#1 FW
One reason I found the answer for this quote is that this was for HIS reads.
The theme of the HIS read was “new beginning”, and this book was chosen by Ms. Riggins. So when I was reading this book, I was searching for something to talk about that topic, but it seemed hard.
This book is essentially about a girl sent to prostitute, how she adapts there and finally gets out of that environment. Laconically it’s sad story, of poverty and prostitution. It is real but not really a beginning for anything.
However, reading this book, the protagonist Lakshmi finds out new things. Even the prostitution itself is a new world for her. The town is a total new place for her. Against new cultures, new technologies, people and language, Lakshmi always tries to study and adapt to it. Finally, her new language and adaptation towards new coming American people helps her get out of prostitution. There is a world that Lakshmi finds in prostitution, another world that she finds in televisions. Lakshmi travels from her original mountain world to a prostitution city world, then finally to a world in television.
In reality, I live in the world in the television. I live in a rich developed country, that I can buy a bottle of Coca Cola everyday. In this close to non-fiction book, I knew things that doesn’t exist in my reality. It’s like traveling. Encountering things that wouldn’t exist, if I lived in my own environment my whole life.
Someway the reasons to read books is this. We can see things that we can’t see in our reality. Reading these non-fiction books let us know some parts of the world that are hard to see. Fiction books would let us see worlds that won’t even exist, maybe only in someone’s head, and history books would take us to past, SFs to future.
This is the reason I read this book. And really, I thought this book was worth my reasonings. Now I know some parts of the world cannot afford Coca Cola everyday, and that in someone’s life, there are different worlds to be.
#2 FW
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Lakshmi has heavy burdens throughout the book.
Although when the book starts she already have heavy burdens to support her family’s money, still she is happy, going to school with her best friend, a goat. She has hopes to marry a boy in the same village, she has friends to play around.
However her first look to responsibilities as an adult comes with her first blood. Ritually, she is kept away for few days, becoming an adult. During her first blood, her mother tells her about how an adult women acts, before her husband, before her family. It’s pretty harsh. Lakshmi asks her mother, why does women have to have such burdens, and her mother answers, Simply to endure”(McCormick 16).
As seen in the quote, the primary motive of the family is to endure. This is why they keep a gambling violent man as a stepfather, why they try to feed the young brother so well to keep him alive. The family needs money and man to survive. This is why Ama has to try so hard to keep feeding, and why Lakshmi has to go for prostitution, reluctantly.
When Lakshmi is sold and leaves home, she feels “My bundle is light. My burden is heavy”(McCormick 60). She then has to beckon to work hard to earn her family the money she was paid for, with only few belongings she had, with all the responsibilities she got.
In the new city, Lakshmi is amazed by the new environment, but among all the girls that are in similar situations as her, starts working hard in the Happy House. Various characters that carries similar, heavy burdens as Lakshmi appears in the book, for example or Monica.
Monica is one powerful character. She is a strong woman, who learns how to get more client than anyone else, who knows how to dream, to finally achieve her goal of getting out of the Happy House. She is a rather patronizing character, but sometimes, shows a melancholic sad feeling toward the baby she left home. All the way, her motive is for her baby. Together with Lakshmi, the two hopes to be welcomed and thanked by their families for the hard labor they’ve done.
However, Monica is rejected. As a prostitute, her family refused to tell her baby about her, told the baby she was dead. She was dearly asked to not enter the village.
Social responsibility in the book is forced to sacrifice themselves reluctantly under heavy burdens for family survival.
#3 FW
KNOWLEDGEABLE
The protagonist girl in my book “Sold” is a very knowledgeable girl. She calls herself the number one girl in school, she observes unknown things, note them, ask people, to gain knowledge and understand her surroundings.
As the girl is sold by her stepfather and sent to prostitution, she is marveled by the new world she sees. She originally lived in a mountain village, passed through cities to come in a big town in a different country. Houses, food, people, even language differs in her new environment.
Although at first she is amazed by the new world she sees, all the cars and people, she starts to get curious, notes words of the new language, and tries to adapt herself in the city.
”The city is not so hard. You just have to study it”(McCormick 68).
