Katie McAlexanders blog

In the biography of  Ning Lao T'AI-T'AI titled, From A Daughter of Han, we read a story of a mother's love for her child. The depths that a mother will go for her child are unmatched in so many areas. The hardest thing for a parent would be to lose their child and we see this in this biography, unfortunately. Her husband sells their kid for just above three thousand dollars, not once, but twice. The father saw the children as a financial loss when all the mother wanted was for her child to know her mother's love. For  Ning Lao T'AI-T'AI  to share her story to be published is so brave and really shows that once she embraced her freedom, she could use her own story to empower women in other tough financial and life situations to seek out freedom as well. I found her sense of independence and desire for freedom despite her circumstances to be very inspiring. 

 In this reading, Maya Angelou gives us a look into her childhood and what it was like in her family at a young age. There was a prominent theme of respecting your elders in this passage which, I know for me growing up, was always a big emphasis for respect. One theme that I also found interesting was the theme of dirtiness. Maya Angelou speaks about physical uncleanness being connected to her spiritual cleanliness which I found super interesting. The comments on appearance in this passage all relate to how clean or dirty someone looked and they're being judged for that. Angelou's mother made sure that all the kids were clean at all times because, to her, that meant that they were less sinful and cleaner in the eyes of God. Maya seemed to like the idea of law and order so being clean all the time had a lot to do with that urge for her. 

 For this week's reading, we saw an account of someone dealing with the extreme grief of a loved one. Vera Brittian lasts her brother during battle and how she deals with that grief is by seeking information from other fellow soldiers about his death. By gaining information over time, she says "I became progressively unable to take in other facts, or to estimate their value". She became numb to the answers she was receiving over time because no answer was bringing Edward back to life. Vera also talks about how she felt that Edward did not know how much she truly loved him which ultimately led to her obsession with how he took his final breath on the battlefield. The guilt she was feeling could not be filled with anything other than having her brother back.