{"id":359,"date":"2016-06-20T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/?p=359"},"modified":"2017-05-02T23:15:04","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T23:15:04","slug":"rawson-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/2016\/06\/20\/rawson-1\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00c0 Propos: Memories of The Lover"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ata-fld-newsletter-logo\"<\/a>Have you ever had a lover?\u00a0 Have you ever been a lover?\u00a0 Or, perhaps a better question, is there someone who is the<\/em> love(r) of your life?\u00a0 Have you ever lived or dreamed a love so beautiful, so real, that it could not have possibly existed?\u00a0 Are you haunted by memories of what was or what could have been?\u00a0\u00a0 Some nights, maybe only in your dreams, does that become your reality?\u00a0 Do you wonder what love really is?\u00a0 What it looks like?\u00a0 How it smells?\u00a0 How it feels?\u00a0 Reading L\u2019Amant<\/em> (The Lover<\/em>) by Marguerite Duras brings up these questions and more.\u00a0 Written in 1984 and winner of the Prix Goncourt, France\u2019s most prestigious literary prize, The Lover<\/em> skyrocketed the already well-known Duras to international acclaim.\u00a0 Its theme of forbidden but powerful love continues to resonate with readers today.<\/p>\n

The Lover<\/em> is the story of a poor, white, 15-year-old French girl living in French-colonized Indochina (present-day Vietnam) in the early 20th<\/sup> century. She falls in love\u2014or, if you don\u2019t believe it\u2019s love, has a torrid physical affair with\u2014a rich, 27-year-old Chinese man.\u00a0 China\u2019s colonization over Vietnam has been shattered by the French, and those people remaining are permitted to stay, in part because of their wealth or contributions.\u00a0 These two broken and resilient people come from vastly different worlds.\u00a0 They could never connect.\u00a0 Yet, here she is, alone.\u00a0 He\u2019s intrigued, she\u2019s amazing.\u00a0 Nothing could possibly come of this.\u00a0 Or could it?<\/p>\n

Could<\/em> such a love be real?\u00a0 Could a poor little abused white girl in colonized Vietnam really fall in love with an older, rich and powerful rich Chinese man?\u00a0 Could he love her?\u00a0 Is this just a form of prostitution? After all, he gives her money to give her family, and he enjoys a sexual relationship with his would-be colonizer, reversing, challenging, and twisting traditional roles of race, power, and gender. (This is a generalization, but traditionally, the Chinese were, and perhaps still are, hated by the Vietnamese.)<\/p>\n

It is the story of love, yes, but also of survival and death: the girl survives her father\u2019s death, an abusive family, the death of her beloved brother, and more.\u00a0 And she loves.\u00a0 She loves her French roommate at boarding school.\u00a0 She loves her brother.\u00a0 And then there is her lover.\u00a0 Our protagonists have no names, which creates a kind of slippage, allowing the reader to enter the text in a way.\u00a0 The open language, lapses, white spaces, and wide margins (in traditionally type-set editions) allow those who have been marginalized, those with no voices, to enter and speak.\u00a0 In fact, Duras\u2019s writing style, characterized as l\u2019\u00e9criture feminine<\/em> by noted French feminist H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cixous, creates a cloud-like world where time loses meaning.<\/p>\n

The language is deceptively simple.\u00a0 The narrative, however, does not follow a linear train of thought.\u00a0 Instead, the story weaves around an aged narrator whose face has been ravaged by time and alcoholism and who reminisces about her \u201ctrue\u201d self and the infinite incarnations of that self throughout her life.\u00a0 The text invites the reader into her world.\u00a0 We are there when her brother dies, when her best friend leaves to get married, when she is excited about school, when she remembers her mother singing.\u00a0 It is fuzzy at first, and the reader is disoriented.\u00a0 But let it go.\u00a0 Go with it.\u00a0 Let it wash over you like the waves along the Mekong.\u00a0 Imagine the bustle and smells of the Cholen, the section of Saigon known as Chinatown.\u00a0 Feel the warm sun and the cool shade of the lovers\u2019 love nest.\u00a0 You will be taken on an incredible journey into a world that explores the very nature of memory, love, power, betrayal, and reconciliation.<\/p>\n

Truth is somewhat elusive in this powerful text.\u00a0 In some interviews, Duras claimed the text was autobiographical, but the text is classified as a work of fiction.\u00a0 There are contradictions in the text that always bother my students, but to me, these differences explore the concept of memory, how it changes, and how it works against us as time passes.\u00a0 Our cherished memories lose part of their reality as we write them, rewrite them, and replay them in our attempts to relive them and hold on to them.\u00a0 The truth is lost.\u00a0 We can feel it slipping away sometimes, causing us to hold on tighter.\u00a0 We attempt another revision or ignore any disparities until there is no longer an outside perspective.\u00a0 We look in the mirror and no longer see the adult we have become; only we can still see the young girl or boy, perhaps na\u00efve and ignorant in their world view but worldly all the same and ready to embark on an adventure.download film Walk with Me 2017 now<\/a><\/p>\n

The narrator looks in the mirror and sees not the woman withered from age and trauma but her true self, herself at fifteen and a half.\u00a0 I can too see this girl boldly crossing the Mekong on a ferry wearing her threadbare hand-me-down silk dress, a man\u2019s pink fedora, her brother\u2019s belt, and gold lam\u00e9 high-heeled shoes.\u00a0 The wind is blowing her braided hair.\u00a0 Her face is warmed by the hot Vietnamese sun as water splashes against the boat.\u00a0 Then she notices the black limousine, hiding the silhouette of a delicate Chinese man.<\/p>\n

Their story is one that I recommend you read.\u00a0 Be prepared for confusion, twists, and challenges.\u00a0 Be prepared to have your memory stimulated.\u00a0 Your past loves and lovers may come to mind as you navigate this beautiful and tragic world.\u00a0 The text haunts me, in the best ways.\u00a0 The last few pages, especially the last paragraph, always give me shivers.\u00a0 My students do always not understand; most have not been or had lovers.\u00a0 They have not been all-consumed.\u00a0 They still like the text but they wonder.\u00a0 They have questions.\u00a0 As someone with some experience in life, I have some answers.\u00a0 My answer is yes.<\/p>\n

Gay Rawson
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Gay Rawson<\/em> is a professor of French with over 20 years of teaching, translating and interpreting experience.\u00a0 Twentieth-century French literature is one of her many passions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever had a lover?\u00a0 Have you ever been a lover?\u00a0 Or, perhaps a better question, is there someone who is the love(r) of your life?\u00a0 Have you ever lived or dreamed a love so beautiful, so real, that it could not have possibly existed?\u00a0 Are you haunted by memories of what was or … Continue reading \u00c0 Propos: Memories of The Lover<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}