Summary Of The Fourth Of July By Audre Lorde

375 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Problems with racism in literature

In the short story “The Fourth of July,” Audre Lorde explains her tragic childhood trip to Washington when the society and America treats black people with discrimination. Lorde repeatedly affirms that racism should not exist and contends that people should try to fix this issue, unlike her parents. Throughout the short story, Lorde contrasts from her parents because she believes that injustice to black people should be conceded, while her parents constantly try to obscure racism. In her writing, Lorde evokes the reader about how her parents persistently try to hide racism when she reveals that her family seat in a “corded and crisp and pinaforced” way (242). Lorde estabslishes how her family tries to be perfect and balanced through this parallelism

Show More
Related

  • Figurative Language And Diction In Queens, 1963, By Julia Alvarez

    703 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “Queens, 1963”, the speaker narrates to her audience her observations that she has collected from living in her neighborhood located in Queens, New York in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. The narrator is a thirteen-year-old female immigrant who moved from the Dominican Republic to America with her family. As she reflects on her past year of living in America, she reveals a superb understanding of the reasons why the people in her neighborhood act the way they do towards other neighbors. In “Queens, 1963” by Julia Alvarez, the poet utilizes diction, figurative language, and irony to effectively display to the readers that segregation is a strong part of the American melting pot.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Audre Lorde And Brent Staples

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    America have a long history of black’s relationship with their fellow white citizens, there’s two authors that dedicated their whole life, fighting for equality for blacks in America. – Audre Lorde and Brent Staples. They both devoted their professional careers outlying their opinions, on how to reduce the hatred towards blacks and other colored. From their contributions they left a huge impression on many academic studies and Americans about the lack of awareness, on race issues that are towards African-American. There’s been countless, of critical evidence that these two prolific writers will always be synonymous to writing great academic papers, after reading and learning about their life experience, from their memoirs.

    Read More

  • Audre Lorde The Fourth Of July Analysis

    1304 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Audre Lorde’s bildungsroman essay “The Fourth of July” (1997), she recalls her family’s trip to the nation’s capital that represented the end of her childhood ignorance by being exposed to the harsh reality of racialization in the mid 1900s. Lorde explains that her parents are to blame for shaping her skewed perception of America by shamefully dismissing frequent acts of racism. Utilizing copious examples of her family being negatively affected by racism, Lorde expresses her anger towards her parents’ refusal to address the blatant, humiliating acts of discrimination in order to emphasize her confusion as to why objecting to racism is a taboo. Lorde’s use of a transformational tone of excitement to anger, and dramatic irony allows those

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Claudia Rankine's Citizen: American Lyric

    1145 Words  | 3 Pages

    Claudia Rankine analyzes racism to its core, bringing to surface that miniscule events are just as problematic as televised ones. Her words are beautifully brutal, striking up emotions for anyone that reads it. As readers, we are taken through a journey from past to present events of racial incidents experienced by different genders and ages. Above all, Rankine provides a strong indication that racism is far from over.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Frederick Douglass, The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

    1284 Words  | 3 Pages

    A human being is a complicated entity of a contradictory nature, where creative and destructive, virtuous and vicious are interwoven. Each of us has gone through various kinds of struggle at least once in a lifetime, ranging from everyday discrepancies to worldwide catastrophes. There are always different causes and reasons that trigger these struggles, however, there is common ground for them as well: people are different, even though it is a truism no one seems to be able to realize this statement from beyond the bounds of one’s self and reach out to approach the Other. The concept of the Other is dominant in Frederick Douglass’s text “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”, for it determines the main conflict and illuminates the issue of intolerance and even blasphemy regarding the attitude of white Americans towards Negroes. The text was written as a speech to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and delivered at Rochester’s Corinthian Hall on July 5, 1852.

    Read More

  • Zami: A New Spelling Of My Name By Audre Lorde

    570 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, The author Audre Lorde exposes the difficulties of growing up in a society that was racist and not accepting to her lifestyle. Lorde’s various relationships throughout her life have definitely played a role in shaping the individual she has become. Her mother was very sheltering trying to hide the racism going on around her. For example, her mother told her white people have a nasty habit of spitting into the wind meanwhile they are spitting directly onto Audre becuase of her color. With growing older comes Audre’s realization of how s...

    Read More

  • Racism In Claudia Rankine's 'Citizens: An American Lyric'

    760 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “Citizens: An American Lyric” by Claudia Rankine the audience is placed in a world where racism strongly affects the daily American cultural and social life. In this world we are put as the eyewitnesses and victims, the bystanders and the participants of racial encounters that happen in our daily lives and in the media, yet we have managed to ignore them for the mere fact that we are accustomed to them. Some of these encounters may be accidental slips, things that we didn’t intend to say and that we didn’t mean yet they’ve managed to make it to the surface. On the other hand we have the encounters that are intentionally offensive, things said that are

