Our Social Ghosts @oursocialghosts1050hc - Tumblr Blog

Mean 141-175

The thing that stood out to me the most in this section was the lasting effect of Myriam’s assault. Clear signs of PTSD are showing in that she keeps feeling her assault as if it is happening over and over again as she is trying to continue living her everyday life. The unfortunate truth is that in order to get back to her everyday life and not have to confront it as often (although I do admit it will still find its way back into her life in some form) she would have to confront it head on. I’m glad she ended up getting therapy after she initially completely disregarded it, as this was the biggest step for her healing. It provided her the space to begin to process and confront what happened to her in a healthy way rather than letting it consume her. I think that writing this book was ultimately the greatest form of healing for Gurba. It provided her with the platform to process everything that happened to her years after the fact and to educate others on the topic. I think it is extremely important how she was able to reclaim so much that should have been ruined for her through all of her trauma. Although she was molested in history class while her teacher looked on, she surrounded herself with history for the rest of her life. She went on to become a history teacher herself, ensuring that nothing like she experienced would happen under her watch. This demonstrates growth from even her college years, when she was so angry at all men for her rape and decided to ruin some married man in the way that her rapist had ruined her. Myriam Gurba is an excellent example of strength and perseverance through anything and everything that life can put a person through. No matter what happens to you, you can do the work and come out a stronger and better person for it.

Meghan Tully

During the book we look into different mental health struggles especially PTSD. Earlier, Myriam said that the only mental health problem one can give someone else is PTSD and we end up seeing this through Myriam’s experiences. Myriam was given PTSD from her rapist that one day. She struggles with an experience in which she felt the hands of a man grabbing her from behind and she began to run away however every time she turned around to see the man, no one was there. This shows how her trauma is affecting her everyday life and how she has taken a toll emotionally from one specific man. Also, having to relive her experience numerous times because people of authority asked her to go through what happened again. This definitely did not make things any easier for her and her signs of PTSD. The district attorney called after the police had asked her numerous times. I found it interesting and terrifying that she made a comment about wanting to have sex with a married man and to break a family up. Overall, she has an interesting way of dealing with her feelings and her sense of humor can be quite strong.

-Jessie Jasie

End of Mean

After reading the end of Mean by Myriam Gurba the ending of the book was almost a direct answer to the guided reading questions. Her relationship with the ghost of Sophia is most certainly interesting. She feels as if Sophia is going to be with her constantly, not as a burden but in good spirits. She constantly feels connected to her. On page 175 she described this feeling as “she still doesn't leave me alone… sometimes I linger on a station and wonder, why am I listening to this? Then I realize she's listening to this. She described this feeling as having Sophia live through her and guide her through life. Myriam has had a complicated and difficult life, she has experienced a lot of trauma, and a lot of the things and accomplishments she described make you proud of her. Her becoming a teacher is a big deal. Teachers are there to be supportive and help students get through the hard times and I believe that she would be an incredible teacher. Myriam's life and traumatic past make you happy for her overcoming these challenges put in her path. She constantly thinks about her past and her abusers at the end of this book as well, I found it interesting how she is so interested in history, however, whenever she thinks of history she thinks of her rape. She uses history to remember her past as well as influence her life from this point forward as a teacher and mentor. I think that Sophia's ghost will be Myriam's guardian angel and watch her succeed in life, the relationship described between her and Sophias ghost is one she will take to her death. The ghost is not a haunting one it's a loving one.

