FINAL BLOG POST

Walking into women’s literature I wasn’t sure of what to expect. I had some stereotypical views as did I am sure most of the class. I though that this class was going to be about women empowerment and well, feminism. Ii was way wrong. This course talked about way more then women. This course brought up the issue of the struggles between yourself and society. This course I believe related to finding you. All the books had one central theme in common, the struggle between society and yourself. Precious from push had to overcome stereotypes and what every teacher though or assumed about her, Rosa had to overcome her past, each of the Maribel sisters had to essentially hide from society what they truly were. Each book related to this theme of struggle. This course dealt a lot with the human emotion and the internal struggles inside one self. Eve Ensler talked a lot about this struggle. In all three works we encountered this course Eve used this as her central theme. In The Vagina Monologues, Eve tried to use an uncomfortable subject, vaginas, to try and prove her point. Eve showed us that as a society women are looked down upon. The Vagina Monologues was all about taking back the word vagina and empowering ourselves to stand up for ourselves and not play into society, and to love your vagina. The final movie we watched was so moving. In the movie Eve followed women as they went through prison. In this movie I discovered that there was a lot more to each of these women then their crimes. This goes back to the theme of the class, we labeled each one of these women by the crimes that put them into jail but by seeing how each of the women interacted with Eve made me see past their crimes and into themselves. The title of this class I believe is like the title of one of the books we read. I labeled this class when I first walked in as a women’s study class, after the course however I learned that there was tons more to the class then just learning about women in history. I took so much out of this course and the main thing was not to let society influence what I think of others as well as not let society label me. This course allowed me to see how people’s backgrounds influenced them such as Allison in Fun Home, Precious in Push, and Rosa in The Shawl.  Women’s studies left me with many valuable lessons about society and myself and I believe it is so important to take these lessons and relate them to my life because it will make me more aware of others emotions. This course can be related to men as well as women. This course is about society as a hole.  Women’s study is so important to learn about people and their emotions, this course showed me that fist impressions are not always right and that where you come from doesn’t designate where you are going. In Two or three things that I know for sure we see how Dorothy is struggling to get through life and to not let her family define her. Dorothy forged her h=own path and we see that it defiantly wasn’t easy for her, but she made it through and she was so much happier as a result. Precious showed us all that we can defy the odds and by having one person believe in you it will make all the difference in the world. Having that one person believe in Precious allowed her to go on and get an education. Coming to terms with your past was a major part of The Shawl. Rosa had to overcome what happened to her in the concentration camps to be able to move on with her life. Rosa had to relive her past as well as understand it to be able to move on. Although our past is very important it doesn’t not define us and one needs to understand their past before they move on with their future.