Storybook Brainstorming Topics

Image information: The Siren by John William Waterhouse; Source: Wikipedia

Storybook Brainstorming:

Readers, 

      This is basically just another post in which I will be brainstorming for a larger project for the end of the semester. Just like my other brainstorming posts (and reading posts) this is basically going to be just me putting thoughts to paper.

Storybook Idea 1: Mermaids

For as long as I can remember, my sister has been obsessed with mermaids. And where she has been obsessed with mermaids, I have been obsessed with mythology. So it seems only natural that I would be able to write my storybook on mermaids. The topic analyses are endless. I could talk about cultural representation of mermaids and what that says about the culture’s beliefs and views on women. I could look at how each culture alters the representation of mermaids and where the alterations could stem from. For as many topics as there are, there are just as many titles: The Mysteries Hidden in the Deep, Mermaids and Mythology, etc.

Someday, my sister is going to get this poem by T.S. Eliot permanently affixed to her body somewhere. Could there be a more fitting tribute to her and our sisterly bond than to speak and write about mermaids and in doing so possibly relive our childhood?

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

(Excerpt from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot)

            When I was a young girl, I loved the book Sirena by Napoli. I think that her story would be really cool to include in this storybook, if only because it would be another tie to childhood mythologies and ideologies. If I used this book it would be really interesting to follow up with stories that portray mermaids as either good or inherently evil (monsters) since in Sirena, the main mermaid is so horrified by the fact that her beauty and singing cause men to die that she exiles herself. It would make a good starting story that at the same time would act as a middling ground between the stories in which the mermaids revel in their monstrous qualities and the stories in which the mermaids are little more than fairytale creatures. An example of a story that could be used for the “good” mermaid side could be Han Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid whereas an “evil” mermaid story could be the Sirens present in much of Greek Mythology such as in The Odyssey.

            Sample Story: The Fisherman and His Soul by Oscar Wilde.

Bibliography information: Wilde, Oscar. The Fisherman and His Soul.  London: James R. Osgood McIlvaine, 1891. Link to original story. 

            I chose this story because it was a good representation of a mermaid story in which the mermaid is not a malicious creature but instead a creature who falls in love. It makes for an east comparison to the stories of other sirens.

Storybook Brainstorming 2: Fairy Tales

            Who doesn’t love a good fairy tale? Our culture (and basically every other culture out there) has a multitude of them—even if in our culture they are warped almost beyond recognition by Disney. Doing a Storybook on Back-To-The-Basics Fairytales would be a really interesting adventure. I chose Celtic Fairy Tales because when I went to Scotland and Ireland this summer I fell very in love with all of their stories and brought home with me a bunch of books on Celtic Fairy Tales.

            For this storybook there are so many stories to choose from, but I think I would start out with “The Fairies” by William Allingham from the book Irish Folk and Fairy Tales edited by Gordon Jarvie. This story is actually more of a short poem about Fairies—it includes information about the Fairy Realm, the Fairy King, and the Fairy Queen, as well as mentions their penchant for child stealing a mischief. A great introduction to the Fairy Tales of Ireland, and a great place to start for this storybook. It would act as an introduction to the story—a song sung around campfires and told from the old to the young, but something that people don’t really believe in anymore.

            Bibliography information: Allingham, William. "The Fairies." Irish Folk and Fairy Tales. By Gordon Jarvie and Barbara Brown. Belfast: Blackstaff, 2009. 3-4. Print. http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/l_fairie.htm

Storybook Brainstorming 3: Greco-Roman Mythology

            I chose to focus on this unit because I love Greco-Roman Mythology. Being forced into taking another language for a Gen-Ed requirement, I settled on Latin. Maybe because I like to hurt myself, but also because I love old stories. I thought it would work out; it was hard (And not pretty). For this Storybook I think I would probably like to focus on either Women or Gods and Goddesses. However, I chose to focus on the Constellations aspect of this Unit because it is something that I am not as intimately knowledgeable about and because I think it would be really interesting to make it into a storybook.

            There are all kind of myths about the constellations and their origins in Greco-Roman Mythology. For this Storybook, however, I think I would start with a myth from Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarion’s “History of the Heavens.” I would choose to write first about the Scales (Libra). After reading the story I learned about how the Scales are tied to the story of the Virgo zodiac. It would be very interesting to do a storybook based on the zodiac signs and how they became that way.

