Author Archives: alizey01

Week 4 – Twenty Love Poems

After learning about Neruda and the choices he made, I wasn’t sure what to expect when reading this. However, I was surprised by the poems I read because some were sweet and softer, compared to what I was expecting. I quite enjoyed the different poems that were written because while the theme (women) was consistent throughout, no two poems were written the same way. It felt as though the first few poems were much more sexual and really touched on the desires Neruda felt towards women, and how he saw them through his eyes. However, as I continued reading the writing shifted to something a bit more heartfelt and sadder, and could be interpreted as feelings of love and loss with a person or even yourself . It was kind of like a “love-story” was being unraveled before my eyes, but with a sad ending. At the start you could sense Neruda’s attraction to women, from the way he described them, but as he continued to write it felt as though he had lost someone who he couldn’t forget and continued to long-for them. Moreover, in the end his final poem ‘The Song of Despair’ completely encapsulates the utter loss and sadness he feels for losing the women he loved . I found the order of the poems interesting. regardless of whether or not it was done on purpose.

I have read my fair share of poems from high school and something that I was always able to do was imagine what was being said, but for some reason I had a hard time putting the words into pictures this time. The poems were very descriptive and it seemed easy to paint a picture in your head but for some reason I couldn’t, and maybe that had to do with the simplicity of the lines. Neruda didn’t use fancy words or make odd comparisons that were hard to understand, he instead wrote in a way that was easy to follow and understand. Rather then painting pictures in my head, I felt myself feeling and hearing more. For example, the line “…leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.” (I Remember You As You Were), I could hear the slight rustling of leaves accompanied by a husky and soft voice. While I was still able to imagine some lines, my main focus was on the emotions I felt when reading the different poems.

As I mentioned before, Neruda used simple language in his poems and he did that by using nature to tell a story. It was interesting to see how he used the simple, natural world to describe the beauty of women and his feelings of loss. Maybe it was his ability to describe women using nature, that seemed to soften his objectification of women throughout the poems. It is possible that if he lessened the use of nature in his writing style, he would be seen as less poetic, and more aggressive.

Question to think about: Neruda relied heavily on nature in his poems, is there a reason he felt the need to do that? What was it in nature that made him describe and compare women to it?

Week 3 – The Underdogs

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This book was really interesting and I liked learning about the Mexican Revolution, from the perspective of regular people, who form a rebel group. I haven’t read many books on revolutions but the ones I have always have reckless, strongly political people who purposefully form a group to fight the revolution. So it was refreshing to read about a group of commoners, with different backgrounds, who stumbled upon each other and formed an unlikely group.

I liked how the author mixed a bunch of different characters together, who were going against the government. For example, we had Demetrio who was forced into leaving his family behind and forming this group, and then we had Luis who chose to join the group. The different character personalities really stood out to me and gave an interesting perspective on the revolution. It added a bit more realism to it because the people fighting against the revolution weren’t anything “special”, but were instead ordinary people who had been forced into it or inspired to fight against it. Demetrio as a character really stood out to me because he seemed so dis-interested to be part of the revolution but at the same time he was a good, strong leader. However, as the story progressed he became interested in the revolution and his role as a leader but kind of failed to stay as a good leader (at least in my opinion because he could barely control his men). It was interesting to see just how much being a part of the revolution changed Demetrio…for the worse.

One of the other things that stood out to me was how from the start, all the characters had a reason, a purpose, for taking part in the revolution. But as the story progresses the reasons become less known and it gets harder to tell what the characters are fighting for. At the start the rebel group was only attacking government men but as the story went on they became violent towards others and began wreaking havoc on innocent people. The government was the one being feared at the start of the novel, but at the end it seemed it was Demetrio and his men. It was a such a big contrast from the type of people they started off as and what kind of people they ended up becoming. It was like the characters no longer knew their purpose for going against the Federales, but instead knew they had to keep fighting.

Question to think about: The story started off with Demetrio being forced to leave his family, while at the end of the novel he chooses to leave his family behind. What do you think the author was trying to represent with Demetrio’s choices at the start and end of the novel?

