Society tries to put constraints on people, providing labels and guidelines of how to dress, how to act, and how to fit into the world. In some occurrences people break these invisible boundaries and declare no to the labels of society. With this in mind, Lacy M. Johnson's, “White Trash Primer” is a nonfiction, short story told through a second person point of view. Johnson's short story is an example of the theme, self evolution. With the use of second person as well as familiar settings; she displays the hardships of growing up in a poor family and despite this achieves a better life for herself not only with hard work but also with perseverance. The fact that primer is another word for instructions, her story is a guide to being white trash. For example, Johnson captivates her audience and puts them in the character's position with her constant use of the word “You” throughout the story. Most of the paragraphs begin with an action such as, “You move” telling the reader what to do and how white trash acts. Subsequently setting is another important aspect as she chooses to describe an identifiable place which is most likely familiar to a great number of her readers. The character discusses when she is at Taco Bell with her mother; the mother was discharged from the hospital and her mother takes the character to the bathroom …show more content…
and shows her the results of the mastectomy (828). As a result of having a Taco Bell location the setting is much more imaginable. The bathroom of the familiar chain restaurant has the audience in that bathroom sharing an emotional moment with their own mothers. Next to address, the idea of transformations as she goes from child to adult. Each transformation is clearly marked with the different use of “you”. Her journey draws readers in while she blossoms from childhood to adulthood. All these different shifts are almost nostalgic like and Johnson is able to draw the audience in even more, as they become nostalgic for a time they have not even experienced. However, even though she is always going through constant changes she does not forget where her roots formed and who she is as a person. Throughout the story she constantly reminds herself of the creek bottom that was next to her childhood home. Furthermore she refers to this as she looks at her father, “You know he's worrying... his forehead gets to looking like tilled soil, mounded in rows like the creek bottom” (827). The creek bottom is home to her, she may find comfort in those memories of when she was young and not confronted by her current struggles. The creek bottom always seems to call to her, forming itself in the expressions of her father's face. Alternatively to this her struggle is clear as she attends college trying to improve her life, “You study real damn hard this time... you buy a dictionary at a yard sale and you think you might learn every word with determination and resolve” (829). She knows this is her last chance because she was not serious the first time she attended college and she is given this last moment to improve herself, to improve her life. Additionally, the words are in a different form of text in the story because she is seeing them for the first time and they are foreign. Further along in the story she must utilize student loans and three credit cards to pay for college (829). This fact allows her to relate to a large group of college students who can understand the struggle of college debt. The cost to her at this time is not an issue because she realizes her education is much more important. This is a time she finally is able to self evolve, to really change who she is by attending school. She can now open doors with her education that she probably did not even know existed. College has opened a completely different world to her, a world of knowledge and everything is new. In the end, through her own strength she is able to finally finish college and graduate as her family cheers for her accomplishment.
She has a flashback of her childhood days, “Your daddy yells your name so loud... like he's calling you to come up from the creek bottom” (829). The creek bottom is a motif as it constantly reoccurs in the story and represents the same idea of her home and childhood. She takes herself to a better place but still her roots remain constant. The identity she chooses is her own and is not what society wanted her to name her as, white trash. Johnson moves readers as she takes them on this journey of
transformation.
Over the past few years the white working class has become docile in means of what Sara Palin describes as “Real America”, a thriving class of individuals who pride themselves on worth ethic. However, the article takes the more known impression of this group of Americans by providing the historical upbringing of the “white trash” as it first appeared in print in 1821; similarly, to how Outing Whiteness,
Claude M. Steele is the author of “ Whistling Vivaldi”, which mainly represents that the meaning of identity contingencies and stereotype threat, and how can these effect people’s ideas and behaviors. By writing this article, Steele tries to make people know exist of identity contingencies. Gina Crosley-Corcoran, who is a white woman suffered the poverty in her childhood. Through describing her miserable experiences in parallel construction to motivate readers sympathize her, moreover approving that she can as a powerful evidence for affirming the impact of identity contingencies. Crosley-Corcoran admits the white privilege really exist in some way in her article “ Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person”, and white privilege
The novel, The Color of Water follows the author and narrator James McBride, and his mother Ruth’s life. It explores their childhood—when they were both embarrassed by their mothers—through the part of their lives where they began to accept themselves for who they are. Moreover, this memoir is quite distinctive as McBride cleverly parallels his story to his mother, Ruth’s story using dual narration. This technique further helps contribute to the theme of self-identity. Throughout the novel, McBride searches for identity and a sense of belonging that derives from his multiracial family. By using two different narrations, McBride gradually establishes his identity and by integrating both narratives at the end, McBride also shows that although both narrators at the beginning had different upbringings, in the end they came together, and understood each other’s perspective.
Wilson, William J. More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. New York: Norton & Company, 2009. Print.
In his essay, “On Being Black and Middle Class” (1988), writer and middle-class black American, Shelby Steele adopts a concerned tone in order to argue that because of the social conflicts that arise pertaining to black heritage and middle class wealth, individuals that fit under both of these statuses are ostracized. Steele proposes that the solution to this ostracization is for people to individualize themselves, and to ‘“move beyond the victim-focused black identity” (611). Steele supports his assertion by using evidence from his own life and incorporating social patterns to his text. To reach his intended audience of middle-class, black people, Steele’s utilizes casual yet, imperative diction.