As a result, she does. However, the interesting thing here is her strong motives to adapt in and know this city.
She was a girl sold to prostitution, and just like all the other girls, she was sold to help her family economy which was hard because of her stepfather. She is sold right after she matured, got her first blood. Right then, she is told from her mother how to live like a adult women, take responsibility and work for home. She asks why women has to have so much burden, when her mother answers, it’s just for survival.
When she is sold to prostitution, she has a talk with her parents. Her mother carries a gambling father, the girl and a small brother that definitely has to survive. Although the protagonist girl feels fear to leave the village, at the same time, she encourages herself to go see the new world, and to stand up to nourish her family.
However, later in the book, she is affected by another girl in the prostitution. Her and the girl believes that they work right for their family, for whom they want to feed, that they are righteous heroes. They expect their families to welcome them and thank them for all the hard work. Even though the hope ends in a mere dream, these ambitions are the primary motive for the protagonist all the way in the book, to stand through works that aren’t docile.
Knowledge for her is a useful tool in the book, for example mathematics to calculate the number of days she need to work and how much she will earn, or language to communicate with people she meets.
The girl always matures herself to knowledge herself, just to stand up through burdens and responsibility.
#4 FW
UNDERSTANDING
This novel is almost a non fiction. It’s extremely realistic, seen by a point of view of a young girl sent to prostitution. It’s a part of the gigantic world we live now today.
This book is written in English, read in english speaking parts of the world. That parts appear in the novel, as American men, as a world in the television. For Lakshmi, this world is mysterious and marvelous, yet frightful. The world of television seems to be so delighted, with many movie stars and rain machines and white horses, yet outside the television, the world she lives is as ugly as it mimes a child for life to get an extra rupee or two. American men are told to be good and bad: they are some way helpers, admiration for Lakshmi, for example the men who caught her falling or the men who payed but just talked to her and didn’t get over her. Yet she also sees American men who gets drunk and treat her violently, also stories that girls who asked for help to American men was violated and was forced to walk outside naked.
For Lakshmi, the world is seen in three ways. One is the old good home, with her friends and Ama, her lovely goat and the boy she wished to be together someday. Another one is the world in television, the one that is so dreamful. The last one is her reality, in the Happy House.
In her real world, she encounters many new things. It is a beginning for her to understand this new world, a world in city, a world of prostitution and beggars and inequality. At first she dreams of home. Then she dreams of the world in the television as all the other girls does.
However in reality, she experiences and observes many suffers of people. One is the mother who was in the Happy House, who had to take clients even though she was sick. She had two children that she had to feed. At the end, she cannot take her illness, and is kicked out because her work is becoming insatiable. Although this world was still unknown new culture for Lakshmi, when she hears the cry of the mother, she describes it something beyond language.
Another character is Monica. Monica has two sides on her character, one called “thirsty vine” that skillfully attracts clients, and another Monica that sleeps with a tattered rag doll, working for her baby in her hometown, dreaming to be welcomed and thanked for her job. Lakshmi understands that both of these sides constructs Monica.
This gigantic world, has many different sides and characteristics, all mingling together to make one environment. This novel is essentially along Lakshmi who encounters many different world and people, observing and understanding the different sides.
#5 FW
The world Lakshmi lives in, is a very different world than the one I live in. It’s greatly different at its structure, its economy level, its culture. From these differences, we get so many different choices and routes in our life.
The economy level marks a great difference in the two world. Laconically, it’s about poverty. Things cheap in my life or in the TV life, is extremely expensive for Lakshmi. We casually devour Coca Cola and sweets everyday so often, from convenience stores, when Lakshmi has to work for several months for that one luxury.
The difference in economy makes difference in people’s life. Lakshmi’s family is poor, so they have hard times to raise a baby. They are born every season, and dies every season. It’s because most of the time, it is insatiable to nourish all their voracity. In Lakshmi’s house, the baby boy gets the best food of all, because he need to grow up as one man. We can also see here a cultural difference. Gender respectation is very different: a man makes all. Lakshmi’s family absolutely needs at least one man in their family, even if that man just gambles away all money.