            Bibliography information: "Star Names and Their Meanings Paperback – September 10, 2010." Star Names and Their Meanings: Richard Hinckley Allen: 9781162588728: Amazon.com: Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Sept. 2015. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=5xQuAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA155

Storybook Brainstorming 4: Creation Stories

            I have always been fascinated by creation stories and how they differ from culture to culture.  So it only makes sense that I would enjoy making a storybook focusing on creation stories. I’d really like to focus on different cultures and the differences and similarities from place to place. I’d like to see how the stories treat men and women differently and what that implies for men and women in that particular society.

            Possible stories I could focus on would be the obvious Adam and Eve Christian Creation Story or something less known such as the Creation Story adopted by the Hindu religion. In this religion creation is triggered by the god Vishnu, whenever he awakes the world gets recreated and whenever he sleeps the world ends. I thought it was very beautiful that their creation story is very circular. There are three main gods and they all serve a real purpose in creation and ongoing life.

            Bibliography information: "The Hindu Creation Myth." The Hindu Creation Myth. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Sept. 2015. http://www.read-legends-and-myths.com/hindu-creation-myth.html

Essay Week 2

   

Image information: Queen Esther seeking out the King: Source: Bible Story Theatre

            I knew going into this week that reading the Unit about Bible Women was not really going to be a super simple one. There is much about the way that women lived and were treated in Bible times that is hard to acknowledge or accept nowadays. It was hard reading about women and their lives in a context where their will was not their own and instead they were merely seen as property or possessions to be passed from one male to another. Love was common in the stories, but not the central factor, and having it did little to change their lives.

            Most of the stories that I read this week were very rooted in the familial setting. It was very clear who was family to whom and exactly how they were related. But an even larger part of the stories focused on the relationships between brothers and sisters. The main story I chose to focus on this week was on Rachel and Leah, who were in fact sisters. Both born from an authoritarian father, Rachel and Leah would forever be grouped together in their stories because of men. Their husband, Jacob, who fell in love with Rachel but married Leah first because she had not yet been wed and then later went on to marry Rachel, and Laban, their father who made the switch of the daughters on the wedding night.  If I remember correctly, Jacob also ended up wedding two of Laban’s slave-women.

            The relationship between the two sisters was forced into a relationship among wives sharing a husband. I think it is very interesting that Jacob was sent to Laban’s tribe to find a wife that was not too far removed from his own family, and managed to marry two of Laban’s daughters and two of his slaves. In an effort to not overly dilute his bloodline her manages to convolute it even more and in the process takes over Laban’s tribe. The bible stories tell of the importance of family ties and bloodlines throughout generations and all different places.

            In these stories that focused on women specifically I found it extremely interesting the light that almost all women were painted in. Always within the context of a relationship as a man, the women were seen almost as objects by which children were born through. In some of the stories love was involved, but in those cases the loved women were always barren and the husband found favor in another wife because of her fertility. It seemed to be that none of the women could win. Regardless of their state, they were never good enough. Those who bore many children were still not given as much favor as the most loved woman. But the most loved woman had to share her husband with others and watch him have a family with them instead. The interesting theme of love vs. fertility was present in a number of the stories in the Bible Women Unit.

            There was only one story about a woman who did anything beyond what occurred in her uterus. Esther—the woman who saved the Jewish people—and even then she was directed by her uncle and only won her people’s lives by begging her husband the king. Women in these stories were not given clear-cut, dynamic personalities or life stories. Instead they were only avenues to tell stories about the Jewish people and the blights that so often befell them.  

Week 2 Storytelling: The Choosing

           

Image information: Rachel and Leah as envisioned by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 1855. Source: Rosetti Archive

            The world that we live in is not fair for everyone. People learn this at different times in their lives—they live different experiences and find the truth at different stages, but in the end we all find out. The truth lies in wait for all of us—an inescapable crossroad that dissects our life into the past and the future. I grew up knowing what was coming for me, and yet the day that I stumbled across that threshold I was as uncertain and as unprepared as the rest of my peers.

            My mother taught me that the way to thrive here was through acceptance. Accept your place in the group, Allia. Accept your fate, Allia. Accept what is to come, Allia. Do not fear what is to come, Allia. You will learn to love your place here, Allia. Everything is taken care of, Allia, have faith.

Everyone wants you to embrace your faith. Lean into the unknown and the uncomfortable and let The Other take away all your fears and uncertainties. My mother taught me to give in; but I will not be broken by my time here.

