Final Paper

                                               

First of all I would like to thank the person who asked me to take this class, then of course my professor Guarino, who chose these incredible books and novels full of adventures and true facts about our society’s women. After taking this class, I feel like now I really know the reality of the women who have suffered everyday but still they didn’t give up and give their selves a new identity. By taking this course, I learned that there are many different ways to read books, novels, and poetry. I learned that how a one paragraph, a stanza, piece of commentary, or just a photograph can be looked at in different ways and how we can talk about it in long discussions. Before taking this course, I never really looked at any book that deeply, but now I know that how much importance a book holds. To appreciate the author’s talent, we should go deeply into it and gain a lot from it.

I think this course has just changed my way of thinking about women. Now I see myself at a different angle. I feel much more educated about women. The things that I learned about women in this course, I never even imagined before. I learned that how a woman sacrifices her own happiness for the sake of her family. To raise her child, she can do anything no matter how shameful or how stoop it is. “Krik? Krak?” is a best example to explain a “mother”.  The story “Night Women” was a story, which showed that how a mother prostituted next to her sleeping son to raise him. For her child she didn’t think about the society, all she thought of was her child. She didn’t even think of the consequences of her son getting to know about the truth.

I also learned that even though women do so much for their families, but men are always given more importance. The biggest facts that I learned about women were from the books called “Vagina Monologue”, “I’m an Emotional Creature”, “Push”, and the movie called “What I want my Words to do to You”.
                                    “GIRLS CAN’T CONTROL ANYTHING

BOYS CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT”

These two lines from “I’m an Emotional Creature” said everything to me. These lines show me the positive and the negative sides of human beings. Girls can’t control anything mean to me saying that they are useless, weak, and just a waste on the earth. Boys are the world. They can do anything they like and even use women in the way they like. I think these lines were the core of the course. But we have proved them wrong. Because as we read these books, we found out that women in the books didn’t give up. They faced the problems and society and overcame. “Vagina Monologue”, I think this book is not just a book; it’s a woman who is speaking for all the women. Reading this book is awareness about women. Yet it’s very uncomfortable to read at times, but like its said truth is not easy to be heard. I would it’s a very strong book and being a woman, we should all read it. “Push” is another book that was just an incredible book. I felt this book was a torture, but also a hope for women that if Precious can come out of her grieves and move on with her life then why not us. “What I want my Words to do to You” was also an incredible video to watch. It was a great chance to learn about these women in the jail, who have killed their spouses. Before taking this course, I haven’t seen a one video that what these women in the jail have gone through and how their life is now. Taking this course has helped me learned about them too.

            This course was also a great chance to go back to the history of the camp’s women and their lives after surviving. This course has taught me a lot about women. I’ve gained a lot more knowledge about them. I learned that how important education is in women’s life. If they are educated, they can fight for their rights a lot batter or I would say education makes women fearless about men. This course has proven the society’s views about women not being able to control anything. Women can do anything and can go very far in their lives leaving the men behind.

                                                                    Thanks very much, Prof. Guarino

                                                                                               

2 Or 3 Things

I think why authors write their biographies, is that they want to let the readers know about the real world. What they had to go through, how bad the situations were, how they were tortured by their own family, and how they suffered every moment without any food. Some authors write to let the reader know that how they came through the bad situations and made their own identity in the society. Some writes, because they want the world to know that they do exit and are famous people who survived out of the crises. The readers who are far from the reality, biographies give them the sense of understanding the situations of the real world. I would say biographies are awareness.

“Two or Three Things I know for Sure” written by Dorothy Allison is a biography of her life with her real life pictures in it. I think it was a good idea to put the real photos of the family in the novel, because pictures do speak. It’s a known fact that you can read a person face by looking at it that what this persons’ life like. Having the photos in novel, you can tell by looking at them that how the people in the family or relatives changed as they grew older. How their expressions or the way of living changed. I think photos connect you more to the novel. They give you extra interest to read. If you look at the picture, it gives you thinking and makes you read more. You look at it and say who this would be and why this person looking like this, why this person is happy or sad, or why he/she is holding this or that. So, I think it’s definitely a great idea to have the real photos in the novel.

