The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

            Maybe I missed the point of this book.  I believe in raising domestic violence awareness.  I believe in the concept of V-Day.  I believe that female mutilation is atrocious.  I believe that society should be as comfortable saying vagina as it is saying penis.  I even believe that women should be more aware of their own bodies and what gives them pleasure.

            What bothers me about this book is the sexual assaults that took place and seemed to be overlooked or underemphasized as an assault.  Children being assaulted by grown males and females should have had the emphasis placed on the act as a wrongful assault on an innocent child.  Maybe if someone had told these children sooner that they didn’t do anything wrong and that they were the child-victims of monsters in our society, they could have had a better life.

I don’t think that talking about and reading about women masturbating raises awareness to domestic violence.  I didn’t care to read about masturbation or sexual relations between two women, woman on child, man on child or for that matter man on woman/woman on man.  It makes me uncomfortable and I just didn’t enjoy reading this book at all.

The stage performance received rave reviews by all accounts.  The V-Day celebrations have raised thousands of dollars for the victims of domestic abuse.  I do believe that the V-Day celebrations have even raised awareness in colleges across America and abroad.  These young adult males and females need to be aware of abuse.  They need to be able to recognize the signs and strong enough to get themselves out of the situation before it gets worse – and it always gets worse.

Abuse takes on many forms.  It is no longer just men abusing women.  Women are abusing men as well.  Women are leaving their children behind and doing all of the things that men were damned for doing in the past.  It’s a different world today than it was 30 or even 20 years ago. 

Maybe I did get the point of this book.  Maybe my passion against abuse in all forms has surfaced.  Maybe my objections are because women are worth so much more than what this book portrays.

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

            Although Eve Ensler is presenting the section as the story of a survivor, I found pages 77-82 to be quite disturbing.  Ensler says that this interview is related by a woman she met in a shelter for homeless women.  This woman met another homeless woman at the shelter and they fell in love.  They now are out of the homeless system and have created a good life for themselves.  However, in these pages Ensler is relating stories of horrific sexual abuse bestowed upon this poor woman when she was just a child. 

The first sexual assault took place when she was just a mere ten years old.  The man that abused her was her father’s best friend.  He was an invited guest into her father’s home.  Home is where every person should feel the safest.  She goes on to say that her father caught his friend in the act of abusing this poor child.  What did the father do?  He shot his friend (adding to this child’s trauma); blood spattered on all of them (more excruciating trauma); the friend was paralyzed for life; and, her mother didn’t allow her to see her father for seven years!  This message is delivered as though not seeing her father is her punishment for doing something wrong.

            What did she do wrong?  Here she is a ten-year-old child being raped by a grown man.  This man shattered her safety in her home and certainly betrayed her father’s friendship.  It sounds as though this child’s rendition as an adult still feels some guilt for the disgusting behavior of an adult.

            At the age of 13, this same young child is again sexually assaulted.  This time it is by a trusted female neighbor.  This 24-year-old woman takes this young and impressionable girl into her car, kisses her and invites her to her home.  When this young girl arrives at this woman’s home, she is scantily dressed.  She proceeds to undress and redress this young girl into a sexy teddy.  She plows alcohol into her and then sexually abuses her for hours. 

            Now one might say that this 13-year-old girl did not object to the sexual advances and maybe she even enjoyed them.  A 24-year-old male or female having sexual relations with a

13-year-old child is rape.  There is no “gray area” here.  It is abuse.

            How can this youngster trust anyone?  She has been stripped of the warmth and safety she felt in her father’s home.  Then she was sexually assaulted.  She witnessed the shooting of the abuser by her father.  And then, to top it all off, she was made to feel that somehow it was her fault.  No one seemed to ever address with her that it was never her fault – it was the abuser’s fault.  She was the child-victim of a pedophile. 

Three short years later, she was once again the victim of a pedophile.  This time the abuser was a woman.  This now 13-year-old girl knew what was happening was wrong and she was afraid of getting “caught.”  In light of the fact that it came up so readily in these interviews, she still feels the guilt of this assault.  I guess it is no wonder that this child grew to be a woman found in a homeless shelter.  Where else could her shattered self-esteem have taken her.  Ensler says that this woman has found love and is making a good life for herself.  I hope that is true.

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

            Ensler’s purpose of celebrating vaginas is insightful.  There are so many women that she interviewed who had never looked at their vaginas until the interview.  Others used their vaginas as a way of defining themselves. 

