As you begin to read my review you will start off by hearing my voice throughout the first couple of lines. The words that I chose to start my review speak for all African American women/girls today who feel exactly the same way that I do. I focused my review on a young poet who talks about the consistent hardships that black women go through in America. By choosing that spoken word poem it really overall explains how it is for a lot of black women and girls. I wanted to focus on this topic because it is an important matter that needs to be told. It also reaches home for me because that is who I am. So, as you read my review I want you as the reader to hear every word loudly and take inconsideration the importance of this review. My audience …show more content…
I tried to not really use so many personal experiences because I it wasn't my own review that was being told. By doing so, I was able to focus on the meaning of the "Black Girls be Boxing," poem and was able to analysis the lines that the poet put into the poem. I wanted the readers to understand the social issue on a deeper perspective so I started off by adding in my personal experiences as a black girl and than I used my primary text to show why I focused on this certain social issue. By writing my review this way it help to set up the tone that I wanted to bring across which was a bold tone and …show more content…
One of the writing activities that helped me to understand my artists main idea was when we did a three column review on the artists piece we were focusing on. We had to gather background information on the artist, examples for the text, the point being made in the text, and the audience they were speaking too. This activities helped me to put together all the quotes and the message the artist was bringing. Another activity I found helpful was when we did the rhetorical analysis triangle. With this activity it helped me to understand what might the artist opinions or ideas that were in their text or lyrics. It also helped me to understand the stance the artist was taking. Thanks to all of the writing activities it was easier to gather all the ideas I needed to include in my
Historically, the job of women in society is to care for the husband, the home, and the children. As a homemaker, it has been up to the woman to support the husband and care for the house; as a mother, the role was to care for the children and pass along cultural traditions and values to the children. These roles are no different in the African-American community, except for the fact that they are magnified to even larger proportions. The image of the mother in African-American culture is one of guidance, love, and wisdom; quite often the mother is the shaping and driving force of African-American children. This is reflected in the literature of the African-American as a special bond of love and loyalty to the mother figure. Just as the role of motherhood in African-American culture is magnified and elevated, so is the role of the wife. The literature reflects this by showing the African-American man struggling to make a living for himself and his family with his wife either being emotionally or physically submissive. Understanding the role of women in the African-American community starts by examining the roles of women in African-American literature. Because literature is a reflection of the community from which it comes, the portrayal of women in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain (1952) is consistent with the roles mentioned above.
Anne Moody's story is one of success filled with setbacks and depression. Her life had a great importance because without her, and many others, involvement in the civil rights movement it would have not occurred with such power and force. An issue that is suppressing so many people needs to be addressed with strength, dedication, and determination, all qualities that Anne Moody strived in. With her exhaustion illustrated at the end of her book, the reader understands her doubt of all of her hard work. Yet the reader has an outside perspective and knows that Anne tells a story of success. It is all her struggles and depression that makes her story that much more powerful and ending with the greatest results of Civil Rights and Voting Rights for her and all African Americans.
She illuminates the hidden causes of the harsh sexism in rap music lyrics and argues that one needs to look deeper to understand why the misogyny exists and how women in her culture need to respond and also start taking responsibility for its existence in order for changes to begin to take place. In the article “ From Fly -Girls to Bitches and Hos “ the dysfunction of our black men is evident, but somehow it’s seen and admired manliness and success. For example the life of Notorious BIG was one of the rap kings that live a life of jail, sex , drugs and murder that “ the seeming impenetrable wall of sexism in rap music is really the complex mask of American often wear both to hide “ . Joan Morgan was vivid as to show the pain men must be feeling so badly that they had to use disrespectful slurs and hateful comment says their music lyrics. I agree with the fact that in today’s society the "bitches and hos" have become the norm. From my perspective that many guys often believe that is how all women act and that they are all pimps and
Often times in the black community we like to avoid talking about topics that effect us because of the fear of “scaring the community”. Hooks shows the readers of Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery that we shouldn’t be worried about scaring the community and we need to inform the community to prevent them from being ignorant of the issues that are prevelant in the black community. This book allowed me to open my eyes to the issues that all African American women are facing on a day-to-day
Gwendolyn Brooks is the female poet who has been most responsive to changes in the black community, particularly in the community’s vision of itself. The first African American to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize; she was considered one of America’s most distinguished poets well before the age of fifty. Known for her technical artistry, she has succeeded in forms as disparate as Italian terza rima and the blues. She has been praised for her wisdom and insight into the African Experience in America. Her works reflect both the paradises and the hells of the black people of the world. Her writing is objective, but her characters speak for themselves. Although the idiom is local, the message is universal. Brooks uses ordinary speech, only words that will strengthen, and richness of sound to create effective poetry.
This poem is written from the perspective of an African-American from a foreign country, who has come to America for the promise of equality, only to find out that at this time equality for blacks does not exist. It is written for fellow black men, in an effort to make them understand that the American dream is not something to abandon hope in, but something to fight for. The struggle of putting up with the racist mistreatment is evident even in the first four lines:
...hey find strength not in themselves, but in each other. They overlook the strength they have in themselves and only see it in another person similar to them. These women have experienced dilemmas that should have strengthened them ultimately. However, instead of being strengthened they begin to change showing that these women lack strong self-identifying characteristics. Instead of the narrative focusing on the women, it focuses on their problems—men. Each women starts to change their characteristics because of a man reacting in ways they normally would not. As a collection of poems centered on the women of color, there was not enough focus on the women, which seems to be what Shange expresses. Shange conveys the point that the black women are seen as stereotypes, and although they do not want to be seen as so, they act in ways that involuntarily put them as a group.
