July 27th Blog
Both of these stories were captivating because once again they deal with what is "normal or right" in society. Both give the history that white is right and what is desirable for women. In The Schooldays of an Indian Girl I was moved by many different passages in this text. When she was getting ready to get her hair cut by the "pale face woman" she stated, "Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners and shingled hair by cowards!" This was exactly the case in the little girls' eyes. She was captured by the enemy and now she believed she would be viewed as a coward. This part was really sad for me to read because it was like she was an animal at this school with no say in her own appearance. The next passage read, "I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. Since the day I was taken from my mother I suffered extreme indignites." This passage was written in a way that was so easy to picture the little Indian girls pain and struggle she went through physically and emotionally. In Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian, the passage that struck me was actually the last one because she is standing as her own person with her own beliefs. "After all I have no nationality and am not anxious to claim any. Individuality is more than nationality. "You are you and I am I" says Confucius. I give my right hand to the Occidentials and my left to the Orientals, hoping that between them they will not utterly destroy the insignificant "connecting link" And that's all."
posted by Brandy at 9:27 AM
3 Comments:
I think your response to Sui at the end of her story is really interesting. I felt a more negative response to it, but after reading your post, it helped me really think about the struggle she must have been going through to embrace either the Chinese or the American blood in her. I felt like she should have taken a more agressive stand for herself, but I liked what you said about standing as her own person with her own beliefs. If this limbo and balance between the two ethnicities is what is best for her, then she should continue to embrace that. I also thought what you said about both stories being about what is "normal or right" for women was interesting. I was reading it as more of what is "normal or right" in terms of how people are treated in society, but I would agree that this says a lot about the pressure that women might feel to be a specific race or ethnicity.
When I read, The Schooldays of an Indian Girl, I didn't think about how she was really being captured and her hair was being chopped off.You are right, it is like her worst fear is being played out right in front of her. I can't imagine what a horrible feeling that must be. After reading that, I mean I already knew it was a bad deal in the beginning, I realized just how horrible it really was. Your comment took the story to a whole new eerie level!
The description of the girls hair getting cut was a very moving scene. It reminds me of how differently different cultures put importance on things. For us, it's just hair...it'll grow back in a few months, and it is just a matter of appearance and vanity. For the girls culture it was so much more than that though. They were taking something meaningful away from her. It was as if they were taking apart of herself away.
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