Sammy's Musings and Insights

I know as a single woman, it is expected to be with a family on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Well, on Thanksgiving I am covered because friends always invite me somewhere, sometimes but not always.  I decided that regardless of that, I still keep these holidays special to me in my own way and so I made a list of traditions I love and some I think I may incorporate: 1) No After Thanksgiving Black Friday shopping--this is thanks to moving to the Bay Area and seeing how crazed shoppers are here. (This is like Ramadan for me as a recovering shopaholic) 2) Celebrating Advent by going to Mass on Sunday 3) Putting up the tree and decorations 4) Lighting my candles on Winter Solstice 5) Watching A Christmas Carol and Miracle on 34th Street on DVD 6) Go see the Nutcracker 7) Attend Christmas Eve Mass 8) See a movie on Christmas and eat at Denny's (I started this in 2002 with my sister) New ideas for this year: 1) Attend Las Posadas (Spanish-American trad...

Despite my disappointment and frustration I had at the Anne Rice signing, I have to give her credit for this: for the best writing advice I ever got from her.  This advice was is that there are no rules to writing.  I am glad she has said that because there have been times in class where I felt like I was restricted in my writing and my creativity and felt like my writing was being hinged.  This happened to me again last week in my American Women's Literature class.  Our assignment was to write a memoir piece that shaped our identity cultural, spriritually, etc.  It had to reflect on our gender identity and values.  Unfortunately, my first draft of my essay, it was not acceptable because it did not meet her requirements.  So I had to ask myself what experiences shaped me as a woman and my gender identity.  I ended up writing about an experience about being bisexually curious.  I was off and running on this and the ideas were comin...

Can I even call it a meeting?  More like I just had a quick word while she signed my copy of her latest novel "Prince Lestat", on Wed. over at Books Inc.  The only word I can sum up my experience is disappointing. I have been a eager fan of her books for fourteen years, since I was an accounting student over at Solano Community College.  Her Vampire Chronicles began to heal me from a depression I was feeling about myself: a 20 year old college student who was unsure of herself and what she wanted to do with her life.  Especially when I was being encouraged to take up accounting and was not completely sure if this was the career choice for me.  Of course, I still finished the accounting program at the college, but I was still feeling empty.  Then came the days when she became self-proclaimed Catholic again.  My knowledge of religion and faith were foreign to me.  Trying to understand the mystery of faith was something I never could grasp or eve...

Today I just saw an article of a group called 4chan users, who have started a smear campaign against Emma Watson for her speech to the UN on feminism.  Part of this smear campaign is the threat of posting nude pictures of herself to the internet.  How distasteful can people get?  And why threaten someone like Emma, who is peacefully making her voice heard about a subject she cares about: women's equality and feminism?  How far will someone go to make sure a woman's voice is shut down permanently? This corresponds to a topic I was reading in Psychology about conformity.  In society, women are expected to be the weaker sex, the submissive sex, the docile sex.  As the generations passed, women are evolving into strong, proactive, intelligent thinkers, movers and shakers, and as we all know evolution is a process in the change of the world.  Yet there are people out there, like these users, who feel by smearing Emma and her speech, they can make women li...

This week, Emma Watson gave a powerful message about women and equality.  It brought me back to one of my first writing assignments about women and feminism.  Below is the writing assignment I did regarding radical heterosexuality.  Enjoy!!! Naomi Wolf's article, "Radical Heterosexuality", brings up a grey area of how a woman can be feminist woman and yet still be a wife to her husband. She brings up a question in the beginning of the article: "By day, they fight gender injustice, by night they sleep with men. Is this a dual life? A core contradiction? Is sleeping with a man 'sleeping with the enemy'?" (1) In other words, how can a woman be wanting gender freedom and equal rights if she is also affectionate with a man? How can she have the same power and freedom as a man when she is also seeking affection and attention from them and giving them the same? Is it possible to have it both ways. Wolf brings up a point that being a radical femi...

