"Homage to my hips" by Lucille Clifton encourages Black women to embrace their femininity and body. Throughout the poem, Clifton uses her “hips” as a means of showing African American women resilience and strength in society. She states that her Hips are big and therefore cannot “fit into little petty places”. She also writes that her hips “have never been enslaved.” Both demonstrates Clifton’s confidence in herself, as well as her feeling empowered. African American women have always been disrespected and degraded. So it is not a surprise that many will feel worthless. However, Clifton wants to uplift them and show that it is okay to be a Black women. It didn’t matter, if they were different or went against society expectations. What is important
In “The Finish of Patsy Barnes” by Paul Laurence Dunbar, readers can agree on the message of the book being that love for family can do amazing things. In the book, a young black boy named Patsy Barnes and his mother Eliza are living in Tennessee during the time shortly after slavery has nearly ended. After Patsy’s father is killed by a horse they moved North to an area called little Africa. Shortly after, Eliza falls sick with pneumonia, and the city physician can not help her and Patsy needs to find a way to afford a new doctor.
The world is filled with many different types of societies and cultures. This is due to the fact that many people share dissimilar beliefs and ideas, as well as diverse ways of life. People lived under different circumstances and stipulations, therefore forming cultures and societies with ideas they formulated, themselves. These two factors, society and culture, are what motivate people to execute the things that they do. Many times, however, society and culture can cause downgrading effects to an assemblage if ever it is corrupt or prejudiced. Society and culture not only influences the emotions individuals have toward things like age differences, religion, power, and equality but also the actions they perform as a result.
due to Hughes, as a modern figure, writing about his own personal experiences; his bitter sadness is bound up with the bright side of love and positivity that has come in the wake of their relationship. ‘Pink Wool Knitted Dress’ references this happiness, as he recalls Sylvia “you sobbed with joy”. The use of the word ‘pink’ in the title is deliberate, denoting femininity, innocence, and happiness, things that are all destroyed eventually. There is contrasting motivation to write this text compared to the other two, as this appears to be Hughes way of dealing with his feelings of sadness following Plath’s suicide. The journey through their relationship from the happiness of their marriage in ‘Pink Wool Knitted Dress’ starkly contrasts some of the later poems. For example the poem ‘Epiphany’, with the title meaning sudden moment of realization, shows the deterioration of their relationship, as Hughes epiphany is that “our marriage had failed”. The use of the word ‘had’ shows the certainty that the marriage was finished, and they were no longer right for each other.
In her novel The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey looks at how history can be misconstrued through the more convenient reinterpretation of the person in power, and as such, can become part of our common understanding, not being true knowledge at all, but simply hearsay. In The Daughter of Time Josephine claims that 40 million school books can’t be wrong but then goes on to argue that the traditional view of Richard III as a power obsessed, blood thirsty monster is fiction made credible by Thomas More and given authenticity by William Shakespeare. Inspector Alan Grant looks into the murder of the princes in the tower out of boredom. Tey uses Grant to critique the way history is delivered to the public and the ability of historians to shape facts to present the argument they believe.
In an interview with Voice of America, she said that her identity as an Asian American “definitely play[s] into all of the reasons why [she] write[s] and why [she] continues to write” (Byrd). That is evident throughout this poem which is about a facet of the Asian American narrative, the fetishization of Asian American women, that is not always discussed. Women from every background deal with catcalling and other forms of casual sexual harassment which is what makes this poem relatable, but Asian American women must face this unique brand of intertwined racism and sexism in their daily lives. “To the Man Who Shouted ‘I Like Pork Fried Rice’ at Me on the Street” is not the solution to this problem, but it is a powerful piece of literature that demonstrates no one is simply a
While I was reading Homage to My Hips written by Lucille Clifton and Story of My Body written by Judith Ortiz Cofer I came up with many of the same themes and ideas that these stories had in common with each other. One broad idea that I found in both poems was that both of the authors, who are women, wrote about their physical appearance. This could tie into a sexual orientation idea. These poems both describe how the authors think of themselves positively and negatively in a physical way.
Clifton speaks of the confinement of gender stereotypes and expectations of women. The voice of the poem claims that her hips are free, “they don’t like to be held back” (Clifton 7). She is a woman with drive like abolitionists, prohibitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights activists.