            I think Ensler’s purpose is to raise awareness of women in general.  It is to raise women to a higher standard – the standards of many years ago.  Not in the sexual sense but in the more liberal sense of every day living.  Women are still underpaid and overworked.   Men still make more money than women doing the exact same job.  I think these are things that Ensler really wanted to raise awareness about.

            Obviously, she also wanted to raise awareness about domestic violence.  Violence against women is at epidemic proportions.  Until reading this book, I truly believed that female mutilation had seized to exist.  I was wrong.  Children – female children – are being mutilated still today.  Male children are “worshiped.”  Examine China, only one child per family, and the females have no worth.  Female babies are still being left on roadsides to die.  They are being put in orphanages simply because they were born with a vagina.  This is violence against women from the time of birth.  What will the Chinese do without women to bear their sons?  Will they revert back to the baby-making machines of years ago?  Maybe they will.  Is this any less offensive than the genocides against the Jews?  I don’t think so.  Our generation of world leaders have become complacent in these areas.  Babies are being killed merely because of the vagina and no one is standing up ready to fight for them.

            Is Ensler successful in touching emotions in her writings?  Oh, most definitely, yes.  If more people would see this play or read this book, maybe some of the atrocities against women would be recognized as such and laws and rules of simple consciousness would be increased.  It would be wonderful to see an end to all violence whether against women, children or men.  This book makes you think that we haven’t come all that far in humanity.  We continue to hurt and destroy one another without a single ounce of remorse for doing so. 

Vagina Monologues

I learned that females possessed the only organ in the human body with no function other than to feel pleasure.  (If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it – and what it would be used to justify?)” 

Those two sentences on pages x-xi caught my attention.  I never thought about a vagina in such a way.  I guess I never really thought in any academic sense about the vagina.  I also found the references to the Hindu temples and shrines featuring the yoni very interesting and a long way from American views even today.

I was quite disgusted to read that women and young girls are still being subjected to the atrocities of genital mutilation and that the monies from V-Day are being donated toward the cause.  This and other atrocities done to young women and girls should never be happening anywhere on the face of this earth.  An end should have been put to these practices long ago.  (I guess you could say that Gloria Steinem stirred up the emotion in me when reading those particular pages.) 

I am finding this book very entertaining.  In all honesty I didn’t think that I would.  I am pleasantly surprised at the way Eve Ensler is presenting her interviews.  I was particularly intrigued by the older woman who spoke about her basement.  The other interview that I found fascinating was the woman with the dreams of water after her first experience kissing a boy.  That very first experience with that boy ruined her for life.  She never was able to overcome that embarrassing scene that played over and over in her mind’s eye.  She was never able to experience a “normal” relationship with anyone.  More importantly, to me, she never once spoke of the incident until she was interviewed for the Vagina Monologues many years later.  Her dreams stopped after having a complete hysterectomy as an older woman.  She went through her whole life not being able to speak of the incident that certainly haunted her every day of her life.  She finally felt at peace after giving this interview and talking about it for the first time.

Krik? Krak! By Edwidge Danticat

            As I began to read pages 125-127, at first I was disgusted at the thought of the cock fight taking place.  But as I continued reading, it was so clear that this is a way of life.  This happens every single day.  The children grow up seeing and hearing the roosters fight to the death.  The men place bets on which rooster will remain standing alive at the end of the fight. 

            This “entertainment” also created jobs for the people around the fight ring.  “During the days the villagers held animal fights there, and sometimes even weddings and funerals.  Outside the fight ring, a few women sold iced drinks and tickets to the Dominican lottery.”  These cock fights were a source of income for some, entertainment for others, and addiction for a few more.

            I became intrigued by the old man in the front of the yard.  It seemed like he wanted to go in and join the others at the ring, but something was holding him back.  It wasn’t his wife’s urging him to leave that held him back.  It was something deeper inside of him.  He seems like a “broken soul” to me.  He appears empty inside.  He talks about spells he is going to put on his wife every day.  Yet every day those spells fail to become a reality – he fails.

            “He was a former schoolteacher from the capital who had moved to Ville Rose, as far as anyone could tell, to get drunk.”  Something devastated this man’s life.  He was a well-educated school teacher held in high esteem.  Now he was nothing but the town drunk standing outside the cock fights listening but not participating. 

            He suffers with a limp that may have been caused by whatever hardship he had endured.  Maybe the excessive daily drinking eases his pain – both physical and emotional.  This is a man who was well-respected in society; someone who was contributing to society; someone who was shaping the lives of children and young people every single day.  Now he is an empty shell of his former self.  He is the useless town drunk standing on the outside looking in.

