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Conclusion

Conclusion

After going through this course, what stood out to me the most was how consistently challenged I was in the way I think about identity and social structures. With all the different books I have read and going to class to discuss about them, I realized it allowed me to evolve how I question certain things especially common themes such as memory, equality, storytelling or power. Moreover, through writing my blogs over the term, I also noticed how my interpretations have evolved from confusion at first to a deeper appreciation of how complex people truly are. Early on, it was strange to me the books as a lot had fragmented narratives or complex arguments, but overtime I began to see how this discomfort was truly intentional as I believe strongly it evolved on how I view things. One of the aspects of this course I really found interesting was how we explored memory and storytelling as it was shown to be unreliable yet meaningful constructs. In some of my blogs, I was interested on how narratives are shaped not just by facts, but by perspective, imagination, and emotion. This idea challenged my first assumption that the truth is something fixed and objective but now I appreciate how stories can hold multiple truths at once even if they contradict one another. This does connect to broader themes in the course about whose voices are heard and how knowledge is constructed. Furthermore, I enjoyed how the course encouraged us to personally reflect along with interpreting what these authors are trying to say. Writing the blog posts once again allowed me to connect with the books to my own personal experiences, which I made the readings more important and engaging. I also found these readings to be difficult to read most of the time, especially when the stories are not linear which were very frustrating, but looking back now it allowed me to slow down and sit with uncertainty rather than rushing myself to read it. One thing I found puzzling was how to balance interpretation with intention as if our interpretations are subjective then how much weight should we give to the authors point versus how we perceive it. But, overall the video lectures and conversations helped me understand these complex ideas, and hearing interpretations from my classmates also reinforces that there is no single idea or single correct interpretation of a book.

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Constance Debre

Love Me Tender

After reading Love Me Tender by Constance Debre, it was a very raw and unsettling story of exploring identity, freedom and the cost of going against social expectations. What struck me the most was the protagonist’s rejection of traditional ideas of love, especially within family structures. Early in the novel, she questions why relationships such as a relationship between a mother and a child must be unconditional. This challenges deeply ingrained beliefs within society about obligation and forces us readers to confront uncomfortable questions about autonomy and emotional truth. At the same time, the novel reveals the harsh consequences of such defiance, Constance’s pursuit of personal freedom leads to her separation from her son, highlighting how society punishes those who deviate from normative roles, particularly mothers. Furthermore, the accusations against her and the legal system’s response emphasize how quickly individuality can be framed as deviance. Her minimalist lifestyle and detached tone further reflects a desrire to strip life down to its essentials, yet this simplicity is intertwined with loneliness and loss. Overall, this book feels both liberating and tragic as it celebrates self-determination while exposing the emotional and social costs that come with it. This tension made me reflect on whether true freedom is ever possible without sacrifice and who really bears that cost. After reading the lecture transcript of this book, it shows how tension between minimalism and excess which I found interesting because it reframes the novel beyond its story and narrative. The idea that Debre’s stripped down lifestyle such as giving up possessions, relationships, and stability is not purely liberating but also a form of “betrayal” that adds complexity to how we interpret her actions. This challenges the assumption that minimalism is inherently virtuous, suggesting instead that it can come at the cost of responsibility, particularly in her role as a mother. The lecture also highlights a paradox of the narrator seeking to reduce everything in her life while she engages in forms of excess, especially through writing and relationships. Her compulsive writing and numerous encounters reveal that desire and expression cannot be fully controlled or minimized. This contrast made me think about how attempts to simplify life often shift excess into other areas rather than eliminate it entirely. In conclusion, this lecture allowed me to deepen my understanding of this book by showing that it is not just about freedom, but about the instability of identity and the impossibility of fully escaping social structures. My question is do you think Constances pursuit of freedom is empowering, especially in relation to her role as a mother? can her rejection of social norms also be justified?

