The short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaide sends a strong message about how identity should not be prioritized over other people's views on you. The female authority figure in the story tells the girl how to act in front of men that do not know her so that they will not recognize the slut she has been “warned against becoming” immediately. Identity is the thing that makes up a person. Identity is the traits and qualities that make people unique and different from others. Since the girl is being told a specific way she must act to be accepted by people that do not know her, that limits the room for her to express herself. If the girl is unable to express herself, she is unable to show her true identity. The female authority figure is sending
In the young life of Essie Mae, she had a rough childhood. She went through beatings from her cousin, George Lee, and was blamed for burning down her house. Finally Essie Mae got the nerve to stand up for herself and her baby sister, Adline as her parents were coming in from their work. Her dad put a stop to the mistreatment by having her and her sister watched by their Uncle Ed. One day while Essie Mae's parents were having an argument, she noticed that her mothers belly was getting bigger and bigger and her mom kept crying more and more. Then her mother had a baby, Junior, while the kids were out with their Uncle Ed. Her uncle took her to meet her other two uncles and she was stunned to learn that they were white. She was confused by this but when she asked her mom, Toosweet, about it her mom would not give her an answer one way or the other. Once her mom had the baby, her father started staying out late more often. Toosweet found out that her dad was seeing a woman named Florence. Not long after this, her mother was left to support her and her siblings when her father left. Her mother ended up having to move in with family until she could obtain a better paying job in the city. As her childhood went on she started school and was very good at her studies. When she was in the fourth grade, her mom started seeing a soldier named Raymond. Not too long after this, her mother got pregnant and had James. Her mother and Raymond had a rocky relationship. When James was born, Raymond's mother came and took the baby to raise because she said that raising four children was too much of a burden for a single parent to handle. Raymond went back to the service for a while but then when he came back he and Toosweet had another baby. Raymond's brothers helped him build a new house for them to live in and they brought James back to live with them. During this time Essie Mae was working for the Claiborne family and she was starting to see a different point of view on a lot of things in life. The Claiborne's treated her almost as an equal and encouraged her to better herself.
Alicia Keys was born in 1981, in New York. From the young age of 7 years old, she began piano lessons. After graduating from the Professional Performance Arts School, she signed a deal with Clive Davis, the head of Arista Records. Davis left Arista to start J Records and Alicia Keys followed. Her album Songs in A Minor released in 2001, and went platinum five times over and earned her five Grammys. She followed up with hit albums such as The Diary of Alicia Keys released in 2003, As I Am in 2007 and Girl on Fire in 2009, all of which won the her Grammys.
Cultures throughout the world encompass a diverse array of lifestyles by which societies are led by. These cultures, in a typical sense, are created by the subset of a population that follows a particular set of morals and ideals. An individual’s own identity, as a result, is dependent on many varying factors of their lifestyle in these culturally regulated regions. In the stories, “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran,” by Azar Nafisi, and “The Naked Citadel,” by Susan Faludi, the authors depict the impact made on an individual’s identity by male-dominated communities prejudiced against women. The discriminations described in these stories contribute to the creation of cultures that oppose the idea of seeing women as equals to men. Hence,
The United States of America, the land of the free. Mostly free if the skin tone matches with the approval of society. The never ending war on racism, equality, and segregation is a huge part of American culture. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement equality was laughed at. People of color were highly discriminated and hated for existing. During the years nineteen fifty to nineteen seventy, racism began to extinguish its mighty flames. Through the lives of numerous people equality would soon be a reality. Through the Autobiography “Coming of Age in Mississippi” by Anne Moody first person accounts of all the racism, social prejudice and violence shows how different America used to be. The autobiography holds nothing back, allowing the author to give insight on all the appalling events and tragedies. The Re-telling of actual events through Anne Moody’s eyes, reveal a connection to how wrong segregation was. The “Coming of Age in Mississippi” is an accurate representation of life in the south before and during the Civil Rights Movement.
Society tries to place many rules upon an individual as to what is acceptable and what is not . One must decide for themselves whether to give in to these pressures and conform to society’s projected image, or rather to resist and maintain their own desired self image. In the story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, Munro suggests that this conflict is internal and external and a persons experiences in life will determine which of these forces will conquer. In terms of the unnamed protagonist’s experiences in the story, it becomes clear just how strong the pressure of society to conform really is, as it overcomes and replaces the girl’s self image.
“Pay no mind to what other people say; whatever makes an individual happy is what he or she should do.” This quote comes from my grandmother, who tries her best to teach me about an individual’s personal identity. An individual’s identity represents who he or she truly is; it is something that allows a specific person to stand out from the crowd. During an individual’s life, he or she will come across many obstacles that will shape her or his being and will further shape her or him into someone with particular traits, or an identity. During my life, I grew up with six older siblings who each had voices and opinions quite different than mine. Although I felt different from everyone else, there was always one person who I related to, my grandmother. All throughout the years of growing up and going through changes, I always seemed to be filled with encouraging words of wisdom from my grandmother, and, most importantly, she was very accepting of the paths I had chosen to follow despite the fact that they were different from my family’s paths. Throughout the book The Norton Mix, which is an anthology of different texts, many aspects of identity are explored. The selection that I believe relates to me the most in this book is “Professions for Women” by Virginia Woolf, a 1931 speech about Woolf's work as a writer. Another text that I believe presents many characters with different identity aspects is the novel Hairstyles of the Damned, by Joe Meno; the novel is about a teenage boy searching for his identity. After analyzing both texts and listening attentively to my grandmother’s advice, I have concluded that everyone needs to understand that no two identities are alike, and individuals should follow their dreams no matter what...
