Tales Of Women Research Articles

Gender in revelations: Unraveling gendered struggles and revisiting the construction of cultural identity paradigms in Badriyah Al-Bishr's Hend Wa alʿaskar (2006)

This article attempts to explore the intricate workings of gender dynamics in Badriyah Al-Bishr's Hend wa alʿaskar (2006). It investigates how the author challenges traditional gender norms through the representation of female characters who strive for liberation. Al-Bishr lays bare the complexities of gender roles within the Saudi Arabian context. Viewed from the lens of narrative perspective, her text reveals the silenced tales of women on the quest for agency and identity. Through vivid storytelling and rich character narrativization that builds on the stream of consciousness, flashback, anticipation, and disruptive temporality, Al-Bishr crafts a compelling narrative of women's revelations within a patriarchal setting. Drawing on cultural discourse analysis, and feminist social epistemology, the reading of Hend wa alʿaskar attempts to offer a nuanced exploration of how gender, power, and resistance intersect and coalesce together to produce a thought-provoking narrative about the contemporary Saudi Arabian context. The complexities of women's tales intricately weave an ambivalent knot of discourses within the narrative, enriching its depth and challenging conventional interpretations.

Devaluing and Revaluing Women: A Feminist Approach to Chandra Prakash Baniya's Maharani [Queen

Chandra Prakash Baniya's Maharani [Queen] is a telling tale of women's exploitation and their glass ceiling in a male dominated society. The novel depicts how women are either risen to the pedestal of ‘Goddess’ or devalued to the position of a ‘whore’, but never given a genuine respect. By aggrandizing or derogating the status of women, the patriarchal society has always subordinated, subjugated, and exploited them. The scenario of deprivation of women from attaining their rights is the main concern of the novelist. He suggests that the prevalence of biased treatment for women in every sphere - social, economic, political, literary - is rampant, and from getting secondary position to being thwarted to grow is an unfortunate fate meted out to women in this male-dominated society. Patriarchy, therefore, has become a clog in the route of women's progress. The present paper aims at exploring the pathetic condition of women in the novel, discussing how women become the victim of glass ceiling in a social labyrinth created by males. To address this objective, the study has employed feminism as a tool to examine the condition of women, especially drawing the concept of glass ceiling of women from Judith Butler to interpret the text.

『남천일록』의 문학적 고찰

Shim No-sung's Namcheonilrok , the subject of this study, is a vast amount of diary literature written every day for five years from the day of his exile as Gijang. However, beyond the general categories that the diary genre can handle, multiple historical, geographical, philosophical, and literary materials are intertwined vertically and horizontally. This study analyzed the stories that independently existed in the diary (i.e., stories within stories) as literary works created by Shim No-sung, and revealed the characteristics and identity of the stories. The stories that Simnosung witnessed, heard, processed, and completed in Gijang were similar to classical literary genres such as folk tales, virtuous women's tales, fairy tales, and fairy tales. Since what he heard and recorded from the listener's perspective was processed and completed using literary techniques, it can be considered a work that reflects his author's intention. The birth of this kind of narrative literature was due to his exile life, where he found comfort in listening to stories, and his writerly temperament to process and complete them in a literary way. Sim No-sung produced portraits, or character stories, of people who had a direct or indirect influence on his life in exile. Some characters are mentioned several times, and when the references are collected and combined, a single character story is completed, which is the case in Heungsam's portrait painting. The portrait of Heungsam that the reader drew at the first meeting is reversed into a completely opposite portrait at the last meeting. The ability to consistently and persistently record a person in such detail comes from the writer's temperament to explore humanity. Parakho Kim Saeng's character story is a story that strangely combines the scene where the story is made and the nature of the fun of storytelling. Delicious food is prepared with care and enjoyed, while at the same time listening to Kim Saeng's story about his difficult life. The story was made even more vivid by the real-time nature of the gathering, where the people gathered at the event also joined in, asked questions, joked, and had fun. This shares its characteristics with well-processed folk tales.

