Sec A #1 –

-One out of five female students on college campuses will experience sexual assault. If there was a university-wide reading of “S. A Novel About the Balkans” by Slakenka Drakulic, it would change campus culture for the better. The women affected by war essentially have no name, no life, and are nothing, but humiliated by male soldiers. This is the case in sexual assault on campus. In Reading S, it would allow for women to feel more comfortable about talking of rape, and bring light to the spectrum, instead of rape being the extreme. It would bring awareness to students on how going through war takes away a persons name, and life.
On investingwest.org, many women at a campus explain their experiences after being sexually assaulted. “Both women say the schools’ handling of their cases compounded their trauma, and both point to insensitive handling that ranged from inappropriate questioning to being required to go through mediation sitting near the man they had accused” This is in issue among many campuses, and a sexual assault seminar should be apart of every school orientation, women should feel comfortable to talk about rape.
Each character in the novel only has their first initial as their name besides two characters, Maj and Brit who were not apart of the war. “Were not human anymore, thinks S. the camp has stopped us from feeling human. How will we ever get used to living outside the camp again?” (Drakulic 130) from this quote alone we are able to understand what the victims went through; therefor we can understand war, it is meant to be hostile and to humiliate victims, especially women over men. The women are taken into the “women’s room” and brutally raped by Serbian soldiers.In reading S. men should see that the “power” they believe they have is great, is not so great. By reading this novel it should bring students together to be able to talk about rape and to raise awareness. Hopefully decreasing the amount of sexual assault on campus.

-Literature by woman is important in our society; it is needed to make changes in our fast growing world by growing awareness. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) declared “systematic rape” and “sexual enslavement” in time of war a crime against humanity. The ICTY investigated the different levels of responsibility of the Yugoslavia people’s Army and the leadership of Serbia for the war crimes committed by the Serbs in other republics of former Yugoslavia, while the government of Serbia was tasked with numerous fugitives from the Tribunal. According to theguardian.com many crimes were committed by Serbian military during the wars; The crimes included ethnic cleansing, systematic rape, and genocide. The International court of Justice, cleared the Republic of Serbia of direct involvement in genocide, but found that it had failed to prevent mass killings, rapes, and ethnic cleansing. After the wars in the 1990’s many military personnel were convicted of war crimes, some of them are still on trial. Literature by woman is needed to make concrete change in the world; there are many incidents of violent abuse towards woman that many people do not know of, such as the female genital mutilation a procedure to remove external female genitalia, which still happens today. Or places like the “Womens room” From the novel S. Many woman writers like Slavenka Drakulic, Cynthia Ozick, Eavan Boland, and Gwendolyn Brooks, could help to make a concrete change, by talking about issues of abortion, anorexia, war, and rape.

-In the poems “Bleeding” and “Anorexic” as a reader you can put a human face on the story to greater understand. Visual poems arrange words as an important way to convey an intended effect on the reader. They are known as typographic poems, which mean they are shaped the way that goes with the theme of the poem.
In the poem “Bleeding” by May Swenson the poem is shaped jagged as if a knife cut right threw it. She uses apologetic phrases, such as “I would if I could”, “I’m sorry”, and “I know I hate that I cant.” In her poem there are actually two poems embedded inside. You can actually read the left side of the cut and the right side to receive another meaning. In the poem “Anorexic” by Eavan Boland the poem is skinny as if it were an anorexic woman, there are about 3-4 words per line. The poem uses a lot of descriptive sentences, such as “Body is a witch”, “Curves and paps and wiles”, “bitch is burning”, and “starved and curveless” to understand that this woman did not think clearly, her body was burning and she is starved. The poem is scary and dark, in such a way she is enclosed. “Keeping his heart much company” If she gives the man what he needs then she will be invisible, she will have no wants or needs.