Poverty in Japan, however, would mean a different thing. First of all, sometimes extra mouth is just too heavy as a burden at any kind. Even a man, or a newborn baby. If there is no man, there are cases that the country would surely help out the family because of its disadvantages. So sometimes some families refuses to officially marry for that money.
Another difference is the job opportunities. Japan has a rather small gender differences, which means there are as much jobs for women to be hired as men. There are more choices than just being a wife, or a housekeeper, or a prostitute. A poor family can send their high school or older children to part time work to help their mouths.
However in Lakshmi’s life, the best way she would earn money is to prostitute or be a maid. Though, prostitute earns much higher, and that’s why her stepfather sells her to the city. There, she encounters many girls similar to her, sent to the Happy House because of poverty.
Difference in culture can really alter one’s life. It’s the value of work, its risk and return differences. Prostitute or part time?
#6 FW
Language. My stereotype about language was about its use. It’s usually some method to communicate. Right. Banal to hear about. It has different sounds and words and letters in different parts of the world, and by understanding its meaning, we can use them to tell something to someone from a different part of the earth. But what I believed was just its sound. If I know the words ice cream I can use it to someone speaking english, ice cream. That’s just it. I thought so. But Lakshmi in this book uses in a more deeper way.
Words for her is knowledge. Lakshmi is a curious girl. When she arrives in her new environment, new city, new language, the first thing she does is to observe and learn them. Later, she learns languages even more detailed by being taught by few characters. However, these words doesn’t just mean by itself for her.
One way she makes use of the words is when she encounters the American man, who is kind and nice, pays money but doesn’t violate her, who wish to help her. Lakshmi only knows few words in English. After their conversation to be rescued is made, Lakshmi throws out random words as ice cream to just attract the men to stay there, for her comfort. Ice cream is what she actually says toward him. It sounds peculiar. But that made him understand what she meant.
Another way Lakshmi relies on words, is when her teacher boy is gone. When they are kicked out, Lakshmi uses the word sorry for means of very sad. The boy does not respond. Then she depresses that all the beautiful words were useless, since the communicator is not there.
What is this all about? Lakshmi using words, when she really doesn’t mean those words. Words for Lakshmi isn’t just to communicate. It’s to make a connection with unknown people, as the American man or the teacher boy, and to stay connected with them.
The most powerful scene of language is just before when Lakshmi says sorry. When a woman, sick, with children, is kicked out to the streets, she roars in despair. Lakshmi describes it as a sound beyond language. Even though it wasn’t a language Lakshmi knew, she well understood the emotion.
Studying language is the positive hope in Lakshmi’s harsh life in prostitution. When most of the days are monotonous, repeated between sleep and food and work, the time the boy teaches her new words, is her only pleasure time. Language is an all-time helper for her.
It isn’t docile to communicate someone what you want to say. Lakshmi, even though she is unable to fully understand the language, can manage that very well. Language is more than just words and meaning. It can be used to communicate to communicate in a more deeper way.
#7 FW
Poverty. Prostitution. And those two come from a greater problem: social differences.
Differences here means in one way, economically. Essentially, poverty. But in another way, it means by culturally.
The most world wide problem in this book is that Lakshmi has to beckon to go to prostitute, where it’s risky, neglecting, life-long and unequal. It’s violent world that everything is decided by one fat dictator.
The reason for Lakshmi to go to prostitution is simply because of the poorness of her family. Like all the other women there, Lakshmi was sold for a great amount of money for her life as a prostitute. But that doesn’t just mean it’s caused by poverty. It has also a cultural cause in it.
Lakshmi’s family has lost their father. Therefore, culturally, when one man is absolutely needed for one family’s pride, Lakshmi’s mother had to welcome a horrible stepfather that gambles all money away. Even if he is the cause to be poor, they still need a man, as a human family, as one proud family in their culture.
Also, the choices of women’s work was a problem. Lakshmi went to school, and she could count. If she has a bit more knowledge, she would have well worked as a money manager of some sort. At least she was studious and hardworking. If she had more choices in jobs, she wouldn’t had to choose prostitution. However, in their culture, women’s work is child raising, house-keeping and prostitution. And prostitution earns the most money. This is why Lakshmi had to go to prostitution. Of the poverty, of her stepfather, of her social culture.
