Sweet Texas Angel

For the last story to read, I picked Sweet Texas Angel. Sweet Texas Angel is about Kay, a student who abandons nursing school to become a household helper. Every Saturday, she visits her very sick mother who has lost her memory and takes care of her as well. Kay feels extreme pressure with so much on her plate. Along with taking care of several people, Kay has one night stands and builds a sexual relationship with the father of the family she is taking care of, Lee. Lee is a married business man, but this does not stop him, or Kay. Lee shows no remorse in his adultery with Kay. He shows full interest in her while leaving his wedding ring on, not feeling any guilt. Kay has an abortion before meeting Lee but this also does not seem to alter her views on being with Lee or hold her back. As a reader, I saw Kay as a character yearning for attention, whether it was from the wrong person or not. Kay knew how wrong it was to sleep with Lee and how much it would destroy and hurt the family, but did it anyway.

I believe McGlynn touches upon many themes in this story. First, he observes sacrifice. Kay sacrificing her nursing career as well as aborting her baby. This story also ties in a lot of religion which I believe connects to sacrifice, as well as sin and fate. The theme of religion creates many questions for me as a reader whether or not to connect “everything happens for a reason” to this story or were these things obstacles for Kay. For example, Kay “sins” with her relationship to Lee. But, she did not plan on dropping out of nursing school, but because she did it led her to Lee. Was leading her to Lee fate, or was it a sin for her to avoid? Was God testing her?  

McGlynn leaves his readers with a lot of questions, which is thought-provoking, but then again frustrating. We as readers all interpret the story differently from what we have experienced in our own lives. Personally, these stories are very long and drawn out and I do not really like how the author leaves us questioning and almost creating our own story.

Remember Love

Jody Lisberger’s collection of stories “Remember Love” was extremely interesting and captivating to me. The stories we were assigned to read and discussed in class so far have been really different from other things we have read so far. I enjoy these stories because they are about situations that people in life do experience such as divorce, friendships, relationships etc. Jody puts realistic and mature thoughts into her writing.

All of the stories unite in a way of complicated truths behind the stories that might not be seen normally but through Lisberger’s writing she brings them to the surface. For example, “The Bush Beating” focuses mainly on a rape that occurred in the meadow but throughout the story we infer that the father has had sexual motives toward his son as well as maybe being gay himself. She presents a problem to us and then as a reader we find out other background information about the characters and reasons why maybe the initial situation happened in the first place.

Personally, I really enjoy how each story has twists and different plot lines linked together into one. As a reader, this made me more excited to keep reading and find out what would happen next and what aspect would link to another. For example, in “In The Mercy Of Water” Kate is struggling with seeing her crush flirt with her friend. Something most of us as readers can relate to, jealousy. You would think the friend would then apologize and not talk to the boy anymore but we learn her friend is struggling with her sexual orientation as well as parental issues, nothing to do with Kate’s crush. But, all of these problems stem from an innocent jump and end up connecting to one another and going full circle in the end. This is what I find intriguing about Lisberger's writing.

Something I found to be challenging as a reader with this collection are the deep topics she does bring up. I find them exciting to read and they definitely keep my attention but some topics can be difficult to read. The rape, divorce and touchy subjects are hard to read due to the great detail she puts into her writing when describing the setting and scene. As well as the fact that a lot of the things she talks about are situations that people have experienced in their own lives. Maybe not personally going through a divorce, or experiencing a rape but something similar like witnessing parents struggle with their relationship for example.

Jody Lisberger: "Crucible", "Bush Beating" and "The Mercy of Water"

Jody Lisberger, the author of “Remember Love”, was born is Stamford, Connecticut in the 1950s. She grew up in Ithaca, New York. Initially, Lisberger studied anthropology at Smith College in 1975 , then got her MA in English at Boston College, followed by receiving her Ph.D. in English from Boston University. In 1997, Lisberger started a MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. Lisberger has taught full time at Holy Cross, Tufts University, Harvard University, and Brown University. She has taught literature, drama, feminist theory, fiction and creative nonfiction. She currently teaches Women Studies here at the University of Rhode Island. What we as a class are looking at right now is her prize winning fiction “Remember Love”.

I just read the three stories “Crucible”, “Bush Beating” and “The Mercy of Water.” I personally enjoyed all three, mainly “Crucible”. Lisberger’s writing is extremely detailed and descriptive. As cliché as it sounds, you do not want to put the book down because she keeps you wondering what will happen next. She is heavy on creating a picture and analyzing the characters situations and thoughts. She creates suspense in the story by linking separate stories all together into one. Doing so, this makes the stories very complex and interesting, as the reader relates the different aspects to one another.

For example, in “Crucible” the story is about a Mom and Dad watching their daughter in her high school play. Although the entire stories setting is at the play, throughout the story you learn a lot about the parents relationship with one another as well as the mother’s analyzing the play as it relates to her own situation. Their daughter, Julia, plays an adulteress in her school play, Abby. As Sheila, Julia’s mom, watches the play she cannot believe her eyes as Julia is caressing another actor’s face as well as indulging in the plot. “Please let it drop and shield these two. My daughter doesn’t know these things. She’s acting. It’s a play. You’re supposed to act.” (page 14) Sheila then begins to connect the play to her current relationship status with her husband, Tom. She herself was cheating with a man checking their house of radon in the air. Seeing the play made her think of her mistakes and how her future with her husband will play out.

