ENG 3298 Blog

 "When does the charwoman come? When can one use the bathroom? When is one allowed to use the lavatory?  you may laugh, but these are not so simple in a hiding place. Pg.290 Anne Frank the Diary  word count: 291      Anne Franks's story is one that is unheard of and irreplaceable. Frank writes about how she basically grew up hiding through a time in which her family was sought after by the germans. She writes about their daily life when things are happening to describe how her family lives. Anne describes how they bathe, how they talk to one another, how they eat, and how they use the bathroom. Meanwhile, her family is just trying to make it seem normal to do normal family things like celebrating birthdays. Anne is still doing normal childhood things like reading, and math. All while her family is under persecution not knowing whether they will be found and sent to a camp where they believe they could potentially get gassed. She describes the family find...

  "You don't know me as well, but I assure you I can stop at any time"  From Times and Places / Emily Hahn Pg. 354 Word Count:321      From Times and Places was an interesting section that talked about opium addiction. Emily Hahn discussed how she became addicted to opium and what she did in order to stop her opium addiction. The story of how she always knew she wanted to try opium too is so interesting. In a way, her assimilation into Chinese culture from America was her use of opium and her addiction. Emily Hahn learned all about the ways of life through smoking and sitting there for hours talking about politics, literature, and many other topics. Emily made it seem as though this was just a normal step in her life a comfort thing in society.  In a way it's almost like her western views were shifted after starting opium, opium changed her views to line up with Chinese culture. In the text, Emily Hahn also talks about how many other western people are add...

"But it is a wasteful system, a system I have no time for." Pg.560 From Blackberry Winter / Margaret Mead Word Count:281      Margaret Mead discussed anthropology and how she was taught how to do field studies. The used her discovery of Samoa culture. Mead discussed how she was taught how to do field studies by her professor and how she believed that it was a terrible system in order to study cultures out in the field. She discussed how she thought that photography and other systems were better to examine and learn from other cultures. She wants other students to want to learn from the system that she goes through. Margaret Mead then goes into the fact that she used this method in order to learn the samoa culture. How it was implemented and how she learned at all the different villages and stops she made along the way. She discussed how the way she was able to implement herself into the families and have discussions that she learned more in 9 months about adolescent gir...

"Yes, I was very lucky- lucky to be over thirty, but not much over it... My heart and stomach and all other organs were in perfect order. At the same time, I was old enough to be tough, I wouldn't break, and I wasn't like the ninas and the katyas." Pg.306 From Journey into the Whirlwind Eugenia Semyonova Ginzburg Word Count: 267      Eugenia Semyonova Ginzburg's story is one that is very different from all the other imprisonment stories we have read about so far. Eugenia Semyonova Ginzburg told her story on the basis of she was a member of the communist party just in prison for the wrong reasons suspected of espionage. She goes on to explain what happened in the prison and her interactions with all these women and her captures. Eugenia Semyonova Ginzburg's story is a little different due to the fact that she talks about all this torture but doesn't ever talk about what they did to her. She definitely was tortured, she would hear all of it. Eugenia Semyono...

" The child we had, Robert L. and I had born dead, he died in the war too: doctors didn't usually go out at night during the war, they hadn't enough gas. So I'm on my own. Why should I husband my strength?  There's nothing for me to fight for. No one can know my struggle against visions of the black ditch." Pg. 237 From the War Marguerite Duras  Word Count:288      From the war is an account from Marguerite Duras about her husband and his coming back from war. She talks about how she would wait for days to figure out if he was alive or not going to the "center". Marguerite Duras's account shows not only how it impacted her husband but how it impacted her throughout the whole time. He was her rock, and Robert was her will to live. The quote from above exhibits this as she had lost her newborn, and had no husband around. She was waiting to hear or see from him, she was completely alone. Robert was the only thing that kept her going there was noth...

" I knew it was useless to worry about torture the interrogator described it was to try and figure out ways to outsmart him. If I was to survive, I must play the game." Pg.371 When heaven and earth came together Le Ly Hayslip Word Count:350      When heaven and earth came together is a very intense story of Le Ly Hayslip getting caught thrown into prison and tortured. She was tortured for things and treated cruelly for helping the Viet Cong. Le Ly Hayslip helped them not be seen, s he would wear 3 different shirts that had meanings in order to communicate to the Cong. This text demonstrates how intelligent Le Ly Hayslip was and how she could "play the game" and outsmart everyone. She would use the shirts in order to demonstrate how she could outsmart everyone, in which when the Republicans were coming, she picked up a pail and walked along the road collecting crops and pretending to look like an innocent young girl that brings her family honor, and when she got ou...

 "her rimless half-glasses glittered, and the precarious bun on the top of her head trembled as she shook her head. "Oh, my dears those are much too hard for me. Suppose we give you pretty English names." Pg. 671-672  The Gift of Passage Santha Rama Rau  Word Count: 278     The quote I chose was one which I believed showed the idea of colonization and oppression that these little girls had to go through. The first part of this text is talking about Santha Rama Rau and her sister going to an English school. In which the school decided to take their Indian names from them and give them English ones. The idea of a grown woman giving you a name, that's not your name because it's too difficult is traumatic. These girls have to start going by English names in which they might forget who they are and where they come from. These Santha Rama Rau and her sister also feel like they don't fit anywhere due to their culture. Although they had to change their way of l...

 "she was narrow-minded. She couldn't bear, for instance, to see women in masculine attire: wearing jeans was disgusting." Pg.192 The price of my soul Bernadette Devlin. Word Count: 254      Bernadette Devlin demonstrated how she was raised throughout this text, in how she found her love for politics. Devlin talked about how from a very young age she showed pride in her Irish heritage and won a contest speaking about poems fighting for Northern Ireland. She sparked something in herself to fight for her idea of northern Ireland. Although her sisters were very different from her, she was able to face people who hated her ideas. Which inevitably lead her to a school that only taught her about the Irish and not about English. Although it also come with challenges and forced her to grow and fight for what she believed in.       The quote above demonstrates the ideas in which she faced that impacted her time at school. Even though she was being taught...

 "run quickly and go with your father. see if you can make him laugh."" so I would set out, and begin to play the child I no longer was." PG. 155 The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway Word Count:277     Jill Ker Conway does a fantastic job of demonstrating the reality of life in the working class in Australia. Her family used it in order to feed their family and have money for the family to survive. Throughout the text, Jill Ker Conway talks about how the dry season was impacting her family and how she could see her family's anxieties start to come out, due to their concern for their life, and their family. Although her family began to have troubles due to the dry season, in which they lost farms and families money, the ability to live and feed their families/cattle. While also the lack of rain would also lead to bushfires that could destroy the families' whole way of life.     I used the quote to demonstrate how Jil Ker Conway felt as a child see...