Free Write

Wishes

I wish you wouldn't say things like that to me, because I know that they're probably true.


"She was like, 'You are such a weird child. I don't think you're mine.'"


I know you meant it as a joke, but I know how she treats you. I know all of it. I wish that she loved you like my mother loves me. Sure, it's a bit stifling, but at least I know that there are arms holding me up when I fall and when I am so lonely I want to break. You don't have that and it shows and I know it. I don't know what to do for you.

I wish I didn't think about you last night. All night. From the second I got home, talking to my parents, taking my trance nap, trance-dreaming about you, and then waking up and trying to do homework and thinking about you some more and then falling asleep and dreaming about you and then eating breakfast the next day, your face the only clear thing in my dream deprived haze. I wish I didn't think about you at all. Because it hurts me so much more than you will ever know, but it wouldn't be fair of me to make this your problem.


I'm sorry. I've said too much.


I wish that things were different for us. I wish we weren't so far away from each other. I wish that I could be the friend you want me to be and that we will never grow apart. But I have a feeling we might. I would rather die than branch off from you. I hope you know that. You are the last thing back home that I actually care about.


I wish I loved you more. I wish that I could go back to you and be a little kid again. Hike through your canyons and stay out on your suburban streets later than a child should. But I can't. Home is only home because of the people in it. I'm not too fond of the people right now. They push and pull and push and pull and think money always matters to me when it rarely ever matters to me at all. I don't want to come back to you because I don't want to deal with their drama, and their heartache, and the way they've internalized things that they really shouldn't; the way they don't know how to live without something negative in their lives. I don't want that, so I don't want you.


I wish you were the only thing that I loved. I wish that I wanted to be good at you and I wish that I could make a living in your art form. But I can't. That's too unstable for me and I don't know how to handle it. I'm not ruthless. I don't want to be so good at what you are that I can't sleep at night for thoughts of pas de chat and frappes. For quadruple pirouettes and ron de jambe en l'air. I can't do that. I want to have a life too, not just you.

African Short Stories: Commentary on Style

All of the stories seem to be written in a very similar voice. It is a refined and clear voice, one that is very concise. They are very straightforwardly written, but have meaning woven into them. This worked quite well in Minutes of Glory, which is probably one of my favorite pieces in anthology. I liked how it causally and clearly brought up the conflicts that surround the 'Anglicizing' of women in beauty (i.e. lightening their skin, straightening their hair, etc) and men's reaction to it. I like how it explored the women who are often marginalized in society and their quest to reach noteriety. I also liked how she managed to become someone confident and in control through material things and then be arrested.

Another story I liked stylistically was Bossy. Apparently we weren't supposed to read it, but I did anyways. I liked how it was written in a series of letters that are sent to only one person. I think that is a very interesting device to use because the characters can be more vulnerable in a letter and writing a letter is more about them and their thoughts. It also lends itself to a little mystery, as you never know who is supposed to be receiving the letter and you don't know a lot of the backstory because it would not make sense for friends to provide information about their backstory to each other. It allows the reader to become fully immersed in the story quite quickly.

I felt that a lot of stories in the Northern Africa section were focused on seemingly innocuous situations but that really led to important revelations about the culture and the society. I liked reading them because they allowed for some thinking but they weren't overly dense.

Certain Winds from the South was also an interesting read as the story was very focused on the mother, even though the story was not happen to her. I liked how the daughter's words were omitted. It made reading a little difficult (this is experienced with the anecdotal story of Memunat) but it added a certain depth to the character of the daughter, while allowing the story to focus on the mother. It would be hard to write a portion of a story with only one person speaking, but I think that it is an effective way to establish who the character is and adds certain characteristics to the character that would be otherwise hard to place on them conventionally.

Male and Female Roles

The role of women in this book is very interesting. There are three couples in the story. There is one old couple, Anowa and her husband Kofi, and Anowa's parents. Anowa is constantly referenced as being strange. She even thinks herself to be abnormal. But I don't think she is the only one. She and Kofi seem to be the inverse of their traditional gender roles. Kofi seems to actually love Anowa, as he is content with her being his only wife and wants her to be the one that he spends the rest of his life and has his children with. Anowa, however, wants to live her own life and wander. Children are not her first priority and she would rather stay home and work. I think that they are interesting characters because they don't ascribe to traditional gender roles, yet they are the main characters. It makes reading the play a different experience than the one we have had so far, simply because the characters are completely different to any characters we had encountered up to this point.

I think that all of the male characters in the play are different than the ones in the books we have read so far. They are usually quite laid back and they enjoy working but seem to mostly be sitting around and they stay stationery. They seem to defer to the women more than any of their previous counterparts. They definitely appreciate their wives and know that their lives wouldn't be able to function without them. It's quite interesting to read, because the story is set in the 1800's and yet there seems to be more equality among the genders than we've seen in history at the time and the stories we've read.

The women are quite opinionated and feisty. They know what they want to do and often inform their husbands as a sort of afterthought. They are aware of the position that their society has placed them in, but it seems that they have adopted their posts so completely that ideas of their social standing seem to come straight from the women.

First Impressions on Anowa

I really enjoy reading plays. I think they are such an interesting medium because a lot of the time you know exactly what the character is supposed to do through the stage directions, but the way the words are said is ofter up to the interpretation of the actor. As someone who has taken acting classes before, interpreting a script is a fun activity that I don't get to do very often. It also quite difficult because you have to figure out where the director's authority begins and your's ends.

I am quite liking this script. I think the staging is very interesting; I am definitely a fan of the split stage. I also liked the characterization of The-Mouth-That-Eats-Salt-and-Pepper and how they are bound by certain character consistencies like the side they must always enter from and how they can only enter on the lower stage and not the upper one.

Reading it aloud in class is also quite fun. The only plays I have read aloud in class are Shakespeare where the language can easily leave you behind if you are not paying attention. I think that this play has elements of that in it; some of the phrasing seems slightly awkward when reading in the cursory fashion one uses when reading aloud. These characters were meant to be portrayed. Having been sick for the first two times we read the book, I was reading it by myself. The full effect was lost on me. The characters really come alive when they are read by other people. Having multiple voices really helps show the differences in each of the couples.