Katie McAlexanders blog

The Italics are Mine gives us a look into the author's true personality and dreams. \ She lists things at the beginning that she despises such as family spirit, paternalism, and anything having to do with “the nest”. I thought to myself, What was the "nest" and what was Berberova referencing? She talks about how she never felt free while in the nest. I think that the nest is another name for something having to do with her family life or where she lives. It also made me think about how a nest can be something that you are trapped in or can fly away from.  Maybe her family was uncompromising and she never felt unrestrained to do anything. The topic of freedom comes up when she talks about picking a career at the beginning of the passage. She talks about writing a list of jobs regardless of her gender or other factors such as other qualifications. She had big dreams and wanted those dreams to not have any of the restrictions that her family or the the world has already pu...

A lot of the focus of this passage is on freedom and women's decisions when it comes to family and marriage. Throughout this book, she speaks about not wanting a family ( husband and children). Women were seen as caregivers for their families who stay home which was the opposite of what Beauvoir wanted for herself which I completely resonate with. I have days where I feel like being a stay-at-home mom would be amazon but on other days I don't think I would be able to feel like I was contributing enough to my family by not working and only living for my kids.  Because her relationship with her family was not good, this leaned her toward her opinion on family life. She did not want to be the traditional woman that society’s standards wanted, instead, she wanted to be free and make decisions on her own and for herself. I have divorced parents so when I was reading this, it brought me to the place where I once considered if I was going to get married or have kids or not due to t...

  During Nien Cheng's imprisonment, she was abused by many prison guards and inmates. The thing that puzzled me the most when I read this was how she managed to survive. In my opinion, she was able to maintain her spirit because of the small kindness she received while in prison as well as the way she was raised. Her interactions with most prison inmates are terrible in many ways. Her physical afflictions were often accompanied by the sense of doom she felt when she knew she might die. Despite their efforts, Nien Cheng's fighting spirit was not broken. Her fighting spirit didn't break, even when these guards tried to take away her choices, and because of that, she was able to survive and maintain her fighting spirit. This process was also assisted by a kind woman from the kitchen. In order to prevent her from having her hands, the other prison guards placed handcuffs on her. Infection developed in her hands after she was cut with the handcuffs.  this is just one of the many...

In this autobiography, Emilie Carles highlights the major shifts and changes in her life from early childhood to early adulthood. Ive noticed this is a common theme in most of the readings that we have done thus far. . Throughout this passage of her autobiography, we are introduced to times when she had to persevere and grow whether it be emotionally, physically, or even just in her own society. She talks about her relationship with her father which resonated a lot with me as my father and I are not very close. She talks about the difficulties of maintaining a good connection with your family. She also talked about her goals and aspirations in wanting to be a teacher which I found very inspiring, giving back to her community. Emilie also references her marriage and the difficulties in her marriage correlate to her rough relationship with her father. I see this every day in my life as my relationship with my father has prohibited me from having a healthy relationship with a guy. when yo...

 In this passage, Devlin speaks about her time as a child her teen years which were spent defying the status quo. From a young age to an adult, she was considered very wise and actually skipped grades in her school years. As she got older, she discovered to stand up for what she believed in and to stand up for others who may not have as big of a voice. Her cleverness proved to be very useful because she was elected as the head senior of her class two years in a row leading conversations about society and politics. I found this to be very inspiring due to the fact that most of the women that we have read thus far have not delved into speaking their opinions about social and political topics to a group of people especially not ones who they are seeing every day and in a leadership position. this showed that she is a natural-born leader and that others' opinions of her drove her to become more successful and have a bigger voice.

In this week's reading from Santha Rama Rau, we read about her experiences attending an English school as an Indian child. Her stories of ostracization and marginalization were impactful and made me think a lot about what it means to feel like you're living a double life. She mentions having a "dual personality" at school vs being at home. at this British school, they gave her and her sister "pretty English names" because their birth names were too hard for the headmistress to understand. this made the author and her sister feel as if they had to be a completely different person at school than at home. at this age, you already feel as if you need to act like someone else in order to fit in but for someone to give them a new name, especially someone in a power position, takes away a large part of their identity and can cause a variety of identity crisis in a child life as we see in this reading. I know that when I was in school, it was so easy to get caught u...

The reading for this week made me think about some of the other female writers we have read from so far this semester. One of the themes that I saw that drew similarities was the theme of questioning faith. We have met many authors who have questioned the morality and existence of God. Whether it be because of things that have happened to them or their family that have made them lose that hope of someone being sovereign or just the existence of a good father figure not seeming real. Jill Ker Conway had to grow up very fast so her maturity was beyond her years. I can relate to being the older sibling and taking on the role of third parent. Being the oldest sibling comes with a lot of responsibility and carries a lot of weight. You have to set an example as well as gain the respect of your younger siblings which is a large task in itself. It also has its rewards because it really prepares you for being an adult as we see here with Conway.