-Thomas Purcell

End of Mean

After finishing the book, I view Myriam’s end resolution as being very profound. Throughout college she continues to struggle with PTSD after experiencing rape and describes the memory of her attacker wanting to run with her on her workouts (142). This analogy symbolizes the never ending pain that occurs after such a traumatic event and she is having a difficult time moving forward without the haunting memories of him. While in college it seems like Myriam went through a stage of destructive tendencies that really did not do her any good, for example, the unprompted interaction with one of her professors. I think she really was going through a phase of not really knowing where she fit into the world; however, in the Fall semester of 1997 she took almost all history classes and got her degree cum laude in 1999. On page 162 when Myriam tells the reader she got a job teaching history I felt immense satisfaction and even pride for her. Aside from the irony of becoming a history teacher herself after getting molested in history class as a young girl, there is deep meaning behind her career choice as I truly believe Myriam has a lot to teach other people. After overcoming many struggles throughout her life as a queer, Mexican woman, she is able to give students a real life world perspective about learning lessons and the hard truths of life. By the end of the book, Myriam has accepted that a part of Sophia will always remain with her. “She enjoys sunsets through me. She enjoys the smell of certain flowers through me. It’s ok for ghosts to exist through me. It has to be” (175). To me, it seems both Mryiam and Sophia are at peace. Mryiam does not feel the ghostly haunting but a duty to enjoy life, listening to music, eating food, and watching sunsets for Sophia.

-Kendra Link

I feel like pages 118-140 triggered a roller coaster of emotions for most of the readers. This section of reading was obviously very sensitive but it was surprising to see how Gurba still stuck to her style of cracking jokes. I feel like this creates a feeling that encourages engaging in uncomfortable conversation. Everyone is uncomfortable with what she is explaining but the way she jokes about how she thought that it was “Elizabitch” was coming to surprise her and thought “‘She’s come to surprise me!’ My thoughts happen in lasagnas, in layers of meats, noodles, and cheeses, and the thought under the Elizabitch one was very different” (Gurba 118). The manner in which she turns the demeanor of a sentence from a joke into an eerie feeling is very interesting. Gurba is really talented at striking the reader’s emotions. Miriam’s experience with the nurse for example, was completely unexpected and enraging. It makes you think how a school nurse can stay employed after telling a rape victim to “stop crying! … You’re going to have to get over this, she said. These kinds of things happen. You're going to have to get over this” (Gurba 122). That is absolutely unacceptable and it was so surprising to read. I feel like it would have been so much more expected if it came from a man, but I think Gurba purposely made the nurse a woman to also discuss that women can be dismissive towards gender violence as well. Similarly to how Patricia said “I’ve worked with women who've been abused and raped. I volunteer at a women’s shelter too, and some of the ladies, … ‘I think they like it’” (Gurba 106). It provokes the same reaction of “How can someone say something like that?” I appreciate that she does this because this is another important point that I do not think many people consider. Another point that she casually made was how it was comforting that the detective taking her statement would cringe at some of the words she said. As if it was expected that he would be cold and hard and even would have victim blamed her. I think one of Gurba’s points of this book is to suggest that there are a concerning amount of harmful preconceptions that are very prevalent in our society and she wants to see them be discussed more. -Aisha Young

Mean 118-140

In this section of reading, what immediately caught my attention was Myriam’s attempts to almost make her situation sound better while being assaulted. In all of her descriptions of the traumatic event, she sprinkles in ideas that can be seen as positive and even romantic out of context. When her rapist is groping her and she turns to see his face for the first time, the first thing she notices is that they were “close enough to kiss” (118). This adds even more gravity to the scene as it demonstrates the helplessness she was feeling. At that moment she knew what his intentions with her were, yet her first thought was one relating her situation with something positive. She goes on to say that his “smile held [her] captive” (118), which, out of context would be a very romantic phrase, yet here demonstrates the power he held over her in the moment. All she could do was separate herself from the situation and pray that it would end soon, until she eventually found herself stopping him without realizing it. This demonstrates her strength in that despite what was happening to her and her instinct to dissociate and separate herself from the experience, she found it in herself to save herself.