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Valeria Luiselli

Faces in the Crowd

After reading Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli, I learned that identity is not something fixed, but something constantly shaped by memory, imagination, and the stories we tell ourselves. The author shows how the boundaries between past and present or reality and fiction can be confusing to people so easily they can overlap. The narrator shifting her life in New York and her later life as a mother highlights how memory is fragmented and unreliable, but still influential. What really stood out to me the most was the idea of “ghosts”, as these are not literal spirits but representations of thoughts and past memories that are always on people’s minds. The book shows how deeply we can as individuals lose ourselves in these imagination and past memory, as the narrator’s connection to Gilberto Owen suggests that identity can dissolve when we immerse ourselves too much into someone else’s story. Moreover, I also learned that writing itself is not always complete, as the authors style of writing which is sort of fragmented forces us to piece together meaning like how we try to understand and make sense of the world or our lives. I also found that the story does not always have a clear narrator as the voice keeps changing which makes it hard to tell what is real or simply an imagination. I think this reflects how identity can feel confusing and never a sure fixed idea, as we are constantly influenced by our emotions and past experiences. Just like the narrator again shifting between perspectives, our sense of who we are individually can also change by the situations we put ourselves in which emphasizes that identity is something fluid rather than permanent. After watching the lecture video on this book, it explored the idea that time and space are not fixed, but constantly shifting. I really found it interesting how the lecture emphasizes movement between cities and identities as it shows that the narrator is always in “transit”, as this connects to the novel’s fragmented structure that the past and present blend together. In addition, it deepened my understanding of “haunting” as it is more about memories and experiences that “haunt” us everywhere we go, which I thought was a really good way to understand our past memories. Overall, this book made me reflect on identity and how we construct it through memory, which can both define and somehow confuse ourselves to who we really are, which I think is very relatable. My question is “do you think the narrator is losing her sense of who she is throughout the book, or is she discovering who her new version of herself is?”

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Ricardo Piglia

Money to Burn

After reading this book, Piglia presents crime not as an act of violence but as a window into society’s values and contradictions. What I thought was really good about the book was that how the criminals burning the stolen money allows us to reconsider what wealth really is, as throughout the book, the bank robber appears to to be because of greed and survival. But, when the gang begins burning the remaining cash during the police siege, the act transforms into something symbolic. As it was said in the book, the criminals throwing the burning bills from the window, “looked like butterflies of light.” I think this forces us to rethink that money is the ultimate motivation behind crime as if the gang were really driven only by profit, destroying the money would make no sense. Instead, it shows us that the act was a form of “breaking” the system surrounding them, or “societal norms”. When the public was furious, it further reveals how this is truly how society acts and values money as they seemed more furious about the waste of money, rather than the violence that lead up to it. After watching the lecture video, I found Piglia’s idea that crime stories can reveal deeper truths about society to be interesting as rather than simply focusing on entertainment or suspense, as he explains how the genre allows writers to delve deeper into political and societal realities and social conflict. Furthermore, crime itself becomes a way of exposing corruption and the relationship between money and violence. In addition, the lecture video raises a question of whether “truth” in literature is found in facts, or in the way stories interpret reality. Lastly, after watching the conversation video, the way how Ricardo Piglia is presented is he is not just a novelist, but as an individual who constantly reflects on how stories are constructed. His work often blends fiction, history, and investigation which challenges the idea that literature has to be a single genre. In his book, this approach is shown as the book is both a crime story and a reflection on politics and society. Moreover, the video helped me see that Piglia uses storytelling as a way to question official narratives and hidden perspectives, which shows how literature can expose deeper truths about power and society. So my question is, when the criminals burned the stolen money, was it really an act of rebellion against society, or was it because they were desperate?