A scene that really added suspense to the story and was interesting to me was when Sheila goes to look for Julia after the play. She goes to find her to congratulate her on how well she did and she is not with the rest of the actors. Sheila is pointed toward a doorway, and is hesitant to go in. Thinking she is in there with her fellow actor that she had intimate scene with in the play. She ponders on this for a while and Lisberger creates great suspense for the reader as to what could be behind that door. We soon learn that Julia is doing nothing but innocently getting dressed, (page 21-23). Although we are built up with uncertainty and doubt in Julia as a “whore” of a character, the scene ends with her doing nothing wrong. I really enjoy Lisberger’s style of writing and her detail to the characters thoughts.

Maus and The Fun Home

I just read the two stories “Maus” and “The Fun Home”. Both stories are written as comics, sequential drawings that have word bubbles to express the characters voices to tell the stories. The first story was about a father and son having a conversation about the flashbacks the father had about his time as a prisoner of war. This story had a lot of Jewish slang in it that made the tone of the story stand out. You could tell the father had broken English, some of his sentences did not make sense and he often snuck in random Jewish words. Also, all of the characters names in this story were Jewish; for example Vladek, Mala, Anja. The characters reference the Jewish tradition Bar Mitzfah’s (blocks on pg 61) and the Jewish event Parsha’s Truma (blocks on pg 59). These depth of the culture in this story works well with the images because it helps to set the mood and get you into the time period from when the father was flashing back too. Ultimately, the tone in this story is that of an older man telling a story with an accent as well as broken language giving the listener a different sense of the story. For example, when an old Spanish woman is telling you a story you get the thick culture tone behind her voice and the story seems to have a different mood too it.

Next the second story “The Fun Home” was about just the opposite, a not fun home. The story is told by a girl, Allison, who is mainly writing about her and her father’s relationship. She begins by explaining a time when she was doing airplane with him and in the story you quickly realize the type of relationship they have and what kind of father he is. You can see how uninterested he is to be playing with his daughter. Quickly, he tells her to go get a vacuum to vacuum the rug, and to get a tool for him to fix something. This immediately sets the mood for the story to an emotionless and uncomfortable plot. Soon, we learn that her father is not so much a family man but a perfectionist that wants to make his life seem as perfect as possible, perfect house, perfect family. Throughout the story we learn that Allison’s father beats his children, as well as has sex with her brothers and in the end, kills himself. But during the story he still goes to church, is a school teacher, and keeps his house in good shape, trying to appear as “perfect” as possible. I believe the pictures worked well with this story as well as the first one. The images of the Dad show how mean and unconnected he his. He never seems to make eye contact with the other characters, always has a mean face on, etc. A block that stuck out to me was on page 17 where the family is taking a picture to show how perfect they are yet no one is smiling or interacting with one another showing no emotions. This was interesting to me.

This story is different than the first story “Maus” due to the way it is written. It does not have a lot of dialogue, mainly it is written as a story and the text is above each picture, where in “Maus” the story is told through the characters dialogue with few narration texts. These stories definitely were different due to the way they were written. Although they were both well written and did a good job of setting the mood and describing settings and characters, having the picture with the word was also interesting as a reader. I don’t often read comic strip stories but I enjoyed these two stories.

Frida Kahlo and Louise Bourgeois

The first artist I looked at was, Frida Kahlo a Mexican painter. She was married to another Mexican painter, Diego Rivera. She was born in Coyocacan in 1907, one of four daughters. Her work has been greatly celebrated in Mexico, as well as in American. Frida suffered health problems all her life. She was a survivor of polio and also seriously injured in a car accident, these experiences and memories to show through in her art. Most of Frida’s art is self portraits. She stated “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." She also stated, "I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.” Frida was also a bisexual and unable to have children. Her marriage suffered due to infidelities and the pressure to try and get pregnant.   

 

As we can see, Frida had some rough times in her life, physically and mentally, and her artwork tells a story of that. She is best known for her self portraits and remembered for the pain and passion in her art work. Her work shows hurt and suffering from the times in her life where she was in misery. Her artwork is unlike anyone else’s and is a reflection of her life, almost a biography through her pieces. She tells a story in each piece with her vibrant colors and intensity.
 For example, this painting “Without Hope” from 1945 is extremely intense and bold with color. The colors are very vibrant and alive, but the meaning behind the painting is almost the opposite. To me, this tells a story by showing Frida on bed rest from when she was very sick and showing how she was feeling, her emotions. Helpless, as if her life was being sucked out of her, obviously she is crying and looks drained. 

Secondly, I looked at the artist Louise Bourgeois. Louise is from Paris, born in 1911. She studied at many schools there and later immigrated to the United States in 1938 to pursue her studies with artwork. She is greatly recognized in the 20th century for her work with sculpture art. Her main theme in her work his her childhood. She uses rubber, wood, bronze and stone to execute her sculptural work. A famous line stated by Louise is “My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.” This statement explains the use of male and female bodies and the connection to innocence and sexuality in her pieces.

An example of her work that I looked at was "Arch of Hysteria" from 1993. This piece is a sculpture of what looks to be a male in almost a back bend. The thing about this piece is that the sculpture does not have a head. The person almost looks paralyzed or immobile. Louise balances the definition of the word "hysteria" in the title with the masculinity of the sculpture with the emotional state of men and women and how they connect.