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African feminism in literature
African feminism in literature
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In both the poem Song for a Thin Sister and in chapter 4 of Citizen, the topic of black women being undermined and looked down apon is a prevalent theme. In the poem, the author is fat black girl who has a younger white friend. Growing up they believed that skinny was a funny thing to be, but as they matured the white girl began to adapt to the social norms of her community while the author became fat. along with the adaptation to social norms, she developed a disdain for her fat black friends because she hasn't fallen into the norms that the white community has set for her. The author doesn't seems to shocked at the change as she has always believed that being skinny is something achieved by white girls. In the book, Claudia talks about
In the novel, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, we learn the story of a abused girl trying to survive the world that she was placed in. She never had any friends until she was in the sixth grade, when she met Eric. Eric was also an outcast because of his weight. The other kids call him Moby because he's on the swim team and that's their clever way of saying that he is like a whale. Sarah and Eric have been friends for six years and when she stops talking and is placed in a psych ward, he questions the situation right away. Eric visits her frequently to try and get her to talk. Sarah finds a way to tell Eric part of the reason why she hasn't been talking. She is trying her best to stay away from her abusive father. In this story, Eric is fighting his hardest for someone that doesn't want his help which makes the situation more difficult, but not impossible. As you follow the story of Sarah and her struggles, the theme will scream at you what real friendship is.
To begin with, black people are victimized by prejudice. Society shows prejudice by having a tainted, preconceived notion of what a black person is—dangerous. This is shown when a young woman runs away from Cole after getting off the bus. This situation elicits a feeling of defence from Cole: “I resisted the urge to call out in my own defence” (Cole, 2015, par. 20). Prejudice is also shown when Cole campaigns door-to-door. On one of the houses, a teenage girl opens
This frustration acted as a vehicle for her to gain a desire to be more
Minny, Aibileen and the other maids are seen as unequal towards the rest of the community, or the whites. They are treated coarsely and like they are less of a person because they have different color skin. The maids were also not allowed to use the same bathroom as the rest of the people. “She's upset because the n**** uses the inside bathroom and so do we” (pg 7). At some parts in the book the women in the bridge club would talk about the maids in a mean way and make fun of them and talk bad about them. “I keep telling her, if that Minny can’t cook she needs to just go on and fire her”.....”Minny cooks fine.” say ole Miss Walter. “I’m just not so hungry like I used to be”. The book was set during the time with all the civil rights movements so this conflicts shows up a lot. “Yet I am neither thrilled or disappointed by the news that they might let a colored man into Ole Miss…..Roger Sticker, our local reporter, is nervous, smiling, talking fast. “President Kennedy has ordered the governor to step aside for James Meredith, I repeat, the President of the United---”. People of color were also being killed because they were who they were or for accidentally doing things. “ Did you hear about the colored boy this morning? One they beat with a tire iron for accidentally using white
Vonnegut's, Breakfast of Champions, shows the need for humans to stereotype. People tend to focus on very irrelevant details, such as race and sex, rather than more important issues. People comment that " the agency [is] on the black side of town," and that is where the " agricultural machines" are living (Vonnegut 41,73). Asserting that the black people have their own side of town and are not human, but " hundred-nigger [machinery]," used to work in the fields (150). People also tend to see household work as " women work," and that is exactly how it is referred to, which shows how women are considered to be inferior beings. (251). Vonnegut determines that although these details are not relevant they do serve a purpose; they point out a very common Black Humor theme, the inadequacy to deal with actual human problems (Vonnegut Web N.P.).
In the second stanza, Piercy describes the girl as healthy, intelligent, and strong (7-8). Yet these positive equalities alone, could not keep people from criticizing her, so the girl feels inferior. “She went to and fro apologizing,” which demonstrates her collapse of confidence with the people she is surrounded with, who kept putting her down (10). She gives in to the hurtful things people say about her: “Everyone [kept] seeing a fat nose on thick legs” (11). The girl thus lets people push her in the direction of society’s standard of beauty, instead of affirming her own unique beauty.
...hey find strength not in themselves, but in each other. They overlook the strength they have in themselves and only see it in another person similar to them. These women have experienced dilemmas that should have strengthened them ultimately. However, instead of being strengthened they begin to change showing that these women lack strong self-identifying characteristics. Instead of the narrative focusing on the women, it focuses on their problems—men. Each women starts to change their characteristics because of a man reacting in ways they normally would not. As a collection of poems centered on the women of color, there was not enough focus on the women, which seems to be what Shange expresses. Shange conveys the point that the black women are seen as stereotypes, and although they do not want to be seen as so, they act in ways that involuntarily put them as a group.