“Two or Three Things I Know For Sure”, I think  is a very detailed biography. I think it’s little confusing if you read it once or not give much attention to it while reading it. To read this book, you really need some alone time to focus. I think it’s a very detailed and unique novel. I think she did good job by putting all the stories together that happened in her life with different people. This novel has some things similar to the other books that we read. In this novel, Allison when she was little girl, she also got sexually and physically abused by her stepfather. It’s just not few women in this world that say that someone raped them, there’s a lot like Dorothy Allison. “The man raped me. It’s the truth. It’s the fact”. It’s a fact of many women’s life. Some don’t tell they just consider suicide the better way to end the matter. Some, I would say are very courageous women who go through it and still comes out crystal clear. They face the world, face the facts and make their own identity. I think all the books/novels that we read, sexual and physical abuse was always there. I think it’s one of the top issues now days that need to be fixed. Men should be ashamed of their selves that whatever they are doing with these women is not right. They are all like their mothers and sisters except the ones who they will marry to or are married to. I think telling the stories through novels/books is the best way to make readers aware of these types of men. By reading it, it can help the girls to stay alert from the men and save their selves.

I think Dorothy Allison is just not a good writer, but there’s also truth in her writing. I think there are a lot of writers, who write just to make you believe on their made up stories and make money out of it. Whatever I read so far in my life, I never read anything like this author wrote when she was ending her story of life. She says, “I can tell you anything. All you have to believe is the truth”. What I got out of it that you only have to believe what you think is right, not what other say. I don’t know if I’m right, but I think it’s true. You should have trust in yourself first, then someone else. Because you know yourself better than the person in front of you who is telling you stories. I think it also applies to the safety of women from getting sexually and physically abused. If you know yourself completely, you know the world. You can protect your own self. Novels and books like “Two or Three Thing I Know For Sure” are also there to make you aware of your own identity and be aware of the world.

2 or 3 Things I Know For Sure

“Two or Three Things I Know For Sure” was somehow confusing for me to read at the beginning to till I read. I tried to remember two things and forget the third, if I remember the third I would forget the other two. So reading this book for me is just like its title. I kind of look at this novel as the other novel that we read called “Fun Home”. Just like in Fun Home, how author was going back and forth while writing the story, this book is kind similar to it. Fun Home was a tragicomic with all the imagery in it; this novel also includes real life photographs. The way of writing, imagery, and expressing the story are little different in these books, but the idea is same. I easily get confused while reading the stories where author changes the story a lot or goes back and forth in the timing of story. So, these two books are kind of like that. This story is based on author life, who is Dorothy Allison. It’s a story of Gibson women, who’s her mother, sisters, cousins, her aunts, and the men who loved them or married them and abused them. I think one of most important part of her life was her mother. Her mother was a beautiful woman and men wanted her. At the age of fifteen, her mother became pregnant with her by the boy her mom loved. But he deceived her mother and left them all alone and after that her mother stopped trusting men. “When he ran away, left her to raise me alone, she never trusted any man again”. I think that was the moment, which turned her mother from beautiful, ignorant, proud, happy and hopeful girl to a bitter, hard, tired and ugly woman. I think this is just not a story of her mother, it’s a story of every other woman who trusts the man of her dreams more than herself and at the end all she gets is deceive by that man and left all alone in the field. Allison grew up be different than her mom. I think because of her mother she chose to be different than her. She thinks herself as crispy, efficient, and a kind of person who do things that are necessary to do. But her aunt Dot says, “You mean and stubborn and completely Ruth’s daughter”. Her aunt describes her as a mean, stubborn, and an ugly girl. But Allison doesn’t care about what other say, she stay in her own world, so that she wouldn’t have to go through what her mother had to. She says, “I don’t hold grudges. I kick butt and keep moving”. She had a good bond with her mother. I think her mother was a kind of person who keeps a lot secret in their hearts. When Alison used to shuffle through the pictures in mamma’s box, there were so many faces with a lot stories. So, her mother was keeping a lot in her heart. I think by looking at her mother and also by what she had to go through in family, she didn’t want to become like her mother and that’s why she tries to do or be different than her mother. I mean she was abused mentally and sexually by her own family, which is a big obstacle that comes into a child’s life that keeps you away from moving on. I am just wondering that what else she will do in her life to move on. I looking forward to read more and find out about it. I think it’s an interesting story and also in some way it’s a story of every girl’s life, who’s abused physically, mentally, and sexually.

