Breaking Clean Essay

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Breaking Clean Book Review Breaking Clean was written by Judy Blunt. It is my primary source for this essay. Breaking Clean is a story of Blunt’s thirty-year struggle to loose herself from the bondage of her family, culture, and the gender roles of the Montana prairie. She was born into the hard life of a family of third generation homesteaders. The land proved hard on their bodies, hearts, and minds. Blunts isolation followed her thru the lingering horror of the blizzard, to a empty one room school house, to her invisible high school years, and finally to a lonely never wanted marriage. As a young child Blunt saw the clear yet defined gender roles that were set in stone in her Montana community. It was apparent in her parent’s relationship. She saw how hard her mother worked inside doing her wifely chores, and on the ranch being able to work just as hard as any man, but still having to stay in a ranch wife’s place. Blunt admired her mother for her skills and quiet strength. Later in life she began to question was quietness strength or a cop out.” Work is the tool that wears us down, draws us in and keeps are eyes on the next two steps ahead. The issue is power. And it’s the silence that kills us” (Breaking Clean 154). Blunt struggled through her childhood for her dad’s acceptance and love. I feel her relationship with her dad introduced her to the reality that as a woman in the west she was nothing more than a second-class citizen. For this reason she hated what she knew becoming a woman would bring, and fought puberty violently lancing her breast. In rural Montana from the time you reached puberty you were expected to do what your mother did, and what her mother did and so on. A young girl was expected to be rough and work hard helping with the cattle, and battle snakes, but when you reach puberty magically you are to become what society says a girl is. She
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