I have seen magical realism prominent in many of Isabel Allende's novels such as House of the Spirits and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's short stories and novels such as In the Time of Cholera . I have also seen it in American novels too, such as Sarah Addison Allen's Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen . It is a genre I love because it brings the fantastical inside the reality of the novel. Magical realism has the power to grasp the reader into the story or novel and get a dose of reality mixed with fantasy. What exactly is magical realism and how does it fit in with Garcia-Marquez's story? According to Postcolonialstudies.emory.edu, magical realism is a literary device that brings out two perspectives: “ one based on a so-called rational view of reality and the other on the acceptance of the supernatural as prosaic reality”. In other words it is the merging of the supernatural with the actual existence in the story. The reader can see this firsthand in the story ...

Another assignment post that I think is relevant to this blog because it focuses on literature and is related to my writings on Latin American writers.  Enjoy!!! What is the definition of a Latina writer? How is it different from being a Latino writer? In my Week Two response of what is a Latino writer, I had concluded that “besides the author that wrote it, it must be a piece that Latin-Americans can relate to, like history or experience.” I still stand by that principle with a Latina writer, like Sandra Cisneros. Why would our publishing want to distinguish Latina writer from Latino writers, just because of the gender? Do they thing this will make it easier to sell a book just because an author like Cisneros is a woman and cannot be in the same category as Junot Diaz and Roberto Bolano? Just because the gender of the author changes does not mean she is less of a writer than a Latino writer. Unlike Bolano and Diaz, who were born outside the United States, Cisnero...

This summer I started an attempt on a reading project for myself and read Marcel Proust's famous In Search of Lost Time, the six volume novel of gigantic proportions.  I had taken interest in this series because I had already owned the first volume and decided to get the other six for my collection (all of them match by the way).  I also decided to read this because a friend had suggested them and has my same tastes for literary and classic fiction.  I have had them on my shelf for a while and when I finally finished Tropic of Cancer and some light reads, I wanted to take on something ambitious.  Thus, I gave myself a project and a goal: to read this six part novel in six months. Unfortunately, this goal has changed immensely.  Here are the reasons why: 1) This is not a light read novel.  In fact, a few times I had to go back to try to understand what M. Proust was saying when my mind wandered off the page to images that captured my mind.  2) Becau...

This is an assignment I just completed for my Latin American Literature class and felt this was a good topic to put up here.  Enjoy!!! When reading Junot Diaz's, “The Pura Principle”, I was noticing that Diaz went back and forth writing in English and then using Spanish phrases to capture the authenticity of the story. I say authenticity because most households that speak both English and Spanish speak with a hybrid of both languages. Though this was never practiced in my immediate family, my father's cousins' families did use a hybrid of both English and Spanish when speaking because they grew up learning both Spanish and English. It was more dominant when expressing emotions. Only my father and his siblings were able to keep up with their cousins in the interchanging of languages. Like his story, in the interview, Diaz switches back from Spanish to English on occasion. This is because this is authentic for him as he is familiar with both languages due to “...

This was taken from my previous blog, written in 2011 when I decided to go back and get my bachelor's degree.  Enjoy!!! It's been a long time since I have done anything with this blog, in fact I have ignored it for a long time, but now it is time to get the juices flowing and get back to writing again. I have decided on something that has been on my mind for a long time. For the last couple of years, okay the time, I have been not writing in here, I have been attending college in a library tech. program. Well, after some thought, and some inspiration from my lit class, I have finally decided to go back and get my bachelor's degree (in Liberal Arts, with English minor). The reason for this goal: I have always been the type who that liked learning, but what scared me was being stuck in the same field all my life, never moving forward. Most of my friends went to college as business majors or as education majors, which never appealed to me. I wanted a career that woul...

Flannery titled her poem “Half-Baked” because she is describing her life as she is writing this poem and remember how her grandmother baked her bread. Before baking, dough must be prepared by mixing the ingredients, forming into a mound, and kneading the dough so it is just right for baking. If one thinks about it, preparing dough is just like preparing for life, learning and growing and making mistakes. In the first stanza, Flannery description of kneading “life's dough/with one hand only” how she is slowing evolving and turning and making adjustments to life and it's lessons. It is described again as she is “holding the pen to cross out words,/ glutonous, glossy, leavened, vicious,/ record[ing] the memory of fresh bread”. Flannery uses the imagery of her grandmother's baking to make the reader understand the kneading of life.   Flannery starts her poem in the first stanza describing her life as kneading through dough, comparing it to kneading and preparing the dough ...