    Read More

  • Post-Reconstruction In August Wilson's The Piano Lesson

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    While the 13th and 15th Amendments depict a step towards racial equality, additional laws were passed that ultimately prevented African Americans from achieving the opportunities and acknowledgement the deserved. From the convict leasing system, to the exclusively white government, white Americans were able to maintain their superiority, restraining African Americans from progressing. August Wilson’s Piano Lesson symbolizes the de facto aspect of an African American life by illustrating the discrimination African American faced due to racism. To achieve true racial equality America needs to see more development from those with less power. In order for this to happen, it is imperative for the people of America to rid of all their prior stereotypical judgements, and overcome their habit of treating people based on their appearance. By then, all pedestrians in any sidewalk would rush over to anyone, even if they were all dressed in battered

    Read More

  • Being Biracial-Personal Narrative

    891 Words  | 2 Pages

    I was late for school, and my father had to walk me in to class so that my teacher would know the reason for my tardiness. My dad opened the door to my classroom, and there was a hush of silence. Everyone's eyes were fixed on my father and me. He told the teacher why I was late, gave me a kiss goodbye and left for work. As I sat down at my seat, all of my so-called friends called me names and teased me. The students teased me not because I was late, but because my father was black. They were too young to understand. All of this time, they thought that I was white, because I had fare skin like them, therefore I had to be white. Growing up having a white mother and a black father was tough. To some people, being black and white is a contradiction in itself. People thought that I had to be one or the other, but not both. I thought that I was fine the way I was. But like myself, Shelby Steele was stuck in between two opposite forces of his double bind. He was black and middle class, both having significant roles in his life. "Race, he insisted, blurred class distinctions among blacks. If you were black, you were just black and that was that" (Steele 211).

    Read More

  • How It Feels To Be Colored Me, By Zora Neale Hurston

    1058 Words  | 3 Pages

    The past sixty years have been full of monumentally huge changes for society in the United States. From the civil rights movement and the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to the election of the first black President and the legalization of same-sex marriage, equality has been the subject on hand. While it may be a big pill to swallow for some, those that have been discriminated against for quite some time finally have the freedom to be themselves, knowing that they are protected under the law. Those minorities that celebrate this equality have a lot to teach the bigots of the country in such a wonderful day and age – pride. Zora Neale Hurston shows how important it is to have pride in yourself, your differences, and where you come from, in her four-sectioned essay, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.”

    Read More

  • A Deeper Look: Langston Hughes's 'Ballad of the Landlord'

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ites a short 33-line poem that simply shows the barriers between races in the time period when racism was still openly practiced through segregation and discrimination. The poem captures the African American tenant’s frustrations towards the landlord as well as the racism shown by the landlord. The poem is a great illustration of the time period, and it shows how relevant discrimination was in everyday life in the nineteen-forties. It is important for the author to use the selected literary devices to help better illustrate his point. Each literary device in the poem helps exemplify the author’s intent: to increase awareness of the racism in the society in the time period.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Between The World And Me

    1568 Words  | 4 Pages

    A rare sighting of an honest portrayal of black life was originally published in 2015 by a man named Ta-Nehisi Coates. This book, Between the World and Me, is a warning to Coates’s son about the world around him and what that could mean for his future. There are examples of news reports dedicated to showing that “The Dream” does not exist the way “white America” believes it exists and analogies enhanced by detailed news reports and blunt personal experiences that both Coates’s and his son have witnessed. Coates leaves a detailed message to his readers about what it is like to be black in a country where everyone “believes themselves to be white.” He appeals to the emotions of readers with factual evidence and personal, unapologetic opinion in order to make his point clear, “white America”

    Read More

  • The Fourth Of July By Audre Lorde Analysis

    1066 Words  | 3 Pages

    Therefore, it shows that Lorde has to stand up for herself in order to go to the dining car. The essay reflects on when Lorde and her family visit a store, they were told to leave the store which made them feel excluded from the crowd. The author writes, “My mother and father believed that they could best protect their children from the realities of race in America and the fact of the American racism by never giving them name, much less discussing their nature. We were told we must never trust white people, but why was never explained, nor the nature of their ill will” (Lorde, 240). The quote explains that Lorde’s parents thought they can protect their child in United States from the racism, however, they had to go through it and face racism in their daily life. This shows that her parents were aware of racism, which they might have to stand up for their rights, but they did not take the stand for themselves as well as their child. Therefore, her parents guided them to stay away from white people. This tells readers that Lorde has to fight for the independence that she deserves along with going against her

    Read More

  • The Theme Of Freedom In The Fourth Of July By Audre Lorde

    667 Words  | 2 Pages

    Does the nation's capital really represent freedom?Well Audre Lorde in The Fourth Of July went to D.C the capital of America and really starts to question if it does. This is the first time she went to D.C and she just found it to be challenging to face racism in the capital that was supposed to represent freedom. When Audre’s family tries to sit down and eat ice cream they get kicked out because they are colored. During a childhood trip to Washington, D.C., Audre Lorde encounters the obstacle of racism changing her perception of what the nation’s capital represented, which means that freedom may not apply equally to all races.

    Read More

  • Black Poetry

    2173 Words  | 5 Pages

    Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.

    Read More

More about Summary Of The Fourth Of July By Audre Lorde

Open Document