“I am a delicate mist. No one can look at me or touch me or see me. I do not want to be held, which is fine-no one wants to hold me, and even if they did, it wouldn’t help. I am a murmuration, a lightly undulating spray of particles, moving easily around the earth without impacting it. I don’t miss anyone and have never fucked anything up,” (Heisey 286).
Twenty-nine-year-old Maggie is now a divorcee, but she’s fine. Even though she’s broke and her thesis is going nowhere. Or the fact that she’s taking up “adult” hobbies, eating hamburgers at 4AM, while googling and tweeting anything she can think of. But she’s doing really good, actually, especially with the support of her academic advisor Merris, her newly divorced friend Amy, and her active group chat with her friends. Maggie is certain she can beat this divorce, that things aren’t really so bad. Really. Continue reading
Let’s take our first look into Ophelia’s flowers with rosemary, since it’s the first flower she hands out in Act IV scene v.
According to the language of flowers, rosemary (salvia rosamrinus), which is also known as “compass weed, incensier, [and] pilgrim’s flower” (Inkwright 133) has often been associated with remembrance and wisdom (Roux 152). Roux explains in her book Floriography that this belief actually stems from ancient Greece when Greek scholars would wear “crowns of rosemary during their examinations” (Roux 152). Inkwright explains in her book Folk Magic and Healing: An Unusual History of Everyday Plants that Greek students would “braid rosemary into their hair to help them with their studies” (Inkwright 133).
“One day I will die, and one day everyone I know will die. One day everyone I don’t know will die. One day every animal and plant on this planet will die. One day earth itself will die, and one day all of humanity, and all relics of human life,” (Austin).
Twenty-seven-year-old atheist lesbian Gilda can’t stop thinking about death. Desperate to stop the thoughts, she goes to a local church that’s advertising free local therapy only to find herself greeted by Father Jeff who believes she’s come to interview for the new receptionist job at the church. Not wanting to disappoint Father Jeff, she’s hired on the spot to replace the beloved former receptionist, Grace. Hiding the fact that she’s very gay, as well as trying to memorize the lines of Catholic mass, Gilda manages to strike up an email correspondence with Grace’s friend Rosemary because she doesn’t know how to tell the old woman her friend is dead. Juggling all this the police have also discovered some suspicious circumstances around Grace’s death, causing Gilda’s already panicked and dark thoughts to run in unexpected ways. Continue reading
“Boredom…is not far from blizz; one regards boredom from the shores of pleasure…The condition of the modern foetus. Just think: nothing to do but be and grow, where growing is hardly a conscious act. The joy of pure existence, the tedium of undifferentiated days. Extended bliss is boredom of the existential kind. This confinement shouldn’t be a prison. In here I’m owed a privilege and luxury of solitude,” (McEwan 73).
Trudy is tired of her husband John. Though he loves and dotes on her she’s sent him away, living in his family home and having an affair with the successful Claude. But now Claude and Trudy are hatching a truly devious plot to get rid of John, the only witness to their murderous intentions the nine-month old fetus in Trudy’s womb. And he has a lot to say about it. Continue reading
“Creative, enterprising, and technologically savvy, millennials have produced a proliferation of images of themselves that complicate demographic analyses and challenge widely held assumptions. These films, television series, digital representations, and, of course, plays, offer complex insights into a much-maligned demographic and deserve serious attention,” (MacArthur xii-xiii).
Voices of a Generation: Three Millennial Plays does an excellent job showcasing a variety of different millennial voices by three talented playwrights. I loved how varied each of these works were from one another, and really appreciated the introductory essays at the beginning of each play. They each analyzed the work in a way that made me appreciate each of the plays more and brought me back to my student days when I’d be researching articles for an essay. That may not sound like a compliment, but it’s one of the highest I can give. I love learning, and I felt like I learned so much from these essays and these plays. I’d love for more collections of plays to be formatted like this, that offer new reading material as well as intelligent analysis of each of the works inside.
Even if you’re not a millennial, there’s so much to love in this collection! Don’t miss out on Voices of a Generation, these are voices you’ll be eager to listen to!
