Book report

Author: Judith Butler

Title: Gender Trouble: feminism and subversion of identity
Publication Information: 1999, New York, Routledge
Genre: essay
This book was first published in 1990, it culminates with the gender discussion started
in the sevenths. In the scenario of gender books, Butler essay is not the most recent,
but it is certainly one of the most original works ever published in the field of queer
studies.
The book is divided in three chapters. The first discuss the concept of “ Sex, Gender
and Desire”; the second the “ Prohibition , Psychoanalysis, and the Production of
Heteroxessual Matrix”; and the third has the title “ Subversive Bodily Acts”.
In this book, Butler began by pointing out one of the main concerns of feminism
movements, which is the approach that privileges gender in the perspective that is
negative to the struggle against sexual discrimination. She takes very serious the need
to present the mechanism that constituted gender, sex and desire as a subversion of
these identities.
For her, the respect to the difference does not necessary means the lack of moral
boundaries, however it implies a new way of thinking the binary Man/ Woman.
What makes the reading of this book hard it is the constant references to others
sciences, such as philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalyses and the different political
perspective; she takes to argue her point of view. She does so, trying to come up with
news concepts for gender, power, subjectivities, etc.
The innovation in this book, it is that Butler does not talk about gender just in a
logical way, but also in a sensitive manner, making the reader to get distance from the
traditional ways of thinking gender.
Her great contribution is in the formulation of the concept that give name to the book:
Gender Trouble. The significance of this concept is vast. As I said before, Butler does
not agree to the binary form of Man/ Woman or Heterossexual/ Homossexual. For
her, this dichotomy cause trouble to people, institutions, public power and so on.
Before, to determinate the gender we had biological criterion, but now what
characterize a gender? That is the question she tries to answer in this book.
In order to do so, she evokes others feminist, nevertheless she disagree with another
binary form: Sex/ Gender. Because for others feminist, sex is biological and gender is
cultural, but for Butler to assume that is to embrace pre-discursive structures.

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For this author, sex is a result of gender constructions. It is her understanding that the
same pre-discursive structure that helped in women empowerment, helps, in the other
hand, less tolerant attitudes through the expression of sexualities because of the body.
She gives the example of the judicial comprehension of gender, that allows one of
two ways: Female or Male.
To her, in order to solve this issue, is not enough to create a third gender to the moral
pattern. It is necessary to understand gender as an action in transitory identities and in
the discourse of sexual differences. The importance of this book is that it take the
individuality as someone that does not always have autonomy.
Is this concepts of Gender Trouble enough to designated the various situation in
which it was created, it is difficult know, but it allows us to think about it in a
different way.

Author: Kate Furnivalle

Title: The Russian Concubine
Publication Information: 2007, Porto Editora.
Genre: Novel
The author wrote this novel in memory of her mother that lived in Russia, China and
India as a child. In order to write the fictional work, the author had to make some
research about the social, political and cultural background of Russia and China.
The book tells a love story between a Russian girl, Lidia, and a Chinese boy, Chang
An Lo. Lidia had come to China when she was only five years old with her mother,
trying to escape from the Bolsheviks revolution in Russia. They find peace in a small
town of Junchow.
They lived in an international colony, among French, English, Italians, Japanese and
Americans people. This small town is geographically divided into nationalities. We
can say that is a fictional work with a true background. It tells the story of the young
couple, but, at the same time, the reader can have an idea of how was China in the
early Twenties.
The book shows us how the different nationalities see each other, how the Europeans
sees the Chinese and vice versa. Through the various characters, we can see different
points of view. For the Chinese character such as Mei li, Chang An Lo, Fen Tu Hong,
Mr. Liu the foreign are not always welcome, because they brought bad thinks to their
country.
The young couple can be seen as what could be ideal in this situation, in other words
the nation can come together, respecting each other’s differences to create a better
world.

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In the same sense, the character Theo, Lidia’s teacher is a good example of what the
relationship between china and the Europeans could be. Theo is a young man that
came to China and tries his best to know China culture and language. He can speak
Mandarin, which shows respect and recognition to Chinese people. He is in love with
Mei Li, a Chinese girl and daughter of a drug Baron, Fen Tu Hong. Her father reject
her, because of her relation with Theo, because he is not Chinese.
The character Christopher Mason represent all the bad things about the British
Empire. He is a corrupt man that seeks advantage in any situation. For him, Chinese
people had no value. He has no moral boundaries. During the narrative, Mason
engage with Theo in an illegal business and we see in the many dialogues they have,
how antagonist they are. Theo represent the foreign that understand his role in a
distant culture, he speaks mandarin and for him China is his new home and Mason
represents the English that want to colonized China and therefor see nothing else
instead his own objective.
It is my opinion that, this love story is not the main story in this book. The principal
issues in this book is how different cultural, languages live together in the same place
and how British Empire tries to sustain his supremacy in a country like China.
It is a story about others, in other words, how the different European see each other
when they are not in Europe, the way the British rule the colony, despite the fact that
they are not in their country and how the Chinese people see these European invaders.
In the other hand, this book allow me to learn many aspects of China history, such as
the struggle of the communist to create a better society. That is well represent by the
main character in this book.

Author: Deepak, T. R.
Title: The Expression of Love and Death in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry
Publication Information: 2016, the Literary Herold Journal
Genre: essay
This paper have the main objective to study the expression of love and death in two
poems by Emily Dickinson: “The soul selects her own society” and “I heard a fly
Buzz when I died”.
The author of this paper start by characterize Dickinson’s epoch. As we know, Emily
Dickinson was born in 1930 and died in 1886. This period is considered as a broken
age, when America received many Europeans refugees.
Emily Dickinson start written poems in an early age that is why she is called a born
poet. Her poetry is simple and brief. She follows her own rules when it came to
punctuation, chose of words or verse variety.
Most of Dickinson’s love poems shows the encounter of the lovers. However, after
they meet they separated and they cannot experience that love in a complete way. For

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her a complete live does not involve a male partner necessarily. For Deepak the love
poems of Dickinson shows not just the happiness but also the frustration in love.
In the analyses that he make of the poems, we can see that for him the poems reflects
the human soul. For example in the poem, “The soul selects his own society” we can
experience the sublimation of the human obsession about love. If we considered the
rhythm and metre it can be seen as a simple love lyric. Nevertheless, it is a poem
about society, but a society without violence or distraction. By experience love, the
world can became paradise. In the second poem, the poet is the bride and death is the
lover. We can realized her way she sees death, not as a punishment, but as freedom.
Emily Dickinson wrote many poems about the theme of death. She was determent to
understand death and what it bring to her own life. She considered death immortal and
for her it has a divine place in nature.
Dickinson does not approach death in the same way in all her poems about this issue,
but we can say that for her death still a mystery. The poem “I heard a Fly Buzz” can
be seem as a symbolic of her own faith. For her the soul goes to the kingdom of the
Absolute.
We can say that she recognize that death is an important phenomenon, but a natural
one. Her poems portrait a reality different from the Age she lived and this is
exemplified in the way she sow death.