I cannot speak on behalf of other cultures of individuals of those cultures. I cannot even speak for my culture as a whole because I’m only me. I can only speak for myself.

When reading these collections of narratives, I felt that the author did an excellent job of portraying individual experience with racial stigma in Canada, but I felt that these narratives should not be used to represent all people of the culture that was being presented. In the case of Janet, I was torn between what she was more concerned with, the fact that she was brown or the fact that she was a homosexual. Both of these identities do not label her, yet I felt that she was trying to make it so these titles made her who she was. I’m happy that her character was not ashamed of either, yet I feel that being brown and a lesbian do not attribute to who she was as a person and how life affected her. I believe that searching for the one word, in her case “Trinidadian”, to fully capture who we are as people is next to impossible.

I believe, and I know that some would disagree, that culture and race was simple details of who people are. They are the foundation of the house, but that’s it. They aren’t the home. So for that reason I felt that Out on Main Street did justly in giving insight to how some individuals see their racial difference, but much of it felt like generalizations.

Sex.

The sexualization of the story was one of the major differences between Coppola’s and Stoker’s “Dracula”. In the book, Stoker did touch on sexual details, such as the demeanour of his two female characters changing after their encounters with the vampires. However, Stoker did not touch on a back romance between the count and Mina, as well as a sexual encounter with Lucy and the wolf in the garden. Of course, it’s Hollywood and there needed to be some type of attraction for the audience to go by. Part of the fact that every female in the movie was topless is part of what made it successful. I also felt that they made the character of Lucy much more flirtatious and somewhat inappropriate than in the book. Lucy, though she was at one point courting three men, is still a lady in London and would not have subjected herself to act as she was portrayed in the film. I felt that her character was always flirtatious, but not a floozy. Whereas in the film she acted as if she were always working a brothel.

To add further to the sexual desires of each character, Coppola played down the role of J. Harker and up the role of his finacee Mina. By doing this he was able to focus the movie on a love story between Dracula and Mina, whereas in the book, the two shared no previous deep romantic connection. Harker only served real purpose at the start of the film, and when he did return in the end it seemed like he did not accomplish of develop. He became more of a back character.

The book will always be better than the movie. In many cases, not just with Dracula. For someone who wants a more action packed and grabbing plot line I would suggest the movie, since the book doesn’t have as much tension as Coppola added. I feel that though the movie came from the book, it’s more “loosely based” due to the many changes.

Kiss of the Fur Queen is one of those novels that was able to make me smile on one page and then break my heart a couple later.

The book itself, although technically “fiction”, isn’t imaginary at all. Which is what makes it so hard to wrap one’s mind around after it’s over. The entire book in it’s events are based upon real things that happened to the author Tomson Highway as he was growing up as a First-Nations member in Manitoba. Tomson Highway experienced first hand abuse during this time in the residential school system, and knowing this fact made each part of his novel that much harder to read. When Gabriel was inappropriately touched by the priest as he slept, that was real. It may have not happened to Highway directly, but it did happen to young boys or girls in the school system. And when the two brothers felt that their families would no longer understand them or their situation, those feelings were true. Many children became cut off from their old lives and were left to be conflicted from who they were and who they were told they should be. Highway, like his two protagonists’, first language is Cree. Upon entering the school system Cree was banned. There was no transition from Cree to English, the children were simply forced to never use their native tongue or names. Both boys grew up to pursue a career in the fine arts. Jeremiah had his music and Gabriel his dance. This can easily be traced back to Highway for his success in writing.

Throughout the novel, I went back and forth from what the Fur Queen meant to Highway in comparison to his characters. At the start of the novel, the Fur Queen, was a beautiful young woman who was a symbol of glory for Abraham. For this sons, however, the Fur Queen is a playful unattainable figure who appears in and out of their lives. I feel that this “Fur Queen” is meant to act as some form of light or hope for the boys. In the midst of their situation, there is a lively element that inspires them to keep going on. Perhaps this is the same small grain of hope that Highway held on to so dearly during his time in the Residential School system. If that’s the case, then this novel is almost a memoir.

