Documentary Duras Analysis

    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 worth anything, she could not grow food. These injustices led her family to be distant they were angry about it and they could not change it. They hated themselves and each other Duras felt the need to escape this horrid life. Her experiences with death, of her brother, love, in her affair, hatred with the injustices throughout her childhood help to shape her future writings and films. 

    This is similar to the other writers we have read, where their childhood and or poverty has an impact on their life that in turn shapes their writing. Similar to Ning Lao T'AI-T'AI who struggled in poverty being a beggar on the streets with her husband trying to sell their baby. They both did not feel as if they had control over their lives and were able to escape that life. These two women were able to tell their stories for other women around the world to be able to read about and not feel alone in their life struggles. 

 Word Count: 342

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