Writer's block is when a person is not able to produce any work or write anything new and the mind went blank. This happens mainly due to the inability of the writer to create creative content or have creative ideas or even health or personal issues, or in this case, the language and cultural background of the writer.

Ju lia Alvarez's "Daughter of Invention" revolves around the story of a young girl from the Dominican Republic and her life in America. Coming from another country, and feeling insecure and inferior with the feeling of indebtedness to the American lifestyle, she felt unable to express herself properly, along with her inability to grasp the English language and speak so fluently. So, when she had to give a speech on Teacher's Day and was looking for ways to make her speech, she found it hard to even start writing anything for the speech. But going through the poetry of Walt Whitman, she got inspired by the words that the poet used, "I celebrate myself and sing myself", "He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher" etc. It was unlike the teachings that she'd learned in her school under the nuns, where they were taught to be 'meek', 'giving' etc. Whitman's poem is a celebration of himself and provides a "boastful" appreciation of his own personality, which the girl's father thinks "shows no gratitude".

But it was this writer that provides the inspiration to get past her writer's block and write her speech.

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3 years ago