What it’s like to be a girl “What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl (For Those of You Who Aren’t),” is a poem written by Patricia Smith in 1955. She used rough words to describe what is like to be a black girl. “Lust” is a short story by Susan Minot who tells the story of a teenage white girl’s sexual desires in a descriptive way. Both authors talk about two young girls searching for them selves, trying to discover when will their true reflections show whom they really are inside. Smith tells the story from a young black girl’s eyes in the 1950s, while Minot tells it from the eyes of a young white girl in the 1960s. First of all, it’s being 9 years old and feeling like you’re not finished, like your edges are wild, like there’s something, …show more content…
Minot describes the girls sex acts with each individual boy in a short detail way. “You’d go on walks to get off campus. It was raining like hell, my sweater as sopped as a wet sheep. Tim pinned me to a tree, the woods light brown and dark brown, a white house half hidden with lights already on. The water was as loud as a crowd hissing. He made certain comments about my forehead, about my cheeks.” (Minot 333). Minot continues to describe the teenage girl lust for multiple boys through out the story. It was normal to have sex after you did it for the first time. Her parents didn’t even seem to care or notice what their daughter was doing. “My parents had no idea. Parents never really know what’s going on, especially when you’re away at school most of the time. If she met them, my mother might say, “Oliver seems nice” or “I like that one” without much of an opinion. If she didn’t like them, “He’s a funny fellow, isn’t he?” or “Johnny’s perfectly nice but a drink of water.” My father was too shy to talk to them at all unless they played sports and he’d ask them about that.” (Minot 334). Her mother couldn’t even recognize the change through her daughter’s eyes as sex began to her effect her. She was blind to see that her daughter was slowly fading away. Her father was too timid to put the fear in those boys minds so they won’t put a hand on his daughter, but respect her because he knows the mind set of a teenage boy. During the young girl sex escapades, she begins to loose herself as she realizes that she no longer existed to the boys after she opened her legs and gave them everything they wanted. “After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickens at slamming, and slowly you fill up with an overwhelming sadness, and elusive gaping worry. You don’t try to explain it, filled with the knowledge that it’s nothing after all, everything
The black women’s interaction with her oppressive environment during Revolutionary period or the antebellum America was the only way of her survival. Playing her role, and being part of her community that is not always pleasant takes a lot of courage, and optimism for better tomorrow. The autonomy of a slave women still existed even if most of her natural rights were taken. As opposed to her counterparts
As portrayed by her thoughts after sex in this passage, the girl is overly casual about the act of sex and years ahead of her time in her awareness of her actions. Minot's unique way of revealing to the reader the wild excursions done by this young promiscuous adolescent proves that she devalues the sacred act of sex. Furthermore, the manner in which the author illustrates to the reader these acts symbolizes the likeness of a list. Whether it's a list of things to do on the weekend or perhaps items of groceries which need to be picked up, her lust for each one of the boys in the story is about as well thought out and meaningful as each item which has carelessly and spontaneously been thrown on to a sheet of paper as is done in making a list. This symbolistic writing style is used to show how meaningless these relationships were, but the deeper meaning of why she acted the way she did is revealed throughout the story.
On Being Young-A Woman-and Colored an essay by Marita Bonner addresses what it means to be black women in a world of white privilege. Bonner reflects about a time when she was younger, how simple her life was, but as she grows older she is forced to work hard to live a life better than those around her. Ultimately, she is a woman living with the roles that women of all colors have been constrained to. Critics, within the last 20 years, believe that Marita Bonners’ essay primarily focuses on the double consciousness ; while others believe that she is focusing on gender , class , “economic hardships, and discrimination” . I argue that Bonner is writing her essay about the historical context of oppression forcing women into intersectional oppression by explaining the naturality of racial discrimination between black and white, how time and money equate to the American Dream, and lastly how gender discrimination silences women, specifically black women.
During the different times that both stories were written the way that African Americans were treated were quite similar. Back in 1909 when The Color Purple took place it was before woman were really seen as what they are and they were just figured to be a caretaker and a maid. The fact that Nettie was black didn’t help because she was considered to be dumb while in fact she was intelligent. During her years when she was married to Albert she with a little help of her sister Cellie learned how to read. Slavery was taking place during the period Desiree’s baby was written in. It was a horrible thing to be African American and a woman during that time. When it was thought that Desiree was an African American her husband shunned her and wanted nothing to do with her.
