An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa

Bapsi Sidhwa's An American Brat, though not my favorite novel, has proven to be a pretty good roundup novel for this semester of Women in literature. Mainly, because it ties together a lot of the themes the class has introduced to us. "third world women" verses first world, Situated Knowledge, Postcolonialism, in-between-ness, essentailism, community, etc.

Mainly, for me, it served as a reminder that this is one person's story, not mine and not everyone elses.

One really interesting thing about the novel I thought was how it both maintained and yet went against stereotypes. There was some ovbvious cliches when Feroza's mother intruded on her life in the United States, portraying what seemed to be an overprotective religious mother, Feroza's family still defied expectation by offering her so much freedom to begin with. I don't believ, that at sixteen years age my parents would ever let me move away to a different country to gain a strong inner self. Then again, my uncle isn't as intelligent and/or responsible as Manek, who seems connected (and yet critical) of both of Feroza's worlds. Though their plan to drive Feroza to be more liberal backfires, the fact that they even consider letting her leave for four months, later to allow her to stay for college, is pretty interesting. Feroza on the other hand seems pretty conservative, not only in the beginning, causing alarm in her parents, but the fact that she decides to marry at such a young age. Then again, she is characterized by her impulsiveness.
One issue that I had with the book was that, like the Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, which seemed to loose it's tie with reality by telling the story of every imaginable muslim (black, gay, american, syrian, etc.) to the point where the diversity amongst the muslim characters began to grow tiring, I felt that An American Brat did a little of this same sort of thing. It was a good novel, but, again, I felt Sidhwa went a smidge too far by pairing Feroza and Jo and David all in the same household. I guess she was trying to show how liberal the United States allowed Feroza to be, and wanted to further express the disconect between her and Zareen and Cyrus, but it doesn't feel completely believable.

Breath, Eyes, Memory

When I read Edwidge Danticant's novel Breath, Eyes, Memories two articles from my freshman year women's studies class came to mind. The first was about oppression. The author (Sorry, you'd have to ask Katie for the name) distinguished between "suffering" and "oppression", dramatically, but thoughtfully defining oppression as being choiceless, cornered, pressed, blocked. I felt that this novel showed how women, not to mention postcolonial women, are so deeply oppressed. First, I thought about the prevalent theme of men's ownership of women, especially physical. Martine is never free from the invasive rape, more so than I have ever experienced in a literature, or anyother recounting. Between the rape and the testings done by her mother, she never fully feels that she is anything more than a tortured object, thwarting her from loving anyone or living happily. This directly ties into the second article I remembered from freshman year, which was about anorexia. The feminist perspective of anorexia is, according to the article, that women become anorexic because they feel so greatly that their body's are not their's and therefore want to destroy that body. Martine's eating disorder and the way she completely tears apart her body in the end of the novel reflect her physical self-hatred.

In conclusion, the aspect of breath, eyes, memory that struck me the hardest was the fact that not only were these women's bodies sacrificed without their agency to society and men, but to each other. Sophie and Maritine both shared their bodies with eachother, despite their desire to be separate. Maritine sees Sophie as a manifestation of her strife and depression, while Sophie goes as far as experiencing the rape of her mother. Its amazing how mothers and daughters emotional connection can push them together through a forced physical connection.

The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta

The Joys of Motherhood was probably the novel that interested me the most thus far in the course. I found the novel to be, more than anything else, about sacrifice. Nnu Ego is the protagonist of the story, born from Agbadi and Ona. I wanted so much to love Ona for her subversive behavior toward traditional gender roles. Her father grants her the privilege of never marrying, and being his forever, which appeared to be liberating. But the consequences of this lifestyle are great. First, though her stubborn indepedence makes her attractively strong to Agbadi, she is always in fear that he only loves her because he can never really have her. Second, she loses a lot of respect in her community, where wifedom and motherhood is praised, despite being so caging and exploitive to the women. Third, when she does have a child, her life begins it's end. Also, Ona, despite seeming admirable, is viewed in her culture as punishable, especially when she becomes the percieved cause of Agunwa, Agbadi's first wife. The death of Agunwa also, due to an exceptionally destructive tradition, results in the death of her slave, who proclaims before falling into the grave that she will come back to life as his daughter. Thus perpetuating the punishment for Ona's lifestyle by making her only daughter, Nnu Ego, one who lives as a slave to her family.
Nnu Ego's whole life is about sacrifice, but a crueler kind than I had ever imagined to be generated from motherhood. She gives up her happiness, choices and life for her children and her husband, all of whom do absolutely nothing for her and leave her to die without having any sort of contentment in her life. while they go on to have happier lives without her. The only things she gains in return for her sacrifices are the validation of taking on the highly respected role of being a mother, and a nice funeral provided by her son. Its ironic, how scoieties, which value motherhood so greatly, and castigate those who chose a different path, still make it such a torture to be a mother.