            I was my mother’s first and only child. I am called “The Miracle From The Other” by my tribe—birthed from a mother who never saw her first blood and lived with the knowledge that she might never see one. I am the sign that faith alone prevails; and yet I cannot bring myself to fold myself to fit into their beliefs. Although I am in some ways an only child, I have seven brothers and two sisters. My mother, my father, and his three other wives all live together in a raucous sort of harmony—built upon the foundations laid in place by acceptance, order, love, and faith in The Other, faith in the Choosing, faith in tradition.

            If I have learned nothing else from this tribe it is that there is a great love present in its people. But through the years I have also seen the undercurrents of distress that this love creates. Love is not equal. Love is not fair. And my father loved my mother more than all his other wives combined. It shown through his actions, through his eyes when he gazed upon her, through the way he begged The Other to restore her to fruitfulness, and through the way The Other accepted his pleas—gifting my mother to my father in lieu of a Choosing.

            My mother did not go through the Choosing, but that does not mean that the same fate awaits me. Only great things supersede between the Choosing, and there have been few great things present in my life. The world is not fair to me. I must live in a world where choice is taken from me, and where I am seen as the portal to a new generation. There is no great love in my life—only the Choosing.

            I knew my day was coming but I am still not ready. How am I to be expected to just give myself over to faith, over to The Other’s mercy on something as small and invisible as faith? How can I be expected to put myself in the same place I see my mother and the others struggle? How can I be expected to live in a world where unhappiness seeps through the cracks of the walls built by faith and acceptance? Where resentment boils in the hearts of those who are either not enough or will never be good enough?

            As I walk to the Choosing Tent, my thoughts still and a sense of calmness comes over me. A plan begins to form within me—one that would change the course of my future and possibly alter the history of my tribe for generations to come. I look at my family surrounding me as I stand in the doorway of the tent and feel my plan solidify. I look back towards the tent that once represented everything about my future and then took a step back. “I rescind my right to the Choosing.” My words flowed from around me and echoed in the voices of my tribe as I kept walking. I had chosen my own path and with it I had gained my freedom.

Author's Note:

I chose to base my story off of the lives of the women Rachel and Leah from the Bible Women Unit. There is so much info and concentration on men and other people/issues in the bible that I think oftentimes the women get overlooked. I changed the original by making it into first person to give the reader a more personalized feeling to the ongoings of their life. I also changed the setting--the choosing does not actually occur to my knowledge. But so much of the stories that I read had the dichotomy between love at first sight and multiple marriages with the most loved often being the one barren. It was just really interesting to see that theme run through so many of the stories. 

Bibliography:

Rachel Story Source: King James Bible (1611): Genesis 29 [Librivox Audio]

Leah Story Source: King James Bible (1611): Genesis 29 and 30 [Librivox Audio] and Genesis 35 [Librivox Audio].

Week 2 Reading Diary Post B: Bible Women Cont.

This is my Reading Diary Post B for the Unit Bible Women. Once again, it is just pure thought stream as I read so please feel free to ignore at will.

Image Information: The Shade of Samuel Invoked by Saul (The Witch of Endor) by Nikiforovich Dmitry Martynov (1826-1889): Source: Wikipedia

The Witch of Endor:
Desperation to keep his throne drives Saul to throw away his own morals. Desperate in his separation from God. Women as a tool to contact God/ speak with things outside the earthly realm.

Bathsheba:
Love at first sight. Even though she is the wife of one of David's people. HE gets her pregnant and then tries to cover up his deceit by getting Uriah to sleep with his wife and absolve him of guilt of producing a baby. When that didn't work the next most reasonable plan was to kill Uriah to cover up his indiscretion. He then took Bathsheba as his wife. Even though this caused him strife with God. David is said to have been one of the closest prophet's to God and yet he too was subject to such a large fall from grace. All these stories involve women as a stepping stone to losing your morals.

Esther:
Women as replaceable when they do not fulfill the needs of men. Esther saved her people by exploiting her husband's favor of her.

Susannah:
Another love at first sight story; looks like it is going to turn out just as badly as the others. At least these elders realize that their lust is wrong. Oh just kidding they're making plans to rape her. Doesn't seem so good now. Oh good some victim blaming in there. Perfect. At least she had God's favor and didn't actually have to die for someone else's lies.