Poor Sanitation Among Women: A Comprehensive Research to Address Women’s Inadequate Sanitation in a Sustainable Manner

Environmental, social, and health problems are frequent in the absence of sufficient sanitation infrastructure and become worse as it stagnates. Poor sanitation has a disproportionately negative impact on vulnerable people, particularly women. There is a health and social divide between men and women as a result of attitudes and ideas about gender and menstruation. When managing menstruation and exercising good hygiene, women face additional challenges. This article examines the social repercussions of the condition of sanitation and tales of women's experiences managing menstrual cycles in both rural and urban areas of India. On a personal level, young women don't understand menstruation. Young women encounter constraints on mobility and other activities during menstruation, as well as stigma surrounding menstruation and a lack of opportunities to discuss it. Young women in low- and middle-income nations typically face psychological, social, and health issues related to menstruation. It might be particularly challenging in nations where menstruation is stigmatized, like India. Nevertheless, even if education is crucial, knowledge on its own is probably insufficient. Interventions must also target societal practices that propagate stigma, shame, and silence surrounding menstruation that might cause internalized stigma about menses in young people. Overall, developing multilayered, culturally relevant interventions that prioritize wellbeing and comfort in addition to more conventional health, educational, and employment outcomes is necessary to support challenge free menstruation.

MEN’S SEXUAL TRAUMA RESISTANCE IN BLACK AMERICAN FOLKLORE: A POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM OF NEGRO “WOMAN TALES”

The purpose of this paper “Men’s Sexual Trauma Resistance in Black American Folklore: A Postcolonial Criticism of Negro “Woman Tales” from the Gulf States” was to discuss the reflection of postcolonial sexual trauma and resistance to it through storytelling among African Americans in the Gulf States. The study was concerned with 3 folktales classified under the cycle “Woman Tales”. The folktales were selected from the collection made by Zora Neale Hurston in the southern states of Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana from 1927 to 1930 and compiled in the book Every Tongue Got to confess: Negro Folktales from the Gulf States (2001). The postcolonial approach and trauma theory based on the interpretative qualitative method and library research was used in the discussion of the selected folktales. It was found that the performance of the “Woman Tales” is informed by the black men’s traumatic memories of slavery and post-slavery emasculation. Black male narrators imitate trauma narratives in which they reflect male sexual trauma and recreate black woman identity to contain it. Through this imitation and reflection, the folktales challenge the legacy of the plantation patriarchy by reconstructing a woman's identity that is docile to black masculinity.

“Nobody told me”: Chicana Women’s Madness and Mourning in Sandra Cisneros’s Have You Seen Marie?

“‘Nobody told me’: Chicana Women’s Madness and Mourning in Sandra Cisneros’s Have You Seen Marie?” employs interdisciplinary research to understand Sandra Cisneros’ tale of women’s mental illness in Have You Seen Marie?. Building on Marta Caminero-Santangelo’s critique of the inequitable treatment of mental illness in literary criticism of women’s writing, I argue that Cisneros draws awareness to the distinct challenges that Chicanas face while struggling with mental illness. Contextualizing Cisneros’ representation of the grief a Catholic Chicana woman experiences after losing her mother, I draw on the work of scholars from theology, psychology, sociology, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and disability studies to further understand the impact of colonization on familial gender roles, the importance of la Virgen de Guadalupe, and representations of mental illness.

Representation of Women in Kashmiri Literature: A Feministic Analysis of Mahjoor's "The Unwanted Woman's Tale" and Naseem Shiafaie''s "Neither a Shadow nor a Reflection"

Representation of Women in Kashmiri Literature: A Feministic Analysis of Mahjoor's "The Unwanted Woman's Tale" and Naseem Shiafaie''s "Neither a Shadow nor a Reflection"

Influence of the mother on the fetus

The influence of maternal impressions on the fetus has long been subjected to ridicule and belonged to the "woman's tales". However, in recent times, this issue is again gaining scientific interest, and since a scientific solution to it is probably not yet close, it is necessary, at least according to Ballantyn's opinion, to prove that this influence really exists.

