Saturday, April 30, 2011

First Impressions

This book is unlike any book that I've ever read. I was interested to see how this book was structured when I first began reading it, and while it was a quick read, it was packed full with hidden meanings and symbols.
When I first opened the book, I did not find an epic poem or a play; I found both. This was so interesting to me because I could literally see the play coming alive. Again, this wasn't an easy ready for me, and I really do think seeing the choreopoem would allow me to make more sense of it. However, I really liked the stage directions at some points. The story lines were a big difficult to follow, but once I was able to keep the women and their stories straight, I liked the poem much better.
I also liked the universality of the poem. These situations that these women found themselves in are not just common to African American women; I felt that any woman could face these situations. Any woman could be raped by a friend or "give it up in the back of a Buick." These stories are common to all women, and I think this book comes down to how all women feel when taken advantage of. This book carries many themes and many meanings, but I think one major one is how something had been taken away from each of these women. Whether virginity, innocence, or a baby, these women found commonality in the fact that they all had lost something. To me, that was one of the biggest themes of the book.

1 comment:

  1. thats interesting... i feel like it might have been alot easier for me to read than a normal book. here you had everything mapped out for you so there wasnt hardly any thinking involved because it was mapped out like a play, yet you had enough room to kinda fill in the stuff that the play briefly or hardly touched on. i liked the universality of the poem also and the freedom you had with it as you read.

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