Contemporary International Writers

The sexual component of The Occasional Virgin is clear from before I even open the book. My first thought about this novel and the sexual component in Hanan al-Shakyh’s work “I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops.” The narrator in “I sweep the Sun Off Rooftops” had moved to London and has culture shock in the […]

Read Full Post »

Amelia beat me to the punch here, but I found myself wondering many of the same things as her. Yvonne and Huda have left their home country and made successful lives for themselves as independent women, but most of the book revolves around their relationships with men. I like them as characters, and want them […]

Read Full Post »

Hanan al-Shaykh’s The Occasional Virgin is quoted as a “frank and fearless novel” on the inside of the book’s jacket.  There are many things both frank and fearless about this novel, but in particular is the author’s handling of sexuality; the sexual acts in this novel highlight the differences not only between Huda and Yvonne’s […]

Read Full Post »

The Occasional Virgin is about two Lebanese women struggling to find their identities between the pressures of their successful businesses and their traditional families and personal desires. The struggles that Yvonne and Huda go through remind me of a song that the Sweet Tones has covered a couple of times: “Quiet,” sung by MILCK.  This […]

Read Full Post »

The Occasional Virgin confused me a bit. On one hand, it is a feminist novel, on the other it is not. The main characters, Yvonne and Huda, are “liberated” women. They have successfully left their home in Lebanon and made names for themselves out in the world. The two women have escaped oppression and fought […]

Read Full Post »

While Hanan al-Shaykh’s The Occasional Virgin and Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah are two very different novels, there are also many similarities between them. One of the earliest similarities was a section about Huda’s hair – “This hair-washing involved an elaborate process of applying oil and allowing it to soak in, then washing it, spreading shea butter […]

Read Full Post »

Purity is a topic that has been explored in almost every single one of the works for this class. Often, there is some kind of significance to it—religion, culture/tradition, etc. In any case, a woman’s virginity is synonymous with her worth as a human being. A woman’s virtue also leads to her being respected by […]

Read Full Post »

A theme of this book is women’s powerlessness in a male-dominated society, particularly when it is backed with religious beliefs and traditions. In some ways, I felt like Huda and Yyvonne are slamming into a brick wall every time they try to make the man see the inconsistency of their beliefs or even see a woman’s point […]

Read Full Post »

Throughout Americanah, Adichie presents many facets of African culture from the highbrow intellectual touchstones to the more everyday pop culture references that shape Ifemelu’s world from childhood to adulthood. This transition from youth is shown from the cultural references she makes at the beginning of the novel when she describes her first connection with Obinze. […]

Read Full Post »

In the book, “Americanah” by Chimamanda Adichie, she talks about her character Ifemelu facing racism and dealing with the American way of seeing an African American. The part that I specifically want to focus on in this blog post is the relationship Ifemelu and Curt. I also want to talk about the fact that Curt’s […]

Read Full Post »

One of the things that caught my attention over the course of the book was Ifemelu’s choices in literature. She is an extraordinarily intelligent woman, yet she is often reading Essence magazine, amongst other “racially skewed” and seemingly beneath her works. In earlier scenes I remember Obinze trying to convince her to read more of […]

Read Full Post »

Write a story that begins with one of these images as the inspiration for the first scene and ends with a second image as the inspiration for the final scene. You should attempt to include as any of the small details in those images as you can as a means of evoking the physical world you’re […]

Read Full Post »

In the beginning of AMERICANAH, the character of Ifemelu has been unwilling to conform. The reader (and I) could tell that she is a strong and independent, having a sense of nationalism and pride in her culture. When Ifemelu came to the United States, she saw strong examples of other conforming (ex. aunt Uji changing […]

Read Full Post »

“Try to Praise the Mutilated World” is a poem which not only tells a story but has fantastic rhythm. Zagajewski is free in his prose, which is a characteristic of the poem allowing for its success. “You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty […]

Read Full Post »

This poem stuck with me the most after reading and re-reading Szymborsa’s poems, because it felt the most relevant to today’s current events. This particular poem was all about how whenever there is a war, or a tragedy, there are always people who have to stay behind and clean up the messes made. With everything […]

Read Full Post »

In this compilation of Wislawa Szymborska’s poems, the poem I found the most interesting and relatable was “Unexpected Meeting.” the reason I liked this poem over all the others is that you can tell how tense this meeting is without her saying it. “Our tigers drink milk./ Our hawks walk on the ground./ Our sharks […]

Read Full Post »

In “The End and the Beginning”, Wislawa Szymborska writes about the war, and more precisely, the after war. What is interesting is her way to write a poem about this subject. We could expect something tragic, or with a lot of pathos. But her choice is to tell the story through a poem of what […]

Read Full Post »

Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish painter during the seventeenth-century Baroque movement who excelled in portraits, particularly nudes. In “The Women of Rubens”, Wislawa Szymborska describes many of the common characteristics that can be found in Rubens’ nude portraits. The poem begins, “Giantesses, female fauna, / naked as the rumbling of barrels. / They sprawl […]

Read Full Post »

Wislaw Symborska admits herself that her poetry focuses on the “particulars.” She is interested in the minute details of the world. She sees the larger image but she isn’t focused on that but instead the small things that would normally go unnoticed. Her poem “Unexpected Meeting” is about the reunion of two people but the […]

Read Full Post »

Read Full Post »

Read Full Post »

I loved Wislawa Szymborska’s poems. She is a very subtle writer, and it’s amazing to me that her work was translated from Polish to English so successfully. I particularly liked her poem “Unexpected Meeting,” and the way she utilized imagery to say something about what her characters were feeling without ever explicitly saying so. “Our […]

Read Full Post »

Rhoades, Ailish October 6th 2018 Contemporary International Writers   Son, You’re the Angel of Death   I snuck out of the house early, just as the sun was peeping over the mountains behind my house. I brought my little sister Charlie with me, to see the chickens. Chickens were the only thing that could make […]

Read Full Post »

In “Unexpected Meeting”, Szymborska marvels at the simplicity of the animal kingdom. This simplicity is reflected in the shortness of the sentences: “Our tigers drink milk. Our hawks walk on the ground. Our sharks drown in water. Our wolves yawn in front of the open cage.” (Szymborska 137). In the preceding couplet, she acknowledges how […]

Read Full Post »

I really enjoyed this story, and the character crafted by Al-Shaykh. The dwarf, as he is referred to throughout the entirety of this story is a very unique and misunderstood man. All he wants is to become a part of the convent, which at first I believe is very honorable and pure of him, but […]

Read Full Post »