Women's Writing Worldwide

 Word Count: 339 Sara Suleri was a writer from Pakistan. She was raised in Karachi in Pakistan. He father was a journalist, and her mother was a teacher. Coming from a Pakistan/Welsh background she grew up and eventually moved to England for a brief amount of time. Later in her life she moved to Connecticut where she is a professor at Yale University teaching English. Suleri goes through experiences of “meatless days” beginning with her conflicts with her family based on the food she was eating. She was told the the  kapura’s  she was eating were “sweetbreads”. These sweetbreads were something commonplace around her and she did not think much of it until some people started mentioning what went into the food. She wrestled with this for quite some time. Her friend Tillat told her “They’re testicles, that’s what kapura really are" (731). Still, she refused to believe it. When this was revealed to her, she was shocked but also felt betrayed. After all, the one who had origin...

 Word Count: 250 Onnie Lee Logan was a midwife from Alabama who became known through her story. She came from a black family and like her relatives before her, she became a midwife. She had many siblings and had gotten into the practice of being a midwife very young and her story was only spread verbally. Back then many people who could not read or write well had their stories transcribed for them. In Logan’s case it was to Katherine Clark, an English professor at the University of Alabama. Her story was then written into a book called Motherwit.  Throughout the book, Logan reflects on the broader social and cultural forces that shaped her experiences as a midwife, exploring the impact of the constant struggles on the women and families she served. She also writes about her own personal growth and development, reflecting on the ways in which her work as a midwife helped her to find a sense of purpose in her life. Logan goes through the process of how she does her work, to the ...

 Word Count: 361 Nisa was a woman from southern Africa in the Kalahari Desert. She is from the King people, or a group of nomads. Her experienced were recorded through an American anthropologist named Marjorie Shostak. Shostak learned the language and then began to interview many Kung woman but not a singular person to fiate on until she met Nisa. Many of the women she met had problems communicating with her except for Nisa. Nisa's life is described in detail, from her childhood experiences growing up in a hunter-gatherer society to her experiences as a wife and mother. Nisa's story provides a window into the daily life of the !Kung people, including their social customs, beliefs, and values. With the help of Shostak, Nisa was bale to get her stories shared in the form of her works, “Nisa: The Life and Words of a Kung! Woman”. "It's hard to tell about these things, because they happened so long ago, and because we had no writing to record them. We have only our memorie...

 Word Count: 288 Maxine Hong Kingston was born in America, but her family is from China. Her family immigrated to the United States and had 5 other siblings. Before writing she went to Berkley, California for college and got married. She then moved to Honolulu for 17 years and taught English. She then went to write 3 books. In this excerpt we see her write from her book, “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts”. Maxine had a a very strange and interesting childhood growing up. Her story starts iof with her mother saying things about curses, plagues, and spiritual metaphors. Maxine most times was stuck most of the antics and would have to be the one carrying out her mother’s orders. Beyond that she faced many odd circumstances at the mercy of her family. From her mother to her “old man”, everyone one seems to have a anxious, weird, or angry mood about them. Later on, her parents started going into the Gold Mountain News to find husbands for their daughters. Maxine fig...

 Word Count : 263 Beryl Markham was raised in East Africa on a horse farm built by her father in the wilderness. She grew up working on the farm and helping her father out who made it. Though she was raised there she eventually went to become a pilot. She worked for many years flying all around Africa delivering mail and supplies. She eventually to fly a solo transatlantic flight from east to west, and was the first woman to do so at that. Her flight ended when she crash landed in Nova Scotia. From that she then went to write a book called “West with the Night”. She wrote it during WWII. Though the book was forgotten or overlooked for many years but was then later republished and became a best seller over 30 years later.              In the excerpt from “West with the Night”, Markham’s says:   "Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday." This quote illustrates Markham's sense of adventure, her readines...

 Word Count: 268 Isak Dinesen, also known as Karen Blixen, is a Danish author featured in The Norton Book of Women's Lives. Her excerpt is taken from her memoir "Out of Africa", which recounts her experiences as a coffee farmer in Kenya during the early 20th century. In the excerpt, Dinesen vividly describes the natural beauty of the African landscape, as well as the challenges and joys of running a coffee plantation in a foreign land. She also reflects on her relationships with the local people, including her employees and friends, and shares insights into their cultures and customs. One quote that would describe her would be: "If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a color that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow ove...

  Word Count: 288 Tetsuko Kuroyanagi’s excerpt comes from her time and life before the War. She was shown on a daily television program called Tetsuko’s Room for many years. The majority of her memoirs from when she was young were published a lot later in her life. They called it Totto-Chan: The Litlle Girl at the Window, which is what we read in the excerpt. She went to a progressive school called Tomoe and they were encouraged and opened up to the type of response and dance to music. It sadly did not last long since the school was destroyed in 1945.  Totto-chan is represented as a very unique individual throughout her school life. She is very unconventional. As represented in her school drama, she is doesn’t quite fit into the mold that everyone fits when it comes to picking parts for the play. Originally, she is supposed to play Yoshitune but can’t remain still during a scene. This also occurs in a scene where is made to be a monk but then gets too jumpy. Eventually she goe...

 Word Count: 274 "I had learned to hold the past in an uneasy equipoise, neither disowning it, nor allowing it too much power over me. It was not that I had become reconciled to it, but that I had learned how to use it, and to make something else out of it, something not quite so heavy to bear." Steedman explores the emotional and psychological impact of growing up in a working-class family in postwar England, examining the relationships between herself, her mother, and her siblings, and reflecting on the larger cultural and historical forces that shaped their lives. Throughout her childhood we get to see how others in her life were affected, especially her parents. The war had made them into versions of themselves they did not recognize. Steedman describes the complicated and frequently tense relationship she has with her mother with a mixture of love, frustration, and sadness. She examines how her mother's expectations and demands shaped her own sense of self as she con...