Reading Week 12: Joyce, Part B

James Joyce:

- 1882 to 1941
- Born in Dublin to a family of thirteen children (though three of those children died in infancy)
- Taught English in a Berlitz school and began writing short stories
- As his eyesight deteriorated he would get other young authors to write his stories down for him as he dictated to them.

The Dead:

- Draws from a lot of things Joyce saw in his life.
- Main character is Gabriel Conroy, who is a professor.
- He has to give a speech and is worried his audience won't understand him.
- The story is mainly just Gabriel interacting with various people at a party, then at the end he has an existential crisis because he realizes that everyone he knows, and himself, will one day be dead. The story ends with him watching the snow fall outside "upon all the living and the dead".
- This existential crisis was brought on by his wife's revelation to him to when she was young she had a boyfriend who she was in love with, but he died and she blames herself for asking him to meet her when it was snowing and he was already sick.

Kushi Fusako:

- 1903 to 1986
- Taught as an elementary school teacher before moving to Tokyo to become a writer.
- Known for her only work, Memoirs of a declining Rukyuan Woman.
- Stopped writing when her work was criticized for portraying Okinawans in a negative light.
- She later published a defense of her piece, but it didn't get much response.

Memoirs of a declining Rukyuan Woman:

- Feels lonely and isolated as a Rukyuan woman, must hide her culture to succeed.
- Discusses the hard times a woman has had, sees her family having, and her people are having.
- Surrounded by discrimination, death, and poverty.
- In the defense essay, the author says she doesn't care about blood purity hierarchies, so she doesn't think her work negatively portrays anyone.

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