Family's Influence

Relationships with our families affect who we grow into ourselves as we get older. Whether they are the ones to catch us when we fall, teach us a lesson, and most of all to teach us who we are on the inside. These authors tell their stories through their experiences with close family relatives

Daniela Gioseffi writes in Bicentennial Anti-Poem for Italian-American Woman about her relationship with her grandmother. Daniela admires the amount of dedication her grandmother and how much sacrificed for the sake of her family, mainly her husband. Nora Marks Dauenhauer also writes about her grandmother in Grandmother Eliza. Nora writes on how her grandmother saved many lives, including her own. While Daniela expresses her appreciation of her grandmother through her sacrifice, Nora writes on her grandmother’s dedication to giving. Nora’s grandmother always pushed herself to be there for others, just like Daniela’s grandmother. Helena Maria Viramontes writes in The Moths about her grandmother, Abuelita, and how their sharing passion for flowers united them. After her death, Helena refers to herself and her grandmother as moths so they could return to the flowers together. Instead of focusing solely on grief, she learns through her grandmother's compassion how to find peace. Their grandmothers use their wisdom to teach their grandchildren the positives in life. 

Vince Gotera writes in Dance of the Letters about his father, who helped improve hid education more than just simply reading to him. Vince stresses the critical point of having his father physically there with him to help him through the reading. Proud to have his father present, he begins to mature himself. Scott Russell Sanders writes in The Inheritance of Tools how his father’s death affects him. Scott writes about the memories of his father and how his time with him built him into the man he is today. Both Scott and Vince write about how the attention from their father affected both of them into maturity.

All these authors have been affected greatly by their family. Have you guys ever been deeply affected by your family?

Daughters&Race

Daughters&Race

Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant is a story told from a black fathers perspective on raising his daughters. The story contains not only a gender issue but a race issue as well because they are African American. One of the main issues in the story is how the daughters get picked on for having braided hair in school as apposed to all the white girls with straight hair. Linnet the daughter tells her father that she wants long blonde hair so she can conform with everyone else. The mother though feels that by conforming with straightened hair for her daughters she is giving into assimilation and there for abandoning her racial pride. This is why she forces both her daughters to get short afro cut hair cuts as they are referred to in the essay. She wants her daughters to appreciate their race and not think that beauty is modeled after what white people look like. The father disagrees with the mother and feels it would be fine to let his daughters have longer hair if it meant they would not  get picked on. This example is what the true meaning of the essay is about which is the mother supports the empowerment method of her race no the emancipation method. "In a Booker T.Washington tone, McCall goes on to describe how the establishment of a black beauty culture serves as a source of empowerment for black women:' Then there is the issue of the Miss America Pageant which is the whole family is watching the beauty pageant and the daughter think that the black women is going to win and she does against a bet she made with her mother. The mother and father are both elated because in their eyes "It is impossible for blacks not to want to see their black daughters elevated to the platforms where white women are." My favorite point in the essay is at the end when the daughter are playing with their dolls and are playing with their father and the father asks them how did two black dolls create a white baby doll. His daughter answers him by saying, "we're not racial. That's old fashioned. Don't you think so daddy? Aren't you tired of all that racial stuff?" To me this shows that the kids aren't even thinking about racial differences which is good thing and once step closer to a more free and equal society.
-Sam Kanusher

Roots

                In Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan, Tan describes her relation between her Chinese roots and her American roots.  On the contrary to her mom, Tan grew up learning and speaking fluent English. Today, she is a famous writer. Tan discusses the burden of having to always speak for her broken English speaking mother.   She tells us stories of struggles she had with her mother and the English language.  One story she shares is when her mother went to the hospital for a follow up appointment to find out about a benign tumor found in her CAT scan the previous month.  Even when her mother spoke her most perfect English, the doctors seemed to have not taken her seriously and did not provide her with the care she should have been provided with.  Tan tells us, “She said they would not give her any more information until the next time and she would have to make another appointment for that” (pg.110).  Tan’s mother refused to budge so they called Tan.  When she spoke in perfect English on the phone with the doctors, “lo and behold – we had assurance the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake” (pg.110).  When dealing with Tans mother, who was hard to understand the doctor was reluctant to help but when talking to Tan, who spoke perfect English, he was more than willing to do anything possible to help.  I was highly offended by the doctor’s actions when reading this part of the story.  Doctor’s jobs are to save people’s lives no matter what age, gender, sexuality, or race.  I feel that Tan should have taken some legal action against the doctor. 

