I love my mother and I think she is a very wise woman. I have learned a lot from her over the years. But sometimes she can be very controlling over my life. I understand that she wants me to grow up to be a respectful, classy lady in society, but in the end it is my life. She always tells me what I can or can not do. Do this but don’t do that. Why are there so many rules in my life? Do boys have these many rules as well? I feel like she’s living my life and I don’t like how my gender dictates the way I should act. Why can’t I play with marbles, but boys can? There are so many things I can’t do just because I am a girl.   I’m still a child and I just want to have fun. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother. She teaches me a lot of valuable things. But for now, I want to play with my friends, not wash clothes and cook every day. When I get older, I will worry about that. She also tells me the way I should dress. She says that I shouldn’t show too much skin or else they will call me a “slut.” Are people really that judgmental? She teaches me manners and how to act properly in society. I appreciate all the lessons and I know you want nothing but the best for me but it is my life, mother.

– Calvin Yu

My mother always tells me what to do everyday and tell me to learn everything she teaches me because it is for my benefit. Although I know that my mother is telling me these things because she want me to understand how to live a better life and I am truly grateful, but I am a “girl” that need my childhood and I don’t really want to know how to live my life in the future. I am a “girl” that want to play and not think about how to make herbal medicines and cook a fish because I don’t need that in the future and I do understand my mother don’t want me to be hungry because I do know that she came from a poor, rural family. My mother always tells me to behave, but why should I behave if I can play and I don’t want to act like an adult that need to learn how to behave in a different situation because I should have an innocent mind that’s always happy and playful. When my mother told me that every relationship have different kind and some don’t work out. To tell you thetruth, I don’t really understand her because in my mind everyone that is nice to me means that I should be nice to them. And when she told me that one day I will go into a relationship with a boy and a sometime boy and girl will bully each other, but why will get into a relationship with a boy all I think about them as friends. I think my mother worries too much for me.

I am a well-behaved little girl. My mother always tells me what I can do and what I can’t. She never really tries to communicate with me. When she asked me if I sing benna in Sunday school, I told her I didn’t. She ignored me and kept talking about the boring rules. I was a little bit sad because my mother was like a cold robot. I listened quietly when she told me how to become a lady. Even if all those rules were made to kill my nature, I tried to remember and obey what she said. I couldn’t play like a boy not to mention play with them. I was told to hide all my genuine emotions and express certain gestures depend on different conditions. Gradually, I know how to smile to someone I don’t like too much; I know how to smile to someone I don’t like at all; I know how to smile to someone I like completely. It’s tired to be a lady, it is like wearing a mask all day long. I feel lonely and depressed, but I don’t want to make my mother disappointed. So I learn how to behave well and I get used to it eventually.

I know I am going to become a lady. I learn how to express my emotions; I learn how to get housework done perfectly; I learn how to properly deal relationships with men. I know what kind of woman my mother want me to be, but I don’t know who I really am any more.

Zhao Wang

I wish my mother would instill some faith in me. Why does she still treat me as if I am still an infant? I know when and how to wash and dry my clothes. I know how to cook. I know how to sew. Why does she insist on reminding me of these things? It’s not fair that she looks down upon me. Most importantly, she constantly reminds me of things that are clearly common sense. Of course I am not suppose to look like a swine while I eat my meal or look like a damn prostitute in public. Who do you think I am mother and why would you say such thing about your own daughter? I am conscious of what I wear and I know how to conceal myself. You can’t tell me who I can talk to and who I can’t. I’ve done everything by your book throughout my whole life. I’ve ironed father’s pants and I’ve swept the house thousands of times. If I’m doing all these chores, what exactly do you do around this house, mother? You’ve dictated my whole life and made it miserable. You tell me I am not suppose to play with marbles because I’m not a boy, but I wish I was. Then you can stop calling me a slut and maybe you would treat me differently. Perhaps you would love me more and actually consider me as your child. Unfortunately, I am not a boy. So mother, “this is how your daughter feels like when you constantly treat her like crap.”

Valerie Dorisca

This monologue reminds me the kind of conversation my mother used to have with me when I was an adolescent. At that time I found her very annoying, trying to control every single move that I was making. I think that is a normal reaction for a girl. When we are young, we don’t want to listen to old people’s lecture. I assume that will be the same reaction for this girl in the text. We can see that she does not understand the point that her mother tried to make by advising her to not sing benna in Sunday school. Innocently she replied: “but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school.” By responding like that she showed that she did not understand that her mother tried to explain that there are some comportment to adopt when you are at church which is a sacred place or in public areas. Singing a song like benna that talks about sexuality, bad taste, and open rebellion; shows that you are an uneducated girl. As a young girl, she does not find important the things that her mother talks about because at that age those advices don’t really matter. What matters is to hang out with friends, play, and enjoy our adolescence. She probably thinks that she will learn those things by getting experiences while making her own mistakes. Thus she does not really pay attention to her mother’s words, and will forget most of them by the time she finished to speak. However as she will grow up and face to certain situation such a struggling to iron a kaki cloth, she will remember some of the instructions that her mother gave to her. Those hints given in the text are some clues that are usually transmit from mothers to daughters to prevent a girl to become a slut as it says in the monologue. For the girl those things don’t make any differences until she will join the society.