Mary and Elizabeth:
God impregnates Elizabeth to prove that he can because Zacharias is doubtful, but impregnates Mary because she is highly favored. Weird parallel there. He uses Elizabeth as proof for both Zacharias and Mary of his ability to do the impossible. Mary as the fruit of all women. Hmm.

Mary and Anna:
Very cool that Anna is a prophetess. Haven't seen one of those yet. Most women have only been introduced as wives first and whatever else they did second.

Herodias:
Another man who stole another's wife. What was the point of her asking for John the Baptist's head? Did I miss something important?

Martha and Mary:
Two sisters who don't marry the same man, but instead seek favor from Jesus. Interesting replay on the sister dynamic that was done so often in earlier stories.

I have basically no idea what i'm going to write my storytelling post about, guys. BUT, I do know that it will have women, deception, betrayal, a little bit of death, and probably some babies. I know, original, right? Stick around this week and let me know what you think!

Week 2 Reading Diary A: Bible Women

Image Information: Poster from a play about specific women from the Bible: Source: Echo Theatre

A large majority of people have been introduced to the people present in the Bible in some manner or another. Its teachings are something that have influenced our society for hundreds (thousands) of years. Even today, its stories still manage to remain relevant. But some stories are still more prevalent than others and that is what this reading post is dedicated to. The women of the bible, important in their own right but oft overlooked.

So basically this is just my brain flow. Ignore at will.

Eve:
Man shouldn't be alone. Women as companions. Why do people not realize that this creation story is just a story when men and women have the same number of ribs? Tree of knowledge and going against the word of god. Two different ways of looking at it, good and bad. Kind of harsh.

Sarah:
Gifted a son even though both her and Abraham were very old. Miracle baby. 100 is very very old to be having babies.

Hagar:
Kind of weird to just decide that this hand maid is the solution to their baby making problems. And then get angry about the plan working. Bore Abraham a boy when he was four score and six (86?). After Sarah conceived Isaac she tried to force Hagar and Ishmael from them. Why would she do that? I imagine that she had a lot of time to get over her issues with Hagar and her child. A lot of jealousy in this story and the last. As well as some resentment.

Rebekah:
Okay so Rebekah becomes the wife of Isaac after helping out Abraham's brother. Wait was Rebekah barren too? And did Isaac take too more wives? What. But then she has twins; two nations in her womb. I thought it was super interesting how it mentioned that Isaac loved Esau (meat eater) and Rebekah loved Jacob. Would be easy to write a story about a family divided.

Rachel:
Okay this is one of the women from the story of the red tent. I wonder how familiar it is to that. Jacob fell in love with her at first sight, but gets tricked by her father into marrying his other daughter even though he worked for Rachel for seven years. And then he worked even more for Rachel to be actually given to him. It seems like these stories like to mess with the women. People must be super resentful towards everyone. Ugh. It even says he loves Rachel more. That means that Leah must have known that she was second choice. Really rough.

Leah:
Even better. God makes Rachel barren to even the score. And she just keeps bearing sons hoping that Jacob will love her. This is really sad. And of course Rachel gets angry (JUST LIKE HER Aunt) and starts the cycle all over again. Why do people keep giving their handmaids to their husbands as a solution? Except Rachel took that baby from her maid. Crazy. It's just reading like a really weird competition between sisters and abusing their maids and giving Jacob a ton of children. But God feels bad/remembers that he closed Rachel's womb and gives her a son (Jacob). Hurrah. This just makes me feel weird and uncomfortable.

Potiphar's Wife (Zuleikha):
This family has a really messed up dynamic. Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers (Leah's sons) and into the service of an Egyptian names Potiphar. A story about unrequited love turned horrible. Healthy relationships are few and far between.

Jephthah's Daughter:
Another story where someone must be sacrificed. She accepts her fate graciously enough however. Cries about her virginity and lack of life in the woods for two months and then is burned to death.

Delilah:
A woman offered a large amount of money for information on a man who was in love with her. And he loves her so much that he just offers up all of his secrets. Except that he doesn't. So she keeps asking and eventually he is worn down. And then she betrays him. All for money. Seems to be a common theme.

Hannah:
Once again another woman who had no children and another wife who did. She was the more loved of the two. Her love for her son converted this other guy though and her story didn't turn out as awful as I expected.

So after reading this first half of the Bible Women Unit I already have the makings of a story idea in my head. Most of the stories deal with the unequal distribution of love and power in relationships. Favor doesn't necessary follow with children. It'd be interesting to write about the need for favor in a life where you aren't the only wife.