On Thursday, May 11 th, I visited the “MoMA”. This was my first time heading to this museum. When I got inside, there were plenty of customer service attendants to help. Once I was guided along with taking a map, I started my exploration. But after visiting all the floors, I decided to stay on the 3rd floor, “MAKING WOMEN ARTIST AND POSTWAR ABSTRACTION SPACE ” because I was very impressed by women artworks. While I was walking in the room, I saw one art that really caught my eyes. The “Untitled” was Lee Bontecou’s steel and canvas sculptures which was created in 1961. Lee Bontecou was American, born 1931.

I choose this art because for me it one of the most beautiful art in the room. Almost everybody in the room was interested to it. People were taking pictures and videos. This gives me a lot of imagination about this art. I then asked myself what is so special about it? why most people are interested to it? The art wort has blacks holes. The black holes are huge, intangible. There is loads of layers that encircling the insight of the black holes. Next to the artwork there is an inscription to help people know the information about the artwork. Lee Bontecou description also helps me to see and imagine the real meaning of the artwork. She wrote “My concern is to build things that express our relation to this country – to other countries – to this world – to other worlds to glimpse some of the fear, hope, ugliness, beauty and mystery that exists in us all and which hangs over all the young people today”.

Overall, it was a fresh, exciting and knowledgeable experience for me. I went in with a different way to look at art and analyze it, whereas I would usually go to admire the beauty of the art.

Aminata Toure

After reading the story, I found that the narrative sstructure of “Wide Sargasso Sea” is much more complex than that of , Jane Eyre. Rhys takes some autonomy with the original and her novel is considered as a written with a change. Rhys relies upon a selection of alternatives narrative most importantly multiple points of view. Although the characters and settings are certainly recognizable from the original from which it is derived, Rhys has written a new narration on history and the effects of both isolation and colonization. When Rhys tells the story of Antoinette (Bertha in Jane Eyre) and her husband (Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre), she highlights the negative impact and also takes the terrible but antagonistic figure of Antoinette from Jane Eyre and turns her into a sensitive victim due to the isolation and confusion caused directly by British colonization. Her isolation was due to her ethnicity, her class, and the white men oppression in her life. She says ” The blacks hated us, they called us white cockroaches “. Antoinette is rejected because her father was once a slave owner. This makes her unperson among the blacks and her family poverty makes her undesirable to the whites. Antoinette and her mother suffer torments at the hands of the white men their lives. These things create in her a sense of isolation. Rhys also takes Antoinette the helpless victim of her oppressive and heartless husband in Jane Eyre, and turns her into a quite powerful heroine who does what she can to take control of her life in the face of all oppression. Antoinette and her husband see the world in distinctly different ways, and those perspectives will do nothing but create division between them.

In conclusion, Rhys wants the readers to have more imagination about the story. And to know and understand that Bertha’s struggles in life are due to the effects of colonization and bad luck as she was isolated because of her ethnicity and class but also because of the lack of love from her husband.

Aminata Toure

After watching the movie ”To Walk Invisible” I can say that Bronte sisters are very ambitious. They want to have a bright future than being governess. Charlotte and her sisters experienced inequality between men and women. In that period, men have more opportunities than women.

In the movie we saw that the sisters did not have enough opportunities as their brother because they were women. For example, their brother has all the opportunities to become an artist but because of his irresponsibility, drugs and alcohol addiction he lost everything. Compared to his sisters that were fascinated about writing, but do not have any opportunity to realize their dreams. Charlotte and her sisters knew that it was impossible for women to write a book or to express their opinions in public. So they used fake names to publish their books. They kept their books secret for themselves even their father didn’t know about it until the day Charlotte revealed him that she was the author of Jane Eyre. They did this because if they used their real names nobody would read their books and people would also criticize them because of their gender.

When Charlotte and her sister went to see the publisher to revealed their real identities. The publisher was very surprised that he seemed like he has doubt about their revelation. Charlotte asks him if it was because of her gender? her accent? or her size?

In conclusion, at the beginning of the movie I was bored but then I found that it was an interesting story that shows the gap between men and women. Moreover, it shows how Charlotte and her sisters tried to show society that women are also capable. This started to make people change their views about women and to accept their opinions.

Aminata Toure

It was very hard for Aminata to wake up as every Monday morning. It was 8 am, she woke up, get dressed and headed outside. When she got outside, the weather was very bad because it was a rainy day. She lives on 137th street on fifth Avenue. When crossing the fifth Avenue bridge to 138th Lexington Avenue where there is the 4 and 5 express train, she saw many people walking on the bridge as her. There, she caught the 4 train, she walked to the end of the platform as she always do to get a car that has available sits. When she got in the train, she found that the train was very crowded and there was no available sit, so she has to stand. Where she was standing there was a strange smell. She looked around her to see what was it? But couldn’t find nothing and there was no homeless in there. After while, she decided to put her scarf on her nose because she could not support the smell anymore. She knows that some people will see that as rude but she just acts like she doesn’t care what they think. The train stops to 125th street, 86th street, 59th street and then 42nd street Grand Central. There, she has to transfer to the 6 local train. There was 4 minutes before the train comes. When she got in the train, there was available sits in the car. she looked for one and sat. Where she was sitting there was a girl next to her who could be the same age as her. As the train was making stops, she noticed that she was going to the name place as Aijan. Arrived to 23rd street they all get off together so she finally concluded that Aijan was also a student at Baruch.