What comes up as an answer to this all? Gender inequality as a culture. In Lakshmi’s culture, women are strictly restricted to be subordinate. They don’t get much choices. Men are valued lot more, and women are told to serve men.
If Lakshmi had more money, if she was a boy, if her culture offered more jobs for women, if her culture offered more individuality for women, the problem of prostitution wouldn’t have been a trouble for her. Poverty, prostitution and gender inequality is the whole point of problem for her.
#8 FW Short Story
I am a cat. A not so young, aged cat I am. I live behind the garage of Mr. Tamura, in a small hole between concrete wall and the house wall. There where soil is exposed in the hole, grass grows and makes a soft and nice bed. That’s been my home, since I departed from my mother cat.
My mother gave birth to few kittens with me. It has been quite a few cold winter since I departed from darling mother cat. I haven’t seen them awhile, so I assume they are gone now. I have lived the longest, than any cat around here. Not to blague about.
We, cat, does not interfere much with others. All we do all day is just surviving, or maybe sometimes, reproducing. Once I had a partner cat, a beautiful black female cat who gave me lots of kittens. She is gone, I remember, in the last winter. Since then, the only cat I talk to is the big boss cat around the corner, the kitten that was just born last winter who lives in the house next door, and a boy who lives in Mr. Tamura’s house.
I don’t have a name. But the boy calls me Neko. He means it by a special cat. That is because I’m the only cat he knows that can have a talk with him.
I do not remember since when, but from around when my siblings all disappeared, and my partner, and when even my small kittens were all gone, my long beautiful tail started to split in two. Since then, I have two long beautiful tails.
“Neko, usually cats don’t speak like human. They say nya or meow.” That’s what the boy says. Then I say, “Any cat can talk like this, if they live long enough as me. We just need enough time to observe your language.”
“How come house cats, like the old mother cat in Mr. Satou’s house, why do they live as long as you did but doesn’t talk with me?”
“They are house cats, that’s why. Ones who lost knowledge to survive, who can’t hunt small rats or who can’t find a sleeping place on their own, can not learn anything.”
“It’s a difficult story.”
This is usually how the boy ends the conversation, when he comes talk to me behind the garage.
“Maybe for you, you are a small boy.”
And that’s how I usually reply to him.
“Neko, Neko, hey, it’s me.”
One day, the boy turned up later than usual. It was a warm spring day, dawn time, the sun turning red in the sky above. The boy sat next to me, leaning on the garage wall, sighing.
“What’s the matter, boy?”
“Nothing much…”
“Seems something is there, though.”
“Well...my friend just told me, that a cat with two tails is a sort of imaginary creature, that they can talk and sing and dance. I said I know one, but they didn’t believe me.”
“Well, that cat must be about me, I’m pretty much sure.”
I swung my two beautiful tails around, and the boy said sure, I think so too.
“Neko, I didn’t like it. Why wouldn’t they believe me? Should I bring them here to show you?”
“No, I don’t think so. Cats doesn’t like so many people in their house. Especially kids.”
“Then, what should I do?”
“Just don’t do anything. Know that you know more than your friends, know that you can see more that your friends. That might someday, help you. Maybe not.”
“That’s a difficult story again.”
“Maybe for you, you are a small boy.”
The boy laughed, I meowed. Then he thought for a while, and murmured that he had homeworks to do. I said you can do them alright. Anyway, he was a human boy, and humans were smart.
“Neko, you are very smart, you know. Much smarter than me.”
The boy sighed, stressed of the homeworks. I said, maybe.
“Neko, if I eat your beautiful tails, would I be smart as you?”
He touched at my beautiful tails, but right away, I swung them back. It moved elegantly and marvelously, my beautiful tails. My black long tails.
“Maybe,” I said.
But when the boy reached toward my tails, I teased him, swinging away one tail, poking his forehead with the other. He stumbled, and gave up.
“Maybe if you keep trying.”
I laughed, and the boy made a furious but confused face. I live very well here, I said. The boy replied, I do, too. So then he realized and went back to do his homeworks. And I went to fetch a rat.
That’s the end of the story.