Reproducing Jane: Abortion Stories and Women’s Political Histories

AbstractIn the early 1970s, before the passage of Roe v. Wade, an underground feminist group in Chicago performed an estimated eleven thousand illegal abortions. Women’s liberation groups formed abortion referral services across the country, but the Abortion Service of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, known colloquially as “Jane” after the pseudonym its members adopted, was distinct, and its story has lingered in feminist consciousness while others have not. Members eventually performed abortions themselves, despite lacking formalized medical training, putting the procedure into women’s own hands. As the pro-choice community began to fear the erosion of abortion rights, Jane stories gained new currency as tales of women’s resilience in the face of unjust legal restrictions. This essay explores how Jane’s story has been told, beginning just after the group’s dissolution in 1973 and ending in the present—when the group became part of the consciousness of a new generation. Jane members took an increasin...

Africa most affected by refugee crisis

As Germany, France and other European countries contend with an unprecedented influx of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, shocking tales of women and children drowning in the Mediterranean Sea are repeated over and over by media networks worldwide.

Between fact and fiction: Can there be a postcolonial feminist ethnography?

This study advocates for feminist qualitative methodologies that focus on stories when studying topics that impact women's well-being and the knowledge produced about them. In specific, population control and family planning mark a defining moment in global politics and international development as this issue has become a struggle about who has a right to live, indeed, a right to inherit the earth. In no other time period have we had to be as vigilant about legal and policy documents placing women's reproductive rights in jeopardy. Since the postcolonial period, female reproduction has been adjudicated by male administrators of Western Governments and Foundations promoting modern-western modernity and neoliberalism. Population policies have been part of national security policy (in the US since 1970s) and define North-South relations, just as other concerns such as immigration, refugees, food sustainability and war. The study aims at reinstating subaltern women's voices as central to international development and planning discourse by presenting ways that personal narrative can circumvent the demands of objectivity in functionalist research paradigms. By calling women's tales fictional, I give the interviewing women the status of storytellers; a position of power imparted to women traditionally. Stories of women's lives recorded in 1992–95 are literary and imaginative constructions and not false as such, serving to reposition women's role in international development. Their words give analysis, life, and historical authenticity to the transnational women's movement in reproductive health.

Riscrivere la storia, fare la storia. Sulla donna come soggetto in Christine de Pizan e Margaret Cavendish

In The City of Ladies and Bell in Campo , Christine de Pizan and Margaret Cavendish imagine women’s participation to war as a metaphor of the sexual conflict that they must fight in order to conquer their visibility in history. While Pizan rewrites history from women’s stand point and acknowledges the universal value of sexual difference for the plan of salvation, Cavendish moves within a modern frame and thinks history as the result of human action. In both cases, the tale of women’s participation to war allows criticizing the moral and normative implications of «nature».

일본과 한국의 ‘독부물(毒婦物)’ 연구* -히라바야시 다이코(平林たい子)와 백신애 소설을 중심으로

일본과 한국의 ‘독부물(毒婦物)’ 연구* -히라바야시 다이코(平林たい子)와 백신애 소설을 중심으로

Histories of Wonder, Futures of Wonder

For 400 years, under Spanish and U.S. rule, Indigenous Chamorro Pacific Islander ancient stories of wonder endured to spark dreams of sovereignty and decolonization. Two such “histories of wonder” have recently offered support for activists who are remaking their islands’ political economy into “futures of wonder.” The tale of Gadao, who protected the island of Guåhan from foreign invaders, empowered Nasion Chamoru activists working against white supremacy and militarism. The tale of women who saved Guåhan from a giant fish inspired ecosovereignty activists to rise up against U.S. military assaults on the environments of Pågat, Litekyan, Pågan, and Tinian.