Aminata Toure

As Freud says, ” For a child his parents are at first the only authority and the source of all belief” I totally agree with this idea because the process of growth of children in the family involves the aspiration of the children to replace and overcome their parents. I remember when I was a child all I wished was to be like  my parents until I grew up and see things differently. One of Freud’s primary arguments is the conflict and relationship surrounded by the family. This is on the development of the romantic attachments and fantasies between children and parents. According to Freud there are many occasions on which a child feels he is not receiving the whole love of his parents. This mostly happens when the child has siblings and feels that his parents love his siblings more than him. I agree with this because most of us has gone through these feelings, sometimes we can even imagine that our parents are maybe not our biological parents. We also often compare our parents to other parents and have negative ideas about them when something happen to us or when we are dissatisfied.

Aminata Toure

The poem “Song of Myself ” by Walt Whitman is the untranslatable self, because it has been claiming an infinitely complex self that has many definitions, but no single definitive meaning. In other word his voice is untranslatable.

Although the poem identifies “Myself” clearly as Whitman, the specification of the speaker is also mystic. Whitman uses broad variety of poetic devices. This poem is part of vision for a society where all are equal, men, women, black and white. Some of the sections contain direct explanations of Whitman thought. For example, he says “For every atom belonging to me as a good belongs to you.” Here, he is telling us that we are equal. He also talks about how good is life. “Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?” Here, he is trying to tell us it is wonderful to be a human being and the ability to become one with the self and with nature. Whitman shows that the union of self and the body enable for an openly incomparable experience in which one have total achievement.

Aminata Toure

The poem “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson, is similar to Jane’s life.

Hope has always been the only thing that helps Jane to survive and to break all the obstacles she faces in her live. This helps her move forward in her life. Jane has been disappointed and underestimated several times in her life. Nevertheless, Jane accepted all the souffrances from her aunty, her friends and teachers at school and also from Mr. Rochester because she has an expectation that one day she will have a brillant future. Hope makes her strong and courageous to the point that she even talks about her feelings “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? you think wrong! I have as much as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for you to leave me.” In this passage, Jane is expressing her emotions about the way she was treated. She is saying that she has feelings and heart too.

In conclusion, hope is very important in anything we doing. Because without hope a person can easily give up and can not fulfill his desires and expectations.

Aminata Toure

After reading both Jane Eyre and Lorde, first, I found that both stories are told by women and then that there is some connections between them such as difference of race, sexuallity, class and age.  They both arguing that silence doesn’t help or resolve differences. In addition, women have to learn how to speak for themselves in order to be free. In other word, they have to express their feelings and thoughts.

Lorde is a black lesbian woman and Jane is an orphan girl. In Lorde’s story, Simone de Beauvoir said “It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting” This means that women need to be strong enough and to have some goals in order to live in a community.

In Jane’s story, we saw that at the beginning she was abused by her aunt and her children. But when she  learned that silence can not help her or fix what she was going through, she decided to speak out about her thoughts and feelings to her aunt ” I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to visit you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty. ” This passage shows jane declaration about how she feels about the way her aunt her children treat her. This passage shows a clear sense of justice and a recognition of her need for love. It also marks Jane’s emotional liberation. Because since the day she was locked in the red room she still has a mental feeling in her spiritual suppression, and it is not until she speaks these words to Mrs Reed that she feels her soul begin to expand.

Aminata Toure

For me, the sublime is defined as an experience from fear and terror. It works upon our senses and imaginations.

For example, when I think about the fire of the hell I am very scare. We all know about the existence of the fire and that there is something else after death which is the last judgment. My question is that why did God created the ” Hell”?  why did he created humanity if he knows that some of us are going to hell? I was born and raised in a religious family. I believe in God and also believe that anything that happen is God willing. Through my childhood until now, I have learned a lot of things about God and how to act according to his rules. I also learned that if you don’t follow those rules properly you cannot escape the fire of the hell. To say the truth, this makes me very upset. I know I am not perfect because no body is perfect but I can say that I am trying to do my best to do so. Nowadays, there is a lot of crimes (murders, rape,…) .  In addition, people tend more likely to do bad things than good. Sometimes I even ask myself where is the world going? Because everything seems like the world is going at its end.

Aminata Toure

Through the reading, we can see that the enlightenment was one thing that impacted people’s lives during the eighteenth century. As it is mentioned in the text, “The quarrel between “ancients” and “moderns” those who believed, respectively, that old ideas,or new ones were likely to prove superior to any alternatives. During the enlightenment, both sides of the ancient/modern divide, thinkers be lived in reason as a dependable guide. For others, reason provided a means for discovering fresh solutions to scientific, philosophical, and political questions. In addition, Thinkers tried to explained what it is to be human. Human beings, enlightenment thinkers argued , could rely on their own authority -rather than looking to priests or princes- to decide how to act well in the world.

Society also played an important role during the enlightenment period. In this era, many thinkers concluded that kings and Queens were ordinary people like everybody else. Thomas hobbes,a seventeenth century philosopher believed that human life before the formation of societies was not as people thought. For him, men and women stay together just for the sake of preservation and progress.

Furthermore, we can say that before the enlightenment,  men had many opportunities than women such as for education, for service in government or diplomacy and economic power. The only occupation women were known for was household. Sor Juana Ines de la cruz, a Mexican nun, proved her own passion for thought and reading, and became advocate of the right of women to education and a life of the mind. Finally, reason showed that if God had given all human beings reason, then women were also able as entitled to develop and exercise their minds as men. Even after all this, society did not accept the full intellectual and moral capacities of women, individual woman has to ask for themselves more rights than these of motherhood.

In conclusion, the enlightenment was one the best thing that happened in humanity and it plays an enormous role in today’s world. The enlightenment made people more realistic. For example, the equality between men and women.

Aminata Toure

Continue reading →