Alicia Serrano Professor Ellison GWS 210G 17 April, 2024 Biomythographies as a Mode of Expressing Queer Narratives Art, films, and all forms of creative media are ever changing yet permanently contain the ability to share stories, emotions, and personal opinions in a variety of ways. Many queer artists and filmmakers exemplify this quality within media by using narratives to draw a connection between the personal and the political. One example of how this can be achieved is the use of biomythography, a concept created by the poet and essayist Audre Lorde detailing a combination of history and fiction while also incorporating a biography into a specific work. An excellent example of biomythographies and how they can be used as a method of sharing …show more content…
Cheryl states, “I’m gonna find out what her real name is, who she was and is, everything I can find out about her. Because, something in her face.. Something in the way she looks and moves is interesting, and I’m gonna just tell you all about her” (Dunye 00:07:04). By incorporating Cheryl’s research and providing the narrative of Fae Richards within the film, Dunye reminds the audience that “The Watermelon Woman” was a person with a developed life, allowing for a deeper understanding of what it means to be removed from history and emphasizing the depth of these experiences. This is an example of one of the ways biomythography possesses the ability to share queer and trans narratives in new ways. Further into the film, Cheryl endlessly searches library databases and a lesbian research archive hoping to find organized information on queer women of color in the 1930’s. Instead, she is met with a series of unorganized files and a failure to carefully document any information on the lives and histories of black …show more content…
someday we’re gonna have a great system where people are gonna donate materials and then they’re gonna be logged, they’re gonna be categories, they’re gonna be sorted, they’re gonna be stored, right now they’re just in boxes” (00:58:26). This visual on how difficult it is for queer women of color to find any information on their history emphasizes the importance of Dunye’s film and why there is a need to share the narratives on queer women of color. By incorporating these scenes into the narratives of each character, Dunye directly emphasizes the specific ways women of color are erased from history and allows for her personal and political narratives to be understood more accurately. It is my belief that this impact could not have been achieved without the use of biomythography. Dunye continues to expand on the ways intersectionality influences queer women of color as she utilizes the narratives of Fae Richards and Cheryl to display her experiences and the experiences many black lesbians face of being reduced to a single simple
Elsa Barkley Brown focuses on the intersectionality of being a black woman in America, in “What Has Happened Here?”. Black women experience different forms of oppression simultaneously. Indeed, racism, sexism, classism, as well as heterosexism, intertwine and form layers of oppression.
In Mignon Moore’s piece, the familial expectations of an understudied group of people is measured—that of African American lesbians. Prior to this research, most studies tested the ideas of middle-upper class white lesbians who found relationships with feminism in mind. What differs with this article is that it focuses
She sheds a light of how early Black feminist scholars such as Collins have been criticized for relying too heavily on colonial ideology around the black female body. Subjectively neglecting the contemporary lived experience of Black women. Critiques such as these highlights the Black female agency in the representation of the body. viewing this as a human and sexual rights or health perspective has been lending to the contemporary Black feminist debates about the representation of Black female bodies and Black eroticism within the culture of
As Rebecca Scoot transport her readers in her narrative of accounts of the Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, she delicately uncovers injustice not within one family but within a system. As she focuses in giving a voice to the Lacks, she also highlights the strength and leadership of the family matriarch of Henrietta Lacks and her cell know as HELA. Envisioning Mrs. Lacks and her family trajectory it exposes discrimination and bias on a much large scale than poorly uneducated oppress Negro or African American during 1950’s. The life of Henrietta and her family’s situation had moderate similarities of another book, The Isis Paper. The Isis Papers the keys to the Colors, by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing’s, (March 18, 1935- January 2, 2016.) In
Cheryl Dunye's film, The Watermelon Woman, combines elements from both narrative film-making and elements from the traditional documentary. The film follows Dunye (as a film-maker and as a character) and ventures on the journey of finding the Watermelon Woman. Whereas most of the film follows Dunye as a character throughout her life as she goes through the process of filming her finds, a few of the scenes are filmed as if the film was an actual documentary. The film is based primarily around the character Cheryl's life and adventure in finding the Watermelon Woman than it is about learning about the Watermelon Woman.
In Nella Larsen’s Passing, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry show us a great deal about race and sexuality in the 1920s. Both are extremely light-skinned women of African-American descent. However similar they appear to be, their views on race, a very controversial issue at the time, differ significantly. Clare chooses to use her physical appearance as an advantage in America’s racist and sexist society, leaving behind everything that connects her to her African-American identity. She presents herself as an object of sexual desire, flaunting herself to gain attention. Irene is practically the opposite, deciding that she wants to remain with the label of being black. She is subtle with her sexuality, never attempting to use her beauty to gain advantages. Linking these two women is a strange relationship, in which Clare and Irene both view each other in a sexually desirable way. Nevertheless, even with that desire for Clare, Irene obviously holds some contempt for her through jealousy, to the extent of wishing that she were dead. This jealousy is also based on social status. Irene is jealous of Clare’s ability to succeed, even though she may not know it. The root of Irene’s jealousy of Clare is in these three ideas of race, sexuality, and class, making Irene despise someone who she obviously also loves.