A Latter to Magda

There were some places, where I couldn’t figure out who Rosa really is and why she does what she does. The story of Rosa’s life has been changing for me from the beginning to the end, but there was one place where I could really understood her. It was the letter that she wrote to Magda about her true self, which really changed my point of view about her. After reading it I was really able to understand her situation that why she acts in the way she acts. I think she is a very true person. Whatever she did or acted like was all a part of her and her family’s reputation. I think she is one of the persons, who carry their true and very own identity, not the one that society likes. She was just being very responsible to carry on the life after all the suffering she went through that her cast or her high society would do. She comes from a very high and reputated family and I think that’s what motivated her to live with her past. She is the one, who remembered her past and lived with it while living in the American society. I have actually become a fan of her, after reading her letter. In the letter she talks about how people (Stella) change after happening all that. She talks about how much Stella hated/jealous of her daughter. Even when she sent her the shawl, she didn’t even bother to send it by registered mail, which probably tells that Stella is a very selfish and very irresponsible woman. Rosa writes to Magda, “She didn’t take the trouble to send it by registered mail! Even though I told her and told her. She has no heart”. Rosa reveals that Stella is a big layer. She lies for everything, even to live in the society. I think Rosa is a true person, because she didn’t care about the society. She smashed her store, because she thought people don’t care about the reality. They just live to show off.  She even left Stella, because she didn’t want Stella to say that she takes care of her. Rosa says that she can’t pretend that she is living a very happy life and forgot her past. So, if she can’t why she would do things according to Stella. Stella is a layer herself without any true identity. It was Stella who accused Magda of being an illegal child, even though she knew that she was not. Rosa was engaged to Andrzej and Magda was their legal daughter. Stella knows everything, but she always finds way to put false accusations on Magda. Rosa writes to Madga, “Stella has a naturally pornographic mind; she can’t resist dreaming up a dirty sire for you”. By reading this letter, I think Stella is not a person to trust. She can’t keep up her own identity. She changes and lies to live. On the other side Rosa, she the one who lives for herself, her daughter, and with her past. This letter really forced me to look at Rosa in a different way. Now, I don’t think Rosa punishes herself by living alone. I think she lives a life that makes her feel comfortable, not guilty. She kept up with her own identity, which makes her a unique person.

The Shawl cont......

‘The Shawl” is not very a positive story to read for the reader. I haven’t finished the book yet, but it really seems hopeless that Rosa Lublin will ever change. I think the story of Rosa is very lifeless. I means she just don’t want to move on in her life. She’s just sticked to her past. She just can’t leave it behind. I think her destiny is really giving her good opportunities to get out of her past, but it’s like she don’t want to have them. She just wants to punish herself by not having any kind of happiness in her life. Sometimes, she tries but she just can’t get over her grieves. I really think that she has become mentally challenged or it could be that no one can really understand her situation that why she do things that she do.

After getting out of the camps and smashing her own antique store, she went to Miami, Florida. She is living their all alone. Her niece is in New York. She has on one else to live with. She is still all alone in her grieves of her daughter Magda. “She had no one but her cold niece in Queens, New York”. She makes her life live in poverty. She just stays in her room and only gets out to do any important work like “laundry”. Her destiny gave her another chance to move on in her life. She meets this seventy-one years old man named Simon Persky in the laundry. Somehow, they get into conversation and talk about their selves and their past. They found out that they were both from Warsaw and meeting in Miami. I think this was not a coincidence that they met, but it was Rosa’s luck that was giving her another chance, but I don’t think that she really wants it. In the laundry he helps her doing her laundry and put her cloths in the carriage. He asks her to help her with the cart to her house and anyhow she agrees. She does make excuses to get rid of him, but he handles it well. She says, “You got internal warning about talking to a stranger”. In replies he tells her his name and makes himself not a stranger anymore. He tells her about his life and then she tells him about her life. She tells him how she smashed up her own store, because she like the people or I would say she just want to give herself more pain. Persky realizes that she is living in her past and she needs to move on. So he advices her, “You can’t live in the past”. But Rosa probably didn’t head him. Then in way he asked her to come to self-serving cafeteria and she agrees. I was really surprised about that how come she agreed. For while, I thought that she is probably interested in him and want to move on with him. But, it was my dilution. In the cafeteria, they had conversation about themselves and the family. After a while, she left all alone just like before and past life comes back. When she gets home she receives Madga’s shawl from Stella. And she goes wild again by kissing it and by crying over it. So, no matter what happens in her life, she comes back to where she starts off. I really thought that Persky is the one who will change her life, but not really. I think no one can change her till she decides to change herself. I hope that the ending of this book will be hopeful. I’m really hoping that she change, if not I don’t think it’s going to be a positive story for the reader.

