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Without Lying Down: Screenwriter Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood - Review

Without Lying Down: Screenwriter Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood by Cari Beauchamp My rating: 5 of 5 stars Deeply engaging and very well-written book about Frances Marion (and some other fascinating women in her circle of friends) who blazed an impressive trail in screenwriting in fledgling Hollywood. It's a literal crying shame that more isn't known of these women, their interesting lives, and their brilliant contributions to storytelling and film. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in early Hollywood history, filmmaking, screenwriting, women writers, working women in the early 20th century, etc., etc. My major takeaways from the book are: writing may be a solitary endeavor, but creating a community of artists and uplifting other women aren't; the boldness of claiming your own worth, and expecting others to respect that, can change your life; and above all - writers save your papers! Apparently, the little which is known of France...

You Are a Badass at Making Money - Review

You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero My rating: 3 of 5 stars The book was more focused on my emotional relationship to money than I expected. There were some assumptions about those attitudes which I didn’t feel applied, so I didn’t feel as connected to this book as the previous Badass. But there were still some really good points and strong takeaways. It reminded me to own what I want. View all my reviews

Work From Home While You Roam - Review

WORK FROM HOME WHILE YOU ROAM: The Ultimate Guide to Jobs That Can Be Done From Anywhere by Robin Barrett My rating: 4 of 5 stars Excellent resource! I found out about this book by stumbling onto Robin Barrett’s YouTube channel. I saw a video in which she listed some interesting work from home options and decided the book was worth a try. It most definitely was. Despite doing my homework in looking for a new income stream there were still resources listed here that I didn’t already know about - and the explanations of the application processes and the payment methods saved me a lot of time in narrowing down the list to things I will actually pursue. There is a lot of repetition in the book - as there are sites which fall under more than one of the categories into which the book is organized. I read the entire book, but I would recommend that if other readers know which category they are most interested in, they just skip straight to that chapter to avoid the cross posting (for lack ...

Tea and Colonization

  Original title of the paper: Post Colonialism in Wonderland               When analyzing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland using a post-colonialism approach, Alice herself can be viewed as a colonizer, perhaps even representing the British Empire of the nineteenth century. While literature is not “a passive reflection of history”, literature and history do feed off one another and each influence the other. (Parker 286). Whether Carroll intended to portray Alice as a representation of the British Empire, which ruled “roughly one quarter of the earth’s land and population” at one time (Parker 298), is unknowable (unless one wishes to be bogged down in trying to sort out the author’s intention). However, when applying the postcolonialism theory to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , Alice does exhibit traits that are considered typical of a colonizer. She invades a space which is foreign to her, attempts to impose her own ...

Marrying the Hangman

  Original title of the paper: Gender, Feminism, and Marrying the Hangman             In Atwood’s Marrying the Hangman the reader finds a tale, based on a true story, in which a woman found guilty of stealing pretty clothes, must then beguile a man, sight unseen, in order to avoid being executed. And while she is written as a victim of patriarchal circumstance, she does, in the end create her own salvation via this beguiled man. Both the antique protagonist, and the poem’s modern “friends” with their “horror stories” all showcase the gender role these women are assigned and expected/allowed to live within, the lack of sisterly bonding between women, and how survival often requires a certain amount of what society might have judged as ‘unfeminine’ selfishness.             Gender is a “social class” (Cudd & Anderson 158) constructed by other people’s “cultural res...

Marxism in Wonderland

  Marx saw society through a rather practical “materialist” lens, understanding that life is made up largely, if not exclusively, of physical needs like food and shelter. He believed that it was our social conditions which determined our consciousness, not the other way around – so that a poor (proletariat) person and a richer (bourgeoisie) one would see the world differently because they were either poor or rich. And he saw the world as being “divided between a class of people who labor to produce goods” and a class of people who exploit them (Parker 230). Within Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass Carroll has created a literary world which brings to light social hierarchy, particularly the binary opposition of the ruling class and the working class. There are clear socio-economic stratifications on display. The treatment of the working-class playing cards by the aristocracy, the fact the bourgeoisie don’t align with and stand up for them, and the f...