Meghan Tully

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 1 in every 5 women in the United States experience rape complete or attempted in their lifetime. This is an unsettling statistics. Just thinking about the fact that over 166 million women live in the US means approximately 33.2 million women will be raped in the United States in their lifetime. Reading about Myriam’s story really puts this statistic in perspective. Feminism has encouraged the shying away from the idea that women are taken advantage of because of what they wear but that does not mean people don’t still believe it, such as Myriam’s father. I was taken back when he told her to take her ripped jeans off because it showed that she was “asking for it” especially after all the trauma that she had been through especially after having to relive what happened and then having to immediately go back to the crime scene and then having to face the mugshots of offenders and so on and so on. The nurse at the school even yelled at her to stop crying and that she is just going to have to get over it. This also took me back because the school nurses are supposed to be there to be there for you and support you, not yell at you after being assaulted and basically just saying “suck it up, buttercup”. Hearing these types of stories really puts it into perspective unfortunately how common these assaults occur, but that does not mean someone should and can just get over it.

-Jessie Jasie

Mean pg. 118-140

While this section did have its humorous moments classic to Gurba’s style, this section was very hard to read. I was especially horrified at the reaction of the nurse who Myriam went to see after the incident and the way this woman handled the situation. “You’re going to have to get over this, she said. ‘These kinds of things happen. You’re going to have to get over this. Do you hear me?” (122). This reaction surprised me while at the same time did not surprise me at all given the time period and cultural differences. To me, it seems like a drastic, terrible response and I would expect more sympathy especially from a woman; however, I am sure there is a great deal of ignorance involved in that many girls are met with similar reactions especially in the past. On the previous page, Myriam describes the way the school secretaries looked at her, “It was the oh-god-she’s-been raped look. It was rotten to receive that look. I didn’t ever want to be looked at that way again” (121). Immediately after the incident, Myriam seems to feel a sense of guilt foreshadowing her thoughts on page 139 when she is subpoenaed. What stood out to me the most in this chapter was Myriam’s urge to run after the man right when it happened. She did not think about how she should have tried to catch him days or months later, but initially right after the incident when she sprinted after him “like a mouse chasing a lion” (119). Luckily her instincts told her to stop, but the guilt of not actually getting him and beating him up would continue to eat away alongside the PTSD. I think a lot of people who have yet to experience (and hopefully never do) such a horrific event do not realize how it stays with you for the rest of your life and makes what were once simple tasks like going to the grocery store, nearly impossible.

Kendra Link

Mean Pages 101-117

During this section of the book two sections stood out to me. To start off, within the first few pages we can tell that Myriam’s tone of voice has changed. It shows us a more serious side of Myriam and lets us see how she has become the person she is today. We finally learn as readers what Myriam’s connection to Sophia is. Towards the end of this section Myriam explains that she was raped by the same man who killed and raped Sophia Torres. She wrote, “I’ve never seen her, never touched her, but the man who touched me touched her too” (112). This quote is very deep and powerful. It shows how traumatized Myriam was from what he did to her and what he did to Sophia. This one man changed Myriam’s life forever and not in a good way. In this section we can start to feel Myriam’s pain when she talks about having survivors’ guilt. Myriam also talks about how Sophia did not have the middle-class privilege that she had growing up. This section of the book was incredibly emotional and allowed us to understand Myriam a lot better. Another part that stood out to me was when Myriam was eight years old and she sat in the bathroom looking at the women in Yuka’s father’s magazines. She stated, “I knew somehow I wanted to connect my body to these bodies, and the faces mattered, especially the lips and the eyes” (102). They clearly were not supposed to be looking at the magazines since they shut the bathroom door. I also believe that Myriam already knew she was lesbian just from taking one look at these. It also helped Myriam in the process of figuring out her identity.

