Women Writing Worldwide Spring 2023 Blog

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...

The Woman Warrior / Maxine Hong Kingston By- Ava Daniels "I don't want to go. I don't know how to do that. there are no such things as curses. They'll think I'm crazy" (453).  This excerpt from The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston is centered around Kingstons life in America and her relationship between her family of 6 siblings and two Chinese immigrant parents.  Throughout this reading, we are introduced to her relationship with her parents, especially her mother. The quote above occurs when her mother tells Kingston to go get free candy from the store or else plague would be brought to their family. Maxine knew that this was not true and was, in a way, embarrassed to proceed. She gets the candy for free and since then, every time they go into the store, they receive free candy from the druggist. Kingston explains how her mother believed that she had taught the Druggist Ghosts a lesson but Maxine knows better. "They thought we were beggars without a...

Out of Africa / Isak Dinesen By- Ava Daniels Karen Blixen, otherwise known as Isak Dinesen when writing, is a Danish author who lived in British East Africa with her husband. The two of them lived on a coffee plantation up until 1921 after their divorce. Blixen turned to literature after the coffee prices dropped and she could no longer keep up with running the plantation, causing her to move back to Denmark. During this time is when she published Out of Africa  (1937), recalling her time she spent living there.  Karen Blixen talks in detail about her time spent living in Africa describing the forest, her surroundings, and the animals. One animal in particular that Blixen talks about is Luna. Luna was taken in by Blixen and would visit her often until she stopped. It came to Blixen's attention and she was told that Luna had a husband who was somewhat scared of the outside world. Because Luna was familiar with people, she was not frightened and would try to get her husband to c...

Totto-chan / Tetsuko Kuroyanagi By- Ava Daniels Throughout this excerpt, Kuroyanagi recalls her time spent at a school in Tokyo called Tomeo when she was younger. After finishing this reading, I gathered a few things about the school through my own interpretation. One thing that stood out to me was how the school sounds like one of the core values is the arts. "Tomeo children never scrawled on other peoples walls or on the ground. This is because they had ample opportunity to do so at school." (472). In this quote, Kuroyanagi is referring to the students at the school and how a lot of their school day is dedicated to using their artistic skills. She goes on to say how they would invest time as a school studying music and drawing with chalk. 

Landscape for a Good Woman / Carolyn Kay Steedman By- Ava Daniels I think that this excerpt not only exemplified how most woman lived during the time period that Steedman was recalling (1950s), but it also pointed out things and details regarding her childhood. Steedman grew up into a working class family and throughout the excerpt she recalls many memories from her childhood while telling a lot of how she interpreted things that her mom did as a child. Carolyn grew up relatively poor for most of her childhood. I think that children in this situation, as well as young adults, sometimes have to grow up a little bit faster in order to understand what is going on around them. "The new consumer goods came into our house slowly, and we had to understand that our material deprivations were due entirely to our fathers meanness" (pg 718). In this specific part of the excerpt, Steedman is explaining how even as a child she understood that her family couldn't have all of the mater...