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT: Vampires are not all young, sparkly, teenaged, hollywood-looking starlets who like to prey on high school girls. Who would have known?

But all joking aside, it is nice to go back and take a look at where the world was before the Vampire Frenzy of 2009 hit the world. “The Blood Drawing Ghost” takes a much different outlook on our traditional and contemporary view of the mysterious vampires.

As per usual there is a heroin to lead the readers to the vampire, but in this case it was a girl named Kate. What I did admire about Kate was that after her encounter with the old and un-dead Michael, she became more empowered as a woman. Suddenly she wasn’t willing to travel three miles to fetch a petty walking stick for her beloved John.  During this time women were not forward with men, yet she gave her father-in-law an ultimatum to let her marry her son or leave him dead. This new type of empowerment, though not illuminated further in the story, is one that touches many vampire stories. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Lucy, a woman who was bitten goes from being a poised, but quite flirtatious lady, to all of a sudden become a seductress. As much as going into Twilight annoys me, I will say that the heroin, Bella, became a more bold person after her time spent with her vampire boyfriend. Could it be possible that literature wants to paint a picture that being a woman vampire all of a sudden gives women the idea that they can strive to superiority? I’d like to think so.

Another interesting point in “The Blood Drawing Ghost” was that our vampire, Michael, wasn’t portrayed in a way to be evil towards Kate. Aside from the drinking of blood, he appeared to be like any old man. He needed Kate’s assistance with travelling, he spoke of his old life before his death, and he even told Kate how she may secure herself for the future. Our modern idea of vampires has been geared towards a Nosferatu in a cape who can change into a bat at any given moment. “The Blood Drawing Ghost” was not at all like this. This further adds to the question of what a vampire really is. Is it being un-dead that gives the definition? Is it the thirst for blood? Pale skin? There is not set DNA or characteristics of a vampire due to the fact that there are hundreds of interpretations of vampires.

The reading of the Kappa Child along with the video by Minoru gave me much insight to what is was like to be a Japanese-Canadian in the first half of the 20th century.

Up until now, my knowledge of the subject was very limited. I knew that the Japanese were persecuted in both Canada and the US after the attack on Pearl Harbour. I knew they were put into camps and I knew that they were faced with strong racial stigma even after all the bans were lifted. However, I never once thought of the person struggles each individual must have felt. It’s easy for forget and become apathetic when a topic is spoken about using statistics and groups. But once we hear an individual story that we being to really understand the gravity of history and what it meant. I felt mad just hearing watching Minoru’s video. I can only imagine how he and his family felt after first being told to be prisoners in BC, leave BC for Japan,  and then have receive news they can return.

I have been uprooted. I have gone from living in the Philippines to Canada to the USA and back to Canada in my twenty years. Yet I was never uprooted for my race. I was never sent away or given an ultimatum. My family moved willingly.

How defeating it must feel to viewed as a stranger in your own home. To be subjected to prejudice because of something others did. It’s an issue we are still dealing with today. We are trying to free ourselves from this idea that separation of cultures or races is beneficial. And many try to hide the wrong doings that occurred throughout history due to racial prejudice. There is a saying that goes along the lines of, “History often repeats itself”, and I hope to high heavens that it won’t.

Wow! There is no other word I have to describe this novel by Atwood. Although I find the idea far fetched, I thought the way she painted the word of Gilead was wonderfully done. I do believe that if the world or government were to crumble in some way, women would be one of the first to be disregarded. As a society today, we are getting better at fighting for equality, but  there is still a social imbalance between men and women.

Years ago, and even in some areas of the world today, it is a belief that the purpose of women in to bare children. They are to be vessels of which new lives will come forth. I am happy that I live in a world where I know I am valued based on who I am, not what I can produce. I am valued for my mind, not my womb. Although the world of Gilead executes their beliefs in an obstruct way, I am still able to understand the thought process behind their views of women because it is an idea as old as time.