Marissa Borgesi

MEAN

While reading this portion of the book, a lot of things stood out to me. My first reaction to the beginning of the reading was that Myriam has changed a lot, using different words, and even making up her own words things seem different. The word “hella'' was used many times throughout this part and it just shows how she has added some new slang to her vocabulary. On a more serious note, Myriam talks about the person who raped her. Stating that they were the same race, and how this person seemed like a normal human being. One of the less fortunate victims goes by the name Sophia Torres. Sophia's outcome was very much different from Myriams. My first reaction to the Sophia part was shock, knowing that people on this planet would actually do something like that makes me worried and shocked at the same time. Following right after this part was the poem that was shaped like a body. It's a very good poem in my mind because it uses a small amount of words and has a cool shape to it. Tying back into the Sophia part, Myriam talks about her privilege. When she talks about privilege she talks about being able to walk out of that alive. Sophia was just a regular person who ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

- Matthew Hendriks

While reading these passages of the book, Myriam talks about rape quite casually as it happens so often in her life. She passes over this section as if it made no impact on her life and it were just a run-of-the-mill occurrence. As a big fighter against rape, I would have thought that Myriam would have spoken about her experience rather than keeping it hidden away like a squirrel hides an acorn. I find it’s kind of humorous that she would go into detail about Sophia and how she feels related to her after going to detail about Sophia‘s conundrum without giving any details about her own experience for the reader to compare the two experiences. And then she made that poem in the shape of a woman out of the police report, and I thought wow what a odd way to make a poem. She doesn’t however speak about the way that she mentally thought of and objectified the centerfolds in the magazines of her friends but rather treats it as a a standard practice of society. I also felt kind of sad after telling us about her rape situation that her world suddenly turned around and now she doesn’t look at it the same way she did before she got raped.

-Jason Demers

#radio #realityvsfantasy whatisgoingtohappen #robots #long reads #new rp #rp #appless rp #repost #rap #reading

This section was interesting in the sense that Myriam’s experiences and stories had many levels. Being eight years old knowing English and enrolled in a Japanese school must have been somewhat difficult even though she does not make it seem like that. She shared the room with Yuka who was Japanese American but third or fourth generation so she was very much American. The instance about them looking at the magazines was also intriguing. They clearly were not supposed to be looking at the magazines since they shut the bathroom door. Myriam already knows she is lesbian just from looking at these. I think this acted as an accelerator in the process of Myriam figuring out her identity. It was also interesting to see her become a docent at the museum and talk with the elderly ladies. It was weird to read about Charming and the Poseidon society, and how she told Myriam it is never too early to start thinking about your death. I would be somewhat afraid if someone said that to me but Myriam just accepts Charming’s business card and says “I’ll definitely start thinking about this” (105). She also listens to Patricia talk about her thoughts on rape victims enjoying being raped. She seems to enjoy listening to and interacting with people who have very different views on society. Myriam was also raped by the same man who raped and killed Sophia. Her description of privilege being life and her feeling guilty for living is quite insightful into why she is haunted by Sophia’s death.

Emma Gannon

Mean: Pages 101-117

During this section of the book, I found it interesting how we finally figure out how Myriam is “related” to Sophia. Towards the end of this section, Myriam explains that she was raped by the man who killed and raped Sophia Torres. I thought it was interesting how she wrote, “ I’ve never seen her, never touched her, but the man who touched me touched her too '' (112). This quote gave me the chills because it shows how Myriam is very much traumatized by not only what the man did to her, but what he did to a complete stranger. It is crazy to think that someone who you do not know plays a huge role in your life.

This has got me thinking about a quote that Myriam has talked about throughout the book so far, “Guilt is a ghost”. Connecting to Sophia, Myriam also describes the role of privilege as well. Myriam describes how she had a more privileged life growing up in the US compared to Sophia and how this has been growing into the guilt she has felt since this horrible event. Through the differences in each other's lives, it does not matter where we live, how we dress, how we act, etc. The worst can happen to anyone regardless of where you are from or who you are and I believe this is where most of the guilt is from in Myriam because she knows that Sophia already had it a lot tougher and she did not deserve anything that has happened to her.