One reason I found the answer for this quote is that this was for HIS reads.
The theme of the HIS read was “new beginning”, and this book was chosen by Ms. Riggins. So when I was reading this book, I was searching for something to talk about that topic, but it seemed hard.
This book is essentially about a girl sent to prostitute, how she adapts there and finally gets out of that environment. Laconically it’s sad story, of poverty and prostitution. It is real but not really a beginning for anything.
However, reading this book, the protagonist Lakshmi finds out new things. Even the prostitution itself is a new world for her. The town is a total new place for her. Against new cultures, new technologies, people and language, Lakshmi always tries to study and adapt to it. Finally, her new language and adaptation towards new coming American people helps her get out of prostitution. There is a world that Lakshmi finds in prostitution, another world that she finds in televisions. Lakshmi travels from her original mountain world to a prostitution city world, then finally to a world in television.
In reality, I live in the world in the television. I live in a rich developed country, that I can buy a bottle of Coca Cola everyday. In this close to non-fiction book, I knew things that doesn’t exist in my reality. It’s like traveling. Encountering things that wouldn’t exist, if I lived in my own environment my whole life.
Someway the reasons to read books is this. We can see things that we can’t see in our reality. Reading these non-fiction books let us know some parts of the world that are hard to see. Fiction books would let us see worlds that won’t even exist, maybe only in someone’s head, and history books would take us to past, SFs to future.
This is the reason I read this book. And really, I thought this book was worth my reasonings. Now I know some parts of the world cannot afford Coca Cola everyday, and that in someone’s life, there are different worlds to be.
#2 FW
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Lakshmi has heavy burdens throughout the book.
Although when the book starts she already have heavy burdens to support her family’s money, still she is happy, going to school with her best friend, a goat. She has hopes to marry a boy in the same village, she has friends to play around.
However her first look to responsibilities as an adult comes with her first blood. Ritually, she is kept away for few days, becoming an adult. During her first blood, her mother tells her about how an adult women acts, before her husband, before her family. It’s pretty harsh. Lakshmi asks her mother, why does women have to have such burdens, and her mother answers, Simply to endure”(McCormick 16).
As seen in the quote, the primary motive of the family is to endure. This is why they keep a gambling violent man as a stepfather, why they try to feed the young brother so well to keep him alive. The family needs money and man to survive. This is why Ama has to try so hard to keep feeding, and why Lakshmi has to go for prostitution, reluctantly.
When Lakshmi is sold and leaves home, she feels “My bundle is light. My burden is heavy”(McCormick 60). She then has to beckon to work hard to earn her family the money she was paid for, with only few belongings she had, with all the responsibilities she got.
In the new city, Lakshmi is amazed by the new environment, but among all the girls that are in similar situations as her, starts working hard in the Happy House. Various characters that carries similar, heavy burdens as Lakshmi appears in the book, for example or Monica.
Monica is one powerful character. She is a strong woman, who learns how to get more client than anyone else, who knows how to dream, to finally achieve her goal of getting out of the Happy House. She is a rather patronizing character, but sometimes, shows a melancholic sad feeling toward the baby she left home. All the way, her motive is for her baby. Together with Lakshmi, the two hopes to be welcomed and thanked by their families for the hard labor they’ve done.
However, Monica is rejected. As a prostitute, her family refused to tell her baby about her, told the baby she was dead. She was dearly asked to not enter the village.
Social responsibility in the book is forced to sacrifice themselves reluctantly under heavy burdens for family survival.
#3 FW
KNOWLEDGEABLE
The protagonist girl in my book “Sold” is a very knowledgeable girl. She calls herself the number one girl in school, she observes unknown things, note them, ask people, to gain knowledge and understand her surroundings.
As the girl is sold by her stepfather and sent to prostitution, she is marveled by the new world she sees. She originally lived in a mountain village, passed through cities to come in a big town in a different country. Houses, food, people, even language differs in her new environment.
Although at first she is amazed by the new world she sees, all the cars and people, she starts to get curious, notes words of the new language, and tries to adapt herself in the city.
”The city is not so hard. You just have to study it”(McCormick 68).
