid of.

“How come we have money to kill but no money to feed or heal?” Really…?

“Six million dead in the Congo and they never made the news…and minerals.” What else is she suggesting we do about the atrocities in Africa? She didn’t like how we went into Iraq where very similar injustices were taking place, so exactly what does she propose?

“Give me one thing to believe in that isn’t a brand name.”

 I can honestly say that Eve Ensler, through Monologues, grew on me some. I was eager to break ground on her latest book here. However, I was disappointed with her first monologue.  I see and hear so much negativity in it; my answer to the title’s inquiry is “Damn, you are on your own. Good luck.” Very depressing, way too idealistic. Fails to offer any constructive advice into the dozens of complaints and reproaches.

Ensler #4

            Ensler, in her text, works toward both celebrating vaginas and raising awareness of violence against women. Several monologues support this claim of celebrating vaginas. “The Vagina Workshop” tells the story of a woman who finally connects with her body and her vagina; the experience is profoundly stimulating and liberating. For the first time in her life, she is amazed with herself and left in an awe called “vaginal wonder.” In “Because he liked to look at it,” the female professes she “began to feel beautiful and delicious-like a great painting or a waterfall…began to feel proud. Began to love my vagina.”  

            Many monologues also help raise awareness of violence against women. In “My Vagina was my Village,” the monologue reveals the story of a girl being raped and tormented by a group of soldiers. Words like “They invaded it. Butchered it and burned it down,” haunt the page and the reader’s mind. Women from a Bosnian refugee rape camp inspired the monologue. “The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could” tells the sad story of girl who comes from a broken home and is subject to rape and sexual abuse at very young ages.

            I believe that she does achieve both these goals equally and it is obvious in reading the 10^th anniversary addition. In the introduction, Ensler professes, “There have been so many victories. Women speaking the word where it had never been uttered. Women standing up against local and national governments…and the voices inside them that judge and censor.” To realize the enormous amount of awareness raised the reader must only look at the “V-Timeline: Ten Years of Vagina Victories.”

            There is a slight contradiction between celebrating vaginas and raising awareness. In many of the monologues, heinous and deplorable acts are often committed to women in the hope of raising awareness through the truth and reality of it. In these specific monologues there are no celebrations of the vagina, simply because the stories are too disturbing. This contradiction is seen by reading all the monologues as one large piece. Also, the reader is able to see the dual-purpose of Ensler’s work in both celebrating and raising awareness.

Ensler #3

For Ensler, language is a very important part of her message. This whole entire movement that became The Vagina Monologues started with the word “vagina.” It was far from an ordinary word either, because along with it came feelings of “anxiety, awkwardness, contempt, and disgust.” Now that is most certainly a powerful word. Because of these uncomfortable feelings, vagina has also become a censored word in our society. Ensler seems to feel that this beautiful word that personifies a woman, has been stolen from the female gender and made ugly and embarrassing. She hopes to reclaim it; to reinvent it. The most fundamental difference among males and females is their reproductive organs. A woman’s vagina, and all its beauty, belongs to her; and so should the term, its definition, and its meaning. She should be able to say it openly and discuss it freely. Ensler sees her vagina as her “primary resource, a place of sustenance, humor, and creativity. So how on earth did vagina become a bad word? NO MORE!

The word vagina does not stand alone either. Pussy, cunt, vulva, coochi snorcher, clitoris, etc., are all words that describe and define something that is truly unique and representative of the female gender. Somehow, however, these words have evolved into making the female body seem dirty or shameful. So the question is… If all these words that are supposed to describe a female body are dirty and shameful…. which terms/words actually do exist that explain the beauty and delicacy of the female body??

To explain why Ensler asks the questions about what vaginas would wear, etc., I would like to start with a quote from Ensler in the preface: “I say vagina because when I started saying it I discovered how fragmented I was, how disconnected my body was from my mind. My vagina was something over there, away in the distance. I rarely lived inside it, or even visited.” Taking this quote into careful consideration, I think it’s pretty clear as to why she asks these questions; the woman and the vagina are one and the same. If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear? The question is answered with a long list of silly answers undoubtedly relevant to the woman answering the question. These questions offer “a personal, grounded-in-the-body vantage point of identifying with your body.   

