More handpicked essays just for you.
The role of women throughout English literature
Depiction of women in literature
Depiction of women in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the United States, the hierarchical system that dominates the social landscape has created a pool of power for those who sit at the top of the social ladder. This system has power trickling down from the top to those at the bottom: those who work hard and get recognized the least. This creates a conflict between the oppressed and the oppressor, and eventually those who are oppressed use those drops of power to fight for their basic human rights. In an excerpt from Gloria Anzaldúa’s book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa explains the complications of oppressed people developing counterstances with their oppressors. In Helena Maria Viramontes novel Under the Feet of Jesus, Viramontes develops a female character named Estrella …show more content…
100). In social movements, the counterstances can be seen as the violent retaliations of an oppressed group of people, such as the Los Angeles riots in 1992 and the Ferguson lootings which occurred recently. These riots are not a spontaneous act of rebellion, but instead are developed from concentrated amounts of stress and inability to create a strong enough voice with political merit. Estrella is a character that develops around the stress of social inequality. Her lifestyle is not standard of “normal American” children where education takes precedents over childhood labor. Viramontes creates Estrella’s background to allow the character to grow through constant stress. Estrella is conscious of her social standing; the experience she had at the baseball game when the “sheets of high-powered lights beamed on the playing field” (pg. 59) induced fear and stress that made Estrella want to retaliate against “La Migra”. Melina Pinales elaborated in class that when Estrella’s mother, Petra, says “you tell them the birth certificates are under the feet of Jesus,” the mother is saying that everyone is a child under God and a child of the earth therefore Estrella should have nothing to fear. Adding to this, Estrella has legitimate paperwork proving her citizenship in the United States. However, due to the nature of Estrella’s work, her …show more content…
This awareness does come with a social outcry, an explosive retaliation, as the stress builds and boils until the injustice cannot be tolerated any longer. The Rodney King incident in Los Angeles is a prime example of social retaliation by the masses. The injustices that occurred paved the way for a group to become enraged and provided an outlet for the social mistreatment of African-American citizens to finally be expressed. The violence that followed would force political officials to respond to an issue that had existed, but was ignored because minority groups’ issues did not fit into a political agenda. However, this form of retaliation cannot thrive and lead to a consensus where terms are fair for both parties. Counterstances stems for violence, and forces violence to become a response. As Anzaldúa expressed, “The possibilities are numerous once we choose to act and not react.” (pg.
Lynching of black men was common place in the south as Billie Holiday sang her song “Strange Fruit” and the eyes of justice looked the other way. On the other side of the coin, justice was brought swiftly to those blacks who stepped out of line and brought harm to the white race. Take for instance Nate Turner, the slave who led a rebellion against whites. Even the Teel’s brought their own form of justice to Henry Marrow because he “said something” to one of their white wives (1). Flashing forward a few years later past the days of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, several, but not all in the younger generation see the members of the black and white race as equal and find it hard to fathom that only a few years ago the atmosphere surrounding racial relations was anything but pleasant.
Solberg, Muriel. “’Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?’ – Rodney King”. 27 May 2011.
Gerhard Lohfink, in his book, “Jesus of Nazareth” believes that Jesus’ person and ministry are intertwined, or actually one and of the same. After Lohfink clarifies the difference between the "reign of God" as distinct from the “Kingdom of God,” he asserts that in Jesus, there is this active, ongoing reign which is not only revealed, but is manifested in all He says and does. Lohfink states, that Jesus is “not just preaching about the reign of God, but He is announcing it,” going on to indicating that Jesus is manifesting this reign in His own self disclosure and the actions of His ministry. Jesus ways of teaching and interactions with others, is shown as compassionate, gentle, direct and personal, as well as definitive and bold. As we also find in Ch. 3, “All that is happening before everyone’s eyes. The reign of God is breaking forth in the midst of the world and not only within people.” (51) And for Lohfink, this is taking place in the actual preaching, actions and life of Jesus Christ. Simply, we are personally and collectively and actively a part of establishing this “reign” right here, right now. A “reign” of mercy, compassion, forgiveness, self-giving, sacrificial love, as well as of justice and peace.
As Elie Wiesel once stated, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (“Elie Wiesel Quote”). Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, which discusses criminal justice and its role in mass incarceration, promotes a similar idea regarding silence when America’s racial caste system needs to be ended; however, Alexander promotes times when silence would actually be better for “the tormented.” The role of silence and lack of silence in the criminal justice system both contribute to wrongly accused individuals and growing populations behind bars.
In The Meaning of Jesus N.T. Wright and Marcus Borg present different views on issues relating to how Jesus is viewed. While Borg and Wright do agree on central ideals of Christianity, Borg tends to have more liberal views, whereas Wright holds more conservative views.
We then see this play out in discriminatory hiring practices, biased treatment in courtrooms, and the kinds of brutal treatment by police that took the lives of unarmed Black people like Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Akai Gurley. The result is that our communities are being put in double jeopardy, first by over zealous police and then by news stations serving as PR firms by
America has had plenty of racial unrest, and what 's shocking is how we continue to ignore its side effects. Many people believe white privilege does not exist or it’s not a real thing even though America was built by white people, with a foundation for whites. White privilege is prevalent in America. They believe there is no way the color of someone’s skin, gives them a privilege. In reality, it does. No matter how much we ignore the fact, that the color of your skin can change the way you live, it’s true. It’s not fair, but it’s true.
