I have always done very well with writing essays, especially narratives. As long as I can organize the subject of my thoughts into different paragraphs, I can write a fairly good essay. Using creative writing to write essays, I think, is actually quite fun.
I really enjoyed the essay Lenses. Although the author talked mostly about binoculars and microscopes, the essay made me think of glasses; how some people have rose colored lenses while others have black lenses and how your lenses on how you view the world can change on a minute to minute basis.
The author talks in great detail about the microscope and how she liked to look at pond water. She mentions how the little bulb would heat the surface she put the slide on, and how the pond water would dry up and the little organisms would swim in what was left of the pond water. For some reason she enjoyed this part, which seems a little dark to me. That would be like a giant setting the corners of her house on fire and watching as she and her family scrambled towards the middle of their home to escape the flames and stay alive.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Night Women
Out of the two stories that we read on Tuesday, Night Women was my favorite. While the main point of the story was a bit depressing, the way that everything was worded was so beautiful that I couldn't help but keep reading.
Night Women was from the point of view of a woman--who we assumed liked in the poorer parts of Haiti--who is a prostitute. She talks about her clients in the story and how they come to her barring gifts for her and her son, which leads me to believe that she is a higher class sex worker, much like escorts in America. She talks about the women who have to pick up men on the street and how they brush the stars out of their hair, which made me think of a scene in the book Wicked; one of the characters refers to his semen as "blue diamonds" when he sees something shimmering on his lover's skin. This may sound nasty, but what if the stars they brush out of their hair is the bodily fluid of the men they pick out on the street?
She also talks about how her clients lay with their backs on her mat, which I'm assuming is where she sleeps. This leads me to believe that she does all the work, contrary to what usually comes to mind when someone mentions sex work. Perhaps that's why she is more of a high class call girl.
From the details of her description of herself, I picture her as a young woman with copper skin and dark hair. She describes herself as a woman in-between day and night, so I imagine she is golden brown like the sunset. Her eyebrows are thin half moons and she has lovely cheekbones. She knows she is beautiful and thinks that, once she gets out of sex work, she can become the goddess she was meant to be with hibiscus flowers in her hair.
Night Women was from the point of view of a woman--who we assumed liked in the poorer parts of Haiti--who is a prostitute. She talks about her clients in the story and how they come to her barring gifts for her and her son, which leads me to believe that she is a higher class sex worker, much like escorts in America. She talks about the women who have to pick up men on the street and how they brush the stars out of their hair, which made me think of a scene in the book Wicked; one of the characters refers to his semen as "blue diamonds" when he sees something shimmering on his lover's skin. This may sound nasty, but what if the stars they brush out of their hair is the bodily fluid of the men they pick out on the street?
She also talks about how her clients lay with their backs on her mat, which I'm assuming is where she sleeps. This leads me to believe that she does all the work, contrary to what usually comes to mind when someone mentions sex work. Perhaps that's why she is more of a high class call girl.
From the details of her description of herself, I picture her as a young woman with copper skin and dark hair. She describes herself as a woman in-between day and night, so I imagine she is golden brown like the sunset. Her eyebrows are thin half moons and she has lovely cheekbones. She knows she is beautiful and thinks that, once she gets out of sex work, she can become the goddess she was meant to be with hibiscus flowers in her hair.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Short stories part 2
In class, we read the short story The Falling Girl. Everyone in my group finished reading it before me and started discussing it, so I was very confused while reading. They were talking about how they thought the narrator was an old woman looking back on her life and watching it flash before her eyes. The only mention of an old woman, however, is when the narrator talks about how, on the lower floors, only old women fall to the ground.
Due to the fact that this story only talks about women falling from this building, I considered that the author was making a statement about women in general. The first thing that popped into my mind was eating disorders. Women are constantly comparing themselves to other women, just like Marta did with the girl that was falling above her. The girl above her fell faster and was going to reach the goal before Marta, which reminded me of the phrase "you can never be too thin." Women and girls (not excluding the boys and men who have eating disorders, but in order to make a point, I am focusing on the women and girls) will starve themselves or binge and purge in order to lose weight as fast as they can instead of eating healthy and exercising. Marta and the other girls could have just taken the elevator down to get to the party, but they wanted to get there as fast as they could, so naturally they jumped off the building to get there. Skydiving is faster than waiting for the plane to land, right?
The whole point of the story is that people will kill themselves in order to get what they want. Again, comparing this to an eating disorder, people will starve themselves or binge and purge themselves to death on the premise of being thin. Society has killed hundreds of people with the idea that human skeletons are beautiful, just as society has killed hundreds with the idea that they needed to get to the party as fast as they could. So fast, that they forgot there are stairs and elevators that could take them down safely.
Due to the fact that this story only talks about women falling from this building, I considered that the author was making a statement about women in general. The first thing that popped into my mind was eating disorders. Women are constantly comparing themselves to other women, just like Marta did with the girl that was falling above her. The girl above her fell faster and was going to reach the goal before Marta, which reminded me of the phrase "you can never be too thin." Women and girls (not excluding the boys and men who have eating disorders, but in order to make a point, I am focusing on the women and girls) will starve themselves or binge and purge in order to lose weight as fast as they can instead of eating healthy and exercising. Marta and the other girls could have just taken the elevator down to get to the party, but they wanted to get there as fast as they could, so naturally they jumped off the building to get there. Skydiving is faster than waiting for the plane to land, right?
The whole point of the story is that people will kill themselves in order to get what they want. Again, comparing this to an eating disorder, people will starve themselves or binge and purge themselves to death on the premise of being thin. Society has killed hundreds of people with the idea that human skeletons are beautiful, just as society has killed hundreds with the idea that they needed to get to the party as fast as they could. So fast, that they forgot there are stairs and elevators that could take them down safely.
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