As a result, she does. However, the interesting thing here is her strong motives to adapt in and know this city.
She was a girl sold to prostitution, and just like all the other girls, she was sold to help her family economy which was hard because of her stepfather. She is sold right after she matured, got her first blood. Right then, she is told from her mother how to live like a adult women, take responsibility and work for home. She asks why women has to have so much burden, when her mother answers, it’s just for survival.
When she is sold to prostitution, she has a talk with her parents. Her mother carries a gambling father, the girl and a small brother that definitely has to survive. Although the protagonist girl feels fear to leave the village, at the same time, she encourages herself to go see the new world, and to stand up to nourish her family.
However, later in the book, she is affected by another girl in the prostitution. Her and the girl believes that they work right for their family, for whom they want to feed, that they are righteous heroes. They expect their families to welcome them and thank them for all the hard work. Even though the hope ends in a mere dream, these ambitions are the primary motive for the protagonist all the way in the book, to stand through works that aren’t docile.
Knowledge for her is a useful tool in the book, for example mathematics to calculate the number of days she need to work and how much she will earn, or language to communicate with people she meets.
The girl always matures herself to knowledge herself, just to stand up through burdens and responsibility.
#4 FW
UNDERSTANDING
This novel is almost a non fiction. It’s extremely realistic, seen by a point of view of a young girl sent to prostitution. It’s a part of the gigantic world we live now today.
This book is written in English, read in english speaking parts of the world. That parts appear in the novel, as American men, as a world in the television. For Lakshmi, this world is mysterious and marvelous, yet frightful. The world of television seems to be so delighted, with many movie stars and rain machines and white horses, yet outside the television, the world she lives is as ugly as it mimes a child for life to get an extra rupee or two. American men are told to be good and bad: they are some way helpers, admiration for Lakshmi, for example the men who caught her falling or the men who payed but just talked to her and didn’t get over her. Yet she also sees American men who gets drunk and treat her violently, also stories that girls who asked for help to American men was violated and was forced to walk outside naked.
For Lakshmi, the world is seen in three ways. One is the old good home, with her friends and Ama, her lovely goat and the boy she wished to be together someday. Another one is the world in television, the one that is so dreamful. The last one is her reality, in the Happy House.
In her real world, she encounters many new things. It is a beginning for her to understand this new world, a world in city, a world of prostitution and beggars and inequality. At first she dreams of home. Then she dreams of the world in the television as all the other girls does.
However in reality, she experiences and observes many suffers of people. One is the mother who was in the Happy House, who had to take clients even though she was sick. She had two children that she had to feed. At the end, she cannot take her illness, and is kicked out because her work is becoming insatiable. Although this world was still unknown new culture for Lakshmi, when she hears the cry of the mother, she describes it something beyond language.
Another character is Monica. Monica has two sides on her character, one called “thirsty vine” that skillfully attracts clients, and another Monica that sleeps with a tattered rag doll, working for her baby in her hometown, dreaming to be welcomed and thanked for her job. Lakshmi understands that both of these sides constructs Monica.
This gigantic world, has many different sides and characteristics, all mingling together to make one environment. This novel is essentially along Lakshmi who encounters many different world and people, observing and understanding the different sides.
#5 FW
The world Lakshmi lives in, is a very different world than the one I live in. It’s greatly different at its structure, its economy level, its culture. From these differences, we get so many different choices and routes in our life.
The economy level marks a great difference in the two world. Laconically, it’s about poverty. Things cheap in my life or in the TV life, is extremely expensive for Lakshmi. We casually devour Coca Cola and sweets everyday so often, from convenience stores, when Lakshmi has to work for several months for that one luxury.
The difference in economy makes difference in people’s life. Lakshmi’s family is poor, so they have hard times to raise a baby. They are born every season, and dies every season. It’s because most of the time, it is insatiable to nourish all their voracity. In Lakshmi’s house, the baby boy gets the best food of all, because he need to grow up as one man. We can also see here a cultural difference. Gender respectation is very different: a man makes all. Lakshmi’s family absolutely needs at least one man in their family, even if that man just gambles away all money.