The point of view of being the oppressed African American is clearly evident in Langston Hughes’s writing. The author states, “I am the darker brother” (2.2) Here Hughes is clearly speaking on behalf of the African American race because during the early and mid 1900’s African American were oppressed because of their darker skin color. No where in the writing does Hughes mention the word racism, segregation, discrimination. No where in the poem are words like Civil Rights Movement or Harlem Renaissance read. Yet, the reader knows exactly what Langston Hughes is referring to. This is because the writing talks about a darker brother being told to eat somewhere else. This leads the reader to put the point of view of the poem into play. Because it talks of such a brother and because Hughes’s was a revolutionary poet who constantly wrote on the struggles of the black man, then the reader is able to easily interpret the poem as a cry for the African-American man. Langston Hughes’s writing as an African American then makes the narration very probable and realistic.
Since her first soiree in the public eye the Black women has been the token friend on the guest list. Doing her best to socialize, she is first ignored, then overly simplified and surmised to be one dimensional. First, the “mammy.” Then, the “Jezebel,” the “baby mama,” the “gold digger,” and the “sassy sidekick.” Why has no one taken the time to get to know her? Society’s perception of black women has been molded by media portrayal. This has misaligned the trajectory, and their image is not congruent with their progressive impact on society. The hackneyed ideals imposed upon this demographic must dwindle as successful, educated black women become the new standard.
...black woman cannot be the source of African American difficulties. However, the conclusion from “Sweat” is not entirely true either because a woman’s hubris, not only a man’s, could bring her to her downfall. The truth that emerges from the tension between the two stories is that one’s hubris is the source of the difficulties of one’s race and the demise of oneself.
Moreover, the woman in the ?eye of the Beholder? not only wanted beauty but she felt the need for acceptance. She was denied this when she was taken to a disability camp. It?s amazing how in the movie, people were separated and treated unequally because of their physical appearances, and as result, they could not share the same society. This is in fact is a metaphor for how discrimination was once in extreme existence in this society. For example, African Americans once had to use: different bathrooms, water fountains, and were even segregated to non-white school. They were even isolated to the worse parts of the cities.
“You can’t rely on how you look to sustain you.”(Nyongo, 2014) On March 1st,2014, Lupita Nyongo, Oscar Award Winner for Best Supporting Actress in 12 Years A Slave, gave a moving speech expressing the thoughts of a young girl. An adolescent young girl wrote a letter stating her perception of being colored. She looked for medication in order to obtain lighter skin. Her self-hate consumed her and slowly prevented her from accepting who she is. The girl struggled with her self-esteem. The young girl is encouraged by several women in black society. People such as Oprah, Alek Wek and Lupita herself were the cause of the young girl’s encouragement. She went on a self-discovery of what makes someone beautiful. The girl’s mother states that she can’t eat beauty and that it is not something that could be consumed. (Nyongo, 2014). The letter persuades young girls that compassion is the key to sustain beauty. Nyongo expresses that emotional courage of oneself is accepting and embracing her external beauty.
One example would be the economic hardship these black woman went through daily. In a statistic of 1940, two out of every five black woman worked full time while two out of every eight white women worked full time (Jones, 109). Black woman were the main bread winners of their family and they made less than the average black man “but despite the shift in employment of Negro women from rural to urban areas, Negro women are still general confined to the lowest-paying jobs.” (Jones, 110). Jones states that black women were earning low scale salaries because they were excluded from working at any other type of profession beside the under paying jobs that tended to be domestic services. The reason why these woman were taking the domestic service jobs was because they were the only ones available and during times of large amounts of unemployment, black women were always the ones to get impacted first by the effects of it. Jones also covers the portrayal of black women in the entertainment industry. They are portrayed as “this traditional stereotype of the Negro slave mother, which to this day appears in commercial advertisements, must be combatted and rejected as a device of the imperialists to perpetuate the white chauvinist ideology that Negro woman are “backward,” “inferior,” and the “natural slaves” of others.” (Jones,
As a woman of color who has always been a big girl, I started struggling with my body image when I reached my adolescence years. Growing up, I did not realize that my body was abnormal and unacceptable. I saw myself just like other peers and age group. My experience of body dissatisfaction first started within my own family. I got teased about my size by family members. My parents, especially my mother, reminded me constantly about how obese I was. Reaching a certain age, she started controlling my food intake and she made sure I ate no more than three times a day. With all those disciplinary actions from my mother and the pressure I felt from family, I started noticing of external standards of beauty and body image. In this lens, one can see that body image is influenced by many factors and my mother became a structure that carried out directives. This example demonstrates that feminine body is socially constructed and taught to us. When this ideal body image or feminine body gets inculcated in us at a young age, it becomes internalized discipline that enables one to distinguish herself from other
It depicts of masculinized feminity in the form of fat drag, that black physically over-weight people are dominant and they suppress others.