...brought with it discrimination of African American women, “They were targets of brutality, the butt of jokes and ridicule, and their womanhood was denied over and over. It was a struggle just to stay free, and an even greater struggle to define womanhood” (162). As the men fought the war the women who were now dependent upon themselves more than ever had to take on the role of the father. The Mammy figure now stood up for herself and would often times leave the white family, the family they left would often have feelings of remorse for their tremendous loss. Women were standing up for themselves and where now the maker of their own destiny, but with that still came the harsh reality that they would be still the most vulnerable group in antebellum America. Many single African American women were faced with poverty and had a really hard time dealing with the war and depending on themselves. Deborah Gray White’s view of slave women shows us that their role was truly unique, they faced the harsh reality that they were not only women or African American, they were both, so therefore their experience was one of a kind and they lived through it, triumphed, and finally won their freedom.
In Walker's personal view, the black woman's history falls into three stages; the woman suspended, the artist thwarted and hindered in her desires to create, living through two centuries when her main role was to be cheap source of cheap labor in the American society, and the modern woman. (Washington, 139) The feminist Alice Walker writes in a circulatory pattern. Her female characters move in a common three-stage cycle: 1)the suspended woman-cruelly exploited, and spirits and bodies mutilated, 2)the thwarted woman-desires most to be a part of mainstream American life, and 3)the modern woman-exhibits the qualities of the developing emergent model. Before Celie, our main character, makes her way into the cycle the story sets her as a child, eager to learn, love, and enjoying life. She and Nettie, her, sister attend school on a regular basis, complete all of their chores, and still make time to talk, to play, and/or to just spend time together. Then, just as Celie reaches womanhood, she finds her way into the first stage: the suspended woman.
In our society of today, there are many images that are portrayed through media and through personal experience that speak to the issues of black motherhood, marriage and the black family. Wherever one turns, there is the image of the black woman in the projects and very rarely the image of successful black women. Even when these positive images are portrayed, it is almost in a manner that speaks to the supposed inferiority of black women. Women, black women in particular, are placed into a society that marginalizes and controls many of the aspects of a black woman’s life. As a result, many black women do not see a source of opportunity, a way to escape the drudgery of their everyday existence. For example, if we were to ask black mother’s if they would change their situation if it became possible for them to do so, many would change, but others would say that it is not possible; This answer would be the result of living in a society that has conditioned black women to accept their lots in lives instead of fighting against the system of white and male dominated supremacy. In Ann Petry’s The Street, we are given a view of a black mother who is struggling to escape what the street symbolizes. In the end though, she becomes captive to the very thing she wishes to escape. Petry presents black motherhood, marriage and the black family as things that are marginalized according to the society in which they take place.
Stereotypes are extremely apparent in our society. When watching this slam poem, a theme that almost instantly emerged was common female stereotypes. I am passionate about breaking common stereotypes of women- we are not just fragile, soft, hairless princesses that don’t like what you’re offering unless its pink and glittery. We are strong and capable of doing anything males do. “You can only laugh cutely or cry beautifully” was a lyric that resonated with me because it is such a real expectation of being a woman. In the world, we live in today women are expected to exude beauty and grace with everything we do, and if not what a mess our lives must be. “We are taught from the moment we leave our pink nurseries we are collapsible paper dolls”. Females are expected to behave passively and be submissive to men. We are supposed to cook and clean and look after the children while our strong, successful husbands are out earning money. Apparently, we aren’t good at maths or science and are
In Black Ice, the autobiography of a black woman recruited into a previously all male elite New England prep school, Carey states, "the narratives that helped me, that kept me company…were those that talked about growing up black in America. They burst into my silence, and in my head, they shouted and chattered and whispered and sang together" (6). Throughout my first semester at Bates, I have identified with Carey. The narratives that discuss growing up as a woman have empowered me. Woolf, Carey, Plath, Rich, and particularly Heilbrun: I recognize the power of these narratives, not only when considered as individual lives or models suggesting alternative realities, but when considered collectively in terms of their life-altering impact. Looking at these works raises critical questions: From where have women come? Have women liberated themselves over the past century and through what means? What has it taken for women to turn their world "right-side up?"
Feeling alone won’t lead you anywhere good. An african american person had a different view of life which others didn’t have. People treated him wrong because his soul was deep as the river, having no one to care. The next poem I read “ Epilogue” has an powerful actions between whites and african americans. I didn’t like how whites weren’t accepting him because of his race. It’s not right because white people don’t understand how people of different races has been through in their struggles. People shouldn't reject others because of color, people need to view what their experience in the past was and how good or bad of a person they are. That’s why I find it important for everyone to accept each person because no one knows what others has been through. I really loved how the african american in this poem has a positive mindset about himself. White people should definitely feel ashamed and learn how society would be much easier if everyone gets along. I think it’s important for white people and color people to communicate on how they feel because this poem can affect others and want to do the same
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.
This poem written by Margaret Atwood is a poem that describes the troubles women face in everyday life because of the discrimination towards them. It tells us that they live in a world dominated by men where they as women have little say in what goes on around them. Women are expected to conform to what society has laid out for them. By using symbolism, parentheses, illusion and photographs Atwood creates a beautiful poem that captures all the aspects of the struggles of women while still entertaining the reader. Through this poem Atwood has encouraged us as readers to open our eyes and take a stand against this discrimination.