Poverty in Japan, however, would mean a different thing. First of all, sometimes extra mouth is just too heavy as a burden at any kind. Even a man, or a newborn baby. If there is no man, there are cases that the country would surely help out the family because of its disadvantages. So sometimes some families refuses to officially marry for that money.
Another difference is the job opportunities. Japan has a rather small gender differences, which means there are as much jobs for women to be hired as men. There are more choices than just being a wife, or a housekeeper, or a prostitute. A poor family can send their high school or older children to part time work to help their mouths.
However in Lakshmi’s life, the best way she would earn money is to prostitute or be a maid. Though, prostitute earns much higher, and that’s why her stepfather sells her to the city. There, she encounters many girls similar to her, sent to the Happy House because of poverty.
Difference in culture can really alter one’s life. It’s the value of work, its risk and return differences. Prostitute or part time?
#6 FW
Language. My stereotype about language was about its use. It’s usually some method to communicate. Right. Banal to hear about. It has different sounds and words and letters in different parts of the world, and by understanding its meaning, we can use them to tell something to someone from a different part of the earth. But what I believed was just its sound. If I know the words ice cream I can use it to someone speaking english, ice cream. That’s just it. I thought so. But Lakshmi in this book uses in a more deeper way.
Words for her is knowledge. Lakshmi is a curious girl. When she arrives in her new environment, new city, new language, the first thing she does is to observe and learn them. Later, she learns languages even more detailed by being taught by few characters. However, these words doesn’t just mean by itself for her.
One way she makes use of the words is when she encounters the American man, who is kind and nice, pays money but doesn’t violate her, who wish to help her. Lakshmi only knows few words in English. After their conversation to be rescued is made, Lakshmi throws out random words as ice cream to just attract the men to stay there, for her comfort. Ice cream is what she actually says toward him. It sounds peculiar. But that made him understand what she meant.
Another way Lakshmi relies on words, is when her teacher boy is gone. When they are kicked out, Lakshmi uses the word sorry for means of very sad. The boy does not respond. Then she depresses that all the beautiful words were useless, since the communicator is not there.
What is this all about? Lakshmi using words, when she really doesn’t mean those words. Words for Lakshmi isn’t just to communicate. It’s to make a connection with unknown people, as the American man or the teacher boy, and to stay connected with them.
The most powerful scene of language is just before when Lakshmi says sorry. When a woman, sick, with children, is kicked out to the streets, she roars in despair. Lakshmi describes it as a sound beyond language. Even though it wasn’t a language Lakshmi knew, she well understood the emotion.
Studying language is the positive hope in Lakshmi’s harsh life in prostitution. When most of the days are monotonous, repeated between sleep and food and work, the time the boy teaches her new words, is her only pleasure time. Language is an all-time helper for her.
It isn’t docile to communicate someone what you want to say. Lakshmi, even though she is unable to fully understand the language, can manage that very well. Language is more than just words and meaning. It can be used to communicate to communicate in a more deeper way.
#7 FW
Poverty. Prostitution. And those two come from a greater problem: social differences.
Differences here means in one way, economically. Essentially, poverty. But in another way, it means by culturally.
The most world wide problem in this book is that Lakshmi has to beckon to go to prostitute, where it’s risky, neglecting, life-long and unequal. It’s violent world that everything is decided by one fat dictator.
The reason for Lakshmi to go to prostitution is simply because of the poorness of her family. Like all the other women there, Lakshmi was sold for a great amount of money for her life as a prostitute. But that doesn’t just mean it’s caused by poverty. It has also a cultural cause in it.
Lakshmi’s family has lost their father. Therefore, culturally, when one man is absolutely needed for one family’s pride, Lakshmi’s mother had to welcome a horrible stepfather that gambles all money away. Even if he is the cause to be poor, they still need a man, as a human family, as one proud family in their culture.
Also, the choices of women’s work was a problem. Lakshmi went to school, and she could count. If she has a bit more knowledge, she would have well worked as a money manager of some sort. At least she was studious and hardworking. If she had more choices in jobs, she wouldn’t had to choose prostitution. However, in their culture, women’s work is child raising, house-keeping and prostitution. And prostitution earns the most money. This is why Lakshmi had to go to prostitution. Of the poverty, of her stepfather, of her social culture.
