The poem tells the story of a young black girl exploring and experiencing what it is to become a black woman in her changing social circle. “it’s dropping food coloring in your eyes to make them blue and suffering their burn in silence. It’s popping a bleached white mophead over the kinks of your hair and primping in front of the mirrors that deny your reflection.” (Smith,9) The food coloring in her eyes, and the bleaching of her hair can only symbolize her need to grow into the more “accepted” form of society, the white skinned, blue eyed, blonde haired men…
This week's readings involved introductions to problems faced by the Chicano community. It depicts how far back these cultural problems have arose and how the community continues to struggle and overcome it. For example, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it is a historical document stating peace, friendship, limits, and settlement for the people of Mexico and the United States. This treaty was drafted in 1848, which ended the Mexican-American War, in hopes for a better relationship between the two countries. In contrast, in the poem, I am Joaquin, the poet brings light how the treaty is broken and how the Chicano people and all people represented in the poem are oppressed socially, economically, culturally, and politically, by the "Gabachos".…
This short story ‘A Warm Golden Brown’ by Alexander Reid makes a strong point about direct and broad scope of racism. He shows that direct racism from the little boy’s mother to his friend comes through and influences him and also show the broad racism from his mother does not falter from personal feelings or experiences that she has or relating to her sons feelings.…
For about twenty-two years now, women in the city of Juarez have been struggling with the violence that is happening around them. Women who live in this city have to live their lives with the fear of one day being sexually abused and killed by criminals. The political meaning behind this piece is that by giving awareness to this cause the artist can help support the cause of the victims who’s crimes have not been resolve. This also helps give the families of the victim some comfort because the artist is sending the message that people should be aware of the injustices that are happening around them and to help support this cause because only then these families can grieve in…
The House On Mango Street and “ Only Daughter” both prove that being an Mexican- American women is a struggle. As Cisneros shows her first hand experience, and as well shows it through story telling. Yet without telling a biography and going straight to the point she shows emotion by using literary elements. Sandra Cisneros Chose to use metaphors and imagery to express the hard ships of being a Mexican- American women. If Sandra Cisneros did not use literary elements to show the lifestyle of a Mexican-American women, the points that she showed in both the texts would not have been as powerful as they were.…
Maya Angelou’s style is very intriguing and captivating due to her usage of tone. Maya Angelou was an American Civil Rights Activist, born in St Louis, Missouri, who lived through the Jim Crow Era - which, as mentioned before, was a critical period in terms of the rise of racial segregation in the United States. Unlike the majority of her kind, Angelou was extremely privileged - becoming a successful actress, author and poet. Although she is privileged and considerably well-off in her own personal endeavors, she is fully aware of the atrocity and inhumanity with which her fellow folk are being treated with on a daily basis. In the poem, she decants and expresses her frustration, but she does so with great subtlety and restraint. Although she uses a confrontational tone (by using the pronoun ‘you’) towards white people (which is the intended audience of the poem), she does not personally attack them in any way. She simply poses rhetorical questions which make the audience re-evaluate their way of thinking and cause them to truly see that their beliefs are founded upon hatred and false accusations. Aside from using a confrontational tone, Angelou also makes use of a perseverant tone which, through close analysis, entails a valuable message for people from all walks of life and, more importantly, the black folk who suffer from racial discrimination. “...I rise..”…
would be an example of such. It seems as though the speaker is standing up for a particular group of people who have been mistreated and/or taken advantage of in some kind of way. Whether it was socially, economically, or politically. Taking the time frame that this piece was written in into consideration, I can only think that this selected group must have been Black people. The stanza that solidified this thought that this poem was in reference so Black people for me was:…
Each poem by Jericho Brown projects many different challenges of being minority and experiencing severities related to these trials. I feel like through his poems author trying to give readers an understanding of how painful it feels to be different from people around. Author explaining and projecting the minority experience through sore, painful and agonizing experiences, because these type of feelings could be related to any reader, in my opinion. All of us have feelings of being exhausted times to times, all of us have been experienced lows in life, and in that undesirable moments we tend to feel that it is nobody who understands, that we left alone in the sorrow, however by reading Browns poems it is easy to see that the pain experiences by speakers` are very related to your, and could have been experienced by anybody else. By the fact of relating speakers` painful experiences to readers` sorrow moments, an understanding of speakers` point of view appears, which is, in my opinion, is the main purpose of almost all literature related to minority experience.…
For African Americans, the pain of racism is ever present, and Walker 's world is devoid of the sinless and the passive black victim. “It 's born out of her own anger. "One thing that makes me angry," Walker says, "is the prevalence of so many brown bodies around the world being destroyed.”( 1. Combs, Marianne. Kara Walker 's art traces the color line. ) Walker mines the source of this discomfort from submerged history and goes so deep that everyone is involved. She knows that stereotypes have not disappeared: they have only been hidden. The animated figures of her cut-paper wall murals attempt to change a painful past into satire. Consequently, African Americans can conquer a fear of racism in which the themes of power and exploitation continue to have deep meaning for them in contemporary American society.…
In “The Myth of The Latin Women”, there are numerous stereotypes that Latin women are judged for. Being a Latin woman, Cofer was judged falsely. Clothing in the Latin culture is a means of expression. Cofer explains that woman and girls often wear brightly colored outfits, specifically dresses and skirts. The clothing that Latin women wear also has an influence on how others might see them. Cofer describes that, “As young girls, it was our mothers who influenced our decisions about clothes and colors,” Unfortunately, the media twisted this tradition, making it translate into “Hispanic women as the hot tamale or sexual firebrand” (245).…
Sometimes we know who and what we are, but it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what we pretend to be or bullied into silence allowing ourselves to be made a victim to oppression. In this essay I’m comparing the authors of “How it Feel to Be Colored Me by Zora Hurston, and How to Tame a Wild Tongue by Gloria Anzaldua. Gloria Anzaldua became a victim of oppression by accepting society expectations of the Chicano culture. Meanwhile, Zora Hurston accepted who she is despite who people perceived her as because of her skin color.…
Tatum, Charles M. Chicano Popular Culture. 1st ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001. 14-48.…
Without inspiration, any type of art would just be nothing but a small showing of skill without its individual story. Amy Tan once said, "The goal of every serious writer of literature is to try to find your voice and your art because it comes from your own experiences, your own pain." Amy Tan herself writes all of her work with her mother in mind as the reader. Her mother is her inspiration. In "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan talk about all of the Englishes she was raised with. These include normal English and her "mother tongue" English, the way she spoke to her family, which shaped her first outlook of life. Along the essay, Tan sends a strong message of how we ought to view people by their individual and beautiful side, not by their shortcomings. A quote in Munoz’ story that relates is, “ Spanish was and still is viewed with suspicion: Always the language of the vilified illegal immigrant, it segregated schoolchildren into English-only and bilingual programs; it defined you, above all else, as part of a lower class.”(72) It is sad that in our society today things like this happen, that we still judge people by their skin color or the language they speak, or even by their name. This relates back into Amy Tans’ story also, on how certain people are denied some rights because their language is not up to our standards. For example,…
All in all, Maya Angelou’s effort to convey her emotions as she realizes the unjust manner in which the Negroes are treated is intensified with the use of rhetorical devices within her essay. The similes and specified colors adds attention to her changing feelings, as her juxtaposition further proves the inequality between the two races. With all the devices combined in her narrative, Angelou is able to effectively raise awareness of the injustice between the colored and the…
Written in 1969, Maya Angelou accounts for poverty, prejudices, and belittled identity through her poem, “Harlem Hopscotch”, in order to encourage one’s acceptance of identity influenced by the challenges they endured:…