The Caribbean regional colonial imperialism produced institutions and movements that deeply affected and continue to affect the lives of Caribbean women. Caribbean women’s literature represents sexual violence and the ideological appropriation of gender identity, gender roles, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and culture and class. The impressionable and forming years of an individual are too often controlled by what society feels correct is based on gender, race and culture. Although one may not behave as their society feels is appropriate, in no way should this result in making someone feel less or wrong because they are of color, female and strong-minded.
One identification category that affects Clare’s identity is gender, specifically how restrictive gender roles disempowered her. Clare Savage is a light-skinned, twelve-year old, middle-class girl who grew up in Jamaica in the 1950s. She lives in a conservative and heterosexist society where they are strict on gender roles and norms. Clare tried to find her own identity and place in her culture; however her mixed heritage creates some problems for her and one of those problems is how she is faced with gender roles. Cliff states that “Clare’s relationship with her father took the form of what she imagined a son would have, if there had been a son” (Cliff 9). When Clare spent time with her grandmother, she usually played with her friend Zoe, but Zoe was not around so she spent time with her cousin Joshua. However,
Miss Mattie told Clare that she could not partake in or watch the boys destroy the hog because that is not what girls do. Cliff states, “They (the boys) had the power to hurt her because they were allowed to do so much she was not - she was supposed to be h...
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...ruck down, especially after trying to play the role of a son by killing a wild pig which resulted in the death of Miss Mattie’s bull. She was challenged with her parents pulling her in different directions with her father wanting her to ignore her black roots but her mother wanting her to remember her roots. Clare was sent off to live with Mrs. Phillips due to pressures her parents felt based on gender, race and ethnicity of whom and how Clare should behave. Imagine being restrained by the fine lines that are drawn by a society which forms one to be someone they are not or because the actions of those who are superior push or mold you into someone who is a stranger. Finding one’s identity, with the added expectations based on gender, race and culture, is extremely challenging and confusing. Clare’s challenges, in the 1950s, are real and prevalent even today.
Fluorescent turquoise waters, a vibrant city culture, as well as an unending supply of mimosas and sunburns within a resort, benefits the common wealthy couple looking for a swell time. When people imagine the Caribbean, they probably visualize the soft sands of the Spice Island Beach Resort. Many people see the Caribbean as relaxing paradise. What people don’t understand, are the years of history hidden behind the mask of many resorts. In the book entitled “Empire’s Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day”, Author Carrie Gibson differentiates how people view the Caribbean nowadays, by altering their visualization with four-hundred pages of rich history and culture, that argues the ideology about the Caribbean
societies to reexamine their view of the Caribbean. In this paper the following topics in The
Queer. Exile. Class (Clare 31).” When Clare writes about losing home, he is writing about the parts of his identity that pulled him away from the place that he raised, as well as the parts of his identity that prevent him from finding home in other places (Clare 41). These words, queer, exile, and class, are both driving forces behind why Clare can’t find a place where he feels fully comfortable settling, but also these words give him a place where he feels at home. Clare explains his trouble finding home best when he describes, “I was a rural, mixed-class, queer child in a straight, rural, working-class town. Afterwards, I was an urban-transplanted, mixed-class, dyke activist in an urban, mostly middle-class, queer community. Occasionally I simply feel as if I’ve traded one displacement for another and lost home to boot (Clare 46).” This telling of Clare’s displacement highlights how his queer identity drove him from his childhood home, but his rural, mixed-class background prevents him from feeling content in the city (Clare 46). His queer identity, and his desire to escape his class situation, is part of what forced Clare into the exile that he experiences. However, these identities don’t only serve as a point of alienation for Clare but also as a place where he can belong. When talking
The childhood of Frances Piper consists of inadequate love, loss of innocence and lack of concern, ultimately leading to her disastrous life. As a six year old child, she encounters several traumatic events, explicitly the death of her loved ones and the loss of her innocence. Over the course of one week, there have been three deaths, two funerals and two burials in the Piper family. “Frances was crying so hard now that Mercedes got worried. ‘I want my Mumma to come ba-a-a-a-ack.’”( McDonald 174). As a young child, there is nothing more upsetting than losing a mother. A family is meant to comfort each other to fulfill the loss of a loved one; however, this is not the case in the Piper family. Mercedes, only a year older than Frances, tries to console her even though she herself is worried. The loss of motherly love and affection has a tremendous impact on her future since now her sole guardian, James, expresses no responsibility towards her. Instead, he molests Frances on the night of Kathleen’s funeral to lessen the grief of his lost daughter. As a result “These disturbing experiences plague Frances with overwhelming feelings of low self worth and guilt that haunt h...