As part of my contribution to blog writing world, and so I don't lose these findings as I write them down, I am going to be posting some entries from school of literature and ideas that I find fascinating.  Some of these will be edited for content.   Nicole Homer  titled her poem “Pandora's Box” because like the mythical box of the Homerian era, this Pandora's box contains a secret that is feared. However, it is a mystery that is waiting to be discovered, while frightening, is also exciting. In the first stanza: “& the whole world feared/what Pandora kept in her box/& if they only knew/if they only knew/ it was only perfume/ & sweat inside.” The mystery people fear is not really a mystery at all.   At the first glance of the title, I thought the poem would be an epic like the Homer epic Iliad. However, the narrator is only describing Pandora's box with the first sentences how mysterious it is and at the same time intriguing. This poem is not an...

Note: another review from my previous blog back in 2009. Enjoy!! That's right--a chick lit novel, Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin. Chick lit is a new kind of genre for me, something I fairly like on occasion, but I never like to admit personally. I'm more into more serious, thoughtful book myself, but it never hurts to once in a while read a more fun-loving, original story about your life as well. Anyway, the heroine in the book, Rachel White, a 30 year old attorney in Manhattan, has just slept with her best friend's fiance, Dex, and has no regret over it. I wasn't sure I was going to have much sympathy for Rachel, basically for the misdeed itself, but after reading her point of view, and learned more about her "best friend" Darcy, who is a shallow, brainless twit, yet pretty and charming at the same time, the kind of girl we all hate, you can't help but feel more compassion for Rachel than Darcy, esp. since Rachel tries to do the right thing by ...

Note: This was from my previous blog written in 2009, hope you enjoy!!! My friends and I, even after two months of finishing this book, are still discussing this great novel: Atonement, by Ian McEwan. I mean, usually when we have read a book, we only discuss it for one day, two to three days tops, but for Atonement--almost two months. I won't give away the plot for those who have not read the novel--however, part of our debate has been on the plot and some of the subplots and of the character Briony, herself. Was Briony mistaken or was she lying when she saw Robbie and Cecilia together in the library? Was she driven by jealousy or naivety of what she saw? When did she start to feel guilty after making false witness to the police? If she had not noticed them by the fountain the first time, what would she have thought when she saw the pair in the library, and would her statement to the police be different? Then we go on to the other characters: Paul Marshall, ...

Note: This posting is actually from an assignment I did for my Latin American Literature class (no plagiarism involved or intended.)  I was so pleased with how this turned out I decided to share with all of you.  Enjoy!!!  Roberto Bolano's story of “Clara” is a Latin-American romance. It is a story of a man who is infatuated with a very mercurial woman, Clara. It even starts out as a typical, sensuous love story: “She had big breasts, slim legs, and blue eyes. That’s how I like to remember her. I don’t know why I fell madly in love with her, but I did, and at the start, I mean for the first days, the first hours, it all went fine.” (Bolano, 1) It is the same love story that one has read before: the male in love with a woman he cannot have, and the woman very disturbed in her thoughts and her actions. This would be the type of story any American would love to read because of the plot itself. When reading the article, “What Defines Latino Literature?”, I had trouble fi...

Today I was looking at articles for inspiration for a budding writer.  Yes, I say budding writer because I have been trying to find my literary voice for the past eight years.  As I was looking in the articles, I came across a story in the Forbes titled " Why You Shouldn't Be a Writer ".  I was shocked by the title, and wondering why on Earth anybody would tell it's audience, especially those of us who are creative thinkers, why we should not be considering a writing career.  At first I thought, maybe it is because this is a business/entrepreneurial magazine, therefore focus on business or economics, but the tips that were inside the article really struck a nerve with me--who in the world has the right to say I should not consider being a writer? The first tip was "You're not good at it."  Hold the phone--who says I am not a good writer?  Was that person in my freshman English class in high school while I was learning to write haiku or sonnets o...