Women Writing Worldwide Spring 2023 Blog

Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman By- Ava Daniels In 1959, Eva Hoffman emigrated with her family from Poland to Canada. In Lost in Translation, she uses this excerpt to talk about this transition and how it impacted her life. In the start of the reading, she talks about how she spent her days learning new words and expressions. Hoffman did not have a private tutor or teacher to teach her these things, so instead she learned new words and expressions through conversations she would have, tv shows, and other interactions. This reminds me of when I went to Australia and had to connect Australian words, dialect, and sayings to what we say here in America. "When my friend Penny tells me that she's envious, or happy, or disappointed, I try laboriously to translate not from English to Polish but from the word back to its source" (388). In this quote, Hoffman is describing how she would learn expressions and how it was hard at first. Hoffman's struggle with losing her nativ...

 Zami : a New Spelling of my Name / Audre Lorde By: Ava Daniels Audre Lorde wrote Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, which was released in 1982. This passage offers a potent examination of Lorde's identity as a Black poet and how the social and political climate of her era—including the effects of war on her life—shaped her experiences. Lorde was raised in Harlem, New York, and was born in 1934, during the height of the Great Depression. She talks about the prejudice and poverty that she encountered as well as the strong sense of community that existed among Black families. Lorde's experiences as a young Black woman during the 1950s and 1960s were shaped by the social and political context of the time, including the Civil Rights Movement, the feminist movement, and WW2. A lot of this excerpt was based around Audre Lorde's early stages of life. Growing up during this time as a black female was not easy to say the least. On top of that, she also grew up poor. Even though the fa...

  Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston By- Ava Daniels      Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston is a seminal work of folklore and anthropology that illustrates the vibrant culture of African American communities in the rural South. Hurston's examination of voodoo, a difficult and frequently misunderstood religious discipline with origins in West Africa, is one of the book's most intriguing features. Hurston references voodoo as a "way of life" as opposed to a religion. She describes her encounters with voodoo practitioners in Louisiana, as well as the rituals and beliefs they shared with her.       Hurston's emphasis on voodoo's relationship to African cultural history is one of the most fascinating features of her writing about the practice. She describes how enslaved Africans brought voodoo to the US and how it developed over time as a means for African Americans to preserve their cultural identity in the face of tyranny. Hurston's writing a...

Meatless Days by Sara Suleri By- Ava Daniels      Sara Suleri, a Pakistani-American author, explores her youth in Pakistan, her experiences as a woman, and her family's history in the excerpt Meatless Days . The passage combines autobiography with social commentary as Suleri considers Pakistan's political, social, and cultural landscapes as well as the difficulties experienced by women in a patriarchal society. The idea of memory is one of the book's major themes. Suleri discusses her recollections of her family, her youth, and her experiences as a woman in her writing while also considering how these memories have influenced who she is today. She also looks at the concept of communal memory and how a community or a country's recollections can influence its history and identity. Suleri also draws attention to the difficulties experienced by women in Pakistan, such as assault and gender discrimination, through her own experiences. She writes of her mother and grandmother...

Motherwit / Onnie Lee Logan By- Ava Daniels "I've seen so many and there are so many different ways a baby can come into this world until I'll be looking for a difference every time. This is the beautiful part about it" (493). In the excerpt titled Motherwit, Onnie Lee Logan invites us into a detailed narrative of her job, delivering babies. Logan uses imagery as well as examples of some of the things she's seen and experienced. In the beginning of the reading, Onnie speaks about how she prepares for delivery. This includes wearing all white, sterilizing her equipment, and giving the mom and dad time alone during the beginning of labor. She then describes the rest of the labor process by giving different examples of things that have happened. In the quote above, Logan really opens up about her job and how passionate she really is about it. She had worked for over 40 years and only had one baby die. She loved what she did and found the beauty in it, and that is wha...

The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman / Nisa By- Ava Daniels In this excerpt titled The Life and Words of a Kung Woman by Nisa, I was taken back to the introduction of The Norton Book of Women's Lives when the author, Phyllis Rose was referring back to her childhood and how she enjoyed biographies of women that were very descriptive and written with no censors. With that being said, this reading was exactly that. The detail of Nisa's childhood and life was definitely uncensored and very descriptive and made me feel like I was there. In the first part of the excerpt titled Earliest memories, Nisa talks about her childhood and her relationship with her family. Because this takes place in Africa in the early 1920's, there was a huge culture shock when reading this. Nisa lived in a village in Africa where the men were in charge of hunting and gathering to provide for their families and the women were in charge of cooking, cleaning, and raising children. Nisa's younger years...