April 2026 – rmst 202 blogs

Final blog post

Here comes the final blog! I would say most of the books we read in this course are quite interesting, and reading them is a great deal. I learnt a lot about places I never been to, and wish if I am able to visit some of the places in the books, such as the Diamond Square from The Times of the Doves, Napels from My Brilliant Friend, and Combray from Combray. These books are great things to talk about with people outside of the class. Just made them think I am knowledgeable and have a very good taste!!!

Before I took this class, I had the habit of reading but did not have the habit of writing. Throughout the course, I actually found writing blogs to be quite interesting and fulfilling, I don’t think my writings are entertaining enough for others to read tho.

Also, thank the teaching team for helping me out during the semester, especially for the time I deleted my blog site:)

I would like to give out some award to the books I read!

The most surprising book: The Book of Chameleons. I don’t understand why. Even though I have not read a lot of books, I always find the books I am reading to be cliche. But it does not apply to this one. I picked this book to read because of the word “Chameleons”, but there is no chameleons in this book.

The best plot twister: My Brilliant Friend. You know what, after the lecture on Wednesday, I read all the spoiler on Wikipedia for the things happened later on. WOW! Never trust Nino. And it is literally breaking the third wall when I read about Lila working at IBM in the IT team. omg this is too close to the reality:(

The best click-bait title: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. Before I read this book, I did not expect it to have so many books embedded.

I am afraid if “he” will come back: The Time of the Doves. When I was reading, I was afraid that Quimet will come back and say “Hey! I am still alive!” at the end. Fortunately, it does not happen.

Let’s go back to the initial question that was asked in the first lecture: What is the boundary between a novel that is only a novel and a novel that can be called as a literature? The pattern I notice is that all the “literature” we read in this class has very obvious “people vs society” kind of conflict, and there are clues of some historical incidents in the books.

Where is the revenge?

Among the three girls, Ramla’s story was the most interesting one to me. The relationship between she and her father made me think of the relationship between Lila and Lila’s father in In My Brilliant Friend.

The blog will discuss the role of family in Impatient, exploring how does it appear as caring and as the embodiment of patriarchy at the same time.

In The Impatient, the father’s authority feels more absolute, and they keep suppressing their daughters with the structural forces. On the first page of the book, the author Djaïli Amadou Amal starts the book with the words from the father:

Patience, the most valuable component of marriage and of life,…, my father says. His voice is serious (p.1).

Then, page 4-6, she listed out the word of advice other male relatives, specifically the uncles, said to the young girls. I don’t want to paste the whole thing here because the list is sooooo long. But there is one claim from the father that I think is worth mentioning:

“Starting now, you each belong to your husband and owe him total submission, as decreed by Allah. Without his permission, you do not have the right to leave the house or even to visit my bedside. Only by following this rule will you be successful wives!” (p. 7).

From his sayings, we can see that the woman is no longer belong to her father but her husband, and the father is trying to educate his daughter to be a “successful” wife. Different from the Lila’s father, Alhadji Boubakari rarely behaves caring to his children because he has five wives and thirty children, which caused him to not have enough time to show the paternal love to his children. Ramla’s describes that “The sole proof I have of his paternal love is that I exist” (p.12). Therefore, Ramla’s father does not allow her to marry the one she is in love with, but the “most important business partner” they have (p.20).

Similar to her father, the uncles behave very much the same. As the father, being the who does not show any connections with daughters, makes some decisions like this, I totally understand that. However, it feels wrong when Ramla’s mother to not care about Ramla’s thoughts on her own marriage. Even though we cannot assume that Ramla and Aminou would be happy if they get married, marry a person who already had a wife and you don’t know as a person is bad.

But the elder relatives, Ramla’s aunt says to her that “Don’t marry the one you love. If you want to be happy, marry the one who loves you!” to convince Ramla to marry lhadji Issa (p. 29).

Therefore, when Ramla shouts out the long “O father” and “O mother” poem, I feel like my blog should be about this.

The question is: how do you like this book? The Hindou section is sooo depressing in my opinion.

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