Jasmine Estevez

Girl by Jamaica Kincaid

This to me sounded like a routine the young girl had in her everyday life. “Wash the color cloths on Tuesday…. soak your little cloths right after you take them off”. Her life was boring and repetitive full of rituals which she must do properly each day. Although as I kept reading I came to realize that this short essay was about a mother telling her young girl how she was supposed to do things. She asked her a question and when the young girl answered she kept giving her a list on how things should be done and what she shouldn’t be doing. “This is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming”. This quote right here I didn’t like so much. The mother is basically telling her child that she is eventually going to become a slut and in order to prevent it from happening she should hem the dress properly. The mother even tells her child how she should smile. This is what I believe is going through the child’s head:

“Mother doesn’t even give me a chance to speak. Throughout this whole lecture I am only able to get two sentences in the conversation. I am overwhelmed with all of this mother is saying. She is expecting so much from me. I haven’t even grown and experienced things on my own as much. Its as if she wants me to be perfect and make no mistakes. Come to think of it mother might of gone through these things and is now letting me know this is how this is done so I wont commit the same mistakes as herself. I still believe it’s a bit too much for me. Haven’t I already been washing cloths and speaking to boys just fine. Just let me grow and learn on my own with you as a mother protecting me and giving me advice instead of a list of things on how to do things.”

At the end I feel like the young girl disappointed her mother by asking “but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?” because after all this time of her explaining what she must do to be perfect in everything she does the child still wonders if the baker would even let her touch the bread. “You mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?”, here you can see how the mother is disappointed and doesn’t believe that after all this talk she will still choose to be someone who does things wrong.

Kiara Marmolejos

I know my mother loves me very much but sometimes she tells me things that I already know. I don’t understand why she insists that I am becoming a slut. I don’t understand why she can’t see that I follow her footsteps. I already know how to do the household chores. I have been doing them since I was six while my brother was allowed to play outside with friends. It’s never been fair. She is so contradictory sometimes. She tells me not to become a slut but then informed me on how to make a medicine to abort a baby. What if I don’t want to abort a baby at all? I would rather admit that I had sex and have the child. Clearly my mother still thinks I am a child. But then why does she call me a slut if I am innocent. I have never even kissed a boy! When would I get the chance for that? Oh how I wish I could kiss a boy! My brother is the one who is allowed outside. I do all the work in the house. Yet they still think he is more capable than I am. I’m so frustrated with these gender roles I just want to run away. My mom will probably accuse me of running away with some boy and call me a slut- again. I know she means the best for me but why can’t she get to know me. She thinks I will be a smiling subservient woman but I wont. I wont smile at people I don’t like. I refuse. But maybe I will let her know that another day… not today. I cant wait until she sees I am her daughter and I am good.

When I entered the Carton Arms Hotels I was shocked because I expected to find a modernized hotel, but I found one of the old and small buildings of New York paints with dark colors which gives the space a lifeless tone. I don’t know if it is its normal decoration, but I found it appropriate with the works of the painter. Most of the paintings has a deformed face on which you cannot describe any expression nor feelings. For some, many parts of their bodies are been mixed up with the background so you can say they form one thing. Thus it is difficult to differentiate the portrait itself from the surrounding. As she defined her work “Ghosts” the paintings are motionless, however what attired my attention was their eyes. Even though their facial expressions are empty, I had the impression that they are looking at me. Their eyes are the only thing that brightens their faces, and toward them you can trace a personal story. Some seem happier, others appear to struggle or afraid.  Those are the feelings that I picked up by looking through their  eyes.By those paintings, Mrs Adelson shows that we have to look at behind the facade to understand a person. Moreover she tries to tell us that somebody can pretend that everything is alright, but by  looking  through the eyes we can see if she or he is lying or not.  Her paintings confirm the idea that ” The eyes are the windows to the soul.”

Going inside the Carlton Arms Hotel was an experience that is so unexpected and different from what I know and understand because the minute you walk in it seen like you are in a whole different world that is full color and arts that many people are not used to. This hotel is living a life if it self. Walking to room to room and each rooms have a different feeling to it that is comfortable or odd. Within the two rooms contain Helen Oliver Adelson’s art that is different in way that it come alive. Looking her painting, the thing that I keep at looking is the eyes within her painting because I felt like it want to tell us something but is unable to. So the name of this solo exhibition is “Ghosts” and I think I understand why. I believe it is name “Ghosts” because is like a ghost that I have a untold stories that they want to shared but they are unable to.

We was unable to enter the third room because someone is renting it out but I ask the person on the front who told us that Helen Oliver Adelson was an artist there for many years and the third room was more of her old works that you display and the other two rooms is her most recent arts.

Even the bathroom and the shower was different from any other hotel and we can tell it was build a long time ago because the bathroom and shower is built separately and the location is different. Also everyone within this hotel had to share the same bathroom and shower because the room don’t have one.

Ekramul