Dorothy Allison 2

I kind of want to go off of what our last in-class writing assignment was and talk about the two or three things i know for sure. One that really stood out to me was, "Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I would rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me." and what i got from that quote is Dorothy saying that with everything that people say about her and percieve her as, she would rather go "naked" than walk around with all of these accusations about her. She wants to live pure and have nobody judge her. If people are walking around judging her then these rumors or sayings are going to get around to people and people are going to look at her in a way where she is judged on what other people say and not on who Dorothy really is. Going naked is like a fresh start. People looking at her with a blank slate and not having things said about her.

Dorothy Allison

With reading the first half of the book I'm a little confused. Why would Dorothys family be so mean to her. Like when I believe it is her aunt that is combing her hair and said to her that atleast she is smart. Which means she is calling Dorothy ugly. Why would anyone want to put a little girls hopes down? She was in 3rd grade at that time so she was around 7 or 8 years old. I remember when I was that young, everything negative someone would say I would take to heart because your so young that you don't know any better. Maybe she was saying that because all the women in the family get treated badly and aren't pretty so she is trying to let Dorothy know not to get her hopes up because she is just going to end up like the rest of the women and get called a bitch by her husband and not have a great life. But what confuses me is why she wouldn't want to give Dorothy confidence. Whether Dorothy had a good life or not, when someone keeps putting you down like that, it makes you insecure and doesn't give you much hope for your life.

Rosa

I believe that Rosa refuses to admit that Magda is dead because she is morning the loss of her daughter. My friend had just told me a story about how her friends mother died and for the longest time the girl would go around acting like nothing happened. At the mothers funeral the girl wasn't even sad. She just waited around for her mom to come back home. She could never face the fact that her mother had actually died and wasn't going to come home. I think that is how Rosa is. She doesn't want to believe that her daughter is dead. She writes to her daughter still and even speaks to her like she is alive. It holds Rosa back because she isn't able to confront that her daughter had in fact died and wasn't going to come back to her. Rosa isn't able to move on with her life which becomes a huge factor in her American life. She isn't able to look past it and not forget but come to terms with what has actually happened with her daughter. She sits around and writes to Magda as if she's alive and doesn't communicate with the outside world because she's stuck in a world where her daughter is still alive.

Push

What is this book suggesting about themes like power, abuse, and survival?
The book Push is a very powerful book. The three themes power, abuse and survival play a huge role throughout the entire book. Precious was abused her entire life. Not only physically but mentally and emotionally also. Power and survival comes into play when she has to fight for everything in her life. She wants to give up and not be here but with Ms. Rain pushing her, she has to fight to survive with having a child at 12 and not having anyone there for her while she grew up and getting abused by her father. Everyone knew what was going on but no one said anything so for her to move forward in a sense is like her surviving. She has the power to do something with her life and not end up like her mother and grandmother and not let her mother get to her head and make her feel like she is nothing and she can't do anything good. Precious wants to get out of the vicious cycle of getting abused and feeling that hurt that her mother and grandmother put onto her.

Fun Home

Fun home has namy themes in it but the one that stood out to me the most was developing an identity. Growing up she was confused as no other and expressing herself to her parents wasn't an easy thing to do. She experimented with girls and tried to find herself. One thing that helped make a lot of sense was when she was in the car with her father and her father said that when he was younger he experimented with boys and he also said that growing up he always felt like he should have been a girl. Then she asked her father if he remembered how she would always want to dress up as a boy when she was younger. A lot of similarities came out between her and her father and it helped me understand the book more. Her father knew what she was going through and I think that made her feel at least a little but more comfortable talking to her dad. She didn't want to disappoint her parents but she knew she had to find herself and what she wanted wasn't what "society" calls normal so it was frightening for her.

I'm an Emotional Creature

The lives of girls today are very complicated. Well most girls make their lives more complicated then they need to be. I know as i was growing up i always wanted to fit in and tried so hard to do so and still today there is a pressure to fit in. For the younger crowd of girls it is more difficult because they have to be in with the in crowd at school and they have to wear the coolest clothes or have the coolest hairstyles. Not only is this wrong, but it lets girls think that they cant be themselves in order to be liked by people. Some girls think that they can't be liked if they don't wear the latest style of jeans from Abercrombie or the newest pair of UGGS. If it isn't expensive then it isn't cool to wear. I remember one time i went to school wearing a new shirt that i bought and my friend came up to me and told me she loved my shirt, but once i told her i got the shirt from walmart she was disgusted. Just because you don't have expensive clothes doesn't mean you can't look good and have friends. If your friends don't like you because you don't have anything nice or because you don't fit in to what the "popular" kids are wearing or doing then they aren't your true friends. They should like you because of who you are and what you are about.

Haiti's History

In 1937, 74 years ago, 17,000 to 30,000 Haitan immigrants were slaughtered in the Dominican Republic by the Dominican Army. This massacre was demanded by Dominican dictator Raphael Leonidas Trujillo so that the Domincan was able to clear out the border region and leave room for landowners to take over the rest of the land.

A lot of the people that live in Haiti believe that Voodoo is the main religion. It may be even considered Haiti's national religion. It mostly revolves around their friends and family. Which is called Loua. Loua protects the children from misfortune. To keep the Loua satisfied, families must "feed" the Loua through rituals. There is a service the familes do once a year and another one that happens once a generation.

The Massacre River (the Rio Masacre) is where the blood flowed between the Spaniards and French colonizers who had faught for the land and possesion of Hispaniola. The land where all the Haitans were murdered in 1937. The river connects and divides both nations.

Boukman (Dutty Boukman) was the leader of the Boukman rebellion and helped to ignite the Haitan Revolution. Some believe that he led a voodoo ceremony which started the rebellion. He was a vodou priest.

Toussaint Louverture was the slave who defeated Napolean. He was a great hero of the Haitan Revolution and considered one of the great revolutionaries in his time.

Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc) was a huge ruler of Haiti in the 1960s. He got the name Papa Doc because he was a physician. He worked in the Haitan government and was elected to the presidency in 1957. He was an expert in voodoo and ruled Haiti with such force and terror.

Tonton Macoutes was the central nervous system of Haiti's region of terror. It was a personal police force of dictator Francois Duvalier. He licensed them to torture, kill and extort anyone and then hanging the corpses as warnings.