Delaney's Blog

Word Count: 287 words  Florida Scott-Maxwell writes about how to maximize our days and be individuals in our society, becoming the best versions of ourselves and how to come out of struggles and hard times. I find this even more intriguing and notable because she wrote this in her eighties, having experienced so much life, able to give readers such great advice. One of her quotes that spoke to me was when she said, "I wonder if living alone makes one more alive. NO precious energy goes into disagreement or compromise. No need to augment others, there is just yourself, just truth- a morsel- and you. You went through those long years when it was pain to be alone, now you have come out on the good side of that severe discipline." This is meaningful in regards to the society we live in because we often feel lost and out of place if we are alone, without friends or a partner, but that simply isn't true. There is so much importance in learning to be alone, and once you can do t...

  Word Count: 270 words    Experiencing so much at a young age, Hoffman had to go through learning a new language and speaking English from Polish. She was born during the time after World War II, her family having to hide to survive. She eventually moved to Canada from Poland, this being an extremely difficult time in her life. Later on she moves to Texas, falling in love with America and pursuing her dreams. I look up to her when I hear how she was born in a very difficult situation where Poland was in the midst of struggle, her and her family having to rise against this suffering and move their future elsewhere.       She says, "Sometimes I long to forget... It is painful to be conscious of two worlds." This quote shows how Hoffman is still able to reminisce to her life in Poland and all of the despair that she witnessed and also endured. I can imagine that she may have had some feelings of guilt living her dream, an amazing life, in America, with h...

 Word Count: 250 words  Audre Lorde was a great example of overcoming lots of adversity by being legally blind at birth and then overcoming lack of love from family members. Lorde was African American facing racism on top of the other troubles she faced. Her mother was essential in making sure her daughters did not notice or feel the segregation that life threw at them, because she wanted to instill power and confidence in her daughters. She says, “I remember how being young and Black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.” This instilled in her a sense of overcoming, no matter where she went she decided she needed to be an example for other black women who may potentially feel overlooked in life.  She also stated, “Any world which did not have a place for me loving women was not a world in which I wanted to live, nor one which I could fight for.” She did not hesitate to love the p...

 Word Count: 250 words      After reading this narrative, we see how different her life story is compared to all the women's writing before this. Zora Neale Hurston was an African American anthropologist who dived into the folklore of Black communities. She started working with Turner, who taught her voodoo, inspiring her and teaching her the symbols of life. She says,  “Many a man thinks he is making something when he's only changing things around.” This quote shows that Hurston was inspired to really change things, not simply shift how things currently were. She tried to learn absolutely everything about New Orleans, taking everything from the elite white in the city. She was brought into a voodoo community, strongly influencing her life in many ways. Voodoo coming out of the Caribbean also came out of Africa, blending with Catholicism was brought into New Orleans.       She also says, " “Mouths don't empty themselves un...

     Word Count: 263 words Another coming of age story but this time about a Pakistan woman, troubled trying to determine who she is as a woman when she takes up many different roles in her life. She has an identity crisis as she lives in a third world country but says there are no women in third world countries. Meatless Days , the title of this story, refers to the time around 1947 where the government decided that two days out of each week would be "meatless days" where no meat was consumed to preserve the amount of cattle and goats in Pakistan. I read this and think that this is a great idea to preserve the cattle and goats, not allowing them to go extinct in Pakistan. Suleri realizes things that Pakistan is missing, for example, history, culture geography, etc. She realizes there is a lot more to the world that she is not exposed to.  A quote I found interesting is, "A face, puzzzled and attentive and belonging to my gender, raises its intelligence to question w...

 Word Count: 264 words      This story from the beginning is different from our other stories because Onnie Lee Logan decides that her job will be a midwife as she is passionate about helping woman in their most vulnerable, difficult, and important moment of their lives. Her life of being a midwife is around 1984, she was a black woman who knew she could step up to share her knowledge with woman who need her help.      Her mother and grandmother, also midwives, inspired her career's work and passion. She was able to help poor, black mothers receive access to great care, as they deserve the same treatment, knowledge, and help as the rest of America. Onnie was eventually stripped of her midwife license, which is extremely harsh considering this was her entire life, but was told she was no longer needed.      "Nothing in my life has ever made me feel so little," Onnie says when recounting the letter she received in the mail telling her her ...