First response to "Fun Home"

When I first got this book I was intrigued by the format that it was in. The way its set up like a comic book and pictures really caught me off guard. Growing up I was never really into comic books and as far as I can remember, I don't think that I had ever read one. This book is bringing on a new experience of reading for me because not only can I capture an image in my head through the text, but the pictures that are illustrated through out the entire book help paint a better picture in ones head through facial expressions, scenes, etc. when you might not know exactly whats going on the pictures clear up the confusion if any at all. When I found out that Alison was in fact gay, it was kind of like a go figure because of the pictures in the book when she was little she dressed like a little boy with a boy haircut. This isn't to say that any young girl that dresses like this will in fact turn out to be gay but had the pictures in the book not been there.

In the time of the butterflies

This book was pretty interesting. When i first started reading the book it seemed to drag a little bit and wasn't really appealing. I think this had to do with the fact that it started off with Dede meeting with the interviewer so i thought that the story would be just her recount of what the book was about. However in the second chapter when Minerva came in i realized that the this book would be like that. I think that that was the most interesting thing about the book that certain chapters were told by a different Maribal sister giving the reader a different point of view. The books ending surprised me as well when i found out that three of the sisters were killed although it was expected because the went against Trujillo, alot of the times the main characters always make it!!

Minerva is the third maribal sister. From an early age she was smart, and self confident. From an early age she wanted to become a lawyer but her father did not want her to, however he agreed to let her attend Inmaculada Concpcion with her older sisters. This was after she spent 3 years at home after graduating high school. Once shes up at school she becomes friends with Sinita Perozo. Sinita tells Minerva about the deaths of her male family members. They were murdered for resisting Trujillo. This is really what ignites the fire in Minerva to become involved in the anti-Trujillo underground movement. She discovers that an old childhood friend who was a boy that she definitaly had a crush on was writing her letters in which her father had hidden from her. This angrys her but she reaches a truce with her father although shes still cold to him. She discover she has four other sisters out of this. She then attends law school where she meets her husband Manolo Tavarez. I haven't read much farther than this! Hopefully ill be done with the book by sunday

"I dance"

The first page of this poem was a little hard for me to interpret what was going on because it was all just one word per line. This caused some confusion as to what exactly the point of the poem was. Of course as I read on, I was able to recognize that the author was in fact talking about dancing. But I think that this poem has to do with alot more than dancing. I think that "dancing" in this poem actually symbolizes moving forward in life and progressing. She mentions dancing when doing normal everyday things; "I dance to the traffic/to the crowds/to the silence." "I dance cause I'm pissed off/I dance cause I can't study anymore." Not only does the author refer to everyday things and "dances" through them but she also mentions "dancing" to bad times in history; "I dance past the killing fields/ I dance past Wounded Knee/ I dance past the skeletons and bones/ I dance past slave branding and holocaust tattoos." I think that this story passes off a very important message about life, and "dancing" really means moving forward and progressing regardless of mood, history, problems etc.

So this girl is trying really hard to fit in with the popular girls at school. She try's to imitate there fashion, and do what they do in order to fit in or be popular. She is even mean to Wendy who she claims to like only in front of these girls because Wendy was apart of them but no longer is.  However none of this seems to work because Julie and her "posse" are constantly nit picking little things which makes her feel left out, and won't even let her sit next to them at lunch. All she wants to do is fit in with these girls and be popular which is surprising because they are pretty nasty towards her. I don't even know why she bothers she even says to herself in her head "Grow up. Be real. Stop pretending. Leave me alone." So you can tell as the reader that this girl herself doesn't even like these girls. So in reality shes not even trying to fit in with Julie and her friends but just desires to be known as one of the "popular" girls. The ending of this story really confuses me. She goes from yelling at julie and her friends in the lunch room to collapsing then waking up in Wendy's bedroom. I think that Wendy is in-fact the narrator of this story. Wendy is the girl trying to fit in. I say this because in the end of the story it says "Wendy is sitting next to my bed drawing a picture of me as an angel in transition." and at the end says "Wendy is laying in my bed" I think this story illustrates the importance of being yourself and not conforming to anyone. Wendy was in fact putting herself down by letting these girls make her feel like a piece of garbage.

"I was there in the room"

This was a very interesting piece. Upon reading I was at first confused but steadily progressed in my interpretation. whoever told this story was talking about a baby being born and her experience in the room actually witnessing the event. I really liked the metaphors used when she was talking about the vagina as the baby came out; "I was there when her vagina changed from a shy sexual hole to an archeological tunnel, a sacred vessel, a venetian canal, a deep well with a tiny stuck child inside, waiting to be rescued." She also mentions seeing "all the colors of the vagina" and I think that this goes beyond the actual experience, I think she uses the graphical language to dip into the hardships women face and the "secrecy" of the vagina that for some reason we still see today, how everyone gets uncomfortable when the word is used. "saw the bruised broken blue, the blistering tomato red, the gray pink the dark; saw the blood like perspiration" I think she uses this intentionally to make the reader feel uncomfortable to perhaps make the reader feel like the women in labor? Towards the end she related the vagina to the heart, and some of the analogies she brought up to link the two I thought were pretty interesting "The heart is capable of sacrifice so is the vagina the heart is able to forgive and repair so is the vagina" etc. However I'm still not quite sure what shes trying to get it in comparison of the two. Perhaps trying to say if there was no vagina there would be no life which is technically true. I think this story illustrates well the effort Ensler put it to soften people up when the vagina is being talked about particularly at the end when she compares it to the heart.

Moaning Language?

So in this story this women talks about moaning. I'm assuming of course she is a lesbian within the very first line "I love vaginas. I love women." However, I was a bit confused reading in a few more lines when she said "women pay me to dominate them, to excite them, to make them come" so does this mean that she is a prostitute that strictly specializes in women? Or does she do this without sexual contact because further on she mentions how she uses "props" such as chains, whips, handcuffs etc. I'm not sure how to interpret this story because I'm pretty confused. So does this women go from being a lawyer to a prostitute who gets paid by women to make .them "come"? She talks about how she practiced moaning in the mirror and recorded it then played it back to see what she sounded like and said; "but always when I played it back, it sounded fake. It was fake." Maybe this was another reason in which lead her to want to make women moan but really moan not a fake moan. Towards the end of the story she writes about ALL of the different types of moans. You can really see her progress in the story of her understanding of moaning women. It seems to me like a big misinterpretation and I don't know if its because of whats being talked about or if its just me.