A Reflection on The Pink Institution and Post Modernism

This book can be seen in a postmodern light because of the way it challenges the modern style that we read in so many books today. This book attacks the common roles that we find in book such as male versus female or blacks versus whites, but rather it attempts to create problems relating to modernism by creating characters that the reader often finds problematic and that we often have to figure out on our own from their exterior. In this postmodern work I found that Saterstrom created an open work, meaning she left the reader to think and supply our own connections and ideas as to how to interpret what we just read about the situation and the characters. “Postmodernism focuses on a vision of a contradictory, fragmented, ambiguous, indeterminate, unfinished, "jagged" world”. Looking at the relationship that Saterstrom has created in this book really got me thinking about characters in my book. Saterstrom  introduces, Abella who is married to the abusive Micajah who is an alcoholic policeman. His beatings and likely sexual abuse takes a toll on their daughter, Azalea.

When we focus on the poetic elements, I can say that this book was very tangible from the beginning where the daughter is eating crackers and all the mother could focus on was her messy hair. I loved the description from the very beginning and the way Saterstrom made a visual picture throughout the text really gave this book an extra specialness about it. This book has a lot of devastating stories and serious issues, especially Aza who tries to commit suicide all the time because of her terrible upbringing. The way the Saterstrom gets into describing scenes with such tangibility is great. Also she often leaves large spaces in between the words that allows the reader to figure things out on their own and that’s the thing I most liked about this book. I thought that Saterstrom's novel depicts a family that is dealing with their own disfunctions and I loved the picture that Saterstrom paints.