The Challenges Of Friendships In Rebecca Walker's Rebecca Walker

1396 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: How do family dynamics affect child development

Rebecca Walker is a Jewish African American young women, who experience a heart breaking childhood. Growing up she was shuffled from one side of the country to the other, switching form one world to the other. In Rebecca Walker’s famous book, Black, White, and Jewish, she struggled to choice what race she wanted to be acquainted with, struggled to build lasting relationships, and continued to fight for the love and attention she wanted. While Rebecca was with her mom she was portrayed as an African American young women, living in a lower class home, and attending an underprivileged school. Rebecca’s mom is preoccupied with work so much so, that she fails to notice how alone and miserable Rebecca really is. She then turns to her friends for the love and affection that she is not receiving at home. In an article Rebecca states “As a little girl, I wasn 't even allowed to …show more content…

In this case Rebecca walker’s struggles come from her moving around so often in her childhood and being unable to have a lasting healthy relationship with one person. All throughout the book, Black, White, and Jewish she continuous to develop friendships with many people but never refers back to most of them. At one point in her life, she begins associating with the wrong type of friends and hits a rough patch in her life where she does drugs, and gets sexually active with men much older than her. Lena was one of Rebecca’s friends that encouraged her bad behavior. Often, Rebecca and Lena would snick into Lena’s father’s study and take weed from his desk and get high and then munch of snacks all night while talking about the most recent drama. Michael was a guy that Rebecca had a major crush on and they would stay up late at night talking on the phone. Until one day he bribed her into letting him come over to doctor him up. She prepared hot tea for him and slipped around the house with a nice robe on. That night she lost her

Show More
Related

  • The Struggle In Ruth Mcbride's The Color Of Water

    976 Words  | 2 Pages

    Growing up, Ruth had a rough childhood growing up in a very strict jewish household. Her family was poor, her mother was physically handicapped, her father was verbally and physically abusive, and she faced prejudice and discrimination from her neighbors and classmates because she

    Read More

  • How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent Summary

    1839 Words  | 4 Pages

    In this memoir, the meaning of language is intertwined with the search for self-identity. This book was focused on an experience of perusing her own heritage by the use of DNA and genomics. In Raquel’s instance, or Rachael as her friends refer to her as, language has become a force of conflict and discrimination. Raquel wants to fit in with her peers and uses language as a means to relate. “Rachael, if you call me nigga one more time, I’m going to have to fuck you up” (pg. 71). It is this conversation that causes racial tension between Raquel and her friends. She tries to explain that they are all women of color, regardless of how much darker their skin is than hers. Her friends can’t seem to understand why she likes all that “black shit” (pg. 71) referring to her like of hip hop music. Another issue regarding culture and ethnicity occurs with Raquel’s encounter with Simon, who uses discriminatory comments as a joke. Raquel, who finds great offense to it, takes this use of vulgar language personally. The role of language within this novel displays the hardships and struggles of growing up as an immigrant adolescent in the United States. It emphasizes the racial discrimination and adaptation aspect as well. However, despite all of the hatred and uncertainty Raquel possesses, she begins to develop resilience,

    Read More

  • Sororophobia by Helena Michie and Black Female Sexuality in Passing by Deborah E. McDowel

    1661 Words  | 4 Pages

    Historically, people were granted certain rights and privileges based merely on their skin color. Persons of darker skin are often less opportune; persons of lighter skin are almost automatically glorified. However, with the mass interracial breeding, many African American descendants started to look “white” even though they were of “black” descent. Many “mulattos” used this to their advantage to acquire higher social status and respect. The act of identifying as a different race and hiding one’s true race is known as “passing.” In the short novel, “Passing” by Nella Larsen, it follows two childhood friends of mixed-race, Irene Westover/Redfield and Clare Kendry, who later reconnected later in their different adult lives; both appear to have light complexion but one embraces her ancestry while the other tries to “pass” as something else. The latter’s decision usually ends unpleasantly. So while it may seem beneficial to “pass,” the end result is that the truth will come out. Literary articles which critique “Passing” such as “Sororophobia” by Helena Michie and “Black Female Sexuality in Passing” by Deborah E. McDowell discusses the issues of passing. Juanita Ellsworth’s “White Negros” provide scenarios where skin color played a factor in education and professional experiences. Louis Fremont Baldwin’s “Negro to Caucasion, Or How the Ethiopian Is Changing His Skin” explains the different ways people pass and how it can be undetected. Blatantly “passing” as a different race can lead to catastrophe and should be avoided.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Coming Of Age In Mississippi By Anne Moody

    1434 Words  | 3 Pages

    Her father left Anne and Anne’s mother when she was young for another woman. Anne’s mother was a strong independent woman that she look up to. During one summer, Anne help her mother and her step father in the plantation. The temperature was so hot, Anne decided not to become a farmer like her mother and father and wanted to get out of black poverty system (Chapter 8). When she was eighth grade, she help the school fundraised money. That was the first experience on organizing people to work together. She would start use that skill she learned later on during the political movement. Before entering the high school, one of her classmate was murdered by white lynching mob. Anne was angry at other African americans for not standing for himself and allow himself to be kill and push around. “I hated them(other African-American people) for not standing up and doing something about the murders. In fact, I think I had a stronger resentment toward Negroes for letting the whites kill them than toward the whites” (Chapter 11). Anne is really upset and she wanted the situation to change.When anne was young, she was not allow to sit with her white friends when they go to movies. Anne started to question about the racial problem. When Anne was nine, she started to work with Linda Jean. Linda’s mother was a really mean white women. She always tried to make Anne quit the job by giving her hard

    Read More

  • Silence and Solidarity in Can’t Quit You Baby by Ellen Douglas

    1590 Words  | 4 Pages

    Developing friendships between black and white women has been difficult for many years. Although black and white women share common grey spaces, it is the effects of racism that caused one culture to be seemingly set at a higher level on the hierarchical scale. The perceived distance created limits on both races which as a result created a wall of silence and a lack of solidarity. Even though oppression and past hurts have prolonged the mending of what could become an authentic healing there are still positive views on what could be accomplished if women of all races came together to form a mutual bond. Based on the views of a white woman writer and culture I will discuss the limits placed on black and white women and how the two could form a place of reconciliation.

    Read More

  • Who Is Twyla's Recitatif?

    994 Words  | 2 Pages

    As much as race does not matter, it does. Morrison leaves out the race of Twyla and Roberta to inadvertently expose the role of learned racism in the world of “Recitatif.” Upon entering St. Bonny’s, Twyla is placed in a room with a girl from a completely different race and assesses the situation, “And Mary, that’s my mother, she was right. Every now and then she would stop dancing long enough to tell me something important and one of the things she said was that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny.” (Morrison 1). Twyla’s first observation of Roberta, her skin color, is immediately indicative of the environment she has lived in, as the basis for her racial

    Read More

  • Race And Race In Southland, By Nina Revoyr

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Literary Criticism In Toni Morrison's 'Recitatif'

    1632 Words  | 4 Pages

    This brings us to the Toni Morrison short story “Recitatif”. This short story encourages an African American or ethnically minded style of understanding. The driving force for the thoughts and actions of both Twyla, Roberta, and the other characters is race and race relations. Those two events may seem like nothing, but it shows how even at the early age of 8, children are taught to spot the differences in race instead of judging people by their