Katie McAlexanders blog

In this narrative, we see a story of a midwife. Logan goes on to recount stories about various families that she has seen that are going through labor and welcoming a new child. It takes a very unique and certain person to be able to perform this job. They have to be equipped emotionally, physically, and mentally for anything that could come up during the birth of a child due to it being such a delicate process. the author is a creature of habit and repetition by the way that she explains how she never goes anywhere without her “orange stick or scrub brush” (484).  She's always ready for the task at hand and she has so much experience in this field due to being a midwife being a generational thing in her family. one anecdote that she shared that I found interesting was when she was talking about how she likes to connect the mother and father of the baby before hard labor comes. she states, “, I tell him this it was you and your husband in the beginning and it was fine. it's you...

    In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston survives relational trauma and emotional hardship from her family life growing up. This does cause Maxine to doubt herself as a human as well as makes her hold herself to an impossible standard. She was constantly surrounded by the need to receive approval from family members. they would be making fun of things she can not change about herself, her appearance, and her voice which added to the emotional trauma developed from her earlier years in life. We see a lot of this in developmental stories especially from women as we typically develop conditions like body dysmorphia from a young age. The Chinese culture established a custom where people were very secretive and liked to keep everything very structured, Kingston's parents had engrained the words "don't tell" (455) in her brain. There becomes a decision between her and her parents because of this very reason. The secrets and the front being put on daily weighed heavy ...

  During her stay at the house, Karen "befriends" a bushbuck she named "Lulu". Since Lulu was a baby, she lived at Karen's home and on her land, but as she grew, she began straying further and further away and returning less frequently. Karen and the houseboys' admirable, loving feelings towards Lulu are demonstrated through the quote "as if it had been the married daughter of the house on a visit" (227). There is an expansive difference between Karen's relationship with nature and that of her ex-husband with nature. It is obvious that they have very different values and ethics, and if the reader analyzes and understands their personalities, the reader will come to see that the marriage cannot succeed. The fact that Karen treats animals like children and feeds them as if they were her own children contrasts sharply with her ex-husband, who kills animals rather than nurtures them. Theor personalities are contrasted vastly in this narrative and p...

  Margaret Mead's Blackberry Winter is a novel about her life story of being a pioneering woman and leading a successful life. She discusses how she grew up and how her grandmother impacted her. She is able to look back at her life through this piece of writing and feel proud and accomplished for the legacy she left behind. Margaret was able to become a mother and also have a career, which is remarkable in today's world. She also learned that the mind is not sex-typed and that we are all gifted and valued in our own ways. In the 70s, being successful at all you wanted in life, specifically being a woman was unusual, and I am impressed by her setting a precedent. A quote I took and digested from this reading was, "And as I had my father's kind of mind- which was also his mother's- I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.". this quote showed how much of a trailblazer she wanted to be for women like her

  Anne Frank's diary is a powerful story of how a family survived the Holocaust living in an attic, fearing for their lives but still holding hope and relishing their journey together. She narrates about two years of her life, from her thirteenth birthday to around after she turned fifteen, and writes about innocent things such as how she feels about boys, her friends, and her school. However, her diary turns heartbreaking as she undergoes family closeness but also problems with her mother. This goes to affect her in all areas of life when she questions how her own mother feels about her. Anne goes on to say at the beginning of the book, "I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have ever been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.". This diary was a healing process for her and a way to digest all of the events she encountered in her years of living.

  Eug enia was powerful in her ability to share her life stories being a Communist in the U.S.S.R. She showed us what it was like to come together with others in tough times and how to be open to putting our problems aside and reassuring those who need our support and love. The prisoners were over the moon to have a new person and a new perspective in the jail, and putting each other at ease was essential to keeping them calm. Eugenia's positive outlook saved her and showed us that we need to be able to come together instead of pushing against each other in today's society.   Eugenia shows and explains the empathy she felt when a prisoner said, "When they heard I was a member of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R., they became greatly excited and asked question after question" (307)

  Le Ly Hayslip lived in central Vietnam with her family during the Vietnam War. She was twelve years old when the U.S. helicopters landed in her village and both sides began gathering children to use as spies and those who engage in sabotage. At the age of twelve, she experienced the deaths of her family, and also experienced torture and rape, things no one should experience- especially not a twelve-year-old girl who was a supporter of the Viet Cong and experienced torture and rape, and she was able to stay strong in her belief that it is good out there. She stands relentless throughout her terrible circumstances and is someone we can all learn from.

We learn about the hardships encountered along the way through Marguerite's words following World War II. Nursing her dying husband through this time is an emotionally exhausting experience for her. As if she wrote parts separate from each other, her story is broken up into different parts and thoughts. It was as if she was writing a diary, recounting the most vivid times of her life. There is a chance that she may have forgotten details like journaling due to the trauma and extreme emotions. As she was terrified of hearing the result, her one traumatic experience would be not knowing if her husband was alive or dead. This scenario would completely destroy me if I allowed myself to think about what if. I have a parent in the military so I had to learn from a young age o not to get caught up in the what if. One of her most powerful lines was, "You don't exist anymore compared to this waiting. You see more images in your head than all the roads in Germany. Machine gun blasts...