#jasmijn

I’m sure that some people will hate me for not liking this collection so much, and I definitely do not mean to spoil the book to those who loved it, but I’m here to speak my mind and tell you why. 

    I understand why Milk and Honey has gained such a large group of enthusiasts on tumblr, the site known for its activist and largely feminist community. This group of readers (me included) must undoubtedly agree with the majority of the messages Kaur is conveying. Not judging a woman on her appearance, but on her abilities. Your worth is more than what a man thinks of you!  Self-empowerment! All that jazz. 

    But the fact that so many people can agree on her message does not necessarily make it a good collection to me. Arguably, by being so agreeable, she does not add anything new to the conversation, which is definitely something that I would expect from a book with such a strong socio-political flavour. It just felt like I had heard it all before, but in the form of Buzzfeed articles and tumblr posts. I probably would have loved it at age 15, when I was still discovering everything the book talks about, and when it would not have felt like a repetition of years of feminist reading and thinking. 

    Then the writing. I’m sorry to say that I did not like the poetry too much either. I definitely liked some poems, but few really hit me. Many just read like quoted sentences, but formatted into free verse that did not always make sense to me (e.g. ”we all move forward when / we recognise how resilient / and striking the women / around us are”) - if anyone can explain why the sentences break off like this exactly, let me know. Maybe I’m not a poetry person.

Er was een meisjedat de wereld leerde kennenvia angst, via handen die geen troost kenden,via stemmen die te luid waren in de nacht.Ze droeg stilte als een tweede huid,ademde schaduw,en leerde lopen met gebroken vleugelsNiemand zaghoe ze elke dageen beetje meer verdweenachter ogen die ooit zongen.De dagen werden jaren,de adem werd overleven.Woorden stokten,maar het hart –het hart weigerde te…

#blogged Jasmijn uit Grasse, exclusief voor het huis Chanel, en camelia-olie. Hoe lekker is deze olie?

Gabriëlle Chanel componeerde deze olie op basis van jasmijnextract uit Grasse – exclusief voor het huis Chanel – reeds in 1927. Het is een ondergewaardeerde beauty staple die dringend wat meer liefde moet krijgen op mijn blog. Want oh, wat hou ik van deze olie. Ze doet me altijd denken aan het boudoir van een Geisha. Ik leg hieronder uit waarom. [korra_icon icon=”cloud”] Huile de Camelia Het hart…

It took me a while to review this, and to read it took me even longer, but here it is. 

I started the book with a reserved attitude – as I mentioned in my review of Milk and Honey, I’m often reluctant about reading feminist literature (though do not misunderstand me, I am a feminist!), and the blurb on my edition made the book seem quite extreme already. However, I came to realise that not a single part of the book is something that has not happened before, or hasn’t been someone’s desire. Gilead seems extreme to a ridiculous extent. Everyone wearing colours with regards to their status. Women bearing children and immediately having to give them away. And the initial impression that everyone is just okay with the situation. 

This final part annoyed but also intrigued me for a long time. The protagonist, Offred (a name that is only based on the man who owns her – actually quite similar to slaves being named after their masters), seemed so passive about everything. She almost seems to rest her case, (“I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.”) and when an opposition is presented to her, she chooses not to actively engage. But along the way I came to realise that this was actually what made the story more powerful, and real. The way that men and some women alike find a way to justify all that is happening is the realest part about the book. I just read Twelve Years a Slave – memoires that really happened, and there too we see this happening in the form of technically good men justifying having slaves. We see it in Nazi Germany. We see it all through history and it is real. There is no point in arguing with someone who is convinced they are doing the right thing. 

The writing style wasn’t for me – I prefer just having regular quotation marks and I enjoy some more descriptive writing, but when seeing it from the perspective that this is all supposed to be a transcription of a recording, the style kind of made sense. Sadly, you only learn this on pretty much the last page. So I had 476 pages in which this annoyed me slightly. The book did have some very very good passages though, some quotes of which I’ll leave at the end. 

So I would say I did not particularly enjoy the story (it seemed pretty plain with most action happening near the end), and disliked pretty much all the characters. But this isn’t what the book is about. It’s about the statement, and the statement came through very clearly.