I Give You Back by Joy Harjo

            I chose the poem I Give You Back by Joy Harjo.  I believe this poem was written out of a hard personal experience.  It is a poem of hope and courage in the face of fear.  Fear has a life of its own to this woman – her hated twin.  She must let go of the fear and feel the pain of its release as deeply as if it were the death of her own child.

            The horrific atrocities that she has experienced are playing over and over again in her head.  She can’t take a breathe without physically feeling the pain of the fear that was instilled on her when these men took over and conducted themselves as savage beasts.  They let the children go hungry so they could stuff themselves.  These men raped the women – her mother.  She saw it; she was there; she will never forget their faces and the fear and pain of her mother.

            Now she is away from their inhumane behavior, yet her eyes never close.  She experiences the anger and fear every minute of every day.  She can’t escape the images in her mind’s eye.  She must take control.  She must take her life back.  The only real revenge is to do well and to succeed.  They win if she allows fear to control the rest of her life.

            She is facing her fears and screaming to be relieved of it.  Fear cannot control her unless she allows it.  It chokes her, but she gave it the leash.  It guts her, but she gave it the knife.  Reject the fear – push it away.  She is fighting with every fiber of her being to destroy the fear and live her life in freedom.  She will succeed – but fear is fighting back not wanting to die.

Krik? Krak! by Edwige Danticat

I am finding this book very moving, especially pages 14 – 15.  My impression of this chapter is that of lost time.  “The sun goes up and goes back down.”  They don’t know if they are really going to make it or even if they will be welcomed when they arrive, but somehow they must try.

To pass the time they tell stories to each other just like children who have to stay indoors because they are sick or it is brutally cold outside.  They do whatever it takes to occupy their minds and pass the time.  Out of nowhere one person will say “Kirk?” and another will say “Krak!  I have something to tell you.”  Then that person begins to tell a story.  

Unfortunately, no one is listening anymore.  They have been below deck for so long that they almost can’t hear each other anymore.  They say anything that comes to mind whether it makes sense or not.  Any real information comes from the Captain or a small transistor radio they have.  This information becomes pertinent to them because it sets the mood for the rest of the day and informs them of what is happening in the world. 

In this section of the book, the news comes from the Bahama news station.  As they listen attentively, their fears are being confirmed when a woman says, “They treat us like dogs.”  The feeling ripples through the ship like hatred running through their body and consuming them.  They all try to go back to whatever  it was they were doing before the interruption.

When they go back to whatever it was they were doing, they realize that they are going back to staring at each other.  They are just waiting for someone or something to change the rhythm or senseless pattern they have fallen into.  These moments of true reflection take place when “nature calls.”  Not only are you embarrassed relieving yourself in the presence of the others, but you realize how vulnerable you really are here.  Nobody cares any less nor any more about each other or themselves.

My Uncle's Favorite Coffee Shop

The waitress in this poem takes great pleasure in pouring my uncle's coffee.  In her mind, when she sees him she automatically relates him with the two easy eggs and a single pancake.  He is well known to her.  Uncle is a regular here.  He loves this place and sits in his favorite booth.  He feels as comfortable here with his eggs, pancake and coffee as he does in his own home. 

He is an immigrant from an iceless region.  He is somewhat obsessed with water and ice, particularly with how drinking ice water makes him feel.  He wants to share his feelings with everyone.  He seems to have been deprived of this pleasure as a child.  The simple moisture of the water in his mouth, the coolness the ice gives it and the clink of the ice on the sides of glass gives him great comfort.  He feels safe.

Uncle is pristine in his daily white shirt.  He is always wearing a freshly pressed white shirt.  This makes him feel important.  It makes him look important to the rest of the world.  He is a peaceful man and rejects the lies the media spreads as they discuss one country versus another.  It seems to him that the hard working immigrants never are able to get ahead.  They do the hard work and get little appreciation or pay for their efforts.  He longs for his homeland, but fears he may never return.

He has longed for the playful, carefree relationship that other couples had with each other.  But, he has never been able to relax enough to form that easy relationship with anyone.  He still longs to go "home."

When the final preparations were made, he happily yet reluctantly says good bye to those he leaves behind and returns to his homeland and final resting place.  In his honor, we return to his favorite booth in his favorite restaurant and "we had to order something or nothing will come." (pg.101)