Nina Godridge November 8

Hello everyone, it's Nina Godridge and I got my thoughts/ review on this week's readings for class.
First off, a commonality between the two stories were the woman's voices. Told in the first person point of view, readers like I were able to relate to the narratives, but also on a  level of vivid description did the stories bring me exactly to the scene each narrator was portraying.
" Once In A Lifetime" by Jhumpa Lahri was a throwback to Freshman year of college for me. I read this in a Humanities class, in which we looked a lot at the cultural difference exemplified in the short story. As it is one of the focuses on the story another one is the relationship between Hema and her crush, Kaushik; the relationship between the two is fairly common of which I have too struggled myself with (When you are crushing hard on the child of your parent's best friend's child). As I read this story, I was sadly reminded that nothing romantically happens between them as Kaushik as monotone as a robot. Yet at the end when he reveals the truth to the nature of their arrival back to America, his mother has cancer. Hema cries and he does nothing but stand with a blank face. Lahiri does a great job of capturing the narrator's motives and the scenery around her, but the best quality about this writer is her talent of description. I could close my eyes and envision the snow falling down on the ground, having a quick snowball fight, then tracking off into the woods behind the house to view the tombstone of the departed Simonds family.
Then with Edwidge Danticat's " Night Woman" the title embodies the story. The five page story told in the first person embarks on a narrative that I had never read before. Within the first sentences I knew the story was about a prostitute and her son. The description of the son's room, his mannerisms as he sleeps; his head creating furrows in his pillow, holding on tight to her red scarf, humming songs while in slumber. The vividness drew me in quickly. One thing we did talk about in class is how hard it is to write a kiss and/or sex scene. Danticat did a great job, " The stars slowly slip away from the hole in the roof as the doctor sinks deeper and deeper beneath my body." It's a great description of the narrator and bodies syncing to the motion. Overall, what I really love about this story is capturing the emotions of how much the mother loves her son, as he sleeps in front of her. She knows one day he will be a grown man. She wants him to know that the stars and angels shine down on him and make their presence. They are worth more than their bodies.
That's another thing these two stories are exemplifying, the description of bodies and their motions. Emotions or not, in the words written, and maybe even caught between the lines is how each character and body is different from another.