One thing that I appreciate about the Vagina Monologues is that they say the things that women only wish they could say. Society has forced women to believe that everything going on "down there" has to be kept a secret but this book publicized it. She praised the vagina and put a face on it making it a more comfortable topic for women as well as everyone else to discuss.
My angry Vagina was about all the horrible things that happen to vagina's that was never explored or talked about. Eve Ensler talks about things such as putting a thicke wad of cottom inside the vagina or having the doctor put on these big gloves and stick things inside the vagina and tell the woman to "relax the vagina". I personally never felt comfortable enough to talk about these things with anyone so reading this made me feel a little embaressed for a second and then as it went on I started feeling a little comfortable. I was raised to believe that certain subjects such as what goes on down there should be kept private but Ensler wrote about it for everyone to read. The language she uses is similar to what I say when I have certain issues with the vagina. Sometimes I wish I could say half of the things she says about how some things we go through are uncomfortable or how she wishes that things would change in order to work with tenderness of the vagina. I felt like she just came out and said everything I wanted to say for me. I felt as if she gave a face, a name, a personality, to my vagina as if she humanized it and made it personal.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
"Night Woman" by Edwidge Danticat
This story is about a single mother who is struggling to take care of her son. In order to provide for him, she takes on a job as a prostitute working during the night. She takes men home and fulfills her job around her sleeping son, only a curtain away. When her son ask's her about what she does and why she gets all dressed up she simply reply's "im waiting for angels to come". With her son getting older she starts becoming worried that he is gonna find out about what she does so she comes up with this lie. If her son was to ever ask her who the man is that is with her she was gonna tell him it was his father, that "an angel has brought him back from heaven for a while.
This story is about the life and hard times of any single mother who has to do whatever possible to provide a means for their family because her sons father decided to "disappear with the nights shadows a long time ago". This mother decides to become a night woman or a prostitute in order to take on this challenge of life. In order to protect her sons innocence, she lies to him. She denies him the truth about their true financial issues and struggles and the truth about what low down dirty thing she has to do to men but she keeps his hope alive. She would rather him think about the positive in the world, heaven, the angels, the fact that his father who had left probably to be with another woman of the night would soon come back.
This single mother wanted the world to seem like heaven to her son to keep his hope alive rather then revealing him to the horrible truth of it all.
This story is about the life and hard times of any single mother who has to do whatever possible to provide a means for their family because her sons father decided to "disappear with the nights shadows a long time ago". This mother decides to become a night woman or a prostitute in order to take on this challenge of life. In order to protect her sons innocence, she lies to him. She denies him the truth about their true financial issues and struggles and the truth about what low down dirty thing she has to do to men but she keeps his hope alive. She would rather him think about the positive in the world, heaven, the angels, the fact that his father who had left probably to be with another woman of the night would soon come back.
This single mother wanted the world to seem like heaven to her son to keep his hope alive rather then revealing him to the horrible truth of it all.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.
Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.
My analysis
This poem is about the two countries that Nye represents being both Palistanian and American. She is using the word skin to describe herself, what people see when they look at her. People see her skin eating and walking and taking part of the every day activities but no one actually knows what is going on behind her skin. When you look at her you see a regular lady not knowing who she really is just as people brush feathers away without taking the time to really find out what it is.
People may see skin do these things but "skin felt it was never seen". She was never seen for who she really was, a Palastanian American but she was just seen by her skin. Nye believed that this skin that was only seen by the ignorant eye had hope. That her skin can not only cover up whatever is going on inside like healing over the "scarred places" but skin can breathe hope that it will one day be recognized for what it really is.
In the end of the peom Nye writes about how behind the skin is a secret. Skin holds memories of her heritage, of her culture, and of who she really is. Skin also thanks the people who took time to explore and to accept these other cultures. Without the people who travel to far places, who accept other cultures and places, she would not have been created and would not have been a mixture of two countries.
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.
Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.
My analysis
This poem is about the two countries that Nye represents being both Palistanian and American. She is using the word skin to describe herself, what people see when they look at her. People see her skin eating and walking and taking part of the every day activities but no one actually knows what is going on behind her skin. When you look at her you see a regular lady not knowing who she really is just as people brush feathers away without taking the time to really find out what it is.
People may see skin do these things but "skin felt it was never seen". She was never seen for who she really was, a Palastanian American but she was just seen by her skin. Nye believed that this skin that was only seen by the ignorant eye had hope. That her skin can not only cover up whatever is going on inside like healing over the "scarred places" but skin can breathe hope that it will one day be recognized for what it really is.
In the end of the peom Nye writes about how behind the skin is a secret. Skin holds memories of her heritage, of her culture, and of who she really is. Skin also thanks the people who took time to explore and to accept these other cultures. Without the people who travel to far places, who accept other cultures and places, she would not have been created and would not have been a mixture of two countries.
Monday, February 7, 2011
19 Varieties of Gazelle poem analysis
TWO COUNTRIES
Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray t
Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray t
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