The readings this week were a little harder to handle than past weeks. All the pain and suffering behind these readings was hard to grasp for me. The language that Meena Alexander uses really makes you feel like someone had just ripped her heart out. In times of crisis, people either come closer or are pushed further away and these authors portrayed that well. All of these authors were innocent, and yet still part of all the violence that was occurring around them. Meena was pushed away and exiled in a sense, because of the color of her skin in a time of crisis. Alia Mamdouh is out casted and looked at as a minority no matter where she goes but she draws from that and much of her writing comes from that freedom of not being tied down to a nationality. A majority of the readings were all nonfiction pieces. I think this is because a lot of what they discuss and the feelings that occur are something that cannot be made up, and only someone who truly experienced them can grasp them on the level that these authors have.
