Women At Point Zero By Nawal El Saadawi

Marriage is important in human society. Marriage is “the customs, rules, and obligations that establish a special relationship between a sexually cohabitating adult male and female, between them and any children they produce, and between the kin of the bride and groom” (Arenson, and Miller-Thayer 520). Most of the cultures are used to seeing only female and male getting married but looking deeper into the society; we can see there are more to it. There are many different types of marriages. In an ethnography called, Guest of the Sheik, by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, she talks about her experiences in a small rural village of El Nahra in southern Iraq. Ethnography is “comprised of the writings of the anthropologist, detailing the life ways of a particular culture, investigated by means of direct fieldwork” (1). As she gets accepted by the women of the villages, she gets a more inclusive view of the culture.

Nobody fully understands what drives people to undertake a mission, but it often causes people to take many risks. For example, Farah Ahmedi climbed a mountain on a prosthetic leg with a sick mother just to reach freedom. Rikki-Tikki fought for his life to save his family. John Steinbeck eavesdropped on people's conversations just to get material for his book. These stories show different people who had each set a goal for themselves. Ahmedi and Rikki-Tikki fought for their lives to survive and save their loved ones. While Steinbeck traveled to great lengths to write his book. Their goals may be different but they all had set a goal and they all eventually accomplished their goal.

In the poem “It’s a Woman’s World,” Eavan Boland uses many poetic devices such as alliteration, simile, and enjambment in order to explain life from a woman’s point of view and how women have lived the same since the beginning of time.

In the book entitled, There Are No Children written by Alex Kotlowitz, he writes a story about two boys that are of coming of age in Chicago in the housing projects called Henry Horner Homes over a two year time period. In their housing projects, the family faces many hardships and struggles to survive in life due to the influence of gangs, violence, death and poverty that consumes their housing projects. Living in such a bad neighborhood like Henry Horner homes proves the fact that “there are no children here” in the housing projects because the children have seen so much crime, violence and death occur that they have lost their youth and innocence as children and have been forced to become adults. An example of one character that changed dramatically due to the horrible conditions of in the projects was Lafeyette Rivers, one of the two main characters in the novel. The three most important events that impact Lafeyette’s life for the worst were the death of his best friend Craig, when his mother told him that he would be forced to become a young adult, and finally being convicted of a crime he did not commit in the first place. These three major events in his life greatly impact Lafeyette over the two year time period it causes Lafeyette to lose all hope in life and as well to live in constant fear of death and of his housing projects.

Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri, is a writer,and she is known for many auto-biographical novels and she also writes poetry and essays. She also loved to study music, dance,and drama. From 1963 to 1966 Angelou was involved in the black civil rights movement. Maya Angelou wrote this specific poem called; “Phenomenal Women”. Angelou has a very creative way of saying things throughout her poem. Angelou talks about a woman in the poem that talks about herself a lot she repeats the phrase“ I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman that's me”( Angelou) therefore Angelou might be this person in her poem. Angelou is trying to show the reader that you need to have more confidence in your own person instead of worrying about others judgment.

In the book There Are No Children Here written by Alex Kotlowitz, Lafeyette is sitting on the living room couch with his mother LaJoe. He is concerned for his mother over the recent loss of her public aid assistance. The children’s father, Paul, who does not live with them, had used their home as his permanent residence. This caused a red flag with the Public Aid Department for LaJoe receiving assistance. After she explains their current situation, along with the reason for loosing public aid, his reply back to his mother is “to put them out, all of them”. In his statement, he is referring to his father and his older sister. His mother does not have the heart to put anyone out on the streets for fear of what the street life will do to them.

Imagine putting yourself in a scenario where extreme racial discrimination was in action and you were being taken into an internment camp, whether you were pleaded guilty or not. This was reality for the majority of Japanese American during the time of world war two. In the memoir Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston describes the injustice committed against the 110,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry who were interred by America during World War 2.

In Nahid Rachlin’s memoir, “Persian Girls”, the author describes her life in Iran and later in America as a woman, refusing to accept both Muslim and Iranian cultural norms. This plays an important role in the lives of many characters, choosing the sometimes hard decision to break apart from cultural standards. Characters that are faced with this difficult choice include her brothers Cyrus and Parviz, her older sister Pari and Nahid herself.