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Marguerite Duras

The Lover

After reading “The Lover” by Marguerite Duras, the book is very powerful and emotional as the story center’s around memory, love and identity. The book is set in French colonial Indochina, where a young french girl begins a secret relationship with a rich chinese man. Moreover, through the narrator’s memories, the story dives into major themes such as desire, poverty, growing up and colonialism. The relationship between the french girl and the chinese man is not just simply about being romantic but delves deeper into how social class, race and cultural expectations can shape it as well. Because of these external pressures, love simply is just not enough as it seems in the book. The narrator reflects on her youth from an older age, which shows how memories can help us understand our past. Early in the book, she even reflects on aging and how she already felt changed by the age of eighteen, which shows how quickly she realized how much of her youth she had already lost. I think towards the end of the book, when her former lover calls her and says he is still in love with her really stood out to me as it shows how powerful their relationship was and how it affected both of them. After watching the lecture video, it highlighted how Duras returns to the story not to retell is but to reconsider it from a different perspective. I found that the idea of the “threshold” was interesting as it represents a space between memory and narration. In addition, Duras stands between her past experience and the act of writing about it, constantly revisiting and reshaping the story which helps explain why the book feels sort of fragmented and reflective instead of just being linear and chronological. It also shows how memory is never fixed and that it really changes every time it is told. Lastly, after watching the conversation video, it helped me understand more the unique style of her writing and why it feels different from other books. Duras focuses less on plot and more on emotion and memory, which makes the story feel so personal and universal where it really tries to resonate with how people usually feel in my opinion. The way where the characters do not say rather than through direct explanation where in the relationship, they rarely talk about their feelings but instead the silence used in writing forces us to interpret the tension is what makes the story feel more realistic. So the question I have is do you think the girl has control over the relationship, or is it the influence from her family situation and environment that has control?

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Merce Rodoreda

Time of the Doves

After reading “The Time of the Doves” by Merce Rodoreda, I enjoyed how deeply personal and intimate Natalia’s voice feels like as the novel throughout presents her life not only through dramatic events but through small, everyday struggles that slowly build into something heavy and overwhelming. I realized as well how powerful simplicity can be in storytelling as Rodoreda’s language is not overly complex, yet it carries emotional weight. While witnessing Natalia’s experiences with marriage, motherhood, poverty and war, its shown how history affects ordinal people like us in subtle devastating ways. Moreover, this made me learn how survival is not always heroic, sometimes it is just simply about withstanding each day by just waking up and going about your day no matter the fear our lives brings us. With Natalia’s transformation throughout the book, it reflects the loss of innocence and identity that war can bring, especially to women who are often left to have to hold their families together. In addition, I realized how symbols such as doves reflect both confinement and fragility in her life. Overall, the novel taught me to appreciate the struggles individuals have to go through and how resilient they are even if it may go unnoticed at times. After watching the lecture on the book, Rodoreda’s depiction of destitution and bricolage allowed me to understand furthermore on Natalia’s survival as it expanded on how poverty in this book is more of a psychological condition that reshapes one’s identity and perception. Moreover, bricolage which is the act of making do with whatever you have, reflects Natalia’s quiet creativity and resilience, which made me learn that survival in the novel is built from fragments, small acts of adaptation rather than grand solutions. Tying this to what I learned from the book, it reinforces how Natalia’s will is subtle but powerful at the same time as it shows that dignity can occur despite the harsh deprivation. Finally after watching the conversation video, it added another layer to my understanding of the book as I realized that Natalia’s fragmented and intimate narration shows similarity to Rodoreda’s own experience of displacement and loss, which made me learn more that the book’s simplicity is intentional as it reflects how trauma reshapes language and memory. Moreover, Rodoreda’s focus on life becomes a quiet form of preserving emotional truth during the aftermath of war. Overall again, this really allowed me to appreciate Natalia’s voice as both personal and historical, which shows how individual suffering carries collective meaning. A question I have is do you think Natalia is strong because of what she has gone through quietly or its not really a choice so she has to be quiet about it?