Annie John by Jamica Kincaid

There is something about a mother- daughter relationship. Unlike Annie, I grew up with an older sister, Claire. only a year and a half apart, we did everything together. The only thing we ever did seperately was our activities with my mom. For some odd reason, she preferred to have a lot of private time with each of us. She would steal me from school for lunches and leave claire to go to all of her classes. Then when I would come home from friend's houses, Claire and mom would be chatting in Mom's room with the door closed. I always felt that she wanted to have a special, but different relationship with both of us. And honestly, I adored her. When I was little I thought she was the smartest, most beautiful and interesting woman that ever lived. She could cook and clean and make things and paint rooms and tuck me in just right and make everyone laugh, etc, etc, etc. But then there was that point when I swear, out of no where, I just hated her. I was 11, it's a bad age for girls. So when I read Kincaid's portrayal of intense daughterly hatred, I assumed it was just a universal thing. That her book was explanatory. I figured that she was dramatizing a commonality amongst all adolesent girls, begining with early childhood, where the identity mainly is shaped by the mother and love for that mother. Then shifting to sudden that hatred for her, for whatever reason.
Then again, I see a lot of differences between Annie John and myself. I never didn't have to share my mom with my sister. The sense of belonging to one-another between mom and I was always interrupted with this needy other person. When I was young and longed for my mother, I felt like she longed for me too, and that we had this rebellous fun love that had to be hidden from my sensitive sister. As I grew older, i felt like my mom abandoned me for Claire, and I inturn wanted to rebel by not loving her as much back.
I sense that Annie's story is meant to be different in someway from most of the readers in virtue of the context that she is living within. That her culture somehow pushes her away from her mother in a way that I cannot understand as a situated knower, but Kinciad makes it unclear how so. Maybe as she matures and experiences her world she sees that her mom cannot protect her from her surroundings, and feels betrayed. And perhaps because she never had to share her mother with anyone else, the betrayal begins when she realizes that her mother has needs that only her father can fulfill. Without a sibling to cushion her feelings of neglect, she resorts to her intense fantasy world.
I feel as though Annie's confusing social identity makes her feel alienated from any sort of outsider understanding that she clearly longs for from others. This novel was certainly an interesting glimpse into the mother-daughter bond, and how extended awareness of the controlling outside world can tamper with it.

The House On Mango Street (continued)

Sorry, my computer messed up earlier and I never got to finish.
I was saying, that many of the female characters in The House On Mango Street are expressed as being apart from the world around them. Additionally, Cisneros continually throughout the novella describes them as looking out the window from inside. Esperanza's grandmother was wild until she was forced into marraige by her husband, and then spent the rest of her life looking out the window of her house instead of being who she wanted to be. Louie's girl cousin Marin is can't leave her house, and stands looking out the doorway all day. Mamacita arrives and sits all day by the window because, esperanza believes, she is afraid because she can't speak english. Rafeala is locked in her house by her husband and leans out the window too much. Etc. Etc. Etc. The more I read, the more I can see this displacement felt by these women in their home country. And the confusion as to where they belong.

The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

I have actually had to read this novella before, but honestly, the first time I opened it, read a few pages and shut it. I guess that I just didn't think it was worth my time because It seemed too brief and superficial to be meaningful. For our class, I reread it, and it is actually much better the second time. I tried to think of the story in the context of the "New Mestizo" and the life of Sandra Cisneros. We learned about the experience of Mexican-American women, as they feel that they constantly straddle the border of two cultures and never feel completely excepted into either. She described, in her youth retreating inside of herself and living as an observer of the world around her, more so than a participant. All of this information really added to reading the House on Mango Street. I noticed, more than the last attempt at finishing the book, the lives of the women. it seemed that all of them experienced the same sort of separateness form society. The first time I read the book, I thought that their distance form the outside world was due to the conditions of their surrounding, instead of an issue of identity. Esperanza stays inside and looks out the window

The Girl In the Tangerine Scarf, by Mohja Kahf

In light of our recent assigned reading for class, the artical "Going Global: The Transnational reception Of Third World Women", I treid to read The girl In The Tangerine Scarf without being too objective or subjective. I have never really been so concious of my text analysis before this novel, where i found it hard not to involve myself in the story, focusingon mine and Khandr's difference or sameness. Considering our possible topics, how white people in Indiana related to Indiana in general, I felt a huge sense of how different I was to the character. I didn't feel as though Monja Kahf wanted her nonmuslim reader to relate to this story as much a s she wanted to show us a picture of a different reality. by this, i mean that she went to no great effort to explain any Muslim tradition to her reader. She uses Arabic phrases and mentions how Kahdra and her family must do this or that or protect this,. all using term with no hint as to their meaning.
When i would read about her mother and father's very opinated view of americans, menaing of course, white americans, I felt like they were talking about me. I even started to feel a little dirty in how I have been socialized. Indiana, a state that borders kentucky (of which I am from) has always been a state that I have decided to despise, based on the small portion I have grown to know across the river from Louisville. in my mind, they are hoosiers and I am something completely unlike them. the "them" I refer to are the people that IU guess I have subconciously decided are white, somewhat trashy hoosiers who want to cut down Louisville's trees so they can build a bridge and steal our jobs and pollute our environment to commmute to work. Suddenly, when I read this book, I saw that, in the eyes of the Shammys, I may as well have unpius relations with every one of the hoosiers that I thought were so unlike me. The Shammy's seemed to define hoosiers the same way that I always have: White, trashy, unclean, wasteful. The difference is that the Shammys feel much more intensely about how one is clean or unclean, etc. and that I, therefor, more than likely would fit into such a mold.
I'm not saying all of this to express my distain for this family or to defend my own pride. On the contrary, I'm sure it actually gave me a little persepective into how a family like the Shammy family would feel, as they consistently face prejudice from these white people. It just makes me sad that The people of their community in Indiana make them hateful toward the land of Indiana and the poeple of all of the United States. It's certainly interesting perspective.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

