secret’s blog

http://www.gabcast.com/index.php?a=episodes&query=&b=play&id=8538&cast=73014&castPage=

http://www.gabcast.com/index.php?a=episodes&query=&b=play&id=8538&cast=73011&castPage=

“Iraqi Teens Work to Help Their Families”

Alive in Baghdad

October 15, 2007

The podcast covers the topic of unemployment in Iraq and how teenagers are getting work in order to help their families.  The people that appear in the podcasts are teenagers who have gone out to get work.  For example, 15 year old Hussein Kamal. In the past he has helped his father with carpentry but recently his brother has taught him a new career, furniture painting.  Other teens that appeared in the podcast were also quite young and have been working for a number of years.  The scenery displayed in the background does not look like anything that we are used to seeing.  There does not seem to be any sort of factory that the boys use for carpentry.  In one case it is some ones backyard. I found it sad to hear Yousif’s story.  Because of the war he was born with a birth defect which has caused him to have many surgeries.  He now is attending an agricultural school and is unemployed.  I find it impressive that even with the rough life of an Iraqi he is still eager enough to get an education.  Many other teens stories made their lives seem very routine and their lives seemed very hard.  It seemed as though they did so much work and would not earn a decent amount of money.  There was not one story in particular that I found memorable because I began to think that they all had interesting stories and were hard working teens that made a good impression on me.

Dear Riverbend,

Even though you give us much information on the war I still find it hard to relate to some things mainly because I am on the opposite side of it.  Each day you are able to look out your window and see live footage of a war, where I am from we watch it on television or hear it on the radio.  We have seen and heard of very terrifying things that have occurred, but could never relate to them in the way that you do.  Before I began reading this book I felt that I did not have very much connection with the war but you have now changed that for me and I thank you.  I now have much more knowledge and feeling of what is occurring and feel very sorry for those that cannot escape it.  Although my life personally has not been greatly affected by the war I have seen others around me that it has had a great impact on.  From reading your book I have felt a special connection with you and the Iraqi people.  Your way of writing is incomparable.  No other books that I have read have related to the war as directly as you have.  I find the book to be very special because you have put a lot of your heart and life stories into it which is something very unique.  Over time I feel that this book will give people great knowledge about what actually has occurred during the war.    

Sincerly,

Secret

Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog From Iraq. Feminist Press at the City University of New York. 2005.

Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq is based on the life of an Iraqi woman from the city of Baghdad.  In the book she doesn’t tell us details from her personal life, but when it comes to giving the reader details about what goes on in her community her responses are the exact opposite.  She speaks of American soldiers and her feelings on the war since it began.  She does not hold anything back when it comes to giving her opinion.  The cover of the book is very appealing, it represents fire and the side profile of the Iraqi woman.  From what I have read so far I have gained a great amount of knowledge on the different religions that are practiced, Iraqi culture, and things that are seen from the eyes of an Iraqi woman. 

Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog From Iraq. Feminist Press at the City University of New York. 2005.

Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq is based on the life of an Iraqi woman from the city of Baghdad.  In the book she doesn’t tell us details from her personal life, but when it comes to giving the reader details about what goes on in her community her responses are the exact opposite.  She speaks of American soldiers and her feelings on the war since it began.  She does not hold anything back when it comes to giving her opinion.  The cover of the book is very appealing, it represents fire and the side profile of the Iraqi woman.  From what I have read so far I have gained a great amount of knowledge on the different religions that are practiced, Iraqi culture, and things that are seen from the eyes of an Iraqi woman. 

Baghdad Burning starts off with a short description written by Ahdaf Soueif explaining the blog of Riverbend.  Soueif focuses on the blog, “Baghdad Burning” written by Riverbend.  As the foreword goes on the author gives the reader a chance to take in what is going on physically and emotionally with the war in Iraq and also shares some of her family history with us.   We are told that there will be a great amount politics that are discussed throughout the book and that the main purpose of the book is to give those with their minds set on one opinion about the Arab and Muslim people around the world a different outlook on it all. Switching over to the introduction, a gentleman named James Ridgeway begins to speak about Riverbend and her blog and to show his opinion on her.  He thinks that she is a unique person because of her background and the culture that she comes from. He then continues to discuss the war on oil and the American troops.  He discusses other problems that have occurred such as the Gulf War in 1991, which leads into the discussion of the war that began in 2003.  According to Ridgeway it was the Bush administration that determined the war to be a “mission that was accomplished” but it ends up being that “The United States never gained enough control to restore any sort of order” (Ridgeway 16).  He then told us that there were 17,000 civilian deaths by later October of 2004.  To me that was extremely shocking.  From the small amount of this book that I have read I have already gained much knowledge on the war.     

I believe that I do have my own room.    I knew this when I read the following quote from chapter 5, “For women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force” (Woolf, 87).  Woman are granted their own power, this power is a room.  Virginia Woolf also discusses how women should take stances for themselves.  Too add onto this, in chapter six Woolf says that, “There must be freedom and there must be peace. Not a wheel must grate, not a light glimmer. The curtains must be close drawn. The writer, I thought, once his experience is over, must lie back and let his mind celebrate his nuptials in darkness” (Woolf, 104). It’s not the things inside of a room that makes it special and meaningful but instead it is what a woman makes of it.  A woman’s room should show her true colors, it should be a representation of who she is.  Within the four walls of my dorm room is my little abode.  The colors represent me, hot pink and black. You cannot miss out on any of my pictures which are so important to me because I feel that all my friends and family represent me in many different ways.  Each person is different in their own way, that is why I believe that each individual has their “own room.”

With Apologies to Virginia Woolf

While scrolling through www.jezebel.com I came across an article titled, “If That Is Awkward For You, Please Do Not Apply, I Don’t Like Awkwardness.”   I was quite surprised at what this gentleman, or so called “Professional Poker Player” was proposing as a job for a young woman.  Paying a woman $13 per hour for doing all of his house chores, feeding him, filling his car with gasoline, and other things that may come up seemed very degrading to me.  From the job description it seemed as though this young man was looking for a sexual partner although he may say the opposite.  He came off as being utterly racist and shallow when he said that the women who applied for the job had to be between the age of 18 and 25.  Not only did they have to be extremely young, but they also had to be attractive.  I could not believe that this man was asking for virtually his own private slave that had to meet his very strict standards.  “Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant” (P. 54).  It upsets me to see the way in which woman are still being looked upon.  I feel that their rights are being taken for granted, and that their free will is being ignored.

A patriarchy is a society in which the men hold the most power over women.  After reading chapter 2 my basic interpretation was that women are beneath men.  Virginia Woolf looks through books at the library about women and finds an interesting topic; it deals with the physical inferiority of women. Woolf then comes to the conclusion that male scholars don’t care about the inferiority of women rather than defending the male superiority. “Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe”? (pg. 26)  After reading this quote I interpreted that women are spoken about much more than men are, although this does not mean that positive things are constantly being said.  When I went to the New York Times website many of the article titles on the front page seemed to deal with men.  The article I chose was titled State in Limbo as Questions Swirl About Spitzer’s Future.  If a visitor came to our planet and took a look at this article I think that they would immediately label the United States as a patriarchy society.  After looking over the article they would discover that the governor of New York is in a great deal of trouble.  This article showed that the governor was first of all a male.  Looking at other articles in the newspaper, all other topics dealing with the government all had names of men.