Bringing Up Bebe By Pamela Druckerman

All humans throughout life are faced with the challenge of growing up. Reading Eleven by Sandra Cisneros shows the struggles of an eleven-year-old girl trying to act her age and not any younger. When coming upon an another year of life it can feel exactly like last. This is because no one ever gets rid of the one, two, three, four and five-year-old self that they once represented. Age is simply a number to tell people when they ask. Instead, the obstacles and experiences during those years truly shape a person.

A shrieking kid, a barking dog, the oven timer going off, a hungry husband that just got off work, and a tired fatigued broken-down wife. This is what full blown motherhood is like, and it all started with a “happy” marriage from a loving relationship. Marriages murder women and the poems “To the ladies” by Mary, Lady Chudleigh and “Marks” by Linda Pastan show that women should not have married men two centuries ago, and that women should not marry men now.

Dorothy Allison’s essay, Panacea, recalls the fond childhood memories about her favorite dish, gravy. Allison uses vivid imagery to cook up a warm feeling about family meals to those who may be a poor family or a young mother. Appeal to the senses shows this warm feeling, along with a peaceful diction.

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

The American Revolution is arguably the most important battle that we as a country have ever taken on. Through this war, we grew together as a country and as Americans. This country was founded through the help of thousands of people of different races and gender. In the novel Revolutionary Mothers by Carol Berkin, the author discusses the role of women and how their various accomplishments are often looked over in the history books. Through the progression of the novel, Berkin details various events that highlight women’s efforts through the course of the revolutionary war. The contributions of women were necessary and helped weave the fabric that is our country.

“You know what I’ve found out about disappointments? I think that if we face them down, they can become our strengths.” (Bauer 113) In the novel Hope Was Here written by Joan Bauer, the main characters go through some difficult struggles. One of the main people, Braverman and Addie both had to overcome disconsolate times. Braverman chooses family over education. Addie goes through hard times when she losses her husband along with three unborn babies. This reminds me of the time where my mother’s friend, like Addie, lost a child, and had to overcome that. While people go through difficult struggles everyday, they learn to learn and grow from them. Like William J. H. Boetcker said, “The difficulties and struggles of today are but the price

(H) The life of women has drastically changed throughout the ages. (CIS) The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan portrays life in America and in China in the 1930’s for women. (GS1) When stories are true, there is more power behind them. (GS2) Novels need accuracy for the book to have feeling. (GS3) A rave-worthy novel needs truth to really draw the reader in. (thesis) Author Amy Tan accurately portrays life for Chinese women in the 1930’s and it enhances the power of the novel because the stories have true roots, the accuracy gives the book more feeling, and the truth behind the stories transports the reader into the novel.

Throughout a woman’s life, she is told time after time that she cannot do certain things because of her gender. People tell women that they cannot be the CEO of the world’s largest company or the President of the United States because it is a “man’s job.” Clementine von Radics’ poem, “For Teenage Girls,” emphasizes the sexism imposed on girls from a young age and how women of history have proven the prejudice against women wrong.

Communication is one of the most vital aspect of everyone’s life and that is often hinted at in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Throughout the book, we encounter mother-daughter relationships that are ultimately impacted due to linguistic roadblocks. The mothers are more proficient in Chinese, sometimes struggling to have their daughters completely understand their dialect. This, in turn, poses as a barrier in regards to conserving a cultural connection between the mother and daughter.

The topic of sex if often avoided in daily conversation. Not only is sex considered to be taboo, but it is also predetermined. The American people schedule when to have sex in order to avoid pregnancy- as if pregnancy is some sort of unwanted occurrence. In order to know when it is safe to have sex, the female Americans often track their cycle and predict when they are ovulating- the time when women are most fertile. Even after a women does become pregnant, the event is still treated as awkward- shameful even. This idea is best exemplified by the choice of dress that pregnant women choose to wear. Female Americans, who have been impregnated, tend to choose to wear loose and baggy clothing in order to hide their current state. Once it is time for the child to be born, the American women will seek the assistance of a physician within a health care facility; they typically wish to be alone when this act is taking

I personally love this book! This book made me feel aware of how other people have

"I do not trust people who don 't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you. ' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt." This is a quote by Mayra Angelou that it clearly explains that, having kindness for yourself is the most important thing for people. Having kindness for yourself it’s the first step that everyone should take. “Suicide Note” by Janice Mirikitani talks about a girl who committed suicide just because she didn’t have kindness for herself. I choose to compare the reading by Mirikitani with chapter number five “It’s Never Too Late” of the book “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron because this chapter talks about how people should start having kindness for themselves. This is a part of the book that Asian-American girl who committed suicide, which Mirikitani talks should have read it before taking the decision to end her life.

Why Come Back? by Mónica Lavín is the story of Victor and Marta, a married couple struggling to overcome a rough patch in their marriage. Lavín narrates the story through Victor’s perspective, with a stereotypical machista ideology. Marta and Victor have been married for 35 years, and one day she left Victor for another man. Three months later Marta has come back to try and reconcile with her husband, but Victor is hesitant in his decision to let her back into his life and he keeps asking himself why she would come back. Lavín strategically uses silence and language in Why Come Back? to emphasize the theme of female submission in a patriarchal environment through Marta’s compliant behavior and Victor’s dominant and resentful attitude.

Don’t be discouraged by the popular subpar reviews because damn. This book is simple, straight to the point, realistic and extremely groundbreaking.

It was a great job the author did on providing information on what it is like to be a young mother and how one can become overwhelmed. With the high pregnancy rates we know that girls and or dads to be do not think about how their lives are really fixing to change. The author is able to offer another view of what real life can sometimes feel like. Girls and women need to learn to step back and make sure they are taking the time to look at who they are fixing to have a child with. Many times there are warning signs that go ignored. Usually a biologic parent does not abuse their own child, but it does not happen, like in the instance of baby Donald and how his own father abused him, women need to see the warning signs they are given when