I found this novel to be pretty fascinating, especially the way that Octavia Butler played with taking characters out of thier element to expose how good people and relationships change in different circumstances. When I started reading, I immediately like both the characters of Dana and Kevin. Dana is smart and kind and thoughtful, and Kevin seems so supportive and loving.

Dana, when she first travels back and see rufus, is very practical and stands her ground about her rights to human dignity. As the nvoel progresses, she changes slightly. She, mainly out of fear, becomes servile and reticent. he no longer seems to fight the system though she has strong convictions about the treatment of others.
In the prolong and beginning of the novel we see just how much kevin loves Dana-marrying her despite objections, calming her through this crisis, holds her at night which leads to his own journey back in time. but when he goes back into the south with her, he eventually changes despite his hopes to help free some slaves. He is controlling and unaware of the atrocities in how white people treat black people. Again, this shows how a person can be almopst wholly different in a new place/time.
This nvoel made me think about slavery in different term, as in how much people are own by outside influences. Perhaps we don't own the kind of people we are as much as we'd like to think we do. i'd like to believe that in any situation I would do the right thing. but perhaps instead we are all slaves to the society or circumstances we live in.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

On the first day of our Women in Literature class, we discussed the required reading and the main subject matter of reading the different experiences of (mainly colored) women. As a white female, I thought a bit that though this theme of the class would be extremely interesting, I wondered how much I would actually be able to relate to the characters, as visually and racially, they would be different from me. I assumed that their color would be the driving force in their novels. But in class, our professor made the point that though the heroines of our class novels would represent an image of a different race/ culture/ ethnicity, they are not meant to be a universalized version of that particular race/ culture/ ethnicity. In fact, to see, for example Pecola or Claudia from The Bluest Eye as a universalization of all black women's struggles would be a degradation of these unique and substantial characters. With this in mind, I was able to throw away my own sense of "otherness" and actually see myself in these characters, despite their additional struggle with racism.
When I read The Bluest Eye I mentally used both my similarities with the characters and our differences with them to understand who they were. Similarly to me, the characters have hardships within their families. They feel the sense that what they are given and who they are is simply not enough. Growing, possibly more so as a female or otherwise, I see that a lot of people are never getting enough of what they need to feel fullfilled. Additionally, they sometimes can't fill in the blanks of dissatisfaction with their own inner strength. When Claudia discusses her parents, especially her mother on the day that she is sick in bed, being more afraid of her mother than comforted by her presence, I felt how relatable Claudia is in the sense that sometimes, no matter what the issue, your parents can't always give you what you need. It has nothing to do with their intention or how much they love you, sometimes, something is just lacking.
Pecola, on the other hand, in the case of her appearence, is unattractive, her ugliness drives her to hate herself and her hatred toward herself allows her to become enveloped in ugliness. Most girls I know have some belief that they are too unattractive to get what they want out of life. Whether or not they are actually pretty is irrelavent. Most women just feel that if they were a little prettier, or could infact just be able to call themselves "pretty" 80 percent of their problems would be solved in life. With this mentality, girls wait for and subconciously beg for vocalized apporval of their appearence. When they get it, they typically have a mental sigh of relief. When none of their life's problems are actually solved, they assume that the previous approval was falsely given and that they are still not attractive enough, instead of recognizing the truth that no matter how pretty a woman is, it will never prove to actually solve any problems. I believ this cycle is similar to young Pecola's.
I used the diffences in the characters of The Bluest Eye to allow myself a new understanding. obviously, the issue of race and poverty are great in this novel. I've felt strained or hurt in my own life by conditions that are out of my control, but never have I felt marginalized and controlled by the sorts of hardships that these girls experience. imagining a life were the mainstream world in an unyielding manner hates, castigates, degrades people to the extent that they don't even get to own their victimhood, but in turn perpetuate the hatred in hating themselves and defending the oppressors is something I have never felt and barely gotten to know in my own suuroundings. Trying to understand how that feels and then applying it the characters and in turn knowing these characters and trying to understand how such oppresion could harm their sense of self, made The Bluest Eye vastly more interesting.