Week 2 – Mama Blanca’s Memoirs

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Wow. Teresa de la Parra’s “Mama Blanca’s Memoirs” was such an interesting read and made me feel nostalgic in a way. The second paragraph in the Foreword, where she wrote “It was not kinship that bound me to Mama Blanca, but mysterious spiritual affinities that in the commerce of souls weave the brief or enduring web of sympathy, friendship, or love, which are separate stages in that supreme joy of mutual understanding”, I felt sadness, loss and somehow nostalgic. This sentence really captured my interest and drew me in to the text.

Throughout the reading I was really drawn in by how everything and everyone was described in such a specific and particular way, that on the one hand you knew exactly what the narrator was conveying, but at the same time it was left up to your own imagination. The way scenes and situations were described really stood out to me because the perspective was from a child (Blanca Nieves childhood), but things were described in a far more intricate way. The narrator’s use of descriptive language like this, brought in a sense of realness to it and it made you forget that everything that was being told was from a child’s perspective. Something like “…my independent soul, my inviolable soul, which Evelyn could not take by the arm, did indeed resist!” (30), was interesting to think about when imagined being said in a child’s voice.

Besides the descriptive language, the relationship dynamics that were brought in between Blanca and her sisters (especially Violeta), and her mother was something I felt most people could relate to (I definitely could). The argument and fight between Blanca and Violeta really stood out to me (mostly because I could relate it to my brother and myself) and it captured my interest how seeing Violeta crying put Blanca in distress, and made her start crying. It was such a contrast from what I was expecting the scene to end up like. From where the scene started to where it ended was sweet but is also got me thinking about how that fight must have been so significant for the narrator to recount it, when describing her childhood. The argument could have just been a dumb story that was meant to be funny, but if you traced it back to where the fight started you would realize just how significant Mama’s need for Blanca to have curly hair was and how it affected the way he childhood progressed.

The constant need Mama had to ensure that all her daughters had the same curly hair, made me feel sorry for Blanca because she kind of lived in her childhood in a lie. Now, it may seem like I am exaggerating but the fact that Blanca’s hair was mentioned through the text, kind of proved just how significant it was to her that her mother was constantly trying to “change her”. Again, this reiterates the idea of how small things that may not seem as significant when you’re a kid, can actually have a big impact on you. It can change the way you view your childhood and yourself.

Overall, I would say this reading was quite interesting and the visuals that were painted in my mind, will stay with me for a long time. The different detailed descriptions kept me visualising throughout the text and had me thinking about my childhood.

Question to think about: Was there a particular scene that was described, that made you think back to your childhood? And if so, how did you feel when recalling that memory?

Week 1 – Introduction

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Hi! My name is Alizey Sultan, and I am a second year student. I am planning (and hoping) to major in Political Science and Philosophy with a minor in Law & Society. My goal is to become a lawyer, who specializes in family law because I like the idea of working with family issues and…corporate law was too hard. A really great course that I recommend, for anyone interested in learning about human development and how family and the environment you grow up around affects you, is FMST 210. Also, I’m also originally from Pakistan but I moved to BC when I was two years old, so I’ve grown up learning about two different cultures side by side while also learning two different languages at the same time.

I didn’t really know what to expect when signing up for this course because I mainly did it with the intention of fulfilling my literature requirement. As I read the course description I was really excited that it was based on a contract because that meant it was up to me to reach my desired grade. Plus it gave me the chance to read books, which I haven’t really been able to do in a long time. After being forced to read The Leviathan for POLI 240, books based around race, sexuality, imagination (etc.) are a welcome breath of fresh air.

One thing that really stood out to me in the introduction video and changed my perspective on the structure of the course, was how with these readings we aren’t doing “history”. When I first read the different book descriptions my mind jumped straight to the idea that some of the books were going to be about how the different political movements and issues that were occuring at that time, affected people’s lives. I was too focused on how the contents of the book described, matched what was going on in history during that time. However, after the first lecture and finishing the video I began to understand the idea of “play” more. I also decided to “ditch” the literary analysis mindset that was embedded into me from high school english and instead adopt the mindset that a book can just be a book and doesn’t have to have every line dissected to find the “meaning”.

I am excited to start reading the books I’ve picked out and just learn about how literature can vary across cultures and that despite the different time periods, the books are interconnected in some sort of way.

Questions to think about: Do you ever picture what the setting or characters look like when you read a book? Is there a particular setting or mood that helps you read better?