The history of racial and class stratification in Los Angeles has created tension amongst and within groups of people. Southland, by Nina Revoyr, reveals how stratification influences a young Asian woman to abandon her past in order to try and fully integrate herself into society. The group divisions are presented as being personal divisions through the portrayal of a generational gap between the protagonist, Jackie, and her grandfather. Jackie speaks of her relationship with Rebecca explaining her reasons why she could never go for her. Jackie claims that “she looked Asian enough to turn Jackie off” (Revoyr, 2003, p. 105). Unlike her grandfather who had a good sense of where he came from and embraced it, Jackie rejected her racial background completely. Jackie has been detached from her past and ethnicity. This is why she could never be with Rebecca, Jackie thought of her as a “mirror she didn’t want to look into”. Rebecca was everything Jackie was tr...
Janie’s first discovery about herself comes when she is a child. She is around the age of six when she realizes that she is colored. Janie’s confusion about her race is based on the reasoning that all her peers and the kids she grows up with are white. Janie and her Nanny live in the backyard of the white people that her Nanny works for. When Janie does not recognize herself on the picture that is taken by a photographer, the others find it funny and laughs, leaving Janie feeling humiliated. This racial discovery is not “social prejudice or personal meanness but affection” (Cooke 140). Janie is often teased at school because she lives with the white people and dresses better than the other colored kids. Even though the kids that tease her were all colored, this begins Janie’s experience to racial discrimination.
The main character is completely alienated from the world around him. He is a black man living in a white world, a man who was born in the South but is now living in the North, and his only form of companionship is his dying wife, Laura, whom he is desperate to save. He is unable to work since he has no birth certificate—no official identity. Without a job he is unable to make his mark in the world, and if his wife dies, not only would he lose his lover but also any evidence that he ever existed. As the story progresses he loses his own awareness of his identity—“somehow he had forgotten his own name.” The author emphasizes the main character’s mistreatment in life by white society during a vivid recollection of an event in his childhood when he was chased by a train filled with “white people laughing as he ran screaming,” a hallucination which was triggered by his exploration of the “old scars” on his body. This connection between alienation and oppression highlight Ellison’s central idea.
As a child Janie’s race is something she realizes later, but is still an important part of her life. As a child Janie grew up with a white family, named the Washburns, for whom Nanny worked as a nanny for. It is not until Janie sees herself in a picture with the Washburns children that she realizes she is black, Janie recounts her realization t...
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).
People go through many obstacles when they face their social identity. Some can overcome their differences, but others may not have they change to even face them due to the treatment that they get from society. Social identity is the one of many controversial and complex problems that many individuals deal with. Because, sometimes it used to be misunderstood making reference to racism and/or others complex matters. “On Being a Cripple” and “How It Feels to Be Colored” are two essays in which both characters suffer from some kind of discrimination. Indeed, in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston and “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs, each author shows different attitude, endures challenges, and change toward social identity.
In Ralph Ellison’s novel The Invisible man, the unknown narrator states “All my life I had been looking for something and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was…I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself the question which I, and only I, could answer…my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!” (13). throughout the novel, the search for identity becomes a major aspect for the narrator’s journey to identify who he is in this world. The speaker considers himself to be an “invisible man” but he defines his condition of being invisible due to his race (Kelly). Identity and race becomes an integral part of the novel. The obsession with identity links the narrator with the society he lives in, where race defines the characters in the novel. Society has distinguished the characters in Ellison’s novel between the African and Caucasian and the narrator journey forces him to abandon the identity in which he thought he had to be reborn to gain a new one. Ellison’s depiction of the power struggle between African and Caucasians reveals that identity is constructed to not only by the narrator himself but also the people that attempt to influence. The modernized idea of being “white washed” is evident in the narrator and therefore establishes that identity can be reaffirmed through rebirth, renaming, or changing one’s appearance to gain a new persona despite their race. The novel becomes a biological search for the self due through the American Negroes’ experience (Lillard 833). Through this experience the unknown narrator proves that identity is a necessary part of his life but race c...
A main theme in this novel is the influence of family relationships in the quest for individual identity. Our family or lack thereof, as children, ultimately influences the way we feel as adults, about ourselves and about others. The effects on us mold our personalities and as a result influence our identities. This story shows us the efforts of struggling black families who transmit patterns and problems that have a negative impact on their family relationships. These patterns continue to go unresolved and are eventually inherited by their children who will also accept this way of life as this vicious circle continues.
In this narrative essay, Brent Staples provides a personal account of his experiences as a black man in modern society. “Black Men and Public Space” acts as a journey for the readers to follow as Staples discovers the many societal biases against him, simply because of his skin color. The essay begins when Staples was twenty-two years old, walking the streets of Chicago late in the evening, and a woman responds to his presence with fear. Being a larger black man, he learned that he would be stereotyped by others around him as a “mugger, rapist, or worse” (135).
This reflective essay is the story of an African American male and what his life is like when he goes out in public. The premise of the essay is that the author feels that because he is judged by society due to his race, he has to go out of his way to make others feel comfortable around him. He talks about how he will walk past buildings if someone is going into them and seems uncomfortable around him, or how he will whistle classical music to try to ease their nerves. The author even speaks on how he is treated differently by authoritarian figures such as the police, bouncers at clubs, and security guards, because of his race. Like the people he is surrounded by they act with extreme caution and will watch him more than they do his white