Week 17 Reading Notes Part A & B

ReadingNotes

Week 17

Part A &B 

Last Week

• Mahasweta Devi in the text is said to be one of the "most important fiction and prose writer in the Bengali language since India's decolonization in 1947". Devi was born 1926 into a Hindu family that was very well educated and many people in her family had careers mostly in literature. 
• As she was being educated it came to a halt when she married Bijon Bhattcharya who was also know for his work in plays like "Nabanna" that depicted the 1942 Bengal famine. His work was said to "reform modern indian drama". He also was an activist like Devi but specifically in the Communist Part in India before it was officially banned in 1949. A side note in a different class I was just talking about something similar to this and being thankful that the US doesn't go as far as violating our rights and blatantly say you can't believe in whatever you choose. 
• They both had a son in 1948 but thing became rocky when it came to the  finical aspect of raising a family for Bijon being overwhelmed by theater work and barley coming home at times and without an income this forced Devi to live in poverty at a time and struggle with malnutrition. 
• She eventually was able to feed herself as income came in when she began to work and Bijon and Devi divorced and this allowed Devi to finish her graduate studies and this started her back on the path of literature were she would soon write some powerful material. 
• On being "Giribala" a story of a women seeming similar to Devi life just because her life seemed to pause when she became married and both of their marriages affected their lives drastically at one point in time. 
• Although there are many things different between Giribala and Devi because in the story the young women is involved in an arranged marriage with a man that wasn't who he seemed to be at first and head an addiction to weed.  

Week 16 Literary Blog Post

Literary Analysis 

Week 16

Close reading

This week for my literary analysis I wanted to focus on "Recitatif" a narrative written by author Toni Morrison. This narrative attracted my attention because of the topic of race discussed or in other words exposed by this whole piece of text. The section I wanted to focus on was on pg. 1174 at the very bottom of the page were they discuss how Roberta and our narrator become friends and the reason they were teases constantly at their orphanage. This section was also very eye opening because it highlights the aspect of bullying from an author that is older than the young generations and how bullying in the past is still so similar to now. Both in the narrator and Roberta were teased for multiple things that in reality weren't an issue but to a child could be devastating. Morrison explains "We didn't like each other all that much at first, but nobody else wanted to play with us because we weren't real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky. We were dumped.(pg.1174)". In this quote you can see how they were teased just because their parents didn't die and they became orphans but just because they were given up they were rejected by their peers. This is a common story when children are different they are excluded and teased for their differences but on a good note the narrator and Roberta stayed together. "we looked like salt and pepper standing there and thats what the other kids called us sometimes.(pg.1174)". Since they were rejected for the same things they became friends and this made them create something positive from the negativity they were presented with and that fact was interesting in the first place. Although it was a small section I believe it was important because it was the start of a relationship and helped both girls through tough times.