Saturday, May 14, 2011

Final Blog Assignment

                What experiences define a woman’s life? The answer is all of them. Why should a woman’s defining life moments be any different than everyone else’s? A woman will have her life defined by experiences that are not exclusive to any one group. The spectrum of human emotion is not foreign to any member of the race and likewise each case of defining experiences should inevitably be unique to the individual and their life. Anger, love, oppression, happiness, sadness, these are all things that are felt by women and are a byproduct of their humanity.
                I feel like there is this stereotype out there in society about which experiences women feel. As if they should only be content to be defined by tradition rather than exploring their own being. For instance, in the story of the Mirabal sisters “In the Time of the Butterflies” Minerva aspires to be a lawyer so that she may fight for justice and right what she perceives to be the wrongs perpetrated against the people by the Trujillo regime, contrary to her sister whom is rather content to be a simple housewife. Now there is nothing wrong with the choice of stay at home mother however, it is certainly not the only choice and Minerva’s choice would equally define her as a woman.
                It is just like that old saying ‘life is what you make it’, there is no cookie cutter example of what is and what is not, a defining moment in the lives of women. To make the claim that only one set of experiences can lead to successful womanhood is to take away the freedom of the individual and continue the viscous cycle of oppression in which women have been victimized for too long.
                Many wonderful things are celebrated in women’s lives however; I do believe it all comes down to the pursuit of happiness. Whether the woman actually succeeds in her pursuit is irrelevant so long as she is actually able to engage in it. To be able to pursue the basic human want of happiness is critical in every person life. The reason why this is a cause for celebration in women’s literature is that so often they are robbed of this opportunity through oppressive traditions often orchestrated by their male counterparts. To pursue happiness is to rebel against the machine and to take a journey towards greater personal freedom. A classic example would be the case of Precious in the story, “Push”. Precious is able to overcome the oppression of her social environment and is able to pursue a little bit of her own personal happiness out of a desperately bleak situation. That is certainly a cause that should be celebrated. Another case in which a woman is able to pursue happiness but is unsuccessful would be the Haitian housekeeper in “Between the Pool and the Gardenias”. The woman pursues her dream of motherhood and this is her pursuit of happiness. To her the defining moment in her life was to be mothering a child, while this story had a rather tragic ending for just a moment she was able to pursue happiness and that should not be overlooked.
                We all need to vent sometimes, for women the ability to vent anger is another key element of the experiences which define women’s lives. A source of anger which I have noticed throughout many of the readings is the perception of women vassals for male sexual enjoyment yet at the same time female sexuality is something to just be ignored. There are just too many cases of sexual abuse against women and I think that for the better part of human history that female sexual rights have been ignored is a focal point of a lot of that anger. The co-partner in crime to sexual abuse has to be the pent up frustration over not being able to express themselves. “The Vagina Monologues” probably best exemplifies this as it is a book which broke barriers for tackling this very issue. The fact that Eve Ensler only recently undertook this project and that for some of the women interviewed it was the very first time that they had been asked about their own sexuality is even more astounding. For how many centuries did women have to go without being able to express their most personal feelings? Personally I am shocked there was not a more radical revolt on the behalf of women everywhere over this pent up frustration.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Two or three things i know for sure

Dorothy Allison, throughout her book, writes down in italics the little bits of wisdom she has learned over the years to be true and one of these truths that have particular resonance is about one of the most basic things we are all taught in life. She writes, “Two or three things I know, two or three things I know for sure and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.”
                This phrase has appeared in one form or another all throughout the most basic teachings of life. Even as far back as the bible the phrase love others as you would love yourself appears. To be beautiful to each other as we must love each other and until we are able to be beautiful to each other we will never know beauty. For too long in our world there has been suffering perpetrated by ugly hatred and the beauty of it all cannot possibly be seen unless we begin to love one another.
                To be beautiful to each other is a much simpler task than to be ugly. Being beautiful could be as easy as tracing your niece’s face with your fingers as Allison does.  Being ugly to one another requires scheming and anger, things that detract from life and hide the beauty of it all from us. Without being beautiful to one another we will never be able to see life for what it should truly be. Life spent making the lives of others more difficult and thereby your own existence less fruitful is a tragedy. Conversely a life spent experiencing joy and bringing joy to others is a life that has been enjoyed and one in which happiness has been pursued to its fullest extent.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Two or three things i know for sure

                In Dorothy Allison’s “Two or Three Things I know for Sure” she has an interesting way of telling her story. Not only does she write about her life and that of her family but she also manages to include some photos pertaining to the people involved in the story. The photos are especially interesting to me because without Dorothy Allison’s writing you would never guess what was really going on and could not hope to appreciate the significance in some instances.
                For example, there is one instance in which there is a photo of a young girl curiously examining a rifle and in the next aiming at nothing in particular. In the photo there is no malice in this young woman’s eyes and all of her actions, as depicted in the photo, point to a person with a passing curiosity towards the weapon. However, there is much more to this photo than meets the eye and this becomes a common theme in “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”. Allison writes, “I know. I’m not supposed to talk about how long it took me to wash him out of my body – how many targets I shot…”. You would never know that the woman in the photo is imagining taking a shot at her abusive stepfather when she aims that weapon at the target. Allison is allowing us to be privy to the back story of every photograph and thereby enabling readers to gain access the valuable details which make the photo relevant.
                It would seem that one of the things that Dorothy Allison knows for sure is that there is always more to something if you look under the surface. In her photos it is impossible to understand the context  without Allison’s assistance and she wants us to come away knowing this, that most things are not what they appear to be.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

the shawl

Is Rosa crazy? Absolutely.  It is not possible to destroy a successful business and thereby your livelihood, move to Miami so that you may live in a life of squalor all the while praying for the arrival of a shawl, which by the way you believe to be magic in that it sustains life for days and is somehow an embodiment of your niece, whom you view as your daughter, who has been deceased for decades. If someone can read this story and not gain the impression that Rosa is a bit off mentally, then they recognize a different definition of the word crazy then most.
                Rosa moves to Miami after smashing up her antique store in New York as a way of both lashing out against those who do not understand the suffering she had to endure back in Poland but also because she wanted to escape from her evil and almost devil-like niece Stella. Almost completely normal if you take out the, my niece is evil in the flesh bit. It is also incredibly hypocritical of Rosa to claim that Stella was responsible for Magda’s death. Had Stella ran after her daughter not only would Stella still be dead but she too would have shared in Magda’s tragic fate, this false choice that Rosa believes Stella had is nearly identical to the same false choice that Rosa had during the march to the camp. Rosa could have stepped out of line and attempted to give Magda away to a stranger but she was able to reason in her mind that it would only result in the deaths of both of them and that therefore she would not attempt to save her life because it would be in vain.
                So why should Rosa not blame herself equally for Magda’s death as she blames Stella? It can only be because she is being a hypocrite and treating her niece who also had to endure the hell that was the Holocaust along with her for not jumping into that electric fence alongside her daughter.