Estrella and Cleofilas have come to accept that they don’t get much for their hard labor. They both learned how society looks at immigrants from other countries. They both were looked down upon. Estrella works hard in the hot heat. She comes to realize that picking grapes doesn’t earn enough money, and it all depended on the piece rate of the grapes. Society turns around, eats the grapes and doesn’t think twice about how the grapes came to their mouths. When the society doesn’t think of the age or person that has picked the grapes.
To look closely at many of the mechanisms in American society is to observe the contradiction between constitutional equality and equality in practice. Several of these contradictions exist in the realm of racial equality. For example, Black s often get dealt an unfair hand in the criminal justice system. In The Real War on Crime, Steven Donziger explains,
From the excerpt from the novel, “Under the Feet of Jesus” by Helena Maria Viramontes, the main character is Estrella, a young Spanish girl with a powerful desire to learn to read. Although she is persistent, her teachers refuse to educate her because they are more concerned of Estrella’s personal hygiene. This leaves Estrella resentful because of the barrier between herself and knowledge. Estrella remains silent until a man named Perfecto Flores teaches her how to read by using his expertise in hardware and tools to represent the alphabet. Viramontes depicts the heartfelt growth of Estrella through her use of tone, figurative language, and detail.
As much as men are working, so are women, but ultimately they do not face the same obstacles. For example, “Even if one subscribes to a solely economic theory of oppression, how can one ignore that over half of the world's workers are female who suffer discrimination not only in the workplace, but also at home and in all the areas sex-related abuse” (Moraga 98). This gives readers a point of view in which women are marginalized in the work place, at home, and other areas alike. Here Moraga gives historical accounts of Chicana feminists and how they used their experiences to give speeches and create theories that would be of relevance. More so, Moraga states how the U.S. passes new bills that secretly oppress the poor and people of color, which their community falls under, and more specifically, women. For instance, “The form their misogyny takes is the dissolution of government-assisted abortions for the poor, bills to limit teenage girls’ right to birth control ... These backward political moves hurt all women, but most especially the poor and "colored." (Moraga 101). This creates women to feel powerless when it comes to control one’s body and leads them to be oppressed politically. This places the government to act as a protagonist, and the style of writing Moraga places them in, shines more light to the bad they can do, especially to women of color. Moraga uses the words, “backward moves”
In the excerpt from the novel Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena Viramontes, the story of a girl named Estrella is described. Throughout the story, Estrella learns a valuable lesson from a box of tools. Viramontes’s use of the literary elements such as selection of detail, figurative language, and tone are implicated to display the development of Estrella’s character. Estrella, a very timid girl at first, eventually becomes confident and capable of succeeding in school after she learns a lesson from a box of tools.
According to Martin Luther King Jr., “There are two types of laws: there are just and there are unjust laws” (King 293). During his time as civil rights leader, he advocated civil disobedience to fight the unjust laws against African-Americans in America. For instance, there was no punishment for the beatings imposed upon African-Americans or for the burning of their houses despite their blatant violent, criminal, and immoral demeanor. Yet, an African-American could be sentenced to jail for a passive disagreement with a white person such as not wanting to give up their seat to a white passenger on a public bus. Although these unjust laws have been righted, Americans still face other unjust laws in the twenty-first century.
Every generation faces new challenges and new problems to which we have progressed, conquered or simply just swept right under the rug. In today’s world we are increasingly facing numerous social problems, such as income disparity, unemployment, political instability amongst many others, but racism seems to have resurfaced in these past years. Although, the United States has come a long way in the issue of racism, it has never completely conquered it. Incidents such the shooting at Ferguson Missouri has raised an upheaval of protesters against the Country’s system that claims equal treatment and equal opportunity for all, regardless of race or gender. Incidents such as the one previously mentioned, clearly depicts that white-power continues
Sandoval theory is influential within second wave feminism. The reasoning behind this article is to provide a framework for theorizing about oppositional activity and consciousness in the United States in the post-modern world (Sandoval, 1991). Primarily, interested in race, class, and culture third world feminist expand on the male/female division. Sandoval credits Louis Althusser for the use of his theory of ideology. Much of her article incorporates influential authors that we have previous discussed in our discussion including Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, and Barbara Christian. She first introduces the concept of hegemonic feminism by discussing the different periods in history: 1. Liberal: women are “as fully human as men” 2. Marxist: “women are different from men” 3. Cultural/radical: “women are superior” (Sandoval, 2001). She later argues that oppositional consciousness is topographical rather than typological. According to Sandoval, there are four cateofries that fit well into the hegemonic frame: equal rights, revolutionary, supremacist, separatist. Yet they add, differential to act as “the mechanism that permits the driver to select, engage, and disengage gears in a system for the transmission of power (Sandoval,