This story takes place in the 1960s, at a time when many black Americans were interested in discovering their heritage. In particular, the “black pride” movement encouraged African Americans to not only celebrate but also affirm their culture. Many embraced African attires, hairstyle, names and African languages. This story revolves around a woman with her two daughters- Dee, who later on changes her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, and Maggie (Walker 55). Maggie’s body bears serious scars from burning and it is hard to say if her mother is sympathizing or empathizing with
In the month of March 2016, Women of the World Poetry Slam had Rachel Wiley, a poet and body-positive activist, present her now viral poem called “The Dozens” (Vagianos 2016). This poem was about slams white feminism as a clear indication of whiteness self-defense mechanism. In this poem Wiley included various kinds social events that have occurred in the past years and just to name two: Raven Symone on blackness and Miley Cyrus and Nicki Manji at the VMAs. White feminism continues to become more problematic as the media continues to allow it to be because whiteness makes money; however, intersectionality about race, public imagery, and actual feminism also continues to go viral as the diversity of American become more and more productive.
Often identity is only thought of as a collection of individual characteristics that are independent such as sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, etc. Intersectionality is when these characteristics are transformed by one another and “tend to collapse into one another in the context of everyday life”. Dorothy Allison wrote Two of Three Things I Know for Sure where she explains aspects of her life through chronological stories revealing details and providing the reader with lessons she learned throughout her experiences. This book can be read with an intersectionality lens focusing on the moments or stories where gendered poverty shapes people’s experience of sex and sexuality as well as how gender, sexuality, and class transforms whiteness into a stigmatizing attribute rather than it’s usual power given attribute. Allison’s scene with her Aunt Maudy and the scene with her girlfriend both show intersectionality in different aspects and times of Allison’s life.
Carol Stack finds herself in a curious place as a young white woman venturing into a black neighborhood in hopes of alleviating negative stereotypes and bringing illumination into a semiosphere that is altogether ignored or even despised. While she defined her purpose as the attempt to “illustrate the collective adaptations to poverty of men, women, and children within the social-cultural network of the black urban family” (28), her methods are not merely those of an outside observer spouting back information, but truly that of an actively engaged participant. Staying true to the guidelines of participant observation studies, Stack did not attempt to isolate or manipulate the culture she saw, and instead of donning the lab coat, as it were, and playing the role of the experimenting scientist, or simply sneaking in, Stack was very human in her interactions and dealings, participating as actively as possible in peoples’ real lives in The Flats. (Hedrick).
The film, Out in the Night documents a 2006 case in which a group of young African American lesbians were accused of gang assault and attempted murder. The film portrays how unconscious bias, institutional discrimination and racism contributed to the convictions of seven African American lesbian women. Three of the women pleaded guilty to avoid going to trial, but four did not. Renata Hill, Patreese Johnson, Venice Brown, and Terrain Dandridge maintained their innocence and each were charged with several years in prison. I cried through out the documentary because it dawned on me that it’s not safe for women, especially gay women of color. The four-minute incident occurred in Greenwich Village where Dwayne Buckle sexually and physically harassed
What art succeeds in doing is transmute the sexual expression into an acceptable form - by turning it into a thing of beauty and approximating it into a haze of sublimity. In the post- modern climate of media, eros as sexuality reels dangerously on the brink of pornography. Yet what is also important is to realize that it is an important lens to view our social, political and cultural identities. At the beginning of the twentieth century, sexuality rode on the tide of social progressivism and became a vehicle for artistic expression in the novel. Also, when eros as sexuality serves as a principal theme in serious or popular literature, it is often used as a means of remarking upon the dynamics in a society. This is the point that is scrutinised and analysed in this paper where the sexuality of women is seen as an important definition and perspective in Toni Morrison’s Sula (1973).The novel explores the lives and friendship of Sula Peace and Nel Wright in the black neighbourhood dubiously named ‘The Bottom’ in the city of Medallion . The novel also investigates lives of its various female characters in this community who add to our understanding of the life of African American women. Morrison is one of the most remarkable African-American authors of the twentieth century and her novels remind readers that the position of African-Americans in the white-dominant society of the United States of
To be labeled as a feminist is such a broad classification therefore it is divided into various subsections, one such subsection is known as hip hop feminism in which Ruth Nicole closely associates herself with throughout this essay I will thoroughly discuss this form of feminism. Ruth Nicole is a black woman that categorizes herself as a girl, by her definition a girl is far from independent. Black girlhood discusses the shared experiences of the ever-changing body, which has been marked as vibrant, Black, and female, along with memories and representations of being female. As a result, Ruth Nicole wrote Black Girlhood Celebration in order to share her personal and political motivations of working with black girls within the community. A conversation that is not often articulated about due to a language barrier. In which this discussion accurately details a means to work with black girls in such a way that does not control their body or pilfer black female individuality. Under those circumstances, Brown believes that black girls are being exploited for their physique through the use of music and instructed to conform to white norms constructed by society.
In other words, Carbado meant to prove that not only Black women fit into this definition of intersectionality, and therefore there are other groups of people, aside from Black women, who can share their same experiences. Carbado’s theory about gender and colorblind intersectionality comes close to being able to explain Audrey Lorde’s understanding of the Black women identity. But applying Carbado’s theory it becomes more inclusive towards other oppressed groups of people, and it highlights Carbado’s expansion of intersectionality within Lorde’s essay.
Madison, D. Soyini. "Pretty Woman Through the Triple Lens of Black Feminist Spectatorship." From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture. Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1995. 224-35. Print.