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
In Deborah E. McDowell’s essay Black Female Sexuality in Passing, she writes about the sexual repression of women seen in Nella Larsen‘s writings during the Harlem Renaissance, where black women had difficulty expressing their sexuality. In her essay, she writes about topics affecting the sexuality of women such as, religion, marriage, and male dominated societies. In Toni Morrison’s short story, “Recitatif” there are examples of women who struggle to express their sexuality. The people in society judge women based off their appearance, and society holds back women from expressing themselves due to society wanting them to dress/act a certain way. Religion is one point McDowell brings forth in her essay, during the Jazz era she stated that singers such as Bessie Smith, Gertrude Rainey, and Victoria Spivey sung about sexual feelings in their songs.
The short story “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, and Halfie” by Junot Diaz is the main character, Yunior’s, guide to dating girls of different races and the ways to act in order to get what you want from them. The only thing Yunior seems to want for these girls is sexual acts. This short story argues that a person’s heritage, economic class, and race affect how a person identifies themselves, and how their identity affects how they act towards other people. The pressures a person may feel from society also has an effect on how a person treats themselves and others. The pressure and expectations from society are also what makes Yunior think he needs to have sex with these girls. There are many different occasions of the main character talking and acting differently to other people within the story, such as: to himself, his friends, and the different girls he tries to date.
In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry; the theme of the play is when people are in poverty, lust increases. The play is about the Youngers, who are a family that just got an insurance check for the death of Mr. Younger for $10,000. Since they have this money, each family member has something they want to use the money for. They could not spend too much on anything and they were spending very little money in order to save it. They had to be very resourceful of where they placed their money.
In ‘How it feels to be colored me’ Neale Hurston opens up to her pride and identity as an African-American. Hurston uses a wide variety of imagery, diction using figurative language freely with metaphors. Her tone is bordering controversial using local lingo.
Toni Morrison's novel "The Bluest Eye", is a very important novel in literature, because of the many boundaries that were crosses and the painful, serious topics that were brought into light, including racism, gender issues, Black female Subjectivity, and child abuse of many forms. This set of annotated bibliographies are scholarly works of literature that centre around the hot topic of racism in the novel, "The Bluest Eye", and the low self-esteem faced by young African American women, due to white culture. My research was guided by these ideas of racism and loss of self, suffered in the novel, by the main character Pecola Breedlove. This text generates many racial and social-cultural problems, dealing with the lost identity of a young African American women, due to her obsession with the white way of life, and her wish to have blue eyes, leading to her complete transgression into insanity.
Discrimination is described as the unjust treatment of others, especially due to race, sex, or age. In the narratives “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua, both writers use their works to shine a light on discrimination in the United States, though in different ways. Anzaldua’s focus relies mostly on the pride of her fellow Chicanos, whereas, Hurston has more of an individualistic, soulful message. Anzaldua grew up along the Mexican-American border where she struggled with her identity as she was torn between the standards of both Mexican and American societies. Hurston did not face significant racial differences until “the very day she become colored” (Hurston 1). Hurston’s
In “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” Hurston breaks from the tradition of her time by rejecting the idea that the African American people should be ashamed or saddened by the color of their skin. She tells other African Americans that they should embrace their color and be proud of who they are. She writes, “[A socialite]…has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges,” and “I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads” (942-943). Whether she feels “colored” or not, she knows she is beautiful and of value. But Hurston writes about a time when she did not always know that she was considered colored.
How would you feel if you woke up in the morning, knowing that everyday a mass group of people are against you, because of the color of your skin? America has always come across issues about race, and this is something that will most likely never end. Race is embedded into our society, media, and even our classrooms. Zora Neale Hurston, author of “How it feels to be A Colored Me”, describes her exploration in the discovery of her self-pride and identity. She tells how living in her community she did not feel alienated or different. Tyina Steptoe, author of “An Ode to Country Music from a Black Dixie Chick”, uses a country film to understand her own life because she notices that the film sparked her love for country music, even though she had
The early 1900s was a very challenging time for Negroes especially young women who developed issues in regards to their identities. Their concerns stemmed from their skin colors. Either they were fair skinned due mixed heritage or just dark skinned. Young African American women experienced issues with racial identity which caused them to be in a constant struggle that prohibits them from loving themselves and the skin they are in. The purpose of this paper is to examine those issues in the context of selected creative literature. I will be discussing the various aspects of them and to aid in my analysis, I will be utilizing the works of Nella Larsen from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Jessie Bennett Redmond Fauset, and Wallace Brown.
The title of the essay, “Black Is a Woman’s Color” hints at the intersections of identity, specifically as it pertains to the life of Black women, occupying two “subordinate” states simultaneously, rendering them to be the most overlooked and ignored people in America. By way of this essay, Bell Hooks turns that idea on its head by transporting the experiences of Black women to center stage. But as the essay unfolds, hooks shows that the experiences that her narrator recounts have been influenced by the ideas and actions of her parents, equipping the narrator with knowledge about the power of artistic performance as it pertains to the Black literary and musical tradition and a unique understanding of gender roles that all impact the way in