I wondered why they did not just opt for a polygamist society or in-vitro fertilization to ensure healthy children. I was also curious as to why they made the reproductive process such a ceremony between the mother and handmaid. I would have thought that they would have treated the handmaid’s like mistresses, but they still attempted to impregnate the wives. An example of something odd was during the birth process when the wife would lie down as well. I didn’t see much of a point to it. Today, if a women has a child via surrogate, they don’t lie in bed with their surrogate or act as if they are the ones birthing. I know the idea was to make it seem like the child was more theirs, but I really thought this was an odd detail to the society.

I won’t deny the fact that I was very excited to have an excuse to re-watch Juno this week. I find it to be one of those movies that can somehow manage to make you feel good about a lousy situation, plus I think her step-mother is a hoot and a half.

However, this time watching I concentrated more on how the film depicted the feeling of pregnancy. I was very focused on how Juno seems to act and feel about being a mother. I found her to be interesting when comparing her to some of the women from the “26 Abortion stories” reading. I was rather surprised to see the range of emotion from all 26 women. I had assumed that a majority of them would have the same apathetic feeling since they opted to go through with the procedure. Some women just wanted “it” out of them and haven’t looked back since, some women have had multiple and don’t regret it, some women said they kept the fetus once and opted to not do it again, some women felt pressured to do it, others regret it, and some seemed to go back and fourth. I found Juno a girl who appeared apathetic, yet really did care for her child. In the movie she appears to not have gone through with an abortion for the reason that the fetus had developed finger nails and she didn’t like the clinic. I felt that Juno was very quick during the abortion scene, and in real life there is more of an inner struggle in choosing. Although Juno was presented as a sarcastic and unemotional character, looking closer could we also say that she didn’t want to go through with it because of her maternal instinct to protect the developing organism inside of her? When she said she didn’t want her child to have a life that was “shitty and broken” like everyone else’s’, I personally felt that it Juno was, in a way, a mother. She wasn’t the same uncaring and sarcastic teenager from the beginning of the movie.

My view of abortion is that it is a choice. It should always be an option for women because it is their body. I know that there are many debates about this idea, but that is my belief. Reading the 26 Abortion Stories was very interesting to me, due to the fact that it showed the emotional side to choosing an abortion that Juno failed to depict. I don’t know what I would do if I were presented with the same circumstances as Juno and the 26 women. I like to think that’s a thing no one is sure of until they find themselves sitting in the waiting room.

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Although I have never experienced it personally, I recently have a personal relationship to breast cancer. My aunt, who happens to be a second mother to me, is over coming this hurdle. Breast cancer is something that is very real for not just the women who suffer from it, but the loved ones around them as well.

Rose Kushner discovered her cancer in a time when knowledge of breast cancer was still limited. The media didn’t discuss the hardships of what it was like to live life with your illness hanging from your chest. Instead of dealing with her cancer in a private matter, she was the type of woman to use her illness as the capsule to educate others on what it is like to have breast cancer and the options that can be taken to deal with it. She turned breast cancer into a social issue.

I believe that although the media doesn’t mean to, the term breast cancer is starting to become somewhat commercialized. I see and hear of adds asking to participate in various events or donate to the cure, but I feel that because it’s another add, we are slowly becoming numb to the important message. So many people have somehow been touched by breast cancer, whether it be by having it, had it, or knowing someone who yet. These facts should make breast cancer a topic many could relate to and make people willing to hear and help. Yet, I personally feel that when people try to pitch the “How breast cancer affected me” speech, it becomes very “heard it already”. It’s not until we experience ourselves, or watch the person we love suffer through it that it becomes real.

People like Joe Spence really make a splash in the water when it comes to getting the word out about Breast Cancer and the personal struggle of it. The pictures are incredibly moving and very “in your face”. Nothing is left to the imagination, and as a woman, I felt incredibly moved to see images of real women with battle scars. The picture that hit me the most was the one where Spence had a survivor posing naked with the words “Monster” across her chest. I feel that I live in a world that lives off self image. Breast are a part of a woman that makes us feminine and to have that taken away would indeed make us feel like these ugly monsters.

As a woman, I commend people like Rose Kushner and Joe Spence for bringing to light an issue that we sometimes overlook, or at least, an issue I have overlooked.