The Kitchen God's Wife

Title: The Kitchen God's Wife
Author: Tan, Amy
Publication: United States, Ballantine Books 1991.

Reason, Type, & Setting: After reading The Joy Luck Club and Malinche's Children a while back I decided to read, yet again, a novel relating to culture and family relationships mostly between mother and daughter. This story revolves around the lives of Pearl Brandt, her Aunt Helen, and her mother Winnie in San Francisco and is taken place in I believe around the 80s - 90s. It is a fictional piece with narrations from both Pearl Brandt and her mother Winnie.

Plot: As said earlier it is story of secrecy and the lack of relations between mother, daughter, and aunt. The way the story starts, with Pearl's narration, her mother calls her to get her to go to San Francisco to attend her cousin Bao-Bao's engagement party. Though she doesn't really have close ties to Bao-Bao and seeing that this is about the 3rd time he is getting married, she decides to go out of her mom's willing for her to. After coming to San Francisco, there she meets up with her Aunt Helen at her flower shop where Aunt Helen wanted to talk to her. Pearl Brandt was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which many people in the family knew about, and Aunt Helen obliged her to tell her mother about her condition since she was the only one left that didn't know. Aunt Helen felt it was her duty to tell Pearl this because she herself is in a sickly state and did not want to die knowing that Pearl kept this from her mother. Now, at the same time Aunt Helen talks with her sister Winnie, who is Pearl's mother and tells Winnie that she must tell her daughter her past secrets as well, with the same excuse of her sickly condition. So in this case, Aunt Helen acts as a mediator for both the mother and daughter. With this intro to the story, secrets start to unfold as Pearl and Winnie narrate their own story and Pearl, Winnie, and including Aunt Helen began to gain a stronger bond with each other towards the end of the novel while each hearing their story.

Character: Pearl Brandt is a Chinese-American that grew up in San Jose, California without her mother around. She is married to an American, has two girls Cleo and Tessa, and is a speech therapist. As mentioned before she is not as close as she could be with her mother because of their cultural difference. This made me think of the Joy Luck Club and the mother and daughter's relationship just as Pearl's. Sometimes I can see this and feel the same with my own mother and I, since our upbringings are totally different with my mother growing up in the Philippines. In turn, these differences lead to Pearl and Winnie's lack of communication towards each other with secrets that should be told, not. Pearl's mother, Winnie, had a hard and traumatic life in China which we later find out in the story when Winnie starts her narration and I believe that Pearl would have understood her mother's ways if she had known about her past.

Evaluation: Overall if I compare this book to the novels I've read before, I enjoyed this book more so than Malinche's Children but not as much as the Joy Luck Club. This novel was more descriptive when it came to the emotions of the characters and the scenes that were going on. You could somewhat get a sense of why these characters were the way they were and why they acted that way towards each other, especially since we get both perspectives of the mother and the daughter. This novel shows that the past really shapes who you are and why things why they are now.

Author, Context, & Trivia: Amy Tan grew up in San Francisco as well and wrote many other books inspired by Chinese-American culture. Her books include: The Hundred Secret Senses (which I will read next), The Joy Luck Club, The Moon Lady, and The Chinese Siamese Cat.

The Stranger

Title: The Stranger

Author: Camus, Albert

Publication: New York, Vintage Books 1954.

Reason, Type, & Setting: Though I've already read this sophomore year, I decided to read it again since I knew it would be a quick read since I will be heading off to Japan in a few days and with spring break soon after that. The Stranger is a fictional story written in the early 1940s and is said to be the epitome of existensialism. The story takes place probably around the same time it was written and is set in Algiers.

Plot: The story starts with Mersault, the main character's, mother dead. So, Mersault travels from his home in Algiers to Marengo. Though his mother had just died he did not show any remorse or sadness from her death at the funeral. Upon his arrival back home to Algiers, Mersault meets a past co-worker of his at the beach named Marie Cardona and they end up spending that night together. A while after that he runs in with a couple of his neighbors and their issues such as Salamano and Raymond Sintes. Eventually, Raymond invites Mersault and Marie to stay at a beach house of his friends. There the gist of the story really begins and leads up to events that call for justified consequences.

Character: Mersault is the main character and is very much like the title of this book. He is like a stranger to society, someone who doesn't seem to fit in. He seems to want to be unnoticed and is very apathetic towards other people and society in general. He contains his own set of beliefs which include not being in a higher being, and that people have no purpose in the world. Towards the end of the story, Mersault starts to understand himself, the people around him, accepts the situation that he put himself in.

Evaluation:The story was interesting, but I did not enjoy it as much as I did last year. I guess it is because at the same time I read the book back then I was learning about existentialism in Ross Roemer's humanties class. The story made me question a lot of things, especially why Mersault is the way he is. Usually when I read books I tend to understand towards the end why a character is developed the way they are. This seemed more of a philosophical book, so it wasn't much to my liking. I'd have to say that though this book was interesting, I don't think I'd read it again.

Author, Context, & Trivia: Albert Camus was born in 1913 and much like Mersault's character he is a French-Algerian. He is associated with existentialism and is a philosopher and journalist. He won the Noble Peace Prize in 1957 and has written other stories such as The Plague and The Myth of Sisyphus.

Warnings Over Future Food Crisis

According to this BBC article a food crisis can be a part of the future ahead, and could be almost as worse as global warming. As poverty is relieved and the possibly of the population reaching an amount of 6.5 billion, the demand for food would increase. Also, if biofuels were to be used in the future, it would take away the land that could be used for agriculture. This is an important issue that has been overlooked and I agree that we should find ways to tackle this issue along with the other issues that affect it since it is all a chain reaction.

Sounds of Silence

I hear the faint sound of an airplane flying overhead along with the friction between the paper and pen. I can hear myself breathing and the rhythm of footsteps across the floor as well as the sound of the closing of the door. I hear the echoes of a piano below the ceiling and mismatched beats going along with the music. I hear, yet again, another airplane overhead. These are the sounds I hear after 100 seconds of silence.

Vocabulary #7

In the movie The Painted Veil, it depicts how life was like living in a cholera endemic region.

Parrots cannot actually conversationally talk as thought to be, instead they mimic the articulation of people's words.





Recently, I have been hearing ads on the radio that our California water system may eventually go through a period of dearth if we do not limit the amount of water we use.






Though some might see the Berlin Wall constructed in East Germany as a bulwark against foreigners and westerners, it was anything but that. It was used to keep the communistic population inside the easter Germany premises.






The baby, who was born prematurely, was not able to inchoate thus having the baby stay at the hospital for one month.

Definitions:
scuttlebutt - A cask on a ship used to hold the day's supply of drinking water
bulwark - a wall of earth or other material built for defense
hubris - excessive pride or self-confidence
dearth - famine; an inadequate supply
deference - respectful submission or yielding to the judgment, opinion, will, etc., of another
emulate - to try to equal or excel
imitate -to mimic; impersonate
mimic - to be an imitation of
endemic - Prevalent in or peculiar to a particular locality, region, or people
aborigine - one of the original or earliest known inhabitants of a country or region.
inchoate - not yet completed or fully developed
precursor - One that precedes another
volatile - tending or threatening to break out into open violence

What is Art?

I find that when people think of art they automatically come up with painting or drawing.
I believe there are different forms of art and they don't necessarily have to deal with any kinesthetic creativity whatsoever. In my vocabulary, I define art as a way of expressing one's self. When I say "one's self" it could be their thoughts, emotions, view towards anything such as an issue. And their expression can be in any form. It could be music, poetry, painting, architecture, or cooking. Whatever form a person deems self-expressive can be art.