The Problem With Pleasure By Laura Frost

In Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein uses her method of “proetry” to paint not only descriptions of subjects around her in the domestic sphere, but also to illustrate their meaning as well. At first glance, Stein’s sentences and stream-of-consciousness narrations seem nonsensical and almost impossible to understand their meaning, and, in some cases, are absolutely frustrating to the reader who hopes to understand them and see the meaning behind them. However, this work is not intended to be read by its surface text at face value. The reader must understand how and why Stein changes and, in a sense, rewrites the English sentence structure and how the matter of perspective can illuminate the purposes to her OBJECTS, FOOD, and ROOMS.

The methods in which men and women communicate are eminently different. This being so, their external state is an indicator of their inner state, but men and women have different external states to express themselves. This is especially evident among children and individuals in relationships, and altered between a couple who tries to adjust their behavior. Deborah Tannen, the author of “Sex, Lies, and Conversation,” argues that boys are girls are taught to have a differ inner state, that males and females usually have the same inner state but express them differently when communicating, and that individuals in romantic relationships can alter the way they present their outer state to represent their inner state in a way their partner can relate to.

In society there are still differences in classes such as higher class, middle class, and lower class. In sociology, we observed a film called The Pursuit Happyness, where we witnessed the struggles a father went through to succeed. Chris Gardner, who was played by Will Smith, is living in his apartment with his wife and his son. Due to their struggles, the mother walks out on and leaves Chris struggling alone with his son. In the film Chris Gardner applies for an unpaid internship for a competitive stockbroker company where out of twenty men, only one gets the job. While he is on his internship, we see the hardships of getting kicked out of his apartment to staying at a shelter home to then sleeping in a subway bathroom with his son. Viewing the movie through a sociological lens, The Pursuit of Happyness will be analyzed according to the major three sociological paradigms: structural functionalism, social conflict theory, and symbolic interactionalism.

Queer Compulsions by Amy Sueyoshi serves as a wonderful insight of various struggles of Japanese immigrants with Americans in its depiction of specific individual of Yone Noguchi through his intimate relationship with other Americans of both sexes. Through the life of Noguchi, the author aims to touch on both racial and sexual (both sexual identity and gender) standards which were expected at the time, and how those affected not only the life of Noguchi, but also the lives of many Japanese immigrants. Most part of the book, from Chapter 1 to 4, the author talks extensively about relationships (not only intimate/family relationships, but also other relationships with general American population, especially Bohemian) that Noguchi had from the beginning of his life.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan follows multiple Chinese-American women who struggle with their self-identity and creating a balance between American and Chinese culture. Because of their immigration and many hardships in life, many of the women feel like they cannot truly tell who they are anymore, and throughout the novel these women are portrayed as ghosts. Ghosts are used to symbolize these women because they share many parallels including being only a remnant of who they once were, or who they could be. Ying-ying St. Clair is one of the women, who has a daughter named Lena St. Clair, she has had a troubled past in China, which has made her lose her fighting spirit, and her spirit in general. Ying-ying is fully aware of her loss of spirit and is embarrassed because she considers ghosts to be shameful and weak, and wants to save her daughter, Lena, from her fate.

In most situations the term power is looked at between one person or group and another. The same perspective from the textbook “Interpersonal Conflict” written by Joyce Hocker and William Wilmot can be applied when looking at the lack of internal power when going through a phase of depression. The type of power, level of power, solutions, as well as the RICE perspective can all be associated with myself and my depressed state I went through for a few months.

Literature is defined as written works published on a particular subject. Literature can also be viewed as witness, because it can be a source of proof based on the events it was written on. Literature as witness allows readers to get a deeper understanding of the issues that have happened based off of what the books are about. Those who read literary texts such as historical novels, memoirs and novels are witness to historical events. These texts can be viewed as witness because the events mentioned are based off of true life events. Some may argue historical fiction is not real and therefore could not be viewed as a reliable source. Even though historical fiction is made up of fictional characters, the conflicts that are mentioned are based

The current generation is quizzical of the importance that religious teachings hold in our evolving pro-choice society. In past generations, spiritualism was a method of uniting the community and nurturing the young. However, we find that faith has the adverse effect. While separate from other religions, a rise in hate fueled discrimination and separatism is observable between different communities in all corners of the globe. In this generation, it is only logical that as religion is taught, after learning from present and past events, the very essence of the teachings is skewed and put into question.