The Alligator Woman's Tale: Remembering Nicaragua's “First Self-Declared Lesbian”

Carmen Aguirre (1931–1971) was a young woman who lived as a self-made man in the 1960s under the brutal, yet populist, right-wing Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. Carmen was known as Carmelo or la Caimana (the alligator woman). This article sheds light not only on la Caimana's life, but on how he is remembered today in Nicaragua. It addresses dynamics of Nicaragua's sexual past, present, and future, as well as theoretical questions dealing with identity, sex, and politics.

Renegade women: gender, identity, and boundaries in the early modern Mediterranean

This book uses the stories of early modern women in the Mediterranean who left their birthplaces, families, and religions to reveal the complex space women of the period occupied socially and politically. In the narrow sense, the word as used in the early modern Mediterranean referred to a Christian who had abandoned his or her religion to become a Muslim. With Renegade Women, Eric R Dursteler deftly redefines and broadens the term to include anyone who crossed the era's and region's religious, political, social, and gender boundaries. Drawing on archival research, he relates three tales of women whose lives afford great insight into both the specific experiences and condition of females in, and the broader cultural and societal practices and mores of, the early Mediterranean. Through Beatrice Michiel of Venice, who fled an overbearing husband to join her renegade brother in Constantinople and took the name Fatima Hatun, Dursteler discusses how women could convert and relocate in order to raise their personal and familial status. In the parallel tales of the Christian Elena Civalelli and the Muslim Mihale atorovic, who both entered a Venetian convent to avoid unwanted, arranged marriages, he finds courageous young women who used the frontier between Ottoman and Venetian states to exercise a surprising degree of agency over their lives. And in the actions of four Muslim women of the Greek island of Milos-Aisse, her sisters Emine and Catige, and their mother, Maria-who together left their home for Corfu and converted from Islam to Christianity to escape Aisse's emotionally and financially neglectful husband, Dursteler unveils how a woman's attempt to control her own life ignited an international firestorm that threatened Venetian-Ottoman relations. A truly fascinating narrative of female instrumentality, Renegade Women illuminates the nexus of identity and conversion in the early modern Mediterranean through global and local lenses. Scholars of the period will find this to be a richly informative and thoroughly engrossing read.

Shashi Deshpande‟s Vision in her novel “Moving on”

Shashi Deshpande has many avatars. At intellectual discussions, she champions the cause of English as an Indian language, and fights for the recognition of women as individuals. She speaks her truth gently but firmly, her words lingering, long after her exit. The present paper projects the fact tale about woman, who speaking for herself or for the whole of womankind is quite different from a man telling a woman's tale Also it brings out the idea of woman explicating herself and emerging out of the cocoon of self pity to spread her wings of self-confidence.

The mundus muliebris within Lucanian society: Tales of women and social life from sanctuaries and necropoleis

This chapter seeks to provide new insight into understanding how Lucanian society was structured, with a special focus on the social role of women. The research takes into consideration votive offerings and ritual objects from sanctuaries and grave goods from necropoleis. A typological survey of the most commonly dedicated votive offerings reveals that there was a division of roles between male and female components of Lucanian society, in which women performed domestic activities, while men were the very protagonists of warfare as well as social and political life. An analysis of some samples of contemporary tombs containing objects linked to symposion challenges this reading, as vases and tools for symposia can be found also in female tombs. This data, therefore, encourages reconsideration of gender roles in ancient Lucania, as they are commonly reconstructed on the basis of archaeological evidence from sanctuaries. When comparing data from sanctuaries with evidence from tombs, the “male-female” polarity, which appears so clear cut from the examination of votive offerings, seems more nuanced and compels us to wonder whether a wider women’s participation to sympotic rituals (and therefore typically “male” social activities) should be considered in Lucanian society.

A Wave from the Past

A Wave from the Past Ryan Stone (bio) Waters Run Wild. Andrea Fekete. Sweetgum Press. http://www.sweetgumpress.com. 200 pages; paper, $12.95. The West Virginia Mine Wars are often buried at the bottom of the barrels of American history. Rarely, if ever, are they covered in high school classrooms, outside of West Virginia, and rarely, if ever, are they mentioned as an important moment that, though ultimately unsuccessful, helped define and set the stage for forced unionization in the 1930s. However, there may be no other time better to return to the Mine Wars and the reasons for the escalation of violence in southern West Virginia than now. The attacks on public and private sector unions have steadily increased and will no doubt continue to follow a path of restriction on collective bargaining rights. Perhaps a reminder of the former state of things would serve the populous best before we begin tromping whole-heartedly toward a state of swim-if-you-can individualism. The miners swam against the currents in the early part of the twentieth century, and though no one should advocate for a full-fledge riot or armed uprising, the lessons of their struggles, and, more importantly, the effects of their actions on the families behind the front lines, should not be lost to history. Andrea Fekete's new and first novel, Waters Run Wild, situates the reader at the forefront of the union movement through the eyes of Jennie, an ambitious older sister whose sole desire at the book's opening is to marry a boy who teases her; Katie, her younger, brazen sister who would rather solve problems with her fists than her mouth; Anna May, the youngest sister, whose innocence permeates her chapters and whose voice is like hope in the wilderness; and the girl's mother, who, as the matriarch, makes a bold effort to hold her family together. There are male characters as well. Two brothers, Isaac and Ezra, who feel the pressure of providing for the family in a system guaranteed to keep them in poverty and debt. Finally, the father, though tragically flawed in his relationships with his sons, daughters, and wife, is asked to do things he simply cannot accomplish. Fekete is a poet by trade, and this is apparent in her first novel. The chapters are short, splashes of the story, and the story's linear narrative is often interrupted by lesser characters. The land talks; the coal dust speaks. The water whispers to Isaac and his father as it fills up the mine where they are working and slowly consumes them. Death is a woman's experience in Waters Run Wild. Jennie and her sisters often find themselves at funerals and wakes, attending to their amorphous and somewhat ambiguous family. Grief is something internalized and weeds it way out through frustration and, in many cases, fear. Jennie fears what will happen to them after her mother dies, even though she proves to be a decent enough caretaker. The family fears they will not earn enough script from Ezra's work to feed themselves after Isaac and their father are drowned. In this constant state of fear and worry resides a kernel of hope for Jennie in the personage of Nandor, a boy who just might save her, and Fannie, the African American woman so polished she doesn't appear to belong amongst the coal dust who offers Jennie real salvation. The reader becomes attached to these characters. You care. You care because the pain they endure is so tremendous, yet they excel at carrying the burden. At one point, Jennie haphazardly thinks, "I just buried my daddy and my brother." There is sorrow and grief in the thought, but Jennie's moment, there on her top step, feels so passé that everyone knows she'll make it, even if she doesn't. Waters Run Wild is beautifully written. The prose here sings with a poet's careful touch. Though the topics are as blunt as a baseball bat to the skull, the language never suggests such force. In fact, the narrative's nature, a predominantly woman's tale, seems to welcome Fekete's gentle hand. The...

Telling Tales of Migrant Workers in Hong Kong: Transformations of Faith, Life Scripts, and Activism

Migrant domestic workers confront a multiplicity of difficulties and challenges. Within the ‘host’ context, some join religious groups that offer comfort by replicating the religion of home; others experiment with new religions or denominations that appeal to them within the modern global context; others ignore or reject religion altogether. This article offers an ethnographic analysis of the religious stories and activist experiences of four women migrant workers in Hong Kong. These women are not typical of the spectrum of religious possibilities facing Hong Kong's migrant workers, but each woman's tales point to the ways in which migratory experiences shape lives and religious perspectives in complex and unexpected ways. The migratory context provides new imaginative resources with which to reconsider religious perspectives, familial and gender expectations, reformulate pasts, and re-envision futures.