“Never again shall I..” “From now on I’ll…” “I shall…” “I’ll always have…” (pg. 34). I miss the childlike naivety of knowing everything. While this paragraph seems to be the narrator reflecting on her life, it can also be a manifestation of the young girl determined to be with a man who is majorly, inappropriately, […]
Posted in Blogs, Duras | Tagged with class, Colonialism, intersectionality, poverty, privilege, race
Another book, another terrible love interest. Can we talk about how everyone in this narrator’s life is simply awful? To begin with, she’s fifteen and a half when she meets and begins a sexual relationship with a twenty-seven-year-old man. When her mother discovers that she’s been skipping school so he can pick her up in […]
Posted in Blogs, Duras | Tagged with memory, power, race, Uncategorized, writing
Marguerite Duras, The Lover
Posted in Duras lecture, Front Page, Lecture Videos | Tagged with Asia, autobiography, Colonialism, gender, love, post colonialism, power, race, sexuality, Vietnam, writing
Joseph Zobel, Black Shack Alley
Posted in Lecture Videos, Zobel lecture | Tagged with C20th, childhood, Colonialism, development, education, labor, language, literacy, Martinique, postcolonialism, race, work, writing
I have to say, I really did like the writing style, it was the only thing that got me through most of it because the length (Last minute reading) was kind of intimidating. While there were a lot of things I loved about this story, I also realized that books ragebait me way too easily […]
Posted in Blogs, Zobel | Tagged with black shack alley, classism, education, poverty, race, slavery
In my opinion, Black Shack Alley was a great choice to read after Agostino. Both follow the story of a young boy, but the characters are opposites in many regards. Agostino came from a privileged upper-class community and never worked, whereas José was born into a marginalized, working class group. Agostino’s troubles were much more […]
Posted in Blogs, Zobel | Tagged with black shack alley, race
Honestly, even though José gets his education and succeeds in life, the whole story made me very sad. I felt sad for M’man Tine, who literally worked herself to death in the sugar cane fields. I felt sad for José’s mother, whom he rarely saw because she was always working somewhere else. I also felt […]
Posted in Blogs, Zobel | Tagged with family, poverty, race
The Lover by Marguerite Duras. I cannot say I enjoyed reading this week’s novel as much as I thought I would. Maybe because it was confusing, with the change of perspectives and no clear chronological timeline throughout the novel but with different paragraphs mentioning different events or people in the girl’s life. One page would […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with class, ew, gender, love, pedophilia, race, relationships, The Lover
I know I said that “Time of the Doves” was one of the books of all time, but this book is a strong contender for the book of all time. “The Lover” by Margurite Duras was an interesting book to say the least. This book’s subject matter was heavily sexual, which would be eyebrow raising […]
Posted in Blogs, Duras | Tagged with love, loveless, race, sad, sex