Girl Who Research Articles

Book Review: The Girl Who Flew Under the Brooklyn Bridge

Book Review: The Girl Who Flew Under the Brooklyn Bridge

The Mediation of Critical Themes of Motherhood Studies in Storytelling: The Case of The Girl Who Drank the Moon

By contemplating the emotional and intellectual link between the reader and the book, this article considers how a contemporary text might respond to current motherhood studies’ issues, and how these studies are mediated to be considered appropriate for an audience of young readers. A psychosocial research strategy is used, through a feminist theoretical framework, to analyze how the young adult novel The Girl Who Drank the Moon incorporates key ideas of motherhood studies through characters’ agency and the storytelling arch. Motherhood is represented as an institution, an individual identity and an emotional experience, and the novel offers the young reader a nuanced vision into an ongoing discussion. The potential of storytelling to mediate social justice concerns to the young reader is highlighted.

Unveiling Cultural Identities and Self Savouring in Preethi Nair’s One Hundred Shades of White and Sarah Addison Allen’s The Girl Who Chased the Moon

Literature often deals with the notion of self-discovery. Self-realisation is the pinnacle of the inner journey that characters undergo in literature. Different individuals experience it at various stages; some in their adolescence, some in middle life, while others in their later years. Savouring is the act of taking pleasure in and appreciating something, frequently food but also other pursuits like music, nature, and relationships. The ability to savour something correlates with enhanced happiness, health, and contentment in life. Savouring serves as a method of introspection. Discovering oneself, one's ideals, and what provides delight and purpose in life aid in cherishing unique and varied experiences. Thus, this paper attempts to provide a comparative study of two novels, One Hundred Shades of White by Preethi Nair and The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen, in which the female protagonists try to savour their self-discovery through various means, namely food, culture, and identity.

Meditations on the Female Chronic Pain Experience in Literature: An Exploration of Lupus in Flannery O’Connor’s Letters

“Men are more likely than women to be given medication when they report pain to their doctors. Women are more likely to be given sedatives,” claims Leslie Jamison while citing evidence from the 2001 study The Girl Who Cried Pain (Jamison 117). Pain as an experiential category is different from other somatic experiences, in that it is heavily dependent not only on its mitigation but also on its avowal of external perceptual forces. As Elaine Scarry puts it “To have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt” (Scarry 7). This is true except in circumstances when one is inflicting pain on another – such as torture, where the other’s articulation of pain reinforces the effectiveness of pain being inflicted. 
 A close look at the existing theoretical apparatus and literary representations of women’s physical pain reveals a big issue. Even when gender is acknowledged as a contributing factor in women’s pain, these conversations are often limited to representations of descriptions of sexual assault, childbirth and, fairly recently, menstruation.
 The experiences of female pain that aren’t solely mediated through the genitalia, lack both representation and a theoretical vocabulary to talk about them productively. My engagement with pain as a symptom of lupus shows that there are experiences of pain heavily dependent on gender identity, which have nothing to do with the genitalia. In establishing a theoretical apparatus for talking about such experiences it might be useful to draw on Flannery O’Connor’s letters as a test for the theoretical apparatus thus developed.

Making Fun of the Make-believe: How The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Takes Revenge on the Discourse of Power

Making Fun of the Make-believe: How The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Takes Revenge on the Discourse of Power

“A Bahian Girl Who Knows How to Love Her Homeland”: Press and Gender at the Time of Brazil’s Independence

RESUMO Entre 1820 e 1823, o Brasil vivenciou o que tradicionalmente ficou conhecido como processo da independência. Em meio às disputas políticas, a imprensa teve uma participação ativa como tribuna pública, representando as ideias de seus editores e do segmento ideológico por eles representado. Este artigo analisa o discurso político presente nas páginas do jornal O Brasileiros em Coimbra, editado em Portugal pelo baiano Candido Japiassú. Para tanto, usamos como referência o conteúdo de uma carta publicada no jornal por uma baiana anônima identificada somente como “F”. A própria dinâmica do universo feminino da família Figueiredo e Melo, e a subjetividade do olhar de “F” sobre a guerra de independência na Bahia, podem ser analisadas com base no diálogo das diferentes escalas de análise entre o micro e o macro, em direta sintonia com a proposta metodológica da micro-história.

