Student Blogs

 I read Black Shack Alley this week, and here are some of my reading experiences.

For me, Amantine, little Joseph's grandmother, is the unique character in the article, with a tragic but extraordinary fate. The author describes how his grandmother correctly made little Joseph's life ordinary and warm in such a poor situation. Despite the hard work on the plantation and how the clothes on his body were worn, little Joseph never touched the ruthless side of reality under the care of his grandmother. As a result, grandmother Amantine's image of a loving, simple, and hard-working black worker jumped on the page. Later articles tell the story of Joseph Jr. and her grandmother living a poor and miserable life on a sugar cane plantation. Nevertheless, The assertive Little Joseph's grandmother, Amantine, understood that knowledge was the key to the broader world. She worked hard to get a better life for Little Joseph.

By looking up relevant information, we can learn that Black Shack Alley is set in the French colony of Martinique in the 1930s. In this context, the meagre income and hard life of black workers and various painful histories are described in the book, which makes people move and think about it. In this case, the children in the plantation have always maintained their innocence and childlike fun; the brave struggle to find a wider world and the future expectations that the future grandmother and little Joseph still have. This tragic background has formed a sad and touching life and expressed a kind of awe-inspiring concept. The book's rhetoric is not gorgeous, but just describing the background of this protagonist is enough to make the reader experience a dull feeling in this heavy and straightforward experience, a reflection on history based on people's empathy.

In the book, childhood is always cheerful and straightforward. Those children who do not have a clear understanding of the nature of life do not care about rudimentary food and clothes that cannot cover privacy; everything is innocent and funny as if adding a sunny filter to the hard life. Looking at the author's life from the perspective of his childhood, the cruel life we can feel is softened by such a filter. So this misery, which should have been stinging, became a continuous dullness. My question is: Is it easier for the reader to have the courage to continue reading than to bluntly analyze this tragic experience from an adult's point of view?

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The original description of Bonjour Tristesse really captured my attention towards the book. I felt that I would be able to resonate with the main character, assuming she is around my age and the problems she faces throughout the book. And as much as I could relate to Cecile, the plot went in a different …

Continue reading "Bonjour Tristesse"

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While I enjoyed this novel and found myself reading it quite quickly, I found the narrator, Cecile, to be highly unlikeable. Cecile’s undesirable attitude is prevalent from the beginning of the novel when she shamelessly describes how her pleasure is solely derived from money and other material items. She goes so far as to say […] read full post >>

On page 128, there was a line that struck me. It went as follows “now we only have each other. We are alone and unhappy.” This line absolutely shook me! This book did not go as I anticipated it to at all! I am quite surprised at the ending and turn of events. The relationships […] read full post >>

This Spanish girl’s experience seemed strange to me. Her upbringing has been in tune with her age and the social environment in which she grew up since she became an orphan. Because it was unsurprising that there was a tumultuous family dynamic during the turbulent years of the Spanish Civil War. Carmen uses lyrical language … Continue reading Nada review → read full post >>

Maria Luisa Bombal’s The Shrouded Woman is the story of a woman who was once a wife and loving mother who is looking beyond the grave at how her loved ones cope with her passing. Personally, I find the use of an already dead protagonist to be really interesting, as it allows the use of […] read full post >>

Agostino is a coming-of-age novel that follows the very short timeline of the main character, a young boy Agostino’s loss of innocence. In the novel, Agostino (13)  and his widowed mother are on a vacation in which his mother sparks … Continue reading → read full post >>

This was a very interesting and enjoyable read. The story delves into the psychological torture that the innocent and timid Agostino must endure as he accompanies his mother on her boat rides. Growing up in a sheltered and conservative household, I saw myself empathizing with him. I felt as if I was right there with […] read full post >>

In Alberto Moravia’s Agostino, the titular character of Agostino spends his childhood days surrounded by his Mother and his world is dominated by his relationship to her. Agostino’s life growing is complex as he has his Mother’s love, however there is only so much love that she can give him. Agostino’s growth in society never […] read full post >>

While reading, ‘Nada’, by Carmen Laforet, I was by far the most emotionally involved I have been since beginning this course. Because of this, I have a lot of different thoughts about this story, and thus my blog post will probably be more disorga... read full post >>

While reading, ‘Nada’, by Carmen Laforet, I was by far the most emotionally involved I have been since beginning this course. Because of this, I have a lot of different thoughts about this story, and thus my blog post will probably be more disorga... read full post >>

The story first starts with Andrea, leaving on her own for school. She seems excited and she “carried herself with... read full post >>

    While reading “Agostino,” I was struck by a distinct tone of the Freudian; the ways in which maturing from the child to the teenager–and various ventures into adulthood in-between–are contrasted with a love, innocent or otherwise, of a maternal figure central to one’s life. Although one may be tempted to refer to the relationship between […] read full post >>

Moravia’s Agostino   This week the reading was a linear storyline which I can say was actually enjoyable as it makes it easier to read. I enjoyed the fact that it was a linear story, as I am not a big reader and reading like last week can get me a little bit confused.   […] read full post >>

 Carmen Laforet's Nada felt very modern, and others might disagree with me but I thought it even felt somewhat contemporary. Sure, that might be because the translation was done relatively recently (2008), but I think it's more so to do with its timelessness. The story has so many themes that are fundamentally about people and their relationships to each other; I don't think humans change all that much from one generation to the next, and I reckon many of our problems are the same as they were centuries ago, and will continue to be centuries from now. 

I hesitate to delve into these topics too deeply, but two themes that really resonated with me in this book were those surrounding Andrea and Ena's friendship, more specifically the way that Andrea views Ena and puts her on a pedestal, and that of a mother's love. 

These two themes fascinate me in different ways. The former reminds me of a friendship that I once experienced a few years ago and so I felt a little uncomfortable seeing a semi-similar dynamic play out on the pages of a novel. Not to get too vulnerable up in here, but I was especially struck by the power dynamics between Andrea and Ena. Ena clearly has more status, in a social and economic sense, and so Andrea often implies a sense of inferiority and admiration, almost worship. I do feel that the relationship between the two is more exaggerated than my own has been, but sometimes it takes a more extreme example to make the subtleties and nuances of people's characters and relationships to become visible.

In this novel, there are two mother figures that particularly caught my attention. Ena's mother, and Andrea's grandmother. Yes, there are others such as Gloria, and Ena's dead mother, but they didn't pique my interest like the other two did. These two characters are very different in many ways, including with social standing, financial status, but especially in the way they view their daughters. Ena's mother confesses on p197 that Ena holds a particularly special place in her heart, more than her sons. Andrea's grandmother is accused later on in the book (p234) of having always preferred her sons to her daughters, and is therefore blamed for the consequences. 

The dynamics of motherhood and fatherhood, alongside daughterhood and sonhood are things that I have thought about a considerable amount over the past few years, having listened to different conversations and experiences. I have heard both perspectives (not within my family); parents who especially value the firstborn daughter, and parents who prefer their sons. I think both perspectives are interesting, though not necessarily correct, and am aware of the damage they can have on the non-preferred children. This novel merely showed me more examples from a different time, place, and culture than those I have personally been exposed to, and I am grateful for that.

I now pose the question: what might Andrea's life look like in Madrid, now that she has left her dysfunctional family behind? Do we think she might feel any abandonment guilt?

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