Madness in Southern China : illness as metaphor in Su Tong\u27s The tale of the siskins and Madwoman on the bridge

In Su Tong’s novels, the term madness is more than a medical term and it carries metaphorical meanings. In The Tale of the Siskins and “Madwoman on the Bridge,” Su Tong uses madness as a metaphor to challenge the dichotomy between normality and abnormality, and draws an analogy between mental hospitals and contemporary society. Unlike Yu Hua’s 余華 (1960-) novels, which intertwine sanguinary violence with madness, Su Tong depicts madness mainly to unveil the absurdity of the Mahogany Street. This paper analyses the use of patients’ illnesses in mental hospitals as metaphors in these two stories. In “Madwoman on the Bridge,” Su Tong displaces the role of doctors and madmen. In The Tale of the Siskins, Su Tong dismantles the clear-cut distinction between normality and abnormality. By reversing the two signifying concepts of normality and abnormality, Su Tong leads us to re-assess a variety of conventions, customs and acts we deem reasonable and legitimate in contemporary society

Heirlooms

Tools have always played an important role in my life. Whether I was in my dad\u27s workshop or my grandfather\u27s garage, I always had a fascination with tools. As a child, my father encouraged me to explore the use of different tools in his woodshop. As he showed me how to use them, I became the next generation to learn the skills of a craftsman. In the past few years, I have been handed down tools from both sides of my family. Most of these tools are from my father and grandfathers, although some are from my great grandfather. The history of these tools shows through the wear patterns that have emerged over the generations. The tools are extensions of my father, grandfathers and great-grandfather\u27s hands- a lineage that I have become a part of when I use these tools. To me, these tools have become much more than their original intention because of their connection to my family history. Therefore I created reliquaries for these tools. Historically, reliquaries contain bones of a holy person or objects touched by that person, and often mimic the relic it enshrines. These are claimed to posses the power and soul of that person through the relic inside. The containers that I created are castings of the objects the tools were used to repair. Inside these containers are the actual items handed down to me. This approach provides context for a narrative between the tool, reliquary, and my family history

The imaginary of the name

In wide areas, including Albania, names were fixed as patronymics and family surnames, showing that their context fluctuation is related to a relative transmissible fixity which must make possible an instrumental politics in naming practice as well as the assertiveness of a kind of individual agency, especially by means of nicknames. Such an emphasis on naming practice and politics thus must lead us to understand the interplay between identity and power

Islands of Grass by Trevor Herriot and The Long Walk by Jan Zwicky

Review of Trevor Herriot\u27s Islands of Grass and Jan Zwicky\u27s The Long Walk

Streams in the Wilderness

Miranda Beale analyzes two award-winning novels by Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004) and Home (2008), identifying their major themes as the necessity of balancing parental responsibility and God\u27s loving guidance and redemptive power in raising children

The Dughwede in NE-Nigeria : montagnards interacting with the seasons

We can conclude that the Dughwede calendar lasts for two seasonal years, marked by the bull festival as a culminating and turning point. All ritual and agricultural activities are interlinked and need to be seen comprehensively together with the social and cosmological order to understand the underlying cultural pattern. The year is dramatized throughout the seasons to keep the communication between the natural and spiritual forces, both creatively reflected in the individual person. The traditional world was kept in balance as a functional equilibrium over a period of time not known to us, but is now moving towards a process of transformation initiated by structural historical change. The first step towards change is the change of moral values which affects possibly first individuals and then groups. This encourages them to give up the traditional way of interacting with their environment. This process can be described as secularisation and leads to another quality of relationship between man and his natural environment. The same process can also be described as socio-economic change