Over the past few decades, research on women has gained new momentum and a great deal of attention. Susan Socolow’s book, The Women of Colonial Latin America, is a well-organized and clear introduction to the roles and experiences of women in colonial Latin America. Socolow explicitly states that her aim is to examine the roles and social regulations of masculinity and femininity, and study the confines, and variability, of the feminine experience, while maintaining that sex was the determining factor in status. She traces womanly experience from indigenous society up to the enlightenment reforms of the 18th century. Socolow concentrates on the diverse culture created by the Europeans coming into Latin America, the native women, and African slaves that were imported into the area. Her book does not argue that women were victimized or empowered in the culture and time they lived in. Socolow specifies that she does her best to avoid judgment of women’s circumstances using a modern viewpoint, but rather attempts to study and understand colonial Latin American women in their own time.
In the novel “Cuban Color in Tourism and La Lucha” the author and anthropologist L. Kaifa Roland describes her journey in Cuba and the different people she encounter with that describe to her the life of a citizen in Cuba. Throughout her stay in Cuba, Roland describes the different situations people go through in Cuba economically and gender wise. She also mainly describes “La Lucha” which in the book is identified as the struggle people face and go through every day in order to get by in Cuba economically. However, the thing that caught my attention the most in the book was how women get mistreated and seen by people differently. Through my paper I am going to be discussing how women in Cuba get discriminated not just by their color or where
With a heart-full of advice and wisdom, Dinah maturates from a simple- minded young girl to a valiant independent individual. “For a moment I weighed the idea of keeping my secret and remaining a girl, the thought passes quickly. I could only be what I was. And that was a woman” (170). This act of puberty is not only her initiation into womanhood but the red tent as well. She is no longer just an observer of stories, she is one of them, part of their community now. On account of this event, Dinah’s sensuality begins to blossom and she is able to conceive the notion of true love.
Discrimination against females and males is a persistent and serious problem, especially in the Caribbean. Throughout history it is believed that the different roles, purpose, attribute and status accorded to females and males in society are characterized by gender. In the Caribbean there has been an uneven distribution of authority, wealth and privileges among females and males. Discrimination against males with discrimination against females are compared on the bases of sports, family and home environment, residual income and sexual orientation.
Scout's narration and the character's dialog prove that Alexandra is characterized by her traditional values while Miss Maudie is characterized as a modern woman. The issues of gender roles are still a large part of society today and it affects a majority of adolescents because they feel the need to conform and ignore their individualism and that is why this novel is still relevant to society today.. The lessoned to be learned here is to be comfortable in one's own skin and don't listen to negative feedback if it is not constructive.
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
Worse, when women swallow the emptiness, loneliness, and naked violence that comes with their gender performance, their ability to develop self-awareness on matters such as academic, sexual, reproductive, safety, and health care rights no longer exists. When characters such as Ruth from Green Girls come to believe that womanhood means being on display and having to perform their roles as women in public spheres despite the feelings of wanting to shield oneself from strangers, they lose their freedom and become fettered to performative roles. Their performance of gender becomes, as Butler mentions, the result of both subtle and blatant coercions. These coercions offer a script of life that women must follow in order to remain the star of their
When it comes to post-colonial literature, most initially think about the colonization of other countries and how it has affected the natives. Though it is the most well known form of post-colonial literature, it is not the most wide-spread. By slightly altering the framing in which one looks at it, the idea that feminist literature by women from a patriarchal society is post-colonial literature begins to make sense.
When I first read “We Are Ugly, But We Are Here,” I was stunned to learn how women in Haiti were treated. Edwige Danticat, who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1969 and immigrated to Brooklyn when she was twelve years old, writes about her experiences in Haiti and about the lives of her ancestors that she links to her own. Her specific purpose is to discuss what all these families went through, especially the women, in order to offer the next generation a voice and a future. Danticat writes vividly about events that occurred in Haiti, leading up to an assertion about the strength of Haitian women. Her essay is powerful in large part because of how she manages tone.
In her younger years, Jane shows that girls do not need to follow society’s normalities through the defiance of her aunt, Mrs. Reed. As a young orphan, Jane lives with her aunt and her three children, and due to Jane’s “plain looks” and “quiet yet passionate character,” she is disliked among the entire Reed family (Gao). Her cousin, John, constantly reminds her of her social standing, calling her a “dependent” who should not “live with gentlemen’s children” like her cousins (Bronte 10). Rather than acting in accordance with her cousin, Jane, in rage of how she is treated with “miserable cruelty” (Bronte 36), Jane compares him to a “murderer...a slave driver...like the Roman emperors” (Bronte 10). Because of her refusal to submit to John Reed’s aggressiveness and accept that she is lesser than him and his family, Jane is punished for the night by her Aunt Reed. Mrs. Reed’s punishment of Jane demonstrates her part in the oppression ‘machine.’ Mrs. Reed should have understood Jane’s refusal to be docile, being a woman herself, but ...