Feminist criticism of "Gamma Rays"

Consider the portrayal of the female characters in The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds from a feminist critic's perspective. What do you notice?

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a feminist critique or reading of this play is the fact that Paul Zindel, a man, wrote a play that has almost exclusively female characters in it. This would make me want to look closely and try to figure out what he does which each of them-- how he constructs them to represent women or femininity in general. (My personal opinion is that none of the characters have enough depth, and what they do show us is not great).

For example, Beatrice and Ruth are contrasted with Tilly because they both wear lipstick, smoke, and talk about or are referenced as having relationships with men (in Ruth's case not terribly explicitly)-- in other words, they have characteristics that are "stereotypically" feminine or female, whereas Tilly is just interested in her science project, and shows no "typically" (or stereotypically) feminine characteristics. Although a brief and perhaps superficial examination, I feel that this is one example of what a feminist critique might show when thinking about this play.

Although this is certainly not all there is to these characters, I felt that there were no positively strong female characters, and that not of them are telling a "feminine" story that is distinct and unique. Perhaps because the feminist reading can be so diverse and can look at a work from so many angles there might be something in this play that would be positively read in a feminist critique.

What I noticed the most when thinking about this play from a feminist perspective was how flat all the characters were. I know this may be my personal opinion of the play getting in the way... Mostly the fact that it was written by a man and the lack of depth in the characters make me feel like a feminist critique would tear this play apart.

What makes Judy Blundell's book worthy of the National Book Award?

I thought that What I Saw and how I lied was well-written for the YA age group and that the story was compelling. Considering it's worthiness for the award, I would say that it was probably judged based on the way the story was constructed-- as a fairly dark coming -of-age story that has historical merit as well as romantic intrigue. I really enjoyed this book, especially because it was a little more adult in its content. Who wouldn't?! On a serious note, the message that the book sends isn't about just doing the right thing all the time, and it doesn't present clear, cut-and-dry situations that get resolved at the end. By the end of the book, there are still so many questions (as we saw in class). Evie learns so much and grows up a lot, but has to make an extremely difficult decision which is not necessarily the right or moral thing to do. Like we said in class, it shows how complicated life and relationships can be, while creating an intriguing and well-constructed story in a very interesting time period. I think it was well-deserving of the award.

Reactions to a novel written in verse (late because I got food poisoning last week and totally forgot!)

Reading a novel like Make Lemonade was interesting because I had never read a novel like that before, and had only enjoyed poetry in very different ways-- getting it in smaller doses for a class or just for fun. When I first heard it was going to be all in verse, I was nervous about the possibility of reading a bunch of rhyming, cheesy poems strung together to make a novel. I was pleasantly surprised to find this wasn't the case... Not that I thought we would read something bad, just that thinking about a YA novel written in verse makes me immediately think like that. I was a little suspicious. I think I have mostly been exposed to either classical poetry (I'm a French major, so a lot of 19th century sonnets come to mind) or really contemporary or more abstract poetry and verse. Make Lemonade is really great because it is just a bunch of free verse poems connecting together to make a whole story. Wolff didn't make it seem too contrived, which was a good thing. Her style seemed really innovative to me because I have never seen anything like that done. I loved it. It was not what I was expecting at all, and was very different from what I was used to. Having LaVaughn be the speaker of the novel also made all the poems have a really interesting feeling. I thought it was wonderful.