Such Anais Journey!

Really good write-up. Anais Nin happens to be one of my favourite writers. Till date haven`t come across such sensitive, well-written erotica. If someone knows of any do pass on the info!

Curses! Foiled again!

meanwhile, check this essay out. Not the study I was referring to but an essay on Woolf that touches upon some of what I was trying to convey:

Woolf

FYI:

Amrita has been unmasked as the interactor formerly known as Salim Another misuse and waste of Chowkie time.

Samina - that`s fine. :)

There is this study that I am thinking of which I`ll pass on when I find it. My point`s based on it but I dont seem to be doing a good job of explaining it. :(

Amrita,

I cant agree with this claim-too generalized.

Samina - I think in some rare cases, it comes naturally so. Usually, however, it needs to be developed consciously. Women tend to use language differently than men - they use more words, especially descriptive ones and more women writers use language to explore language within the parameters of literature.

I did not mean to give the impression that language and gender is inextricably linked - but it is definitely subconsciously linked.

Amrita,

I disagree with the idea that writing is inherently gender implicated or inextricable to gender, race or class. Look at the work of Sara de Ibanez-a Latin Modernist, and Jean Toomer-an African American experimentalist. Both believed that ideas and language could transcend identity.

Contd. from 35 by Urstruly;

Prof. Khurshid is brilliant. Irshad Haqqani is his usual play-safe lick-in-style self. In any case he brought it to our attention is good enough to get a Chowk-rating of 1.
Prof Khurshid is five star, as usual.

This discussion is getting provincialised into another bang up bewteen us versus them. It has its own peculiar problems, like the dynastic connection of the South Asian women leaders pitforking them into leadership roles of entire countries, and then the lay citizens of the country coopting what was essentially a powerful sympton of patriarchy and male domination into a triumph of locally grown feminism.

In fact there are even greater examples. Draupadi in Mahabharata is often held up as an impossibly modern character, or Chand Bibi, or so many exceptions that prove the rule.

I was however interested in the other issue raised by Farzana; about so many women writers having to write their world to find themselves. This is particulalry poignant in the case of some, like Sylvia Plath. Though in the begining feminists held Ted Hughes guilty of Sylvia`s suicide, all serious lot are now settled on the issue that the Sylvia-Ted partnership fed each other`s creativity. And that Ted alone was too soft a target.

Some of Plath`s journal entries are viscerating. As much as her best poems, and yet more accessible in prose.

I feel that most male autobiographies are self deprecating or ironic when analysing their lives, while female auto-biographical writing has a far more emotional edge, and therefore perhaps more partisan.

What is it? I think the vents of these two volcanoes are wired separately. One bursts through the heart, the other through the mine. But make no mistake, without creative talent, both accounts will fall flat.

In terms of male autobiography, Naipaul`s letters to Father comes to mind. ..though not quite an autobiography. Even Frank McCourt`s Angela`s Ashes is a quirky, funny and touching take on his life, but never a lacerating account of his internal struggles...like Plath`s or Anais. Do you think it has to do with more internal ir-resolutions that need to be sorted out for women artists than men?

Re: # 38

Harish - I think things are changing... a bit.

Let me start with Plath. My view of her journals is somewhat tainted by the fact that they were edited by Hughes. Reading it, I think that perhaps it is possible that he was only looking it over as an editor pure and simple and that the stuff discarded might have been done so with readability in mind but did he have to destroy it? You have to admit that his hand being so involved in it raises the eyebrow a teeny bit at least. Of course, it didn’t do him any favors that his next wife killed herself too.

As for the volcanoes, you may be right. I think men had the freedom to roam and discover the outer world whereas women had to discover it within. When I read Woolf, I thought it was telling that she thought of a room with a view. At the same time, there was Hemingway and Fitzgerald and the rest of them living in Paris and discovering themselves long distance as it were. There are always exceptions of course – I remember an introduction to Colette in which the essayist wrote that her idea of a perfect writing life would have been 50,000 pounds a year, a villa on the Riviera with a view and a pretty boy or two to keep her company. :)

But I think its different now. A little. Two of the best descriptions of (women’s) inner life that I had the privilege of reading came from two very young men. One of them wrote of marital rape and the other about a mother’s depression – and they were intensely feminine and beautifully written.

