The American Girl doll leans against the young girl’s bed, unblinking brown eyes watching as Savannah plays. The Kaya doll is clothed in a faux-deerskin dress, tassels and beads hanging in a fringe. Her hair is long and black, painstakingly braided and tied off with feathers and shell-adorned hair ties. Earlier, the small girl with light blonde hair had undone the braids and gently brushed through Kaya’s hair before braiding it and making sure each strand was in place, then finally tying off the hairstyle. Now, she begins to set up a small model teepee. She props up the plastic poles, meant to resemble thin logs, then carefully wraps the suede cover around the small Teepee. Inside, she places the buffalo hide and elk-hide blanket inside the Teepee, a bed for Kaya to lay on. The girl jumps to her feet, calling for her mother to help her find Kaya’s horses, the appaloosa Steps High, and foal Sparks Flying. …show more content…
The mother smiles, happy her daughter loves the doll so much.
Savannah had begged for months for it, and Debra was pleased. She herself loved the uniqueness of the doll, always one to expose her daughter to new ideas both unique and educational. Kaya is considered the first American Girl doll, a proper nod to the fact that Native Americans were here long before Europeans made their contact. In researching the doll, Debra found that Kaya has a face-mold that differs from the other American Girl dolls, due to a taboo with in her nation, the Nimíipuu, that has to do with showing their teeth. In their culture, it conveys aggression, and is frowned upon. Satisfied with the message the doll’s story conveyed, she purchased Kaya as a Christmas gift for
Savannah. Kaya’s series of books paint her as a strong young woman, a trait the mother sees in her daughter, even at such a young age. Both mother and child greatly admire the spirit of the girl described in the books. Like Kaya, Savannah fancies herself to be an outdoors-woman, enthralled by and appreciative of what nature has to offer. A similar love of horses and animals in general is a strong connection between them as well. Despite Savannah and Kaya coming from different cultures and stories, Savannah liked that there are many things to connect them and many things to learn from Kaya’s story. Debra stands from the couch to help Savannah to look through the home for the two toy horses. Meanwhile, Savannah tears through the home, from bedroom across the hall to bedroom, again down the small hallway and past the stuffed-full bookcase to check the bathroom, just in case. Flying through the living room and into the kitchen, where Sparks Flying lays on his side. She picks the little one up, stroking the black mane and rearranging the mess that has come of his tail. “It’s okay, Sparks,” she She makes her own Teepee, dragging large, fallen branches through the forest. Leaves that fell a while ago crunch beneath her shoes. Two sticks she grabs, one with a forked end, propping the second one into the The cat hisses and twitches it’s tail, fur ruffling around her neck.
This book report deal with the Native American culture and how a girl named Taylor got away from what was expected of her as a part of her rural town in Pittman, Kentucky. She struggles along the way with her old beat up car and gets as far west as she can. Along the way she take care of an abandoned child which she found in the backseat of her car and decides to take care of her. She end up in a town outside Tucson and soon makes friends which she will consider family in the end.
In both poem “ Barbie Doll” by Merge Piercy and “ homage to my hips” by Lucille Clifton, they both expressed the different way on how our society wants us, women to look and act in order to be except into the society. Our society condemned any women who are to act differently from our norms. In this society and in every culture aspect they are always stereotype, women always been taking advantage of no matter what century we are on. In “Barbie Doll” the author tend to provide more effective critique of society expectation about our body image than “homage to my hips”.
Very few dolls were carved out of a single piece of wood. The arms and legs and head were carved separately and glued to the torso.
Deloria, in the introduction, begins with the picture of an American Indian using a modern bubble-style hair dryer at a hair salon. This image often evokes a chuckle, as Deloria states, because of our inherent expectation for an Indian to be wearing buckskin in the plains, rather than in a hair salon. Often, once the topic of stereotype, malice, and expectations are brought up, the chuckle or grin is gone. The preconceived ideal of what an American Indian should be is so deeply ingrained within us that we do not even give it a second thought when judging a supposed anomaly as the woman under the hair dryer. Deloria organizes his work into five sections, in the form of essays. These tackle the issues surrounding the stereotypes and expectations that we have for the Native peoples, in a variety of different aspects. The first one focuses on the idea of violence, and the popular notion of a savage depiction of the Indians. The second focuses on the Native American view of themsel...
Louise Erdrich’s short story “American horse” is a literary piece written by an author whose works emphasize the American experience for a multitude of different people from a plethora of various ethnic backgrounds. While Erdrich utilizes a full arsenal of literary elements to better convey this particular story to the reader, perhaps the two most prominent are theme and point of view. At first glance this story seems to portray the struggle of a mother who has her son ripped from her arms by government authorities; however, if the reader simply steps back to analyze the larger picture, the theme becomes clear. It is important to understand the backgrounds of both the protagonist and antagonists when analyzing theme of this short story. Albetrine, who is the short story’s protagonist, is a Native American woman who characterizes her son Buddy as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The antagonist, are westerners who work on behalf of the United States Government. Given this dynamic, the stage is set for a clash between the two forces. The struggle between these two can be viewed as a microcosm for what has occurred throughout history between Native Americans and Caucasians. With all this in mind, the reader can see that the theme of this piece is the battle of Native Americans to maintain their culture and way of life as their homeland is invaded by Caucasians. In addition to the theme, Erdrich’s usage of the third person limited point of view helps the reader understand the short story from several different perspectives while allowing the story to maintain the ambiguity and mysteriousness that was felt by many Natives Americans as they endured similar struggles. These two literary elements help set an underlying atmos...