"The Shawl"

“The Shawl” is a very small, unique, and extremely powerful story written by Cynthia Ozick. It’s a small story, but there are so many details that are hard to follow. I found it hard to keep up everything in my mind when I was reading it. It’s a very emotional story of a mother, her daughter, and her fourteen years old niece. I would call this story, “a Magda’s story”, because it’s really about her life and death. Rosa is Magda’s mother and just like every other mother she was trying really hard to protect her daughter from the guards. Magda is only few months old and a very unique child. She is a good child, she wouldn’t cry at all and also I think she had some sort of disabilities and because of them she didn’t act like a normal child. “Rosa believed that something had gone wrong with her vocal cords, with her windpipe, with the cave of her larynx; Magda was defective, without a voice; perhaps she was deaf; there might be something amiss with her intelligence; Magda was dumb”. Even then, I think Magda was a good child and because of her innocence she survived for some time at the camps. Rosa loved her daughter a lot just like any other mothers and that’s why she always had fear that Magda was going to die soon. Fear of Magda’s death was making her really weak. She couldn’t take care of herself. “She was afraid to fall asleep; she slept with the weight of her thigh on Magda’s body”. I feel really bad for Rosa, who lived a life of fear of losing her child. She knew that if the soldiers find her baby, Madga’s dead and that was the reason that she would always keep Magda wrapped in the shawl, which has been protecting Magda for months. But, she didn’t know that her own kin will deceive her. Stella who was always jealous of Magda and wanted to be wrapped in the shawl that Magda was wrapped in. She was the one of the reasons that caused Magda’s death, because she took the shawl away from her. Because Madga didn’t have the shawl around her, guards found out about her and threw her into the electrified fence. Even Rosa couldn’t do anything, because if she had gone to save her, she would’ve ended up dyeing also. She was not able to do anything. So, she took Magda’s shawl and put it into her mouth and tried to feel her Magda in it. “She filled her mouth with it, stuffed it in and stuffed it in, until she was swallowing up the wolf’s screech and tasting the cinnamon and almond depth of Magda’s saliva; and Rosa drank Magda’s shawl until dried”. I think Rosa suffered a lot. She was a very helpless mother, who couldn’t even do anything else rather than feeling Magda in the shawl. “The Shawl” which was probably the savior of Madga, but at the end it was also the reason of Magda’s death. I think the author called this story “The Shawl”, because the shawl was the protector of Magda, but it was also the reason that took a daughter away from her mother. Overall, I think it a good story. It has a lot innocence of a relationship of a mother and daughter. Even though they were in the camps, but they were very close to each other. It was the reason that Magda’s first word was Ma. It shows that no matter where you are, a relationship of a mother and a daughter is always strong.

HoPe CoNtInUeS…………..

                                      

The time went by and finally back at the house in fall. “Fall”, which I think refers to the family’s situation also (mentally, physically, and economically). Just like in fall all the leaves fall, grass turns brown, and sign of winter, snow the bad time of year comes. I think the family’s situation was very similar to it. I think this novel has connection with everything. Just like fall, the family was all broken/fallen by all the bad times they had to go through. Coming back for them was very fortunate, but at the same time for society they were not respected people at all. They had lost their identity, marked people, and they were very mentally disturbed also. They were not considered in high/mid level society at all. When they tried to get friendly with those same people who were nice to them, they would also ignore them. “Now when we ran into these same people on the street they turned away and pretended not to see us”(115). I think society should help them come out of their grief, but they wouldn’t because of arrogance. I think this family is very brave. They still have hopes and they are trying to get over with their past and move on with their life leaving the past behind. They are not thinking about what they lost, but what they have to gain. They are happy to be home. They feel that they are lucky that they have home to come back to, because there are a lot of other people who had nowhere to go. “Many people who had come back with us on the train had no homes to return to at all”(109). They know that their house is not in good condition, but still they have a hope that they will make their house just like it was before. They will sleep on separate beds all alone and they will have good food to eat. They will go back to school and make up for the years they have missed. They will dress like other students and they’ll change their name. They will have good food to eat again. Their mother started to work at other’s houses and bought her children new dress, house things, and good food, etc. She even worked when she had a day off to get some extra money for her family. “On her days off she took in washing and ironing to make a few extra dollars” (129). I think their mother is the bravest character in this novel. Because even being mentally and physically, and economically disturbed (cheated by Milt Parker), she didn’t give up. She tried her best to give her children the best life she can. When they came back home, there was hardly anything left in it, but still by working hard she bought the things that they needed to live. I think this family is very strong. I also think that in some way it’s a happy ending story. This family has high hopes. They know how to leave the past behind and look for good future. I think moving on in life is the only way to have a better life and this family has proven that. They are moving on with a lot of hopes, which is the only way one can come out of his grieves. I think this story is very powerful for the readers who are also emotionally and physically disturbed. It can be a good way for them to find a right path and move on with their lives. I think Julie Otsuka has done a great job writing this novel.