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Jose Arguedas

Deep Rivers

After reading Deep Rivers, this book taught me how deeply culture, language, and environment can shape an individual’s sense of identity, as through Ernesto’s experiences, growing up is not only simply about age, but about becoming aware of social hierarchies, and cultural conflict. Ernesto’s connection to Indigenous traditions and the natural world made me realize how knowledge and belonging can exist outside formal institutions like school. Moreover, it also made me realize that power can somehow exist in schools through education and language as the boarding school uses cultural dominance by silencing the voices and values of the Indigenous people. It shows how systems that “claim” to educate all students can also lessen how people feel about their identities, and at the same time, Ernesto being shown as emotional sensitive made me realize that empathy and memory can somehow be forms of resistance. Most importantly, this book taught me that understanding identity is deeper than I thought as its simply not something you can just figure out. Ernesto is constantly pulled between Indigenous Andean culture, which he feels connect to, and the Spanish Institutions that make him act in a different way. Because he technically belongs to these two different environments, he experiences confusion and loneliness which sometimes is relatable as a Filipino-Chinese individual. But its also this discomfort that shapes who he is, and question the world around him rather than just accept it for what it is. Furthermore, after watching the lecture video, it emphasizes conflict and convergence without end as Argueda’s point of view of how he refuses to present cultural conflict that can never be resolved fully shows this. Andean and Western cultures in the novel present this in a constant state of tension instead of moving towards something better, which reflects why Ernestos identity never seems to be settled throughout the novel. The lecture video shows this not as weakness but as something that is present in real life which is realistic as there will always be tension with cultures from different environments. It also made me realize further that this unfinished or constant tension is exhausting but can be productive at the same time. It does create pain and confusion for Ernesto, but at the same time it allows him to be reflective, as I believe Argueda suggests that living with tension rather than escaping it can help people become more aware and learn how to become better individuals with empathy. My question after reading this book is how does this idea of that cultures should not have an end,  challenge the expectation whether cultural conflict should be resolved or harmonized?

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Uncategorized

Agostino – Alberto Moravia

Reading Agostino was a very unsettling but yet eye-opening about growing up too quickly, as Moravia shows adolescence not as an exciting transition, but something that I believe a lot of people can relate to which is confusing, and painful. Agosto’s relationship with his mother starts out as a very close one as they would go out to sea every morning but then eventually starts to become ruined as the summer unfolds. I believe that the beach is very important to this book as it feels very exposed in a way where there are no places to hide as nothing surrounds it which sort of resembles Agostino’s emotional state. As Agostino become more aware of how everything happens in public his insecurity about himself arises. Moreover, him encountering the older boys makes him face adulthood which involved him being mocked and them being very cruel to him which he falls into a very deep state of sadness. I think what makes this novel so effective though is its emotional restraint. Through Moravia not over explaning Agostino’s feelings, the silence seems enough to tell already. At the end, Agostino seems like he changed but for the worst as he feels more lonely and confused. I really do feel like I can relate a lot to this book as growing up is very difficult as you get more glimpses of how reality is like and that it is not all sunshine and rainbows as how I felt back before as a kid, and most especially you become to sort of feel more insecure about yourself as your actions seem more realistic and life changing in a way. Watching the lecture video, allows me to understand more of Agostino as linking the story’s emotional ambiguity to the limits of language and reality shows how Moravia’s realism caputures the realness through subtle gaps in experience and expression, which highlights the novel’s insights into growing up and becoming more self-aware. The commentary video as well helps situate Moravia as a writer who puts significant importance with realism and moral discomfort. He does this by making Agosto not really likeable but revealing how I guess we all feel and sort of resemble with. The video emphasizes emotional detachment and social observation, as Moravia exposes the quiet violence of the relationships in our everyday lives and how truly dark the process is of when one starts to become aware of their actions within society. So i guess my question for discussion is with Agostos realization, is it more caused by people being cruel or because of expectations that society has put oursevles in and the expectations that come with that if not lived by?