Hippie Barbie, written by Denise Duhamel uses the symbols of the contemporary life of the fairy-tale lifestyle into reality. The words and ideas used in this narrative poem give fantasy a different perspective. It is inferred that the speaker is a female Barbie specialist, who reflects her knowledge by using the popular Barbie doll as the main character. Throughout the poem, she gives key points that have female perspective; for instance, kissing Ken, thinking about having mixed-race children, and walking a poodle. She establishes a story-telling tone, which introduces Hippie Barbie as a real woman. The speaker is trying to address to all Americans that know deeper into Barbie doll life. By using the word “hippie” she gives a sense of rejection, opposition and liberalism towards things. Hippie Barbie reveals the ugly truth about the society based on appearances that we live in.
A maiden aunt never marries because a river prawn bites her calf and, due to minimal treatment by her physician, nestles there to grow. She devotes her life to her nieces, making for them life-sized dolls on their birthdays and wedding days. When only the youngest niece is left at home, the doctor comes to see his patient and brings his son, also a physician. When the son realizes the father could have cured the leg, the doctor says, "I wanted you to see the prawn that has paid for your education these twenty years."
The Barbie is a plastic, man-made female toy, which has perfect facial symmetry, unnatural body dimensions, and perfectly unblemished white skin. In Chris Semansky’s Overview of “Barbie Doll,” he explains that the Barbie “is invented to show women have been socialized into thinking of their bodies and behavior in relation to a male-controlled idea” (Semansky). The title directly alludes to the Barbie toy, which represents a design of a man-made construction of the female image that shows an unnatural human form that could only exist inside the imagination of men. Throughout both “Barbie Doll” and “The Birthmark” you will find the female protagonists seeking an ultimately perfect form, free of the characteristics that those around them see as unworthy. It is as if they are chasing the blueprint of perfection that is present in the Barbie. The original Barbie came with three outfits a bathing suit, a tennis outfit, and a wedding dress (Semansky). Her outfits clearly symbolize restrictions forced on female privilege, identity, and autonomy, where “she embodies the ideals and values of her middle-class American community” who expect her to “spend her days at the country club and her afternoons cooking dinner for her husband” (Semansky). This is directly similar to the “outfits” those around the women in “Barbie Doll” where the girlchild is born
In A Doll’s House Henrik Ibsen writes the character Nora, to reflect a child, the reason he does this is to comment on gender stereotypes of the time this work was written, to portray women as powerless, dependent, and naive. Her actions and overall position in the play is what places her in a position of the child in this work, however in some ways this is Nora’s coming-of-age story, and Henrik uses Nora to comment on women’s placement and capabilities in their modern society.
Von Monogyna´s Great Horned Owl Katsina Doll (Mongwa) is the master carver´s representation of the Katsina spirit Mongwa. Monogyna crafted the Katsina in 1980 out of cottonwood root. Cottonwood root is the traditional material for Katsina dolls because it was once abundant in the Hopi´s homeland, modern day Arizona. Katsina dolls are religious icons that were traditionally created to teach children, especially young girls about the Katsina Spirits (Hopi Cultural Preservation Office). The Mongwa Katsina was not created for this purpose as evidenced his inclusion of a base in his carving. The inclusion of a base is characteristic of Katsina dolls meant to be displayed standing rather than as wall hangings like traditional iderations of Katsina.
"What Dolls Can Tell Us About Race in America." ABC News. ABC News Network, 11 Oct. 2006. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
Stone, Tanya Lee. The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us. New York: Penguin Group, 2010. Print.
In "A Doll's House", Ibsen portrays the bleak picture of a role held by women of all economic classes that is sacrificial. The female characters in the play back-up Nora's assertion that even though men are unable to sacrifice their integrity, "hundreds of thousands of woman have." Mrs. Linde found it necessary to abandon Krogstad, her true but poor love, and marry a richer man in order to support her mother and two brothers. The nanny has to abandon her children to support herself by working for Nora. Though Nora is economically advantaged, in comparison to the other female characters, she leads a hard life because society dictates that Torvald be the marriages dominant member. Torvald condescends Nora and inadvertently forces Nora to hide the loan from him. Nora knows that Torvald could never accept the idea that his wife, or any other woman, could aid in saving his life.
A Doll House was one of Henrik Ibsen's most controversial plays. He wrote this realistic play in 1879. Ibsen's writing style of realism was clearly shown in this play. This play was controversial at the time it was written, shocking conservative readers. But, at the same time, the play served as a rallying point for supporters of a drama with different ideas.
My friends and I never owned Barbies. When I was young, little girls in my New York City neighbourhood collected “Dawns.” Only seven inches high, Dawns were, in retrospect, the underdog of fashion dolls. There were four in the collection: Dawn, dirty-blond and appropriately smug; Angie, whose name and black hair allowed her to pass for Italian or Hispanic; Gloria, a redhead with bangs and green eyes (Irish, perhaps, or a Russian Jew?); and Dale, a black doll with a real afro.