Emmy's Blogs

     Once the Nazis conquered Holland, there was no place that the Jews could go. They were prohibited to go to the park, or the swimming pool, or the shops. The Jews had a lot of restrictions and no freedoms which frightened them. The Frank family had a shelter that was nothing like what other places Jews were hiding in. Even though they had a better hiding place than most, they still lived in constant fear. Anne was so lonely she missed her friends and knew that until the war was over, she was not going to be able to see them again. She had a close relationship with her father. He was the “peacekeeper” between Anne and the others, especially her mother. She wrote in her diary that she is the opposite of her mother and that is where a lot of her frustration comes from. Anne felt that she had to mother herself because her mother was not filling that role.      This documentary was interesting a different point of view from reading entries from her diary. In...

     Reading pages from Anne Frank’s diary was different than other readings in this book. Anne’s focus was on what her life was like in hiding during the war. Her along with her family and the Van Daan family, hiding away from the Germans with days written out as they were happening created a different feeling while I was reading. I, of course, haven’t forgotten the horrors that went on outside of their secret hiding space, but Anne gave a different perspective. She wrote about what it was like for two families to be stuck in a small space together for such a long time. They would listen on the radio at times to hear the horrible news, but her diary was full of descriptions of quarrels and relationships between people in the house with her. In other stories, we have read the women write from the point of view after escaping the horrible conflicts they endured.       Anne felt that she was separate from her family especially her mother. Anne wrote, “I ...

     Le Ly Hayslip was a strong young girl that dealt with a long of pushback from several conflicts she encountered. From the young age of 15, she was arrested many times based on her values toward the Viet Cong. She said when talking about being arrested and questioned, “Besides, as I already learned, the questions and answers were always the same” (p. 363). This is important because she had been through this process before, and her responses stayed consistent. She would use the fact that she was a young girl that did not know anything, but when really, Le Ly knew more than she led on in these situations. When Le Ly got released, she was praised by her community for her bravery. Then, she got into more trouble, was arrested for being on the battlefield by soldiers, and put into a prison camp. Each day she was brutally tortured and interrogated, but still stayed true to her values toward the Viet Cong. Her story reminds me of another woman we read about Nien Cheng. She w...

     As Duras writes about the arrival of her husband, she explains, “I can’t remember what exactly happened. He must have looked at me and recognize me and smiled. I shrieked no, that I didn’t want to see” (p.239). She is in shock when she finally sees her husband again after so long, and he looked like a stranger. He was so ill and weakened from the war and being in the concentration camps in Germany. Robert was near death with a high fever and would not eat for several days. He was not hungry and could not take any food without his stomach bursting. His organs and whole body were so delicate. Duras said when describing what it was like for her when she was taking care of her husband each day, “I fall asleep anywhere. I wake in terror. It’s awful, every time I think he’s died while I was asleep” (p.244). She lived in constant fear of her husband dying without the chance to say goodbye. Duras would not eat and could not sleep for days on end. She does not handle this tra...

     She grew up in Vietnam, then part of the colony of French Indochina. Although her family was white, thought of as a superior race, they were not rich or even close to being rich. Duras said her family life was difficult. Her father died at a young age, so once they did not have the father working as the headmaster, the mother had to go back to teaching. Teachers getting paid horribly and that lead to her whole childhood living in poverty. This caused her to constantly live-in fear and led her to create the work she did. She lived alongside and played with numerous Vietnamese peasant children and saw their struggles through poverty. There were so many deaths of Vietnamese children that mothers started to get used to having to bury their children. I cannot even imagine the heartache those mothers went through not being able to feed so many children that they would die. Dura’s mother struggled to get land and when she was finally able to receive some land it was not wor...

     This movie was portrayed through a French plantation owner. Throughout the film, she shows power as a woman. She did not have any children, but when a close friend of hers and the woman’s husband dies, she takes on the responsibility of adopting their Vietnamese child. When talking to a man from the French Navy, he said that it is a man’s job to command men, her response was that is what men usually say. She was these Vietnamese working men’s boss and leader. It is hard for other men to understand because she is breaking through the norms given by society. Jean-Baptiste is a Navy officer the mother falls for and wants to be with, but he does not want to stay in one place he wants to travel the world.       This woman had so much power that even when these working men, even when they were worried and upset about horrible people, maybe communists, coming after them. These people just watched their leader get shot and they still got up and went back ...

     Santha was thought of by her mother and sister as young and childish. She wasn’t very confident when attending her new school because it was a change of atmosphere from being homeschooled. The teacher made Santha and her sister, Premila, change their names to more English names that were easier for her to pronounce. Santha talks about remembering “[…] having a certain detached and disbelieving concern in the actions of ‘Cynthia’, but certainly no responsibility” (p.671). She felt disassociated from her own identity when she was given a new name. Santha did not feel that she had any responsibility for what Cynthia would do in school, she viewed them as two different people. Santha and her sister left the school for good because of the racist way in which they were being treated. Once she realized she never had to return she explained, “I understood it perfectly, and I remember it all clearly. But I put it happily away, because it had all happened to a girl called Cynt...

     Devlin was a bold, confident, young woman. She was not scared to stray away from the norms that society put in place for women. She aced tests and flew through her academics without any issues even finished some early. Devlin’s greatest influence was Mother Benigus. As she wrote, “[…] Mother Benigus, whom we called Reverend Mother, and who is among the people who have influenced me, one of those I most respect” (p.190). This woman was very influential in Devlin's strong sense of self. That came from learning Irish history from Mother Benigus rather than hearing the English side. Gaining more knowledge of Irish history helped to bring out the Irish activist within Devlin.       As Bernadette described, “I knew no Irish when I went to grammar school, but the class I joined was a class of crude political rebel: we knew nothing about politics except what we were for and against, and we were for Ireland and Mother Benignus was our heroine” (p.191). Thi...

     From such a young age Jill had to take on a major role as the glue that held her family together. Her family relied on her a lot for several different tasks mostly work on their land with the animals. Her family struggled without rain which allowed their land to flourish. “There was no getting around that the work was there and had to be done, and so I fell early into a role it took me many years to escape, the person in the family who would rise to the occasion, no matter the size of the task” (p.157). Her parents did not even want her to attend a school like her brothers, they relied on her to stay and help the family. She was required to take on an adult role as a caretaker for her family. She was not even able to have a full childhood experience.       As she wrote, “Lacking playmates, I would retreat from the adult world to my swing, set away in the eucalyptus trees a hundred yards or so from the house. There I would converse at length with i...