Lights, camera, action. The spotlight gleams down on me. What do I say? Sure, my blackness typecasts me as aggressively outspoken, even though my occasional moments of shyness and social awkwardness prevents me from navigating within this narrative. A common rhetorical tactic that is upheld in the black community is the premise that young girls should be “seen, and not heard.” This narrative was heavily consumed in my household, which brew me to believe that my voice was trivial compared to my male counterparts. The Sapphire archetype of anger and the Jezebel archetype of sexuality failed to align with my shy persona. At a young age, I developed an inferiority complex. This is one of the effects of teaching young girls to keep quiet.
Self-definition is crucial, not only to being, but to creating. As Gilbert and Gubar so astutely note in The Madwoman in the Attic, "For all literary artists, of course, self-definition necessarily precedes self-assertion: the creative 'I AM' cannot be uttered if the 'I' knows not what it is" (17). One way of describing this work of self-definition is as "learn[ing] to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die" (Estes, 33). But female definition has not been this sorting out process of self-definition. Instead, it has been a static male definition "by default" or "by intent." If the female is to create herself, she must begin with a process of self-definition whose first step is, of necessity, a negation of the hitherto established male definition of "female." Virginia Woolf calls this "killing The Angel in the House" (PFW 286). Before she can say "yes" by creating a positive form she must first say "no" to the false positive form created by a patriarchal society. Before she can reclaim herself from the negative space of t...
Do you really the know the real you? Identity is something you can never know how it’s formed. You could have been pretending to be someone else your whole life ‘till you find something new exploring your own self can change you up.The people in the article I’m using some don't know their own identity and end up being someone who they are not and are changed by others. Which you or the people in the articles can or can not regret in the future. It also depends on you, sometimes when you don't know yourself you pretend to be someone else to see if you fit in with them, but all of you are just different. My essay will talk about all the topics talking about like, When you don’t know your own identity you can clearly communicate it to others, If you don’t know your own identity people can manipulate or change you, and lastly the topic I'm talking about is if you know your own identity you can make good life decisions to achieve your life goals. This will help you understand a lot about
The poem "Girl" by author Jamaica Kincaid shows love and family togetherness by creating microcosmic images of the way mothers raise their children in order to survive. Upon closer examination, the reader sees that the text is a string of images in Westerner Caribbean family practices.
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.
Identity has many sides to it. In private, people are allowed to conceptualize their own views, ideas and beliefs without the influence of outside opinions. In the public sphere, some may fear public scrutiny and in order to avoid that kind of situation, many people change their values and beliefs in order to fit in with the majority. However, if one feels strongly about their values and beliefs then they are more likely to stick with what they think is right even if it goes against what the majority believe in. In turn, the public sphere can provide a space for one’s private values to manifest themselves- allowing one to show their true self. In the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer displays how one can develops their views through private experiences and how they display themselves in a public space. Chaucer does this through the character in the Wife of Bath, explaining her private
The poem Girl by author Jamaica Kincaid shows love and family togetherness by creating the next generation of women. The poem is basically a guidebook for life on how a woman should take care of their family. Jamaica Kincaid demonstrates the proper task a woman should display. Girl symbolizes the proper way to respect yourself not only as a person, but as a woman. When a woman carries herself respectfully man admire her more. A man is usually attracted to women when mother-like characteristics. Women should hold high expectations of herself more than anybody. Women are not able to perform the set of tasks that a man is able to perform without being called a slut.
How can one establish one’s own personal identity when one’s societal expectations rules one’s life? Virginia Woolf uses her story, A Room of One’s Own, to show the stifling reality of the struggles in making room for women in the twentieth century culture. Virginia Woolf established a feministic view in the patriarchal world of the early 1900s. Woolf begins the story with a witty narrator preparing a lecture on women and fiction, and that the reality for a female to write fiction was not conducive to the weary life handed to her. The narrator of A Room of One’s Own points out that the cultural expectations for women in society was quite different from what many women’s goals actually were in life.
Identities are an important part of the human experience. One of the many identities that creates a person is gender. Society, being the entity establishing social norms and social roles, plays a part in effecting the individual’s gender, and how they choose to express themself. The underlying or overlying identities also have the same effect. Gender is not only an identity, it is a lifestyle inside and out. Gender, like race, class, and sexuality; is not limited to the binary scale, and that is normal, natural, and human. The concept of gender is man-made, but it forces one’s hand to analyze the thought processes behind an individual's perception on gender through self, through society, or through the dichotomy and/or correspondence of the