Glory Edim's On Girl-Hood | 2021| Book
Fifth Sunday by Rita Dove | 1985
I didn't really understand this story too much. Especially when I attempted to answer the discussion questions.
She had never been kissed so I assume she couldn't be pregnant.
Or was her rage rooted in her father's awkward approach to the scene?
Definitively her attitude at the end of the short story was markedly different from the beginning - which I guess does reflect character growth in ways. But largely, I don't understand.
*In research, I was unable to find any analysis' done on this piece and also understood Rita Dove is a poet - which is clearly reflected in the language she employs.
"We decide who they are." (52)
"And we feel lots of things we can't say.... go back to pretending we don't feel anything at all." (53)
"Encouraging us. Discouraging her fears." (53)
"That she hates us because we are everything she has tried to deny that we are. We are everything she has thought but never said. We have shown her." (54)
I've felt the fear attributed to the teacher's avoiding them in fear of their mockery. I've felt the desire to hang around them and laugh, knowing the actions weren't funny. I've understood the deep desire to be proven wrong and disappointment when I was not. The second hand embarrassment as the ways in which they carried themselves affirmed their stereotypes. The questioning of how much of self I've cultivated to avoid that. Avoid being seemingly understood before I was known.
This short story was a psychological reminder of the worlds I inevitably play within as a biracial women. The racial ideologies I've inherited on other side. The understanding that sometimes any attention, any feeling is drastically better than none. The control felt in commandeering an environment. A reclamation. A reparation.
"What kinda work do they do and how they live and how come we ain't in on it? Where we are is who we are." (63)
I remember being in middle school without a phone. Without a parent willing or able to pay for one. I remember not having internet or a computer to do my homework on. Remember not having non-expired food in the fridge or a kitchen sink that worked so I could make a canned soup. Remember wanting to go to a concert or shopping with friends. Remember not having money. Remember wondering why those that did weren't sharing. Couldn't someone add me to their phone plan? Couldn't I have dinner with your family? Couldn't anyone see me and wish to help?
That's what this passage triggered for me.
The knowing that there were the haves and have-nots. Knowing that you were the latter and it was your personal responsibility to change it. There were worlds I didn't know, but once I did, I knew I wanted access. I wanted their freedoms. I became determined.
Dance for Me by Amina Gautier | 2006
"...self-reflective moments... consider the grave issues of the times and their place in the world." (69)
"I was losing my rhythm and running out of breath when she finally said, 'Wow. You're good. Really, really good." (71)
"I couldn't either, but no one knew that. They all took it for granted that I could." (72)
"The dancing, I thought, brought me respect and admiration. Through it, I was redeeming myself in their eyes. I was, after all these years, good for something." (74)
"I was not one of them and we claimed no kinship with one another." (72)
"Was there some magic word I needed to say, some secret code that would let him know I meant business." (26)
"The party, because I had longed for it, was a disappointment." (78)
"...the real world, their own distinct ones, but I was somewhere in limbo. Set apart, I didn't know how to let either of them in." (81)
Bad Behavior by Alexia Arthurs | 2016
"They looked at the sweet little face on the body of a woman..." (82)
"This blasted country that turned parents into children and children into parents." (83)
"-it was that when they made mistakes, they knew to be ashamed. All children were selfish, but American ones had an easier time living for themselves." (83)
"...so she could cry without anyone seeing her." (85)
"Her parents had been furious... but they hadn't asked why." (86)
"Not all mothers could afford to be kind" (86)
"But then, without realizing until it was too late, without knowing why or how, she had failed her daughter." (87)
"She married a man that wasn't as ambitious as she was." (87)
"If she didn't... the thought would never have occurred to him." (88)
"...thinks, of course my mother set her right. Unbeknownst to her, Trudy talks to her granddaughter, reasons with her." (89)
*In researching more The Color Purple author, I found her daughter's website that features a quote from a person at Gettysburg College - my alma mater.
"She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that 'no' is a word the world never learned to say to her." (111)
"She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know." (113)
"... I couldn't reach the quilts. They already belonged to her." (120)
"And then the two of us sat there just enjoying, until it was time to go in the house and go to bed." (122)
"It was the sound of a cheerful death." (133)
"She had a body like all the others who lived here except she was willing to be naked." (135)
"Princesse felt like she had helped to give birth to something that would have never existed otherwise." (142)
".... to have something to leave behind even after she was gone, something that showed what she had observed in a way that no one else had asked and no one else would after her." (143)
"...clutching an image of herself frozen in a time that would never repeat." (143)
In a House of Wooden Monkeys by Shay Youngblood | 1989
"She was in misery, but could not show it before all those who had come to witness." (146)
"...a rootwoman." (146)
"Mama Etta was a rich woman, because she would always have someone to care for her." (147)
"To deliver a living, growing thing from her body was a miracle she wanted to bear." (148)
"...as they were suspicious of a man with only one god." (148)
"...it was only natural that she longed for hands and lips of passion on her breasts and on the soft spot between her thighs and warm arms to hold her through the endless nights her husband was away." (149)
"....the women turned from each other in that intimate way, back to their men. It had always been the way, from her grandmothers time and before." (148)
"Angry looks flew above the injustice of his words." (149)
"...Mama Etta spilled herself into the room and stepped like a queen up to the altar, to her daughter's side." (149)
"The silent procession of those who had lost faith wound down the dirt path to the village." (149)
"Widow watched him some, then turned to follow the others." (150)
I enjoyed this short story a lot. The relationships people form with religion and why. The return to community and roots, when dismayed. A community that may reject but closes in around you against foreigners.
• December 20, 2022 | Barbados •