                This story is about leaving your home country and living abroad, and how your roots will still never leave you. It is about changing ethnic qualities, and keeping them all at the same time. It is about struggling and confrontation with a hostile environment towards different cultures and breaking those boundaries. It is also about the generation gap.  It shows how Tan was ashamed of her mother’s non-conforming ways, but how she was always there to support her mother.  Perhaps, Tans mother’s struggles along with her strive to be able to speak English, made her feel proud of her roots?

Class So Far

     ENG 110 so far has been a great class. I enjoy how we do things besides just always reading. For example, these blogs that each of us participate in are a great way for us to really see what other people are thinking and are a great way for us to interact. Since our society today is so into technology, this is easy homework! I do find it difficult sometimes when it comes down to the reading assignments and the reading load. I usually tend to read things that are from our day today, present time. I don't really enjoy reading things from years ago or things about history. It just doesn't make sense to me. Why read something if its over and done with already? I like to read books that cause humor or books that make you never want to stop reading, almost like mystery books! I find it hard to keep up with all the reading material for this course. Every MWF I find that we have to read at least up to fifty pages and it is hard to manage this with all my other work. Along with reading, we have to blog every night as well. However, it is a four credit class so I am trying my best! I usually like to get my readings and blogging done right away. If we get assigned to read something for homework in class that day, I will try to get it done that night so it isn't a constant weight on my shoulder. If I wanted to change anything about this course or how I am doing, I would say it would be not waiting to the last minute to write my analysis papers. I always find myself the night before sitting in front of the computer freaking out on not knowing what to write or how to even start. If I can manage to write these papers early and in advance, I can let Professor Heaney proof-read them so maybe I can get a better grade in the long run. I can then edit my work based on her comments. As they say, always have a peer edit your work! Overall ENG 110 has been a great course. I always like the group work we do in class and the group work we do in our blogs. I'm never bored because I always have something to do to keep my mind working and my blood flowing! I am interested to see what the other books, stories, essays, and poems we will be reading and what they will be about! How are you guys liking class so far?

Fun Home chapter 7

             In chapter seven (The Antihero’s Journey), we get a closer look of Alison and her father’s relationship. When he took the kids on a trip to New York City, Alison was exposed to homosexual men, and she never really met such obvious homosexuals before; so this was somewhat of a turning point for Alison. We also learn that Alison and her father connect from their love for literature. Alison takes her fathers’ English class in school, and truly enjoys it. Other students in the class don’t pay attention much, and Alison says, “Sometimes it was as if dad and I were the only ones in the room” (p. 199) This reveals an unspoken bond that her and her father share, and it shows that she actually enjoys this time with her father. In the car ride her father says, “You’re the only on in that class worth teaching.” And Alison responds with, “It’s the only class I have worth taking” (p 199). This uncovers the deep respect both Alison and her father have for on another.

            When Alison goes home for a break, she talks to her father about novels she’s read. He chooses a few he thinks she’ll enjoy, and she actually reads them. This exchange of books between Alison and her father is another example of the way they show respect to one another. When Alison talks her mother, she can see the pain she’s in by staying with her father. Alison says, “It was the first time my mother had spoken to me as another adult,” (p 217) which was comforting to Alison because when she was younger, she couldn't talk to her mother without feeling a little uncomfortable. At the end of the novel, Alison comes to terms with her father’s death; that it was a suicide. She says, “But in the tricky reverse narration that impels our entwined stories, he was there to catch me when I leapt” (p 232). Alison is basically saying that when she was ready to “come out,” he was there to support her, but when he was struggling with his sexuality, she was too late to save him.

-April Cust

Fun Home (Chapter 6)

Alison, this time, takes the reader deeper into her life as the story progresses. In this chapter, Alison focuses on her deteriorating relationship with her mother as well as her own maturity process. Alison illustrates how she begins to feel both of her parents’ slip away from her. With both of her parents being focused on their own aspirations, Alison expresses how little they pay attention to her. Because she feels so isolated from her parents, she begins to form her own individual by being completely on her own. For example, when going to the football game, Alison dresses herself as boy for the sake of her comfort zone. She states, “Putting on the formal shirt with its studs and cufflinks was a nearly mystical pleasure, like finding myself fluent in a language I’d never been taught (182)”. By putting on clothes that she felt best suited her, she is now making her true self-aware to the pubic rather than just herself.

