sarahcollins's blog

Sarah Collins
Dalke
Feminist Critical Studies

For my project I’ve decided to read a selection of Japanese books and manga, (popular Japanese comics), as well as essays on feminism in modern Japan. I will be attempting to define and explore what feminism means in modern Japanese literature, how it differs from American feminism, and why. I think that examining what feminism means in this culture will let me both learn about a different kind of feminism as well as see American feminism through a new lens. It will let me examine whether, as Paula

I think I used to be if not the worst nightmare, at least a bad daydream of feminist trailblazers. I reaped the benefits of their labors and never truly felt oppressed as a female, but was relatively ambivalent to the feminist cause. My high school assigned a fair amount of books by women, not just the Brontes, Austen, and Shelley, but Cisnero, Angelou, Hurston, Tan and more. For me, feminism was inapplicable to my immediate life, and almost historical, at least in America and other “enlightened” countries; I never applied feminism with the urgency of activism to my life, because I couldn’t see how or if I was being oppressed.

I find Cixous’s article to be the richest one that we’ve had to date, maybe because of its “free” style that other people have commented on, which allows it to make bold assertions about the future of feminine writing, academic and personal, and also because it seemed full of commentary on what we’ve read so far.