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.