Ensler #2

Audience reaction is crucial to Ensler’s overall project because of its ‘shock value’. The shock value brings attention and puts a spotlight on the project.  Howard Stern, a popular radio jockey, revolutionized talk radio by introducing material that was controversial and unconventional. Through this approach he made quite the name for himself. Ensler is putting shock-valued spin on her own piece of work. Instead of using the shock value to gain recognition for herself, she uses it to draw attention to two different issues: (directly) how women are repressed in society and (indirectly) the atrocities committed against women throughout the world. 

She works to push us out of our comfort zones because it’s the only way to break the chains repressing women in society. The monologues help women realize their own self-worth and beauty. It helps them understand that each woman has a unique and meaningful voice. There is nothing to be embarrassed about or ashamed of. With this new recognition they are further empowered to stick up for themselves, especially when basic human rights and/or needs are being violated.

“The Flood” represented an entire generation of older women. The general attitude of ‘their down-theres’ is one of awkwardness and embarrassment. It reads, “I can’t tell you this. I can’t do this, talk about down there,” which explains a lot. This generation of older women feels that after a certain age they can no longer express themselves sexually. They can’t even bring themselves to speak about ‘down-there.’ Ironically enough, however, in the final sentence, the older woman reveals the comfort she had taken in the conversation. Ensler also says in her intro “women secretly love to talk about their vaginas.” This makes me think about the repression of women in the past and present.

           “I was twelve. My mother slapped me.” This monologue is riddled with overtones of embarrassment, awkwardness, and fear about the menstruation cycle. It does seem mighty strange that something so natural can be seen in such an ugly light.

Ensler

Eve Ensler wants Monologues to be publicly performed because the concept is supposed to be much more than simple words in a book. Hearing “vagina” yelled out and talked about on stage is supposed to be, at first, shocking and unconventional; then it is supposed to be liberating and empowering. If it were just words contained in a book, dull and emotionless words, then this entire movement would have never gathered this much momentum, and become all that it is today. Instead, the words are supposed to become alive and fly out, catch the attention, and infect the audience. The audience is supposed to be a part of it all. It has encouraged women to stand up against the voices that “judge and censor.”

She wants vaginas to be physically embodied because it resonates inside the audience much more personally when stories have a face and a personality to them. Through these uniquely identifiable stage monologues, women can find what they need in order to “reclaim their bodies” and tell “the stories of their own violations, desires, victories, shame, adventures.” They can connect to one another and become united against the larger and much more egregious issue of violence against women. The effect this has is pretty profound. It humanizes the cause and raises awareness of a widespread issue that conflicts women.  In turn, more and more women get onboard and rally around this movement. They find “their power, their voice, and their leadership ability by becoming accidental activists.”

Night Women

          “Night Women” is a very short story revolving around a prositute and her young son. The setting takes place inside their small dwelling. At night she ‘works’ and brings her ‘suitors’ back to her place where her young son sleeps behind the scene. This story is a lot of things: it is sad and tragic, it genuine and heartfelt, and it is raw and unapologetic. The narrator says that “there are two kinds of women: day women and night women.” Obviously, she is a prostitute, but she describes herself as someone who is “stuck between the day and night in a golden amber bronze.” I believe she makes this distinction  because she refuses to be defined ONLY a prostitute. Prostitution only serves as a way for her to make money and support her son. Also, she proudly runs a household and plays the role of a traditional female and mother.
          What I noticed most of all in regard to the narrator was her amazing strength. She seems to accept the cards she has been dealt, however unfortunate, and shoulder on with both incredible hope and perserverance. She plays both her roles (day woman/night woman) the best she can. She is tender and caring to the boy by offering up her scarf, reading him stories, and most importantly, preserves his innocence with dressed up (literally) stories of angels. She COMMITTED to helping her child feel happiness in the face of unspeakable despair. In her role as a night woman, she takes ‘painstaking care’ in prepping herself for ‘dates.’ The narrator keeps hope alive in a most marvelous way; in a way that is fundamentally human.
          Of course, such a life wasn’t able to completely spare her of certain side effects. She remarks in the very beginning that,“Tonight I am much older than the twenty-five years that I have lived.” This sentence speaks in volumes. This is not an isolated feeling unique to her only. Knowing a little about the history of the Haitians, I can say somewhat confidently mostly all Haitian children simply HAD to grow up extremely fast and learn to provide for themselves. This is precisely what the narrator is doing, and in my opinion, she is doing an admirable job. This story, despite being such a harsh reality, represents the Haitian struggle and should be preserved. I managed to find a good quote in the back of the book to help further articulate this meaning. It reads, “…and since you had written them down and memorized them, the names would come rolling off your tongue. And this was your testament to the way that these women lived and died and lived again.”