I will love/even unwilling: bell hooks and Sappho on love as an action
Sappho’s enshrinement in pop culture “as [a] love goddess,” according to bell hooks, has been essential in suppressing a long-held narrative of love constructed primarily by male poets (hooks, xxi). However, Sappho’s conceptions of love (at least in their fragmentary, translated forms) do not seem to fulfil hooks’ criteria for romantic love.
Ruined?
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down recounts a conflict that occurred between a Hmong family and an American hospital regarding the treatment of a Hmong epileptic (in the eyes of the Western medical tradition) girl, Lia Lee.
The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger tells the story of the self-made man, Balram Halwai, who claims himself to be many things: a servant, a philosopher, an entrepreneur, and a murderer. Although these professions are certainly apart of Balram’s repertoire of trade, his journey from his birthplace— which he dubs the Darkness—to his office at the end of the novel in the Light (Bangalore), serves as an overarching metaphor for the transition of India from the old into the new.