- Cassandra DeLegge

Mean Pages 101-117

I thought these few chapters were very deep and added the final piece of a lot of connections made earlier in the book. Myriam’s tone changed early on in the first few pages, and one could see how it was showing a more serious side of Myriam and letting us learn about how she become to be the person she was today. We finally learn as readers Myriam’s connection to Sophia, and how Myriam was raped by the same man that raped and killed Sophia. Myriam talks about feeling survivors guilt and you can really feel Myriam’s pain when she talks about this. Myriam also connects for the readers, the foreshadowing of the motif strawberries, and how since Sophia worked in a strawberry filed, that is why Myriam does not no longer enjoy strawberries. Myriam also talks about her guilt that Sophia did not have the middle-class privilege that she had growing up. The reading allowed us as readers to understand Myriam better, and carried an emotional tone throughout the chapters.

- Lydia Gugliuzza

Mean pages 101-117

There were a few things in this section of the reading that really stood out to me. Starting with when Myriam was 8 and she sat in the bathroom looking at the women in Yuka’s father’s magazines. She says, “I knew somehow I wanted to connect my body to these bodies, and the faces mattered, especially the lips and the eyes.” This scene feels to me that Myriam was both longing for a women like the ones in the magazine, as well as longing for a body and complexion like these women. I don't quite know how to feel about this situation. It reminds me of the impact that social media has on women today, how we have begun comparing ourselves to pictures we see on the internet rather than loving who we are. Another part of the reading that feels really important is how Myriam talks about rape. Her connection with Sophia now becomes clear as she discusses the topic. She talks about how after being raped, “you understand that you live in a world where getting classically raped is possible and that classical rapists ark, everywhere, even in impossible places.” This definitely makes me sad realizing that when people are violated in the way that Myriam and Sophia were, it lives with them for the rest of their lives. That having actually been raped, it becomes more real to the person as they realize that it could happen again at any given time. That’s a really scary thing to think about.

Emily Angelari

While reading this section I could not help but realize the shift in tone that Myriam displays. I could tell when starting off reading that it was gonna be a somewhat dark chapter as she isn’t as interested in art or seems as bubbly and sarcastic as she has while narrating in the past. But now, we as the reader finally learned why she cares so much about Sophia Torres and why “guilt is a ghost” (116). These 16 pages in my opinion were the most dark and serious pages I think I have read in this book. We learn that Sophia’s rapist was also Myriam’s which is why she feels so connected to her but we also learned that Sophia picked strawberries in fields. This reminded me of when Myriam was driving with her friends and saw Mexicans working in a field and she felt guilty that she did not have to do that as she had privilege. Not only were we already aware of Myriam’s survivors guilt but we now can better understand that she has guilt not only form surviving her rape but also for living a privileged life compared to Sophia. I can only imagine how Myriam must feel as that very easily could have been her and she can even admit her PTSD caused by it. The similarities between these two women are astonishing and for Myriam it must be hard to acknowledge this.

- Gabby Chase

The most recent reading of Mean made me think a lot of about my Criminology class. Recently, I have been learning about rape; what causes it, different types and how it has an effect on the victim. Reading the chapter Strawberry Picker really brought to light the idea of victim blaming. Victim blaming happens a lot in rape incidents as others blame the victim for putting themselves in this “situation”. This is one of the reasons why victims don’t report incidents of rape, as they don’t want to endure the experiences of having to relive everything and re-explain the situation to people that may not be as understanding.

Another type of victim blaming is initiated by the victim themselves. They blame themselves for what happened to them and this can lead to a lot of emotional and psychological “baggage”. When Myriam says “[t]he privilege of surviving doesn’t feel good. It makes me guilty” (p. 112) makes me think a lot of victims blaming as she feels she shouldn’t be alive and that doesn’t deserve the “privilege” of being alive. She seems as though she is experiencing some emotional trauma from the experience which is causing her to feel like she doesn’t deserve to live. This is why it is connecting to the concept of victim blaming for me

-Hayley Chang

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Our Social Ghosts