What comes up as an answer to this all? Gender inequality as a culture. In Lakshmi’s culture, women are strictly restricted to be subordinate. They don’t get much choices. Men are valued lot more, and women are told to serve men.
If Lakshmi had more money, if she was a boy, if her culture offered more jobs for women, if her culture offered more individuality for women, the problem of prostitution wouldn’t have been a trouble for her. Poverty, prostitution and gender inequality is the whole point of problem for her.
#8 FW Short Story
I am a cat. A not so young, aged cat I am. I live behind the garage of Mr. Tamura, in a small hole between concrete wall and the house wall. There where soil is exposed in the hole, grass grows and makes a soft and nice bed. That’s been my home, since I departed from my mother cat.
My mother gave birth to few kittens with me. It has been quite a few cold winter since I departed from darling mother cat. I haven’t seen them awhile, so I assume they are gone now. I have lived the longest, than any cat around here. Not to blague about.
We, cat, does not interfere much with others. All we do all day is just surviving, or maybe sometimes, reproducing. Once I had a partner cat, a beautiful black female cat who gave me lots of kittens. She is gone, I remember, in the last winter. Since then, the only cat I talk to is the big boss cat around the corner, the kitten that was just born last winter who lives in the house next door, and a boy who lives in Mr. Tamura’s house.
I don’t have a name. But the boy calls me Neko. He means it by a special cat. That is because I’m the only cat he knows that can have a talk with him.
I do not remember since when, but from around when my siblings all disappeared, and my partner, and when even my small kittens were all gone, my long beautiful tail started to split in two. Since then, I have two long beautiful tails.
“Neko, usually cats don’t speak like human. They say nya or meow.” That’s what the boy says. Then I say, “Any cat can talk like this, if they live long enough as me. We just need enough time to observe your language.”
“How come house cats, like the old mother cat in Mr. Satou’s house, why do they live as long as you did but doesn’t talk with me?”
“They are house cats, that’s why. Ones who lost knowledge to survive, who can’t hunt small rats or who can’t find a sleeping place on their own, can not learn anything.”
“It’s a difficult story.”
This is usually how the boy ends the conversation, when he comes talk to me behind the garage.
“Maybe for you, you are a small boy.”
And that’s how I usually reply to him.
“Neko, Neko, hey, it’s me.”
One day, the boy turned up later than usual. It was a warm spring day, dawn time, the sun turning red in the sky above. The boy sat next to me, leaning on the garage wall, sighing.
“What’s the matter, boy?”
“Nothing much…”
“Seems something is there, though.”
“Well...my friend just told me, that a cat with two tails is a sort of imaginary creature, that they can talk and sing and dance. I said I know one, but they didn’t believe me.”
“Well, that cat must be about me, I’m pretty much sure.”
I swung my two beautiful tails around, and the boy said sure, I think so too.
“Neko, I didn’t like it. Why wouldn’t they believe me? Should I bring them here to show you?”
“No, I don’t think so. Cats doesn’t like so many people in their house. Especially kids.”
“Then, what should I do?”
“Just don’t do anything. Know that you know more than your friends, know that you can see more that your friends. That might someday, help you. Maybe not.”
“That’s a difficult story again.”
“Maybe for you, you are a small boy.”
The boy laughed, I meowed. Then he thought for a while, and murmured that he had homeworks to do. I said you can do them alright. Anyway, he was a human boy, and humans were smart.
“Neko, you are very smart, you know. Much smarter than me.”
The boy sighed, stressed of the homeworks. I said, maybe.
“Neko, if I eat your beautiful tails, would I be smart as you?”
He touched at my beautiful tails, but right away, I swung them back. It moved elegantly and marvelously, my beautiful tails. My black long tails.
“Maybe,” I said.
But when the boy reached toward my tails, I teased him, swinging away one tail, poking his forehead with the other. He stumbled, and gave up.
“Maybe if you keep trying.”
I laughed, and the boy made a furious but confused face. I live very well here, I said. The boy replied, I do, too. So then he realized and went back to do his homeworks. And I went to fetch a rat.
That’s the end of the story.