Rosa

" Before is a dream, after is a joke, only during stays."

To me this quote is the definition of Rosa. She has let what happened to her in the camp define her, so much that she cant go back to life before the camp & she cant make a new life for helfself after. She has isolated herself. She is not taking care of herself , she doesnt leave her room and stella is for the most part her contact to the outside world. She intentially starves herself. She lives in poverty and this is all her doing. All of the things that she does and the way that she lives is a replecation of camp life. She is inflicting punishment on herself. I honestly cannot understand why Rosa chooses to do this to herself, but the camp has changed and broken her.

I think that if Madga had survived that Rosa wouldnt be acting this way . I think that she would have moved on with her life, but she blames her self SOOO much for Madgas death, that it has altered her life forever. She thinks that it is wrong for her to try and move on because Madga never had the chance to move on. Honestly i think that Rosa has lost it . I am very suprised that she hasnt tried to kill herself, but then again im sure that even if she had thought of it she wouldnt do it because of the fact that she would feel that was the easy way out , and Rosa feels like she needs to be punished for letting madga die. This is why 30 years later she still cant get over what happened to her.

I dont think that its so much the camp that Rosa cant get over. Its madgas death. I also think that maybe she replecates the camp life in her own life because that was the last time that she had madga, and she also does it as a form of punishment to herself. She still clings to the shawl and is awaiting Stella to send it to her b/c it has something to do with Madga. Its really not the experience of the camp that Rosa cannot get over, It was magdas death.

But then again,: how does a mother get over seeing her child murdered before her eyes ?

The shawl . Blog #1 w/e 4/30

Story #2 in the shawl was  more interesting in my opinion than story number one . The second story to me shows how a traumatic experience really can change your life forever . In this story we meet Rosa ...30 years later . She is hardly the Rosa we met in The first story . Rosa is 59 now & living In Florida .  Rosa lives in Florida which she calls a " hellish place " she associates the place and the sun with an executioner and a furnace.  Eventhough she thinks this of Florida she still chooses to live there because she is punishing herself for what happened to madga. While Stella has moved on , Rosa cannot get over what happened in the camp . In her letters she creates this life for madga . She is delusional. She blames herself for not saving madga . When Rosa was released from the camp , she owned a successful antique shop but she lost it one day & destroyed it because she didn't like the kind of ppl that shopped there & how they wanted the antiques for the wrong reason ."... whatever you explained to them , they didn't understand " .

The transformation of Precious

In the beginning of the book we meet Clarice Jones aka Precious. Precious is a 16 year old girl who is pregnant for the second time from being raped by her father. The first chapter Precious flashes back to the past alot. She is having a very hard time living in the present because she is so scarred from her past. She is forced to grow up way before her time & has the responsibility of taking care of not only her self but her mother. Precious's jumping back between the past/ present shows just how unsure and confused she is about her own life. She is often day dreaming. Because other people tell her she is stupid , Precious believes she is stupid, but really wants to be smart. She believes that because she is an overweight black girl , that is why she is treated the way that she is , and that if she were a blonde white girl that she wouldnt have gone through the things that she goes through. She feels invisible. She wants to get out of her mothers home, but she doesnt know how to survive on her own, or who to even go to for help because she is not used to people being willing to help

At the end of the book we meet a whole new Precious. She is not the girl that we knew in the beginning. She has changed. Precious has become as independent as she can be for a 16/17 year old girl . Her and Abdul are living in a halfway house, she is going to school & progressing & she is trying to be a good mother. Precious never felt loved in her life, but she has found a family in Ms. Rain & the each one, teach one girls. They have become her support system & they encourge her and make her feel loved. She wonders how these people can love her more than her own flesh and blood. Precious starts to become curious about love & sex. She isnt sure about how the two work together because she was sexually abused by people who were supposted to "love" her. Because Precious thinks that because of her weight and race she is abused, that incest group is great for her because it lets her see people of different races with the same problem, & she doesnt feel as bad anymore , or that it was her fault or something that she had control over. We also find out why she named herself Precious, she thought that if she named herself that , that her father would see her as Precious & stop raping her. Precious develops the courage to confront her mom about the abuse , which i think is a huge stepping stone & major progress on her behalf. She also finds out that she is HIV positive.