“It’s possible to feel the horror of something and to accept it all at the same time. How else could we cope with being alive?” (Ward 138).
Rob is desperate for a normal life, and on the surface she’s achieved it: a husband, two daughters, and a nice house in the suburbs she’s renovated to her liking. But she worries about her oldest daughter, twelve-year-old Callie who’s obsessed with true crime, talks to people that aren’t there, and collects the bones of small animals. When her younger, fragile daughter Annie is targeted by Callie, Rob can think of no better place to take Callie than her childhood home Sundial which lies deep in the Mojave Desert. Meanwhile, Callie’s worried about her mom. She’s been looking at her strangely, and while she likes Sundial she doesn’t know why her mom wants to bring only her along for the trip, and why she keeps talking about secrets. Rob and Callie take a journey to the past through memories, forcing themselves to confront the darkness in both of them in hopes they can find light in the future. Continue reading
“One of the hardest things about recovery is coming to terms with the fact that you can’t trust your brain anymore. In fact, you need to understand that your brain has become your own worst enemy. It will steer you toward bad choices, override logic and common sense, and warp your most cherished memories into impossible fantasies,” (Rekulak 5).
Mallory Quinn is eighteen-months sober and finds herself a babysitting job in the privileged neighbourhood on Spring Brook, New Jersey. Ted and Caroline Maxwell seem like kind and doting parents who will do anything for their five-year-old son Teddy, who takes an immediate shine to Mallory, and she loves her job. The neighbourhood is safe for her nightly runs, she enjoys the cottage pool house that she lives in, and she loves looking after Teddy, and Teddy loves showing Mallory the pictures he draws. They’re the sweet sort of drawings one expects from a kid: a rabbit, a balloon, of Mallory herself. But then one day Teddy gives her a picture of a woman’s body being dragged through the woods, and then the pictures get more disturbing and far more detailed than a five-year-old is capable of drawing. But when Mallory finds out that a young artist was murdered in the cottage she now calls home years before, she wonders if Teddy’s drawings may be a message from the young woman. Mallory sets out to find out what the spirit wants from her and Teddy before it’s too late.
I have a lot to say about this book, so spoilers ahead!Continue reading
The first episode on my short-lived podcast was all about Barb Holland, so it only made sense to make her my first post for What Girls Do. I don’t know what it was about Barb Holland, but I like oh so many Stranger Things viewers fell in love with her.
It should go without saying, but I will be spoilingStranger Things and Barb’s fate in this post, so if you’ve somehow avoided both in the seven years that it’s been out then kudos to you, but that time ends now. Continue reading
“Her blood ran red like any other warm-blooded American woman, but Bunny knew her insides were inky black, a mixture of oil and water she’d never be free of. Oil tied her to Texas, to her oil baron family, to her husband, a barrel-chested man as big as the state itself. Water tied her to her mother. And the two co-existed inside her like a quiet disease,” (Stewart 3).
Bunny lives in her gorgeous Dallas home as the perfect housewife, making pot roasts for her husband and that the home is fit and perfect as everyone else’s on the street. Actress Jessica moves to Dallas hoping to escape the LA life, and perhaps cause a little drama and excitement in the process. Amanda buys the old house as a contestant on a new house-flipping reality TV show. All three women are from different times, living very different lives in the same house in the American south. Continue reading
“Self-sacrifice remains the only fate imaginable for women. More precisely, it is a self-sacrifice that operates by way of abandoning one’s own creative potential rather than it’s realization,” (Chollet 83).
Feminist writer Mona Chollet explores which type of women were accused of witchcraft in history and how that has adapted to the modern world. Looking particularly at independent women, childless women, elderly women and the different way society villainizes and attempts to control these women.
I did think there would be more about witchcraft and witch trials in Chollet’s book. Based on the title and cover, I definitely had a different idea for what In Defense of Witches would be focusing on, but I was happy for the read nonetheless. Instead of focusing on witch hunts from the past that were common in Europe and America, Chollet draws parallels on what makes a woman a witch. What is it that society deems scary or incorrect that women do that makes them seem unwomanly? What choices do women make that don’t follow the status quo that makes them a threat? Continue reading
Sarah O'Connor 