a shinagawa monkey

Eileen, Emma, and Mark begin their presentation highlighting the feminist criticism of a selected short story, "A Shinagawa Monkey". The opening consists of information about the author. The author of this short story is Haruki Murakami, he is born in 1949. He is known for famous stories due to the way he writes about women and how organizes men being the protagonist while women are looked at as objects. In this story, Mizuki is a married woman in her 20's who has trouble remembering her name, although this issue doesn't carry over for anything else,  just her name. She decides to keep this a secret because she is scared of cutting ties with any friends or family, she decides to meet with a therapist, Tetsuko Sakaki. She discusses events in her life and Ms.Sakaki is able to solve Mizuki's problem. The presenters depict a flashback to Mizuki's private school, Yuko had asked Mizuki to keep her name tag as she was going to a funeral and never actually returned. The reality is that a monkey actually stole Mizuki and Yuko's nametags, the monkey is in love with Mizuki, when the monkey is detained, it reveals that Mizuki did not have any loved ones and doesn't even love her own husband. Her own parents didn't want any connection to her, so they sent her away to private school. Mizuki's appearance is overall described very little in the story. The presenters discuss power dynamics, gender roles and expectations, intersecitonality, voice and narrative structures. The presenters go into greater detail to explain details to the audience. Finally, the activity is introduced. The class is split into groups and each group is assigned a short story by the same author, Haruki Murakami. The presentation was well communicated and had a lasting impression on me, I learned a lot about the different aspects of the feminist lens.