The end of the book leaves the answers to alot of questions uncertain. You do not know what is going to happen to Precious & her children. I think that its sad that a young girl who endured so much abuse & made so much progress had to end up HIV positive. Precious wants to find love, but honestly I dont think that she will ever be able to have a successful relationship with a man. I think that because of the abuse that she has endured at the hands of a man who was supposted to love her, Precious is scarred for life. I dont think she would be able to be physically intimate with a man , even if she really wanted to . Her being HIV positive also will make it harder for her to find somebody to love her. You hope for the best for her, but in reality Im not sure what would happen to Precious after the ending of the book. Maybe with ALOT of counseling Precious would be able to get over everything that has happened to her in the past, but it is good that she is focused on getting her life together, so that she can be a good mother to her children.

You also wonder how Precious will handle her children asking questions about their daddy when they get older. What would she say to them? How do you tell your children that you have the same father as them ?

Push

In class the other day our group talked about who failed precious . We came to the conclusion that everybody did . I think that everybody who knew what was going on & didn't do anything about , hoping that some one else would  failed her . I think the person who failed her the most was her mother .

I know a woman who was sexually abused as a child by her father. Her mother refused to believe her . It wasn't until years later, when her niece said that the same thing happened to her , that this mother admitted to knowing what was going on .

As a mother your first instinct should be to protect your child . How can you call your self a mother & allow incest & sexual abuse to your child ? Precious makes a reference early in the book about how the rape started when she was in the second grade , than she started putting on weight , than all the kids started making fun or her . Her mother ALLOWED this to happen to her.

When Precious had little Mongo , that should have been a sign to her mother . Like the woman I know , even if her mom didn't want to believe what was going on before , it should have been a wake up call to her then . It's sickening to know that her mother allowed this type of abuse to happen under her roof & that she lacks motherly instincts . Precious has more motherly instinct than her .

I think that because Precious's father was having sex with her it really screwed her mother up.  She probably felt that she couldn't satisfy him & it screwed up her mind & self esteem . She even starts to sexually abuse Precious .

Both of Precious's parents failed her . Your parents are supposed to protect you . Her father was a sicko who wanted her in a sexual way & her mother completely lacked the mothering instinct to protect & love her child .

Push

The first time I read push I was 15 years old. While ive always read above my reading level , I found that the book is very intense. The book is written in the writing style of a 1st grader, but from the live of a highschool girl. This book deals with rape, incest, abuse & a young girls struggle to do better. The main character of the book has two children by her father. Her mother resents and hates her & abuses her because she has children by her father. Her mother makes her feel like a low life because she was raped by her father. Her mom tries to put her down by calling her names. Her youngest child has some type of down syndrome because of the incest. The book can sometimes be hard to read because of the way that it is written . Words are horribilly mispelled, and the sentences have no type of structure, but as the story progresses so Precious's writing. its good that the story is written this way because it shows how uneducated and how far behind she is. Her home environment is entirely to blame for this. Her mother doesnt care about her enough to care how she is doing in school, & all her teachers know her family situation so they just pass her , so she can become the next teachers problem.

Fun Home 2 ( late blog )

This story has several strong themes throughout the book. The biggest theme without a doubt is sexuality. The book has a lot to do with her sexuality as well as her struggling with her sexuality. She figures out her sexuality through books. She reads interviews, dictionary definitions. These things help her to determine that she is a lesbian . Bechdel and her father were different because while she chose to be open about her sexuality and have a partner, her father had lots of affairs and wasnt open about it. He doesnt come out partly because he was scared. There was " fear in his eyes" whenever the conversation got to close to sexuality. Another theme in the book is death. There is a debate on whether her fathers death was a suicide or an accident. Her father also is the director of a funeral home. The book also talks about gender identity. Bechdel recalls wanting her brothers to call her Albert on one camping trip. Also bechdel looked at her father as a big sissy, while her father tried to make her more feminine. Her father displayed, feminine behaviors while she displayed mascuiline behaviors.

Fun home. ( late blog )

Fun home is structured around Bechdel's relationship with her father. In the beginning of the book Bechdel talks about her father obsessing about restoring their families home. This shows his emotional distance from his family. The distance also has alot to do with his homosexual tendencies. The book isnt presented in chronological order, but instead significant events are focused on , and looked at from different angles. Her father had a sexual relationship with a man while he was in the military , and he has had them with his high school students, as well as some of their close family friends. He dies when she is 19 years , in what she suspects is a suicide, but after her mother asks for a divorce her father steps out in front of a bread truck and is killed. Bechdel struggles with her own sexuality and shortly before her father is killed she comes out as a lesbian to her parents.