From Captivity to Empowerment: the Spectrum of Farida Khalaf’s Journey in The Girl Who Beat ISIS

From Captivity to Empowerment: the Spectrum of Farida Khalaf’s Journey in The Girl Who Beat ISIS

Interrogating the repressive voice of patriarchy: Analysis of Ama Ata Aidoo’s story, “The Girl Who Can”

Interrogating the repressive voice of patriarchy: Analysis of Ama Ata Aidoo’s story, “The Girl Who Can”

The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival by Estelle Nadel (review)

The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival by Estelle Nadel (review)

Monsters revisited: a comparative study of the use of humor in dramatizing benevolent monsters in The Monsters under the Bed and The Boy Who Loved Monsters and the Girl Who Loved Peas

Works for children are filled with a myriad of creatures that are often used by writers to convey certain messages to the young readers/audiences. From tamed to wild, real and imaginary beings, such creatures emerge either as benevolent or evil forces. This study seeks to highlight the role of humorous, benevolent monsters in works for children showing how their presence is laden with meanings. For this purpose, two plays for children are selected: The Monsters under the Bed (2007) by Fr. Dominic Garramone and Osb and the St.Bede Theater Troupe, and The Boy Who Loved Monsters and the Girl Who Loved Peas (2013) by Jonathan Graham. Drawing upon humor studies, monster studies, and child psychology, the paper attempts to analyze the use of humor in portraying friendly monsters in the selected works reflecting how it is through them that the children protagonists revisit their views of monsters and understand that they are a reflection of themselves (their needs/fears). The analysis of these benevolent monsters and their effect on the protagonists will be carried out in relation to the different theatrical elements and the verbal and visual signs which clarify and affirm the benevolence of such creatures and the humorous touch added to their roles.

The Girl Who Fell and Lost Her Hearing.

The Girl Who Fell and Lost Her Hearing.

The Silenced Subjectivities in I Am Malala and Red, White and Muslim: An Interpretative Analysis of Two Muslim Women’s Memoirs

This paper draws upon the theory of subjectivity of Muslim women as enunciated by Saba Mahmood in her seminal work Politics of Piety. Grounding our analysis in her work, we critically engage with two selected memoirs I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban and Red, White and Muslim: My Story of Belief. Both books are written by Muslim women who are from two different locations; Pakistan and America. Via their memoirs, we probe into the kinds of representation the central characters exhibit and how these texts employ the ideas of subjectivity and agency. Our position is that the subjectivity and agency of Muslim women, as depicted and endorsed in these memoirs, is more in accordance with secular neoliberal paradigm. When a secularist model is employed as a yardstick to measure Muslim women’s agency, it makes her appear subjugated or oppressed. Representations are then curtailed within two extremes: that of a distressed damsel in need of liberation or a modern, chic woman who is empowered and not much different from her enlightened sisters in the West. In each case, the coveted ideal is the secularist, neoliberal model of what constitutes an agentic and free woman. This portrayal, we have attempted to argue, leaves much to be desired. It undermines the agency and subjectivity of women who opt for a more religious and more confined existence. Such women are deemed conservative and unenlightened because visibility in communal, public places is not their preference. Thus, this paper signals towards a need for a more nuanced portrayal of Muslim women.
 Keywords: Memoirs, Muslim women, secularism, subjectivity, agency

Empowering Green Girls: An Ecofeminist Reading of Baba Yaga and the Black Sunflower and The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus

To children, nature is not only the shelter, savior, and life-maintaining force, but also the impressive world that they are involuntarily attracted to. The immense fascination with nature in children’s literature shows the significance of such a relation. This paper seeks to examine two plays for children that deal with the relation between young girls and nature: Baba Yaga and the Black Sunflower (2000) by Carol Korty and The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus (2020) by Eric Coble. Both plays do not merely highlight the importance of nature and the natural world, but also emphasize the relentless attempts of young girls to protect nature and reconcile with its inhabitants. The protagonists in both plays emerge as the central driving force; they embark on a journey to the natural world in which they find peace, understand the value of nature, and, finally, save the natural and the human world as well. Drawing upon ecofeminism, the paper aims to examine both plays as ecofeminist texts through analyzing the young girls’ perception of the injustice done to the natural world and its dwellers, and their journeys that end with the reconciliation with nature.

