Tuesday, October 21, 2008

We are not so different....

FYI, i had good pictures.. but my internet is messed right now.



Although the customs and the background are tweaked, the astonishing comparisons between our lives in America now, and that in the 1970's juxtaposed to that in Africa, are truly not so different.

Serah reminds me of the small town girl from which I have lived in and out of. Our stories are not so similar, but I see what makes us the same. As a small town girl, you must fight for yourself and overcome through your education, or you will be just another housewife, living under the roof of a man. Serah has seen that all too well. She had the chance to overcome and be educated, but instead she took the name of a man who prove himself more of a donkey than king.

Ambrose to me seems like what a typical man would in the 70's... and although that man has far been buried, I see the way he holds himself. He prides himself in sounding like a white man, and by saying "the trouble with the black man is that he just isn't ready to vern himself yet."

Ambrose is a empty-headed follower, paid by the government to live for the government. And while Serah holds on to what I could see is the closest thing to an African hippie, Janneh " but we need to draw the people's attention to what is happening. these guys are lining their pockets, man. grabbing what they can while they're in office. and it's our mney. yours. mine. everybody's."


So Janneh (ha, which we won't get into that past) is all anti-establishment, Serah, the lost voice in the domesticated mess we call marriage.

And although marriage is not evil... I SWEAR I'M NOT FEMINIST. I just think that Serah was the typical small town girl who married the first man that seemed appropriate and left her dreams behind. She had two kids, birthed the rights to live under the wages of the government, trying to fight the man.


I think that Serah just needed some more direction, she was listening to the direction of "man" with no voice of her own. Even thought women's rights proclaimed its way into our lives as American women in the 60's, Serah was the woman who envisioned her equal rights through a window.



While all these rights are looking to expose, just like the equivalency here in America at the time... with the socialism movements and feminism... as equal rights protests knocked on the White House's front porch, Sierra Leone fought for it's own independence from the "man."

2 comments:

Katthoms said...

Serah was one of my favorite characters too. And I don't see you as feminist either, she did exactly that. She married the first guy who gave her butterflies. "Independence from the "man"" I like that quote it pretty much sums up the book, getting away from the "man"

Allen Webb said...

I really like the way you connect the characters to people and types that you know. This is the amazing thing about literature -- we get insight into a world obviously profoundly different from our own, yet we also get to discover rich connections and similarities.