Tag: feminism

At the restaurant

.Reading time 1 minute.

She was sitting on the table next to mine. Husband and kids were there as well. It was 12pm. I had just sit and ordered coffee. They started browsing through the menus and decided to ask each for an entrance, plate, dessert. A glace of wine. ‘Yes, please’, she said. The kids would have chicken nuggets and ice cream, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. The waiter came. The husband said: ‘For me a red wine, for her a soft drink’. A look at her, her gaze on me, pale, speechless, and aggression. Wife is also a child. Infantilization, unsuitable to make basic decisions, de dominant, the leader, the strong male has to be shown in the little niceties. It is what’s respectable these days. The waiter angrily, reproachingly, said: ‘only water for you then’. She said nothing, not there, not after, silence, resignation. For the sake of the family, that is what’s called these days. A look at her ‘take your wine’, I wanted to say, her pale face ‘I don’t have the strength’. ‘Stop him on his game’, that’s so easy to say’. It takes time to learn.

The Years —By Annie Ernaux

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Book Review

 

As per her signature style, The Years is a very intimate account of facts. Some reviewers argue this is a portrait, implying a description of one’s self, that could easily fall into an autobiography. If this book is indeed a portrait, it reflects not only the side of Ernaux personality, but also the personality and moods of an entire country, France. As an adopted French, I should have read this book in its original language. I found the translation a bit dry, especially in relation not to the narrative itself, but to the consequences of that narrative into the reader’s emotions. Ernaux knows her country and her culture very well. This is why in The Years she did not speak by the first person of singular, but by the first person of plural. It is a narrative based on a political and a social perception that belongs to an entire country, in a specific period of time that fortunately (or unfortunately) extend to these times. 

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Blue Nights — By Joan Didion

.Reading time 6 minutes.

Book Review

‘You notice as it first as April ends and May begins, a change in the season, not exactly a warming —in fact not at all a warming— yet suddenly summer ends near, a possibility, even a promise’. When those blue nights are finished is not anymore a warming but a warning of darkness, of solitude, of silence. This is how Joan Didion explains the title of her book, it is an opening to a heart wrenching story. The story of a mother who sees her own child die, slowly, painfully, in an ICU for twenty months. This is a story in which Didion also analyses carefully and to the detail whether her daughter showed signs of dying, emotionally dying, way before, and her own involvement as a mother in such a cruel destiny.

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Active Language and Feminism

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Words are changing. Some resist the waves, saying that the language is already inclusive and should not be messed with. No matter what we think. It is mutating. Young people are looking for ways to express themselves and if we don’t go with them we are just going to be left behind, obsolete, archaic, useless and, as it is happening as we speak, misunderstood.

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Georgia Meloni —Bad News for Feminism

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Politics and Feminism

Picture taken from theneweuropean.co.uk

Italy has chosen her first prime Minister. It is not good news for feminism in Italy, and around the globe. Georgia Meloni. A far-right politician and journalist. Leader for more than eight years of Brothers of Italy, one of the most conservative parties. Involved in politics for nearly twenty. Always militating for the far-right, always instigating. A nationalist. A true warrior of ‘God, homeland and family’. Her win was implicated by the same patriarchal discourse.

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Women who run with the Wolves —By Clarissa Pinkola Estes

.Reading time 6 minutes.

Book Review

Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This woman is the first that comes to my mind when I think about this book. She is prismatic, multifaceted, a whole, complete, intellectual, emotional and spiritual woman. Wherever side you look of her, it has been worked, it is full with experiences and memories, and specially with wonderful teachings in which every single woman can benefit from.

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The Golden Notebook —By Doris Lessing

.Reading time 12 minutes.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Book Review

This novel incarnates an amazing power and a vast relevance to these days. It is easy to forget that it was written in the 50s, as we are still discussing the subjects of the book, which are all different, although they make part of the same woman’s life. These woman’s thoughts are full of contradictions between being a communist and racist, between being a feminist and a homophobic, between being a good partner to her men and a lousy mother to her daughter.

The book narrates the life of Anna Wulf, an independent writer, communist and in a certain way a feminist. She has a dear friend, Molly. I found this friendship to be dysfunctional, or at least to accentuate the dysfunctional personalities of both women individually, which causes great damage to them and their children. The entire book is narrated by Anna. It is not divided in titles or chapters, which made the reading difficult. However, it is interesting how the author changes subjects, dividing the book in notebooks, black, red, yellow and blue. It is still disorganised, as she changes subjects and colours as she writes, but one can follow the sequence of the changes when getting used to what she is talking about.

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City of girls —By Elizabeth Gilbert

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Book Review

Rating: 5 out of 5.

The book starts with the protagonist, Vivian Morris, writing a letter to Angela, a secondary character. I have always cherished whoever can write a letter, as I do not know many people who can actually do it. At this point of the book Vivian has aged and she is planning to recall her own story only to answer one single question from Angela. “Vivian, Angela wrote, “given that my mother has passed away, I wonder if you might now feel comfortable telling me what you were to my father?”

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Approaching Eye Level ­­­–By Vivian Gornick

.Reading time 6 minutes.

Politics and Feminism

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I wanted to read this book for a long time. I considered it an ovation to feminism. It really is. Vivian Gornick’s feminists statements are the mix of a self-portrait of a woman who decided to live alone, and another who is looking for meaningful company. She has devoted to the type of feminism that was on furore on the 70s, the one that is not into marriage. This type of feminism that interlocks with spinsterhood is the life she has been living since then.  Gornick loved to find sisterhood groups, full with intellectual-type ladies, dedicated to solve the problems of the everyday life for women. However, those groups always lost their momentum, and ended up melting again into the same cultural patterns they were fighting, alienating her all over again.

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The Problems of Making War

.Reading time 9 minutes.

Politics and Feminism

Picture taken from Dreamstime.com

A lot of academics argue that if someone doesn’t know anything about a subject, the best thing to do is to keep quiet and let the experts handle the matter. I cannot disagree more. In cases that involve human rights violations the importance is not about the knowledge of the conflict, or even the politics, but the empathy towards the victims. I say this now because I was also part of that academic world, the political analysis, where a lot of arguments and conversations flew around, directed only to intellectuals, and not to the public, that was ultimately the one with the power to implement changes.

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