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Uncategorized

The Shrouded Woman

After reading the Shrouded Woman, it allowed me to think differently about memory and story telling. Through Bombal, memory was shown to be something emotional and sort of fragmented instead of a clear sequence of events. From the narrators reflection on her life from her own wake made me realize how much of her experience went unnoticed while she was alive, and how her death was her only being able to speak honestly.  It shows that death can somehow allow a sense of clarity, not just symbolism as the narrators ability to see relationships clearly only after death shows that “social roles” imposed on women can sort of distort their understanding of themselves during when they were alive.  I was stuck by how how the novel centers the inner world of the narrator and how her loneliness within her marriage reveals how she often ignored her desires. This made me reflect on how one’s emotional needs especially in a marriage can be seen as insignificant and be dismissed as maybe in my own personal opinion people stop addressing their partner’s emotional needs as they already “locked” for life so it is not important anymore. It also made me realize that showing feelings like regret and loneliness are just as important as outward actions as you have to address what you truly feel emotionally inside. Moreover specifically on the tone and imagery of the novel, it was effective in expressing how she was feeling as it is usually difficult in expressing these type of emotions. In addition, this book helped me better understand how Bombal uses fiction as a tool to challenge social hierarchies, especially those tied to gender and cultural “centres”. Because the novel is narrated almost entirely from the perspective of a corpse shows how fiction can go beyond realism to show emotions that are usually hidden. Viewing the novel as well as an example of peripheral modernism made me realize how innovation can come from marginalized voices, not just literary centres. After watching the conversation video about the book, it highlights Bombal’s unique narrative choices especially how she uses a conversation with a scholar to deepen our understanding of the book. It emphasizes as well Bombal’s focus on gender, class, and memory, which shows that the novel is not just about a life of a woman but how her inner experiences push against societal expectations. By watching the conversation, and them talking through the story with their own insights, it allowed me to see how Bombal’s work fits into wider literary conversations about modernism and how a female perspective changes how stories about identity can be told. I wonder though why does Bombal make the narrotor only gain clarity about her disappointments only while laying in her coffin, and in real life do we still not fully comprehend how we feel internally?

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Uncategorized

Proust – Combray

After reading Marcel’s prousts’s Swann’s Way, Proust was able to explore how memory works not as a clear and logical process, but as something deeply emotional and often triggered by everyday sensations. Much of the reading, I believe focuses on the experiences of the narrator, that shows how the bounderies between the past and present easily blur with one another. For example, when the narrator lies in bed in which the narrator is half-awake, it shows how the narrator struggles to locate himself in time and space, and memories from different periods of his life often overlaps and merges. This showed me how disorientation reveals how memory is not something we consciously control, but something that moves unexpectedly and out of our control. Moreover, I learned that memory is tied to our senses that our body feels, as Proust shows that physical sensations such as the feeling of lying on bed or the darkness of a room, can suddenly bring back vivid memories from our childhood. This suggests that our past is never “gone” but it will always exist in us in someway, that will only allow us to remember with the right “experience” that our body senses. This I believe challenges the idea that memory is simply a mental record of events, but something that exists and emotional. Moving on, the writing style was very detailed in a way that shows the process of someone remembering something. The long sentences and detialed descriptions reflect how memories slowly appear, and not just all at once. This style of writing tells the reader to slow down and experience time in the same way the narrator does. After watching the lecture video, the video emphasizes how Proust’s writing challenges habitual reading and invites us to engage more actively with text. It furthermore frames Proust’s work as a break from traditional narrative forms and instead focuses on time, memory and perspective. This makes readers rethink how stories should be told and connects directly to how memory appears through everyday sensations rather than just simply logical thought. In addition, after watching the conversation video, it deepened my understanding of how Proust’s writing explores memory and time. It showed how Proust shows how memory truly does return to our minds in unexpected ways in where we may not think of it, but because something happened to us during that day, our body will somehow “waken” it up. All of this ties in how memory is not linear or logical but truly through sensory.

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