Alison also discovers that her father, because of his legal trial, is forced to go to counseling for six months. She believes that this is the invisible link to one of the many reasons that her father’s death was a suicide. At one point in the novel, Alison witnesses her father asking her mother if his psychiatrist can come to the house. Her mother immediately turned the idea away. Alison’s father rarely asked anything throughout the novel, especially toward his wife. The fact that his wife turned him away, could be a reason itself that he felt more alone than before.

When Alison finally decides to tell her mother about getting her period for the first time, her mother did not express any nurturing toward her daughter. Because both of Alison’s parents are so lost in their own worlds (her mother working on her play and her father going through legal agreements), she felt the need to look out for herself. Alison writes, “When I was ten, I was obsessed with making sure my diary entries bore no false witness (169)”. Any other young girl would first go to her mother when she begins maturing. But, because Alison does not have that strong intimate relationship with her mother, she began looking up words in the dictionary. This idea of Alison becoming more independent confirms the idea that Alison (even at her young age) did not need her parents as much, and she believed that they didn’t really need her. 

If Alison had a closer relationship with her parents, would her personality be any different? Did doing things on her own actually help her? Or hurt her (like her OCD)?

Chapter 4 & 5

In chapter 4 Allison goes into how at a young age she admired masculinity but not in a way that she admired it but wanted to emulate it. The comparison for which the chapter is about is this along with her father and his desire for  being effeminate. On page 90 the top comic strip is Alison kneeling down at the garden along side her father. She says she hates flowers and he father says, "Sprinkle in a little fertilizer, then put the bulb in pointy side up." Then after she calls him a sissy which she does throughout the chapter. This reveals to me that even though she has revealed her self to be a lesbian she in a strange way looks down on her father for being gay as well and not the typical manly father figure society would have wanted him to conform too. Later on Alison reveals that she would rather have a crew cut rather than a typical girly haircut after she got the nickname butch. These are both obvious that she wants to escape the ways she is being told to be which is effeminate. The comparison is explicitly shown on page 98 in the top drawing. Alison wrote, " Not only were we inverts. We were inversion of one and other." In the picture the mother is saying the fathers suit is effeminate and the father is saying how Allison needs some sort of straw hat. Meanwhile Alison wants to wear sneakers.  The father is trying to express his desire to be effeminate through his daughters attire. Perhaps the first time she expresses her desire to want to be a boy is on page 113 when her and her brothers are in the mine with the construction workers. The worker doesn't know she is a girl so she tells her brothers to call her Albert. This whole family dynamic is extremely odd and i would assume her father can see right through his daughter and knows she is trying to come out. 

Chapter 5 has a few meaningful themes in my opinion. One is that Alison feels her father would have still been living had they not lived in there small little town and the other is her development of OCD.  She says that because of him being forced to cover up who he truly was he was almost pushed into his suicide. Had he lived in New York City were he could have come out and lived a true life and have people accept him for who he truly was than he would be alive. This book is extremely sad and depressing listing to Alison talk about her father and all the issues it has caused her such as her development of OCD. She explains how she must count patterns on floor tiles and undress in the same manner or else she would have to get dressed again in order to take off the clothes in the right order. OCD can be very dangerous and it is very sad that she has it alongside her other issues. A young man from the town next to me just recently committed suicide because he couldn't handle his OCD anymore. 

Sam

Coming out

                In chapter 3, Alison completely exposes herself and her own personal struggles with her sexuality and her coming out to us readers.  She opens the chapter with telling us that “My father’s death was a queer business—queer in every sense of that multi-valent word.” (pg. 57)  She then highlights different definitions of the word queer that I found to be extremely interesting and true to her father’s characteristics.  These definitions were “At variance with what is usual or normal in character, appearance, or action; strange; suspicious”, “qualmish; faint”, “to thwart, ruin; to put (one) in a bad position;”, “counterfeit” (pg. 57) Her father was extremely suspicious and different with his actions and was definitely not normal.  She then tells us of her experience, four months earlier, about coming out to her parents.  While away at school, she sent them a letter.  Ironically, her parents were not as understanding about the news as she had hoped.  I found this to be ironic because her father had affairs with other men, and her mother had known about them.  Alison says, “I’d been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents’ tragedy” (pg.59).  This made Alison feel belittled in her biggest time in her life.  While she expected her parents to reciprocate some sort of support or empathy, she is relayed even more shocking news than she had given. 