Susanna at the Beach, by Herbert Gold, presents a tale of the virtues characters admire strictly contrasting with the vices for which characters are consumed. The characterization of the main character, Susanna, is portrayed as embodying seven “heavenly virtues” including chastity, temperance, diligence, patience, kindness, humility, and charity. While the other characters in the story personify the seven “deadly sins” including lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy, pride, and greed. Herbert Gold depicts a theme of virtues versus vices utilizing the literary device of characterization in Susanna at the Beach as supported by the character depiction from the biblical reference of Daniel and Susanna.
The poems themes are appearances, femininity, and self love. The women in these poems are celebrating their different body images than society norms, and they express how much they love their body. The poem “homage to my hips” is written in lowercase letters. The lowercase letters Lucille show Clifton’s unique style and subtle and classy tone. Clifton is proud of her hips, but she is not bragging. Megan Falley on the other hand is outraged and fed up. When she is telling the poem to her audience, she is yelling. She says “fat girl, fuck you.” Those words are empowering. She is tired of they way society sees fat people and is saying “fuck you” to those judgemental people. Falley loves her body and is not ashamed of it. She says, “Fat girl dance anyway./Fat girl shirt off./Fat girl lights on./ Fat girl, lights, on!” She is doing things some fat girls are afraid to
Overall, this poem is used to compare an African American to a cypress tree in a positive manner, which is evergreen and always pointing upwards. The time frame in which Angelina Weld Grimke wrote this in was a difficult time to live in. Only recently had African Americans received their rights, and even then, other races, more prominently, caucasians were hateful towards them. Although not lengthy, this poem manages to successfully capture the enduring strength that African Americans held during this difficult time period by simply comparing them to a strong cypress
Woman without voices seems to keep all feelings and thoughts to themselves, yet screaming for a shout out of understanding without spoken reasons. Lucille Clifton, an African-American Postmodern/Modernist poet enables that feeling through her heart felt inspired poetry.
Oppression through Sizeism is prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s size (Sizeism). Throughout the poem “homage to my hips” Clifton suggests that through Sizeism she learned to hate her “hips” because she was a young black woman who did not fit within Caucasian standards of beauty. Clifton writes “I have known [my hips] to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top!” highlighting positive images of the female body that parallel the negativity of female oppression. Clifton emphasizes that men do not hold real power at the mercy of a woman and her charm, for a woman who learns to love everything about herself, including her body holds the greatest power against a man. The perspective Clifton takes in her poem can be attributed to the fact that her “poetry is rooted in her experiences as an African American woman raised in an impoverished urban environment, who has a strong and enduring love for family and community” (Lucille
The speaker in 'Homage to my Hips'; carries a very proud and self-confident attitude. The best example of this would be when the speaker says, 'These hips are mighty hips. These hips are magic hips. I have known them to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top!';(Pg705). That line is so powerful, it portrays the image that she thinks that bug women are better than men. The speaker in this poem is also a very brave and daring type of women. 'They don't like to be held back. These hips have never been enslaved, they go where they want to go';(Pg705), that line shows how brave the speaker is. It conveys the message that ...
Clifton was one poet that knew how to slip in futuristic comments that helped out the good of the community. She may not have known that someday she was going to be famous for them, but she was clever enough to understand how to put in cultural heritage that would become influential in time to come. Josephine Cameron states that, “I believe it is so important to remember things like Slaveships and to write poetry and sing songs and teach our children about them” (Cameron). This quote shows that many of Clifton’s poetry help many different people out and show them what exactly cultural heritage is. Her poetry by itself is a cultural heritage because we are using it now. This is a magnificent concept, this is because with this poetry, he or she can see what concepts were being learned back when the Harlem Renaissance was going on. Many of Clifton’s poetry are about singing. This line from her poem Study the Masters shows he or she this, “You would understand form and line and discipline and order and america.” This shows a lot about how Clifton writes. Many interesting things come out of this poem. One in particular is that she lowercases America. This shows he or she that she still doesn’t see herself as a true American and may have some doubts about what it might mean. Many other things can come from this, especially
To what extent does Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Medusa’ challenge stereotypical masculine and feminine attributes?