During July in the Salt Lake Valley, girdled by the backsides of the Rocky Mountains, the fireworks last for weeks. Pioneer Day brings out a sort of ultra-nationalistic pride in Utahans, and gunpowder dashes red, white, and blue across a seven-thousand-year-old sky. The city rests along the Wasatch fault line, said to be formed by a faultless God, and the doorsteps are worn by the soles of dress shoes and the souls of men forcibly saved. We—those who defiantly insist without end that we don’t belong here—have our jokes about this place. There are three types of people in Utah, we assert: treatment kids, Mormons, and ex-Mormons who have been estranged from their families and (incapable of escaping the hell-hole of the valley) seek amnesty in the underground freedom of the Sugarhouse district.
Nestled within these seven or so square blocks of Salt Lake City lives a vibrant community of punk musicians, gay clubbers, hemp-milk drinkers, and spray-paint artists. Zines line the bookstore shelves, perused by millennials with minimalistic tattoos and crystal altars in their shared apartments. The coffee shop is open on Sundays. When I am not here (and sitting,
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In another still, a small shelf which holds exactly three books: Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, a dense yet intellectually profound examination of gender roles and their decided uselessness; House of Light by Mary Oliver; and Catcher in the Rye. Even the gender-neutral bathroom is warm, lined with posters quoting Whitman and Frida Kahlo. The whole place smells like patchouli, cold-pressed kale juice, and honey, all this mingling amongst heated political discussions in the open air. Wild gesticulations fly beneath edison-style string lights strung through re-sourced mason jars. More than five hundred miles from home, I forge a space for myself here—just on the weekends, when I can get
Abbey and McCandless experience different degrees of separation from industrial living, but neither wholly rejects it. Abbey, a National Park Service employee in Utah, states “I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront immediately and directly if it’s possible, the bare bones of existence” (6). While Abbey surround...
Professor and poet Deborah A. Miranda, pieces together the past and uncovers and presents us with a story--a Californian story--in her memoir, “Bad Indians.” Her use of the Christian Novena, “Novena to Bad Indians,” illustrates the irony of using the form of her oppressors as a call out for help, not to God, but to her past ancestors. We tend to think of religion as a form of salvation and redemption of our lives here on Earth, in which we bare down and ask for forgiveness. But by challenging this common discourse using theological allegories and satirical terminology, Miranda turns her attention away from a Deity to call the reader out for help. It is crucial to recognize the struggles that the Native community currently face. Californian Indians are often not given recognition for their identity and their heritage, and are also repeatedly stereotyped as abusive, alcoholic, uncivilized, and “freeloaders” of the United States government. Such generalizations root back from European colonization, nevertheless still linger in our contemporary society. Miranda has taken the first step forward in characterizing few of these stereotypes in her Novena, but she’s given her story. Now what are we going to do with ours? It’s up to us to create our
The narrator’s room is furnished with “symbols of restraint” such as, the bed nailed down to the floor, a gate blocking the stairs, and rings in the walls. According to Jeremy MacFarlane’s journal “Enough to make a body riot”: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Chester Himes, and the Process of Socio-spatial Negotiation, all the things in the room normalize the “repression and self-denial” practice for women. And, of course, the yellow wallpaper reinforces a state of “grotesque, idiotic cheerfulness,” which is the key to a woman’s assent in the status quo (MacFarlane, 8-9).
Much of the essay is filled with polar opposites, different metaphors for west-central Nevada; “present knocks against the past, development knocks against nature, repression against indulgence, reality against dream, masculine against feminine, the Goddess of Destruction against the...
Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex. Through history women have fought for equal rights and freedom. They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers of children. Only with the push of the Equal Rights Amendment have women had a strong hold on the workplace alongside men. Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men. This tension comes from men, society, in general, and within a woman herself. Two interesting short stories, “The Yellow Wall-paper" and “The Story of an Hour," focus on a woman’s fix near the turn of the 19th century. This era is especially interesting
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Women's Studies. 12 (1986): 113-128.
As a result, women were stuck at home, usually alone, until their husbands got home. In the story, Jane is at home staring at the wallpaper in her room. The wallpaper’s color is described by Jane as being “repellent, almost revolting” (3) and the pattern is “torturing” and “like a bad dream” (10). The description of the wallpaper represents Jane’s and all women’s thoughts about the ideologies and rules upheld by men prior to the First World War. It is made evident that this wallpaper represents the screen made up of men’s ideologies at the time caging in women. Jane is subconsciously repelled by this screen and represents her discovering continuously figuring out what she wants. Metaphorically, Jane is trapped in that room by a culture established by men. Furthermore, Jane compares the wallpaper’s pattern to bars putting further emphasis on her feelings of being trapped and helpless. Later in the narrative, she catches Jennie staring at the wallpaper’s pattern and then decides to study the pattern and determine what it means herself. Her study of the pattern is representative of her trying to analyze the situation in which she’s in. By studying the pattern, she progressively discovers herself, especially when she sees the woman behind the
Golden, Catherine, ed. The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper." New York: Feminist Press, 1992
Exploration was a paramount upheaval at its time bringing innovation, exotic goods, and change to the Western world. The key proponents of Spain and England navigated to the bounds of the Earth to bolster their empire and acquire wealth. Meanwhile, social dilemma and reveries developed of the new land while its voyages brought back mass epidemics. Consequently with the aforementioned considered, explorations were a fundamental revelation in society; they led way to many expansions in culture and development while also provoking conflict as the world’s powers exploited the Americas.
In his article, “The Gender Gap at School,” David Brooks scrutinizes common gender roles and introduces the idea that biological factors may play a role in human development. He begins his essay by analyzing the three gender segregated sections in any airport, which include the restrooms, security pat-down areas, and the bookstore. He goes on to explain that the same separation occurs in the home. Brooks includes a study given to nine hundred men and women who were asked to name their favorite novel. The study determined that men preferred novels written by fellow men, whereas women favored books written woman.
Wood, J. T. (2013). Gendered lives: communication, gender & and culture (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Golden, Catherine, ed. The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper." New York: Feminist Press, 1992.
How does one compare the life of women to men in late nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century America? In this time the rights of women were progressing in the United States and there were two important authors, Kate Chopin and John Steinbeck. These authors may have shown the readers a glimpse of the inner sentiments of women in that time. They both wrote a fictitious story about women’s restraints by a masculine driven society that may have some realism to what women’s inequities may have been. The trials of the protagonists in both narratives are distinctive in many ways, only similar when it totals the macho goaded culture of that time. Even so, In Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing we hold two unlike fictional characters in two very different short stories similar to Elisa Allen in the “Chrysanthemums” and Mrs. Louise Mallard in “The Story of an Hour”, that have unusual struggles that came from the same sort of antagonist.
Gender in many ways is a defining factor in the communities of both real life and the literature that real life inspire. As an often politically charged identity category, it contributes heavily in defining how community. Three works of literature that show the effects of Gender in defining a community are Life In The Iron Mills by Rebecca Harden Davis, Sula by Toni Morrison and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. These books explore the themes of gender identities defining a community in different settings and succeed in showing it all of them.
Traditionally, men have held the power in society. Women have been treated as a second class of citizens with neither the legal rights nor the respect of their male counterparts. Culture has contributed to these gender roles by conditioning women to accept their subordinate status while encouraging young men to lead and control. Feminist criticism contends that literature either supports society’s patriarchal structure or provides social criticism in order to change this hierarchy. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts one women’s struggle against the traditional female role into which society attempts to force her and the societal reaction to this act.