So I'm not even going to pretend that I'm entirely of sound mind right now, but I get the sense that that doesn't entirely matter.

I'm interested in what Chugthai is trying to say in The Crooked Line by creating a character like Shaman who, in her actions, rejects for nearly the whole novel, the notions of traditional womanhood, while simultaneously promoting it in her friend Alma. She can't bring herself to let go of those traditional notions, but at the same time, can't bring herself to be a woman as she "should" be--a wife, a mother. Remember her FOUR abortive attempts at surrogate motherhood.

Following this same vein of thought...what does it mean that Shaman can only embrace semblances of these notions of womanhood while married to a white man, specifically a white soldier. But then again...she doesn't really embrace womanhood, at least not motherhood. Her ambiguous motherhood seems like such a catastrophe at the end.