I am an Emotional Creature Blog 1

            One aspect of Ensler’s project that I am glad that she carried over into I am an Emotional Creature are the facts distributed throughout the book. I think that this is key to Ensler’s project and the structure of both The Vagina Monologues and I am an Emotional Creature and serve multiple purposes for Ensler’s project. One of the obvious purposes of having the facts distributed in both of the books is to inform people. I found the facts in both of the books to be very interesting and eye opening. A majority of the facts were something that I did not know or something that I never really thought about, or thought about in that sense. I feel as if some of the facts are topics that are known but never really thought about or discussed, just like vaginas and the emotional state of teenage girls. They are known, but dismissed. Because they are dismissed, they are never really discussed. The one that really stuck out to me was the one about the genocide. Even just sitting here thinking about it disturbs me. Which brings me to another one of the purposes: to get an emotional response. One of the purposes of both of these books is to get an emotional response out of the readers (or the viewers). The facts distributed throughout both of the books help Ensler to accomplish this goal by providing readers (and viewers) with eye opening information. My personal emotional response to some of the facts that I read in both of the books created just as much if not more of an emotional reaction than some of the monologues. One fact that I felt in my gut when I read it in I am an Emotional Creature was “A new report says of the estimated 300,000 child soldiers around the world, about 40 percent of them are girls. The girls are often front-line fighters or used as porters or cooks. Many are sexually abused.” Everyone knows that there are child soldiers all over the world, but many people do not realize how horrifying this fact is, because it is not something that our culture and society deal with in our everyday reality. However, I was shocked to find out nearly half of the child slaves were girls. I do not know why, but I did not think that girls were as at risk to becoming child slaves. I pictured them being raped and left and that they take the boys to fight, because that is what our society is conditioned to believe. This enraged me. I decided to major in Public Health to help fight the social disparities that exist in our country to create a healthier generation and society for children and adolescents. I see first hand the toll the war on the streets takes on the members of the Boys and Girls Club where I do my internship. As awful as all of this is, in reality, this is probably minute compared to what some other children are dealing with around the world. In my opinion, the facts that Ensler has distributed throughout both of the books make her project stronger and contribute to the trail of success it is leaving. People are being provided with stories and facts they never thought about or considered or even knew existed. The facts make the stories real and intensify the emotional that the reader or viewer may already be feeling.