                Alison also tells us of her father’s passion about the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  She tells us how her father saw himself in various characters and tells us of the bizarre parallels between the novel and her father.  She says, “Gatsby’s self-willed metamorphosis from farm boy to prince in many ways is identical to my father’s.” (pg. 63)  As we read earlier in the book, her father grew up on, and ventured into the farms near his house.  We have also read how he was the “prince” or ruler of their household.  She also tells us of how he even looked like the man who played Gatsby in the movie. 

                Alison also shares the downfall of her parent’s marriage.  She tells us that “They did not use terms of endearment” (pg.68). This must have been hard for Alison and her brothers to grow up around.  While she remembers two moments where her parents showed slight affection for each other, the rest of the memories were dark.  Her and her brothers would sit on the stairs and hear her parents fighting and sounds of crashing.  Rather than accepting that there was physical abuse going on the house, they would make excuses such as “Sounds like he knocked a stack of books off the desk.” (pg.69) I do not blame Alison and her brothers for doing this.  Growing up in an abusive household is extremely hard and can be detrimental on a child.  Rather than facing the truth, they would make excuses to not face reality.  By the end of the chapter, we find out that her parents divorced.  If her parents had divorced earlier, would Alison’s childhood have been any easier?

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

      In chapter two of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic we as a reader get a better understanding of Alison's fathers death. As Alison stated in chapter one, her and her father do not have a close relationship. When chapter two opens, it begins at her father's funeral. Everyone in her family is asking themselves if it was truly an accident or if he purposely walked in front of the truck. There is evidence on why some people think it is not an accident, and why some people do. "There's no proof, but there are some suggestive circumstances. The fact that my mother had asked him for a divorce two weeks before. The copy of Camus' a happy death that he'd been reading and leaving around the house in what might be construed as a deliberate manner"(27).

     Alison later talks about what they used to do at the "Fun Home." She talks about how her and her brothers always used to fool around. "My brothers and I had lots of chores at the fun home, but also many interesting opportunities for play"(37). Alison and her brothers often slept there with their grandmother. Grammy always would make sure all the bugs were killed before they went to sleep. In my opinion, it seems that Alison had a good and healthy relationship with her grandmother. It seems as if her grammy was always there when Alison needed her. Grammy also told them stories before bed. Alison's favorite is the one about how her father got stuck in the mud when he was three and how Mort saved him. 

    Alison talks about the time when her father called her back to the private room where the bodies where dressed and not yet put in a casket. That must be a hard sight to see being a teenage girl. She saw the person's genitals and his chest that was spilt open. The father didn't even have the decency to explain what he was doing, he just asked for the scissors near the sink. In this chapter, Alison states that she has a girlfriend yet she doesn't give us clarification if she truly is a lesbian or if this girl was just a friend. It is very clear at the end of chapter two that Alison wasn't very much effected that her father died. They clearly did not have a good relationship. "My brothers and I looked for as long as we sensed it was appropriate. If only they made smelling salts to induce grief-stircken swoons, rather than snap you out of them"(52). Do you think Alison was upset at all by the departing of her father?

In chapter one of "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic", written by Alison Bechdel, we learn about the relationship between Alison and her father when she was a child. She explains how her father is really into decorating and design of their gothic revival house in Pennsylvania, and she doesn’t have much of a relationship with her father whatsoever. Alison refers to her father as “a Daedalus of decor,” (p. 6) and she truly wishes he took as much energy he puts into decorating into showing affection towards her. She really only speaks to him when he asks her to help with decorating something around the house, so that vital father connection is not really there during her childhood. In the beginning, they have a couple minutes of fun together playing the airplane game, which every child usually experiences sometime in their life, but when they were done he loses interest and says, “This rug is filthy. Go get the vacuum cleaner.” (p.4) This makes Alison feel like her father doesn’t even enjoy or notice the times they spend together.

                Alison is also uncomfortable in her fathers’ presence because he gets angry very easily when something isn’t perfect. When they were setting up the Christmas tree, Alison’s brother was holding the tree, but the needles were sharp, so the tree fell. Her father got into a fighting stance and her brother shouts, “Don’t hit me!” (p. 11) This image portrays to the viewer that the father can be abusive at times to the children since they react this way towards him. Alison soon realizes that her father “used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they were not.” (p. 16) Knowing this, Alison recognizes that her father must have a secret if he’s trying this hard to be perfect, or reflect perfection. At the end of the chapter, we learn that her father commits suicide when she’s about twenty. Will Alison be scarred for life from the absence of her father’s love as a child?

-April Cust