[stylist] DBG (chapter 4)

[helene ryles]

Hi Lora,
Yes it's the same girl: Nadia Murat: in first chapter she is 12 and a half.
Second chapter she is only four and a half.
In the fourth chapter she is 8.
I put the dates of each of these chapters in brackets right after the
chapter headlines.

I disagree with parents not being able to abuse teenagers since I know
several cases of this happening in real life. I know a woman about
30(at least cronalogically) who is still abused by her mom. She has
taken on a role of assumed helplessness.
Have you read a book called 'The little prisoner?" Her father abuses
her from the age of 4 up until she is an adult. As an adult she still
lives in fear of him, up ontil the time she take him to court.

In Nadia's case she is cronologically 12 but physically  speaking she
is very small and malnurished which makes her an easy target. Remember
in chapter 1 fiona says that she is probably older then she looks so
she thinks she's 'one of us'. I can't say any more then that without
giving the plot away.

Helene



On 08/09/2009, LoriStay at aol.com <LoriStay at aol.com> wrote:
> Hmm.   Eight years later?   That's stretching it a bit.   How old is the
> child we're reading about in the second chapter?   Six or seven?   Eight
> years
> later she would be fourteen or fifteen, and I can't see her mother forcing
> her to try to fly (or float) because she would then be adult in size.   A
> lot of child abuse stops when a person reaches the teen years because all it
> takes is one slug in the gut from the kid to the parent to stop the
> bullying.
>   Bullies are usually cowards.
> So since it can't be the same child, who are we reading about?   Sorry if
> I'm confused!
>
> I first realized that low vision people might use braille and canes in
> 1981, when I attended a seminar at the NFB in Baltimore.   It was an eye
> opener
> in more ways than one.   On one side of me sat Joane Fernandez (later Joanne
> Wilson) who wore glasses, but still wrote her checks using a guide and
> Braille, and on the other sat Ramona Walhoff, knitting or crocheting
> something
> during the seminar.   I think Ramona has no vision at all.   Joanne also
> used
> a cane.   Some years later, she became the director of the Louisiana Center
> for the Blind and after that she was head of Rehabilitation Services in
> Washington.   She took herself quite far using the skills of blindness.
> It's
> not something one forgets.
>
> On the other hand, I have a friend who is partly deaf and partly blind who
> refuses to learn Braille or sign.   Communication with her was extremely
> difficult.   I had to email her, and have her expand the message to better
> than
> 18 point on her screen.   We encouraged her to get cochlear implants, which
> have helped somewhat, as she now augments her enlarged screen with a screen
> reader.   Cochlear implants are not perfect, however.    Aside from the
> difficulty she had getting them installed (the first one had her on the
> operating table all day, and failed to actually install it!), if several
> people are
> talking at once, say in a party, they are useless.   I sometimes have
> similar problems!   I taught a class a couple of years, and finally had to
> tell
> the people (all adults) that "If more than one person talks at a time, I
> can't hear either of them."   I still tell this to a group I lead.   They
> think
> I'm kidding.   And I'm classified as fully able to hear.   I'm not so sure.
>
> Anyway, could you clear up my confusion about the main character?   What's
> her name?   Do you have an outline of her life to date (not too detailed)?
> Or are we talking about two girls, both daughters of the mother who tries
> to kill her?
> Lori
>
> In a message dated 9/7/09 5:07:49 PM, dreamavdb at googlemail.com writes:
>
>
>> Hi Laura,
>> yes Fiona (the 3ft 7 lady) does make an apearance but you have to wait
>> several chapters before she comes into it again, since the first
>> chapter happened 8 years after the second one, so that time has to
>> elapse before we get to meet Fiona again.
>>
>> Your spot on about oralism. I feel my education has suffered due to
>> the lack of more visual clues but since I was just HOH nobody
>> considered signing as neccessary. It's the same when blind kids have
>> some useful sight. Braille goes out of the window and they are
>> expected to use large print and not encouraged to use a cane.
>> I used a cane when I still had low vision and found it very useful.
>> Another strange thing is that while low vision people are discouraged
>> from using canes, people seem ok about them using a guide dog. I never
>> quite understood that.
>> If you need a guide dog your vision is automatically bad enough to use a
>> cane.
>>
>> Helene
>>
>>
>
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