"Entrapped Neighbour POV"
You are my new nextdoor neighbour who is simply obsessed with me. Every time you see me, you can't help but stop and try to talk with me. I always see you looking and gawping. Today I have invited you over to my house for a coffee, but you very quickly realise that I'm not quite the girl next door, rather, a cruel and terrorising dominatrix who wants to make you her new plaything.
Custom clip (order yours today!)
āļø Feminist Friday āļø
Jamaica Kincaid
Writer Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson on the Caribbean island of Antigua on May 25, 1949, when it was still under British colonial rule. At age three, Kincaid was taught to read by her mother but was later neglected when three boys were born to the family. Kincaid attended schools on the island, however with few opportunities available to females, she began apprenticing as a seamstress after school as a very you ng girl. Childhood experiences of exploitation and oppression would be integral themes in her later writing.
In 1965, soon after she turned 16, Kincaid left Antigua to work as an au pair in Scarsdale, New York. She earned a high school equivalency diploma and enrolled in photography classes. After finding her writing voice through poetry to accompany her photographs, Kincaid wrote a series of articles for Ingenue magazine, interviewing celebrities about their te en years. In 1974, she began writing for the New Yorker column, āTalk of the Town.ā Her first book, At the Bottom of the River (1983), gathers the stories she had published in the New Yorker between 1978 and 1979.
Kincaid changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid in 1973 at the age of 24 to both give her the anonymity needed to write about intensely personal material and to identify herself with a specific region of the Americasāa region marked by exploitation and the violent history of slavery. The process of renaming is a theme portrayed throughout Kincaidās works, where renaming is often used as a metaphor for conquest and colonial domination.
Other themes found throughout her texts include betrayal, loss, and division, all resulting from colonial exploitation and the disempowerment of women. Kincaidās anger at the colonial exploitation of non-white Caribbean people erupted in her book, A Small Place (1988). In her more recent work, Kincaid continues to explore the theme of domination but through the metaphor of gardening and plants. In 2005, she published Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya, a project funded by National Geographic.
A prolific writer, Kincaid has won several awards and two honorary doctorate degrees. Kincaid is now a visiting professor in the department of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University. She was recognized for The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) in 1997 as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and the OPN Faulkner Award. Kincaid and her family live in Bennington, Vermont.
Iām thinking of a name to call my slave-base. I like āSerenitesā, but I thought Iād hold an open forum to see what you yourselves suggest! Once I have a good handful of suggestions, I will put it to a vote. The winner will get a free custom vid. If I win, well.... Iāll have to think of something else š
Post your suggestions below. What should my slave / fan base be known as hence forth?
āļø Feminist Friday āļø
Isabella of Aragon
Warning: Problematic Feminist
Isabela I of Castile and Leon was the Queen of the majority of what is now Spain, at the very beginning of its time as a Great Power. She is generally spoken of as one half of Isabela and Ferdinand, the Catholic monarchs of Spain. She reigned as Queen of Castile and Leon (which is the majority of what is now Spain) from 1474 until 1504. Her husband Ferdinand reigned as King of Aragon from 1479, which united most of what is now Spain under a joint head of State. Their motto was āTanto monta (or monta tanto), Isabel como Fernandoā, āThey amount to the same, Isabel and Ferdinandā.
Isabela was born from her fatherās second marriage, and when she was born, was third in line to the throne of Castile, after her half brother Henry, and her younger brother Alfonso. Henry became King, and she and her brother were left in his care, by the terms of her fatherās will. Henry wasnāt particularly interested in them. Rather, he was keen to have his own children succeed him to the throne. Unfortunately, he didnāt have much luck there, with no children from his first wife, and the only ch ild from his second marriage (Joanna) being strongly rumoured to have been fathered by someone else.
So after her brother Alfonso died, Isabela was regarded by many in Spain as the most legitimate heir available. Henry tried to control her by controlling her marriage, and during a 10 ye ar period she was betrothed to four or five different princes or Kings from the region. In the end, though, she took matters into her own hands, and arranged her own marriage with Ferdinand, who was heir to the neighbouring Kingdom of Aragon. After considerable subterfuge, they married in 1469, with Isabel sneaking out of court pretending to visit her fatherās tomb, and Ferdinand disguising himself as a merchant to visit the kingdom of Castile.
Her brother did name her formally as his successor, so when he died in 1474, Isabela was theoretically Queen. A considerable faction, however, preferred her brotherās daughter Joanna, and the neighbouring King of Portugal provided considerable support for Joannaās claim, which he backed up by marrying her himself. The resulting war lasted five years, with victory eventually going to Isabel, helped greatly by troops from her husbandās Aragon Kingdom. Once Isabela had her first son, John, in 1478, that cemented her claim, with the succession an important job for any Queen in those times.
Once she was firmly Queen, and Ferdinand had succeeded to the Aragon throne, they ruled their Kingdoms separately (there was no political union, save at the top) but jointly. Their motto, āTanto monta (or monta tanto), Isabel como Fernandoā, āThey amount to the same, Isabel and Ferdinandā helped them to effectively run things in the otherās absence.
Although they didnāt make major changes to government structures, what they did do was to make the current government structures work. Isabela restored the finances of her Kingdom (Henry had sold off many estates to cement relationships at well below their true value) and abolished the key government positions who were there purely for patronage purposes, making sure that anyone who had a government position was there to do a particular job, rather than to deliver patronage and reap the benefits.
But these key changes are not what Isabela and Ferdinand are famous for. In 1492, they expelled Jews from Spain, completed their reconquest of Arabic Spain with the capture of Granada, and agreed to finance Christopher Columbusā expedition to the Indies (where he eventually discovered America). After the expulsion of the Jews, they ramped up the Inquisition (which they had established as a particularly Spanish organisation in 1480) and used it to ensure the orthodoxy of those who converted from Judaism and Islam to Catholicism (often with the use of tort ure to extract confessions).
Once their reconquest was complete, they devoted their time to setting up the Kingdom for future empire, with a series of dynastic marriages for their children, and the Inquisition devoted to making Spain a country with a single faith ā Roman Catholicism. At the same time, the Spanish explorers quickly moved to exploit their discoveries in South America, and the riches that were on offer there. Their grandson, Charles V, ended up with an enormous empire, including the low countries, much of Italy, large parts of South America, as well as Spain itself.
Isabela died in 1504, leaving her husband Ferdinand as the regent for their daughter Joanna (known as Joanna the mad) and grandson Charles. The territory she brought to the marriage made her the senior partner in the joint monarchy.
