Our book club discussed Veil of Roses on Tuesday. I highly suggest this book to anyone and everyone. The title of today's blog is what the main character, Tami, photographs while she is here in America to get married and hopefully stay. What I love about this book is how the author can take something as simple as going to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks into something wonderful and typically American. As I was reading the book again before Tuesday, I was struck yet again by how lucky we are to live in a country where we can vote, read what we want to, speak out against our leader, pretty much anything we want to do, without fear of recrimination from our government.
I was watching the news last night and NBC is doing a series of special reports-last night it was from Congo about the plight of women there during the civil war that's going on in that country. Apparently Congo has one of the highest rates of rape in the world and there are women are being raped by soldiers, left for dead, so badly abused that some die. After they recover and are taught a useful skill, they can't even go back to their villages because they are ostracized by their husbands and families. Today, I was reading an article on the internet about a Saudi Arabian woman that's been accused of "witchcraft" and is in danger of losing her life. Women in Saudi Arabia can't drive, be seen without a male relative in public or even leave the country without a male relative's permission.
As women in this country, we are free to speak in public, walk down the street in whatever clothes we want, pursue whatever career we want, run for President if we want, worship whatever God we choose. We don't have to worry about police watching us on the street, torturing us or taking us away from our families. As we were talking in book club Tuesday, people complain about how "bad" we have it. We don't have it bad. We're incredibly blessed and we need to remember that fact. Here, I can be who and what I want to be and so can every other woman or girl that lives here, no matter what.
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3 comments:
I watched that same news on the plight in the Congo and it made me think of the discussion at book club and I wrote a post very similar to yours! Ooooooo...eerie!
I'm telling you-we great minds think alike!
Amen Sister! When I was about your age, I went through a semi-feminist stage (whatever that means) and thought that it was terribly unfair that women didn't make as much $$ as men for the same jobs, that women were denied access to some careers, that women who worked outside of the home also had to come home to the "second shift of laundry and cooking, etc. As the years went by, however, I read a lot of stuff that woke this gal up big time.
About the Congo situation, I remember sitting in the library one sunny Saturday morning reading an Oprah magazine that was filled with stories of absolute horror. The contrast between what those women and children were going through right that very morning as I was leisurely reading in a beautiful book-filled library struck me with such force that I felt sick.
Thanks for choosing such a good book. I'm almost through with it!
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