Scarlet Benoit set out to find her grandmother who had been kidnapped for weeks. Walt Masters wanted to warn Loren Hall that stampeders were planning to steal his claim. Farah Ahmedi undertook the mission to escape Afghanistan with a prosthetic leg and her mother. However, all three fought to better the lives of themselves and/or others.

Christine De Pizan’s The City of Ladies is acknowledged as one of the earliest and most impactful feminist texts. The character of Lady Reason relays numerous rousing tales of significant, powerful female rulers with the intention of helping Christine build the City of Ladies, a sanctuary for women in a world bound by the laws of male dominance. Each story Lady Reason tells Christine attempts to expunge the propagated lies men have insisted upon to maintain their patriarchy. Lady Reason also states that the stories will serve as a foundation for the city walls; it will be the city’s base of protection. An argument can be made about how the city’s exclusivity and selective admittance of only “worthy” women insinuates that Lady Reason’s accepts of the sexist principals propagated by men. This assumption, however, is incorrect, as it does not take into account the possibility that some women are denied entrance into the city because of past deeds, such as committing crimes of homicide and theft. The role of stories in The City of Ladies is essential to the development and execution of the story, which brings to light modern day issues with gender socialization and inequality.

What society thinks about yourself becomes important when you feel that people treat you in a different way. It is not about what you do, it is about how society judge you. In the article, “Beast of Burden” by Sunaura Taylor we have a story of a disable person who narrates how was her life since her childhood until now. On the other hand, there is another article, “The Arab Woman And I” by Mona Fayad which tells us about a lady who had to experience the opinions of others, society suppose her to be someone even when she does not want. The authors include examples, personal experience and rhetorical strategies to give us a better understanding. This text provides information of how is that society is the one who had been involved with the fears of people as time goes by.

“An Unknown Girl” by Moniza Alvi is a free verse poem about the author’s experience getting her hand hennaed in an Indian bazaar. Throughout the poem, Alvi makes use of structure techniques like end-stopped lines, occasional rhymes, language, imagery, and changes in tone to explore different aspects of the concept of identity.

A woman pushes as hard as she can for the last time. “It’s a baby girl!” the man announces, as the new mother hangs her head in sight of the hardships her baby, Elizabeth, will face. Miles away in a hospital, another woman gives birth to a healthy baby girl, Marley. As she sees her baby for the first time, she smiles knowing all the great adventures this baby will experience in her life. The polygamous mom takes the little girl home to her family, a family where she has more than one mother and many brothers and sisters. As she grows up she lives her life trying to be “proper” and “sweet” in the eyes of the prophet. Somewhere far away, Marley is outside playing with her mother and learning how to be a kid. At the age of fourteen, young girls like Marley are innocent and should be going on dates, having fun with friends, and living their life, but for a fourteen year old Elizabeth, she is married to a man twice her age to be his second wife. As she begins her life with her husband, she sees the jealousy of the first wife and the neglect she feels by her presence. Shortly after, the young girl is replaced by another new wife after having a child. Ever since the day she was born, she had no control over these stages happening. Her fate was determined from time of birth and is determined by men until the day she dies. Her fate will be ruled by the religion of Polygamy.

A famous Japanese writer Ihara Saikaku, born in 1642, was a son of a wealthy merchant in Osaka. He had a wife and three kids, one of which was blind and in addition to taking care of his family, he learned to write haikai poetry and comics at a young age. Since his wife died at a young age, he became adventurous as “he traveled extensively writing about the various parts of the country” (Rollins, para.4). One of his first novels is called Koshoku Ichidai Otoko in 1682, which led to Saikaku becoming the first Japanese writer able to reflect the life of the modern city Japan and how he supported equality.

The novel Women at Point Zero starts off with a psychiatrist who is looking for women to research at a women’s prison. When Nawal speaks to the prison doctor, he mentions to her that there is a woman in one of the prisons, who is a lot different than the others, a relentless prisoner named Firdaus. With her abnormal habits of rarely eating, sleeping, talking or accepting people to visit her, the doctor imagines that this women couldn’t have been capable of committing a murder. When Nawal goes to try and speak with her, she is shocked to witness the women refuse her presence and in turn disrupts her own self-confidence. After many unsuccessful attempts to interview Firdaus, Nawal sees that there is