Olivia's Blog

  This book sent a mix of emotions while I was reading it. Although it wasn’t exactly portrayed in the book, the age different between the characters… like can we talk about it? The lover, of whom we don’t even know his name, is in his mid-twenties and she is 15 and a half??? Like that is absurd. I know times were different but this is a whole case of pedophilia. Anyways.  The novel focuses more on the racial aspect of their relationship and how the deterring factor for the lover’s dad was her ethnicity. It really brings to life racial segregation. In a way (ignoring the fact that she is 15 ½ and he is in his mid-twenties), they are both exploiting each other in different ways. She is exploiting him for this money and using his emotional vulnerability to her advantage and he is using her for emotional stability.  There is so much wrong with this situation. First of all, can we talk about her getting in a random man’s car when he asked her? Like did your parents not give y...

  Wow. This was just sad. Are you kidding me? She gets hit by a car and dies after all of that? C’mon Rodrigo, you could’ve come up with a better than that. Macabea was a poor, naive, invisible girl who literally never complained and didn’t feel the need to. “Sadness was also something for rich people, for people that could afford it, for people who didn’t have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.” (52-53) And this pretty much summed up the type of person Macabea was. Macabea also had a deeper meaning. She could represent the greater group of marginalized people. Who are completely overlooked by society. This is really shown by Rodrigo, the fictional narrator, who interrupts the story very often and uses big words, to remind us that he is the one who is telling the story. This is him almost just like debating with himself whether he should continue telling us the story and if it’s worth it. This really hits hard in terms of how in our society, we have to work hard to make o...

  Okayyyyy so there are a lot of emotions and symbolism to unpack here. First, starting off with Quimet. Do not like him. Of course he starts off like a dream, very charismatic but turning into your worst controlling nightmare subtly first and then over taking your life. I sound dramatic but look at this poor Natalia girl who was given a nickname by her husband basically calling her a pigeon, like wow not romantic at all. If anyone called me a pigeon, its out the door with you. Anyways, off topic. But also not. The pigeon nick name also symbolizes male control as well as the erasure of her identity. From the get go of their marriage, Quimet is sure to establish clear gender roles and their constraints, confining Natalia to typical woman duties while he is off playing with pigeons and thinking they’ll be able to make them some money. What a loser this guy is.  I found it sad for the pigeons but a little funny when Natalia would shake the pigeon eggs to kind of mess with his pro...

  After reading Black Shack Alley, it left me with a weird empty feeling. I would say I felt quite strongly about the emotions portrayed in the book because this novel is describing just a small portion of emotions of real like events that are still happening today. Which is why it is such a powerful and emotional novel. I could see how school was a representation of colonialism in a way of still having control over minorities even after so called “post-colonialism”. Because even though, people such as Jose think they are gaining their individualism back, they are still being controlled by the same system that colonized them, just in a more discrete (but also not so discrete) form.  In Black Shack Alley, people are forced into obeying because if not, there is little room for survival. In my eyes, Jose’s grandmother M’man Tine is a symbol of hope and perseverance through hard times and it is just sad to see such innocent people and kids grow up in a place where death and sickne...

  This book made me feel quite uncomfortable and weird when I was reading it. There were a few lines within this book that I had to read over to make sure I was reading it right because they were quiteand were lowkey really gross. For instance when Agostino was looking through the door and watching his mom change and was sexualizing her body at such a young age made me super sad and made me remember how I don’t like Sigmund Freud. This novel has definitely been the easiest read so far in terms of how I understood the text, but the most unrelatable as well. Reading Agostino go through different stages of thinking in such a short period of time kept the book interesting and I really did not know the direction the book was gonna go.  “Saro was startled, and without letting go he opened his eyes, turned, and looked at Agostino. In the boy's face there must have been such wild-eyed repulsion, such barely concealed terror, that Saro seemed to realize immediately that plan had failed...

  I quite enjoyed this reading, it was a point of view that I’ve never read a book from before. This short novel touched on an issue of gender and agency. How a woman is always the focus of others in terms of her beauty and appearance, even when she is dead. I found this quite impactful because I never really thought about it like that. Near the beginning, Ana Maria makes a comment about how her hair was perfectly set around her head and how it fell down to her chest. I made the assumption that she never wore her hair like that but whoever positioned her, had a certain idea about how a woman should look and not how she usually did.  This book is very much so also focused around perspective. Not only the unique perspective of it being narrated from a dead woman but also how the woman’s perspective changes once she is dead and how she develops a clearer point of view of her life from when she was alive.  Throughout her life, she experiences a lot of anxious and depressive f...