jamreadingjournal

[jamreadingjournal]

You [humans] are hierarchical. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all... [...] That was like ignoring a cancer. [...] Intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike. But denial doesn't matter. A cancer in someone's body will go on growing in spite of denial. And a complex combination of genes that work together to make you intelligent as well as hierarchical will still handicap you whether you acknowledge it or not.

— Octavia Butler, Dawn (Xenogenesis, Book I)

[jamreadingjournal]

WEEKLY JOURNAL - 2

Cher readers,

As I read the Cask of Amontillado I notice how obssessed are Poe's characters.

I am always shocked how Poe explores about human emotions such as jealousy, fury, envy.

The worst part of human feelings are so real. It is well written, and his characters are cruel, remorseless. Montresor killed Fortunato sadistically.

Even though I think their characters are horrible, I like them.

I never related this short story with Come see the sunset, until this course begin even though I read those texts in the graduation back in 2016.

The short story come see the sunset is written by Lygia Fagundes Teles. The short story approaches gender issues in the background. It shows how patriarchal society perceives and treats women.

We can see how Literary Criticism approaches patriarchal society in the feminist criticism.

I read about it in the 6th chapter of Theory into practice, by Ann B. Dobie. The author explained how literature is about man talking to man, not to woman.

Dalcastagne, a Brazilian author, also affirmed that women were written by men for so many time and in those stories they were stereotyped, and that's what happens when we don't have proper representation in literature: we are faded to be stigmatized in literature.

Colomer, a Spanish writer, wrote about canon texts and criticized how selecting texts are often creating vertical lines in the reading process because most of those texts are canonical literature and in part of them there is no proper representation. She even brings Even-Zohar to explain how the literary system is complex because it's a polysystem.

She also talks about how experience should be a priority in the reading process, and this experience would be more productive when is a collective and collaborative reading. So people can create meaning together.

Just like Eco, Colomer also thinks the meaning of the text is constructed during reading and it depends on who, when, how each person reads.

For me, creating meaning is about experience the text. As Larrosa Bondía, a Spanish writer, explains: experience is what happens to us, and its different to get a information.

The way we experience world impacts how we read and construct meanings in literary texts.

Thank you for reading.

Jamile

[jamreadingjournal]

Weekly journal - 1

Cher readers,

This week, influenced by my colleagues Clévis and Soraia, I chose the short story Hairball, written by Margareth Atwood. The story is about Kat, a woman in her thirties who had surgery to remove an ovarian cyst. As I expected, the story brought discussions about women and their bodies in a patriarchal society. It reminded me of reading The Handmaid's Tale, in which women’s bodies are tamed by men. Obviously, it reminds me of real life as well.

At first, I thought the story would be about abortion. Then, I thought the story would be a supernatural body horror due to the “hairball” being an ovarian teratoma, and the beginning of the text pointing out November as the month of the dead. As I read the pages the horror was related to something more realistic. Thus, the body horror performed in the short story is related to the way women’s bodies are disrespected in society.

Historically women have been treated as inferior to men, in philosophy, education, economics, religions and literature. Ann B. Dobie in her text Feminist Criticism brought up literature as one of the elements that reinforces patriarchal patterns. Dalcastagné also pointed it out when she wrote that men write about men and their writings about women are stereotyped.

Dobie (p. 127) affirmed “literature is the record of a man speaking to other men, not directly to women”. Dobie affirmed that a patriarchal system marginalizes women’s works and their bodies. And it is present in Atwood’s short story Hairball, when Kat says men think women are “whinge receptacles”. Kat did not like to be mistreated, but she had to play that role in order to get some opportunities. Dobie mentioned that women learned to persuade men in order to get what they want. In the arts this persuasive method is frequently related to seduction.

Hairball is a text that approaches oppression women suffer in society. Logically, the short story would bring abortion up. Kat had abortion twice because “the men in question were not up for the alternative”. She did not decide about having the babies. Her point of view was not respected and neither was her body. Consequently, she protected herself from the suffering by saying “she didn’t want children anyway”.

A thing that caught my attention in the story is how Kat, once Katherine, polished not only her personality turning into a rebel woman but also the personality of Ger, Gerald before her intervention. “He was her creation”, the narrator said. It made me think of Frankenstein.

Although Kat is a smart character I personally think she is credulous when it comes to her relationship with Ger. She knew he was using her, but did not see he was becoming just like her. At the end, She went to work while recovering and he took her position in the magazine. “The next morning she pulls herself together, downs an espresso from her mini-machine, picks out an aggressive touch-me-if-you-dare suede outfit in armour grey, and drags herself to the office, although she isn’t due in till next week.” (Atwood, 1991, p. 51).

One thing I did not understand is the mother-child relation Kat had with Hairball. It made no sense to me. Was it because she wanted those children the men aborted - and forced her to do it too? Has she gone mad and those thoughts were the result of all that violence she went through? After all, I think Kat realized she could fight back when put her teratoma in the bag and sent it to Ger’s wife.

In the next journal I'll approach The Birth Mark, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Thank you for reading!

[jamreadingjournal]

“It is not a lake of fire and brimstone as in Hell. It is worse. The leachate is the end of all things. The rest of food, toxic residues and unburied corpses. Everything end up there. Leachate is a damned endless weeping. It is the rotten tears of scourged eyes.”

Ana Paula Maia, Bury your dead (2018)