Bailey, Beth. Sex in the Heartland. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1999.

“In 2009, 33 million people in the United States were second generation immigrants, representing 11% of the national population. The children of such immigrants in the U.S., also known as "second generation immigrants," experience a cultural conflict between that of their parents and that of mainstream U.S. society” (Wikipedia 1). Amy Tan the author of “Two Kinds”, and the young character in the story both are a second generation immigrants, who have struggled in their life with parents, about the culture they assimilating and their real culture.

The history of publishing has been plagued with literary hoaxes — from the somewhat harmless Ern Malley hoax to the most recent Belle Gibson scandal. Unfortunately literary hoaxes will continue to happen, unless publishers begin to fact check manuscripts before publication. Publishers claim they are unable to do this due to the financial cost of the procedure and this is a believable claim. If you spoke to an average person they would say that the print industry is dying, thanks to the rise of digital technology, and there has been a downturn in profits.

Sharon Olds’ poem “Sex Without Love” wonders at the ability for two people to have sex and not involve emotions or pretenses of love. The poem argues that it is better to have sex without love under the premise that love is a false savior for people, and everyone is all alone anyhow. In other words, the claim is that personal interactions do not serve a purpose other than being a distraction, and they will inevitably end. However, the notion that attachment and love are false hopes for people and each person is all alone does not account for the inevitability of human interactions and the underlying importance of relationships. While the poem does not give its definition of being alone, complete isolation is virtually impossible and leads

In “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy,” Emily Esfahani Smith writes about the conflict between Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Happiness” and the culture today, which focuses on happiness in life rather than meaning. She introduces Viktor Frankl as a star medical and psychology student who survived the Holocaust in 1942. While Frankl was kept hostage in his camp, he was forced to find the good in life in order to survive. After being liberated, Frankl recorded his experience and what he learned in nine days, creating a best-seller in the United States. Smith explains that even though it has been concluded that Americans’ happiness is at an all-time high, the Center for Disease Control says that almost fifty percent of Americans have not found a purpose in life. Smith tells that bad mental health, self-esteem, and depression are less likely to be found in those who have found a pleasurable meaning in life. Happiness is associated with being a “taker”, while having a meaning life is associated with being a “giver” according to Smith. The downside to having a purpose for one’s life is the fact that he or she is usually more unhappy due to stress and worry than those who only strive for happiness, Smith explains. A study in 2011 proved that if someone has a negative circumstance occur in his or her lifetime, that event will give him or her more of a drive to find meaning in life rather than happiness. Smith concluded by linking these other sources with Frankl’s

LGBTQ social movements have evolved over time from liberationist politics of the 1970s to an enormous contemporary focus on gay and lesbian marriage rights, a controversial and arguably assimilationist priority for mainstream LGBTQ advocacy groups. Different forms of activism have approached assimilationism versus societal reformation or preservation of unique constructions of queer identities with a myriad of arguments. In “The Trouble with Normal” by Michael Warner, the author focuses primarily on a criticism of gay marriage rights activism in which he posits that all marriage is “selective legitimacy.” He points to other LGBT movements and issues as more worthy of pursuing, particularly intersectional pursuits of equal rights for people regardless of coupled status. In “Marital Discord: Understanding the Contested Place of Marriage in the Lesbian and Gay Movement” authors Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor give a snapshot history of LGBTQ activism since the 1970s and offer similar arguments as Warner about the heteronormative and neoliberal nature of placing the fight for legal marriage rights at the forefront of LGBTQ activism, although they do also introduce emerging improvements with the increasingly intersectional awareness of modern advocacy efforts.

Alexis Picard Professor O’Brien English 131 5 May 2015 Stein’s Rosy Stain Tender Buttons by American writer Gertrude Stein consists of three sections titled “Objects,” “Food,” and “Rooms.” Embedded in a context of unabashed lesbian eroticism, Tender Buttons withdraws from conventional syntax and semantics and integrates polysemic words to offer a vision of escape and revolt. Stein is knowingly anti-patriarchal and complicates poetic expectations to dissolve uniformity and normative reading. Tender Buttons is highly condensed with layers of public and private meaning, where exclusion from an understanding demonstrates Stein’s paradoxical inclusive-exclusion. Heavily influenced by cubism, Gertrude Stein disassembles conventional syntactic structures