That said, there is a definite difference between men and women and how they write – the language, the descriptions used, the character development, all of it is subtly different. When women pick up a pen they write of the world within themselves. When men pick up a pen they write of themselves in the world. Each is writing of a mirror image but the reflection is always shaded by gender and I think that is very right. I don’t feel like reading women all the time just as I don’t feel like reading men all the time. As you said, yin and yang.

# 35 Urstruly..

If u can please read `` Silent No More: Confronting America`s False Images of Islam`` by Paul Findley.

I found it an excellent book from someone who did not know about Islam, learnt about Islam and also taught people what Islam means.


Silent No More: Confronting America`s False Images of Islam
Findley, Paul

Amana, Paperback, 2001, 336 pgs.

``Findley here shares his personal impressions and experiences in dealing with American Muslims, their communities, and the issues and events important to them. He examines the false images of Islam that linger in American minds, the impact of these stereotypes on US national interests, what is being done to promote accurate understanding of Islam, and what more is needed. Findley chronicles the pioneering endeavors by Muslims and other activists, and documents the entry of American Muslims into mainstream American politics and the impact of their bloc vote in the 2000 elections``.

``In his recently released book Silent No More: Confronting America’s False Images of Islam, Paul Findley, a 22-year veteran of Congress, chronicles his long, far-flung trail of discovery through the World Of Islam: the false stereotypes that linger in the minds of the American people, the corrective actions that the leaders of America’s seven million Muslims are undertaking, and the community’s remarkable progress in mainstream politics``.

Steps like this are moving Muslims in America forward, gaining success, strength and
power. So your urdu article is one point of view which is also biased.
I heard in a khutba once in Pakistan, ``America talks about giving our women equal
rights and all these NGO`s are corrupting our women`` ....These were the Mullahs .So my friend an article like the one you posted is no surprise.

You are sidestepping at a rate of knots: I used your word “confrontational” because I did not know then that you were talking about militant feminists. As for militant feminists, how many women do you know who heard one of them yell “ALL men are vermin” and so turned to their unoffending male family members and thought “Goddamned ^*^&^& - I should lace their food with rat poison tonight”? Women are people too. They have sufficient intellectual capacity to understand that generalizations don’t work.

So why don’t you? As a member of a third world nation and presumably access to the media, you must have come across the thousands of reports of women whose description tallies exactly with the one given by you in your reply. Just because some activists have managed to push your buttons, is it reason to cast doubt on their trails and sufferings?

Re: prostitution. Nobody wants women to sell their bodies for sex. But it happens everywhere – in Islamic, non-Islamic, secular, whatever countries. Most of this trade is based on the exploitation of poor young women who have either been forced into it or have no other viable economic option. These women are open to health risks, their children are denied a respectable future and they are at the mercy of whoever “owns” them. The activists are not asking that prostitution be advocated as every young girl’s dream job. They are asking that these women be treated with common decency. That they be allowed access to the law, against infectious disease, etc. If you can assure a society in which women will never have to take to prostitution or be forced into it, the question of their “pensionable schemes” simply does not arise.

Now please don’t tell me how that is possible in a perfect society. Once you have a perfect society, you can make that argument. This is not a perfect society and these women are looking for help. Why would anyone want these women, true victims of society, to be further victimized?

PS – I have only ever learnt Roman and Devanagiri scripts so I don’t know what 35 means.

HANDS OFF - NO PICKING AND CHOOSING ALLOWED

Inquirer

``But is your question about the pensionability documentable?``

Please direct this question to saminashah

Urstuly,

You cant be serious.

Re: # 32
What is so unbelievable? Have you seen your mother chained and you sisters doing....?