Week 8 Reading and Writing

Looking Back

Drawing of Draupadi
Source: Google Image

Writing Assignments

After reviewing my writings, I noticed a pattern emerging among all of my stories: they all focus on women empowerment and gender-bending. Throughout all of the readings, I have noticed that the women in Indian epics are not treated equal as men. Instead of being treated as queens or warriors, they are treated as extensions to their husbands, accessories if you will. As a feminist, I find this extremely annoying and almost impossible to overlook. For instance, I enjoyed the Ramayana up until Rama forced Sita to perform a chastity test. Although I love writing about strong females, I can see how this theme may become redundant to my readers. I am struggling between allowing this theme to be my niche and letting my writing solely be able gender-bending traditional stories or if I want to branch out and step out of my comfort zone. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Reading Assignments

Overall, I am finding the reading assignments difficult to keep up with. It seems difficult to separate these large epics into four large parts. When I began to make a post about a part, I forget what information I wanted to include when I first started reading because of how much detail is in them. I think moving forward, I will open my blog post as I read in order to jot down my thoughts as they occur, and then, go back and edit them into one cohesive blog post. Although this may take a lot longer than what I am doing now, this may be able to help me flesh out my ideas more and help me remember more details. 

Image

I chose this drawing of Draupadi as my image because it is from the story I am most proud of. At first, I was most proud of "Siren City," but after I wrote the last sentence of Draupadi's Swayamwara, I instantly knew this one was an accomplishment. I have never been creative so I have been super proud of myself for coming up with three separate stories. Although they are based on traditional Indian stories, they are all my own ideas, and my personality shines through each post. I think I like Draupadi's Swayamwara so much because I can relate to the protagonist. Although I am not married to five men (yet), I do not agree with tradtional gender roles, and I am extremely independent. In general, I feel like this class has allowed me to find my comfort zone in writing (something I never thought I had) while expressing myself through my work.