There Flies the Witch by Mayonn Paasewe-Valchev

Reviewed by: There Flies the Witch by Mayonn Paasewe-Valchev Fiona Hartley-Kroeger Paasewe-Valchev, Mayonn There Flies the Witch. Greenwillow, 2023 [224p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780062993649 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780062993663 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 4-7 Where winged old Yakaka goes, flying far and wide to mend injured lands and waters, there too goes Red, her foundling daughter, carried on Yakaka's back. The pair share a life full of love, if not of plenty, but Red's contentment is marred by a recurring nightmare, her inability to effect healing with storytelling the way Yakaka can, and a hunger to know about her past and be sure of her place in the world. A dangerous flight over the ocean leaves Red stranded on an island where she must make a new life with a kind but complicated mother-and-son duo, the island's only other inhabitants, until time and finally a terrible storm bring more than one revelation to the surface. The cadenced storyteller's voice and short, propulsive sentences render every moment of the deceptively simple plot urgently alive. A wealth of earthy, quotidian detail provides some needed distance from the roiling emotional dynamics; beneath an exquisitely poetic skin, the novel brims with tensions between abandonment and isolation, fault and forgiveness, empowerment and self-realization. As an aspiring storyteller whose efforts often seem to fall short, Red is eminently relatable to novice (and experienced) storytellers: her composition process, visualized on-page, is replete with crossed-out vocabulary choices and passionately reimagined realities. As she comes into her own, readers are given a well-crafted lesson on finding one's voice to protect one's home. The novel's repeated verbal patterns and ecological concerns make it a good partner for Stringfellow's A Comb of Wishes (BCCB 01/22), and the relationship between Red and Yakaka calls up the complicated affection shared by Luna and Xan in Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon (BCCB 09/16). This is absolutely not to be missed. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

캘더콧 수상작에 나타난 동물 형상화의 양상

This article aims to discuss animal-focused Caldecott winners in order to explore the way in which anthropocentric perspectives are projected onto animals, the animal wildness erupts through artificial coverings, and animals and humans meet in the wild. The act of feeding and helping animals is based on a highly human-centered setting that makes animals live and feel happy even in hard conditions, as depicted in Make Way for Ducklings, The Big Snow, and Song of the Swallows. The relationship between Genevieve and Madeline in Madeline’s Rescue shows that animals have risen to the status of friends living together, instead of being typified as inferior creatures. On the other hand, references to zoo tigers in Madeline’s Rescue lead to rethinking of the meaning of animals located in a separate space called a zoo, unlike pets, as in The Biggest Bear, May I Bring a Friend?, A Sick Day for Amos McGee, and Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear. Zoos are exposed to the fundamental problems implied by the observation that the zoo animals have been deprived of wildness. The wild energy of the animal as a “living creature” breaks through the cracks of the homopocentric layers no matter how hard the layers try to cover the energy, which is portrayed in The Three Pigs, Where the Wild Things Are, Jumanji, and Tuesday. A possible union of an animal and a human is hinted in The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, but it is almost impossible to capture the scene with human language. Owl Moon and Wolf in the Snow demonstrate how hard it would be to try to reach the reality of the animal in the wild under the cover of human language. Not relying on any other human language than onomatopoeia, which translates the sounds of animals into symbols as they are heard, Owl Moon and Wolf in the Snow trace meaningful encounters between animals and humans in the wild.

Relational Resilience in The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After and Call Me American: A Memoir

Resilient autobiography emphasizes the relational aspect of life writing, drawing on human relationships that have added to the adversity in life recounted, but also builds on human connections that have encouraged and enabled survival. This paper examines resilience in Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil’s The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After, which recounts Wamariya’s experiences of fleeing the Rwandan genocide. The other text considered is Abdi Nor Iftin and Max Alexander’s Call Me American: A Memoir, which depicts Iftin’s life in Somalia during the 1990s and relocation to Kenya and then the USA. The two autobiographical texts present resilience not only as survival but as embodied within the memoirs through the selves presented in the narratives. Resilience emerges as endurance in the face of hardship and suffering, and as a counterforce in various relational contexts, to traumatic personal and collective pasts. Both memoirs exemplify the devastating effects of war, displacement and personal loss, where trauma becomes entrenched in efforts made for survival. The attempt to reorder and repossess trauma can also be seen as an act of resilience. The personal narrative is interpreted and put into writing from the perspective of the person whose life is in focus but also through the eyes of an external observer. The life recounted can therefore be seen as both autobiographically and biographically produced.

The Girl Who Heard the Music: How One Pianist and 85,000 Bottles and Cans Brought New Hope to an Island by Marni Fogelson (review)

Reviewed by: The Girl Who Heard the Music: How One Pianist and 85,000 Bottles and Cans Brought New Hope to an Island by Marni Fogelson April Spisak Fogelson, Marni The Girl Who Heard the Music: How One Pianist and 85,000 Bottles and Cans Brought New Hope to an Island; written by Marni Fogelson and Mahani Teave; illus. by Marta Álvarez Miguéns. Sourcebooks, 2023 [40p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781728262314 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 2-4 This picture book biography focuses on the life and activism of Mahani Teave, a talented musician who grew up on Rapa Nui (known more widely as Easter Island, a designation assigned to it by Dutch explorers in the early 1700s), left to pursue a career as a concert pianist, and ultimately returned home to help repair environmental damage to her island and begin a musical school. Frequent time jumps, heavy use of similes, and clever, enthusiastic asides all create an informal pace and tone that is accessible to young readers, and the book wisely focuses on the activism done on one island, narrowing the overwhelming global crisis of climate change down to a specific school that is a model of recycling and creative, intelligent use of natural resources. The illustrations are dreamy and bright with highlights of organic shades and flowing, peaceful lines, emphasizing the natural beauty even while there are grave concerns about, for example, the environmental damage tourists have done to the land or the shocking amount of trash in the surrounding ocean. Extensive end matter rewards the persistent reader with a wealth of information about Earthships (the type of innovative and environmentally friendly building blueprint used to construct the music school), background on the island language and culture, and a biography of Teave's life that provides further detail about the dates she studied, her musical career, and what specifically drew her back to Rapa Nui. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Representations of “The New Woman” in Changes and Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo

This study explores the representations of “the new woman” in selected works by Ama Ata Aidoo, namely: Changes (1993), Our Sister Killjoy (1977), and Girl Who Can and Other Stories (1997). Ama Ata Aidoo addresses the conditions and needs of continental African women (African women who reside on the African continent) and points out key issues relating to discrimination and exclusion on the basis of sex and gender objectification, structural and economic inequality, power and oppression and gender roles and stereotypes. It reviews several studies carried out on works by Ama Ata Aidoo thus providing this study with the privilege of filling the gaps that were not addressed. It is finally noted that Aidoo does not agree with the view that the success of a woman should be gauged by her ability to get married and have children as emphasised by African tradition. To her, the success of women does not lie in their ability to reproduce but rather in becoming productive in other aspects that benefit humanity and promote the independence and progress of a nation. Aidoo clearly implies that for any nation to develop effectively the role of a woman must not be ignored. A woman has to join hands with the man in order to see a better nation, it should however be noted that the position of a woman in the contemporary world is still a hustle since it is proven through all the new woman characters that it is hard for women to live as single or divorced without enigma from the society

Pragmatics and The Philosophy of Language Acts Found in The Girl Who Fell Beneath The Sea Novel by Axie Oh

<p> </p><p>This study aims to identify the types of directive illocutionary acts by Searle and perlocutionary acts by Austin, which occur in the novel The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh. The researcher used descriptive-qualitative method. The data of this study were taken from 282 utterances containing directive illocutionary acts. The first result shows that only seven of the eleven types of directive illocutionary acts were found; ask (175), beg (11), command (8), demand (29), command (36), ask (8), and warn (15). The results of these two studies showed two types of perlocutionary acts, namely successful (175) and unsuccessful (107).</p>

Directives Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Acts Found in The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh

This research aims to identify the types of directives illocutionary acts by Searle and perlocutionary acts by Austin, that occurred in the novel The Girl who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh. The data for this research were obtained using a descriptive-qualitative method. The data of this study are taken from 291 utterances that featured directives illocutionary acts. The result of this research showed seven out of eleven types of directives illocutionary acts were found; asking (184), begging (11), commanding (8), demanding (29), ordering (36), requesting (8), and warning (15). Furthermore, the researcher also found that after receiving directives illocutionary acts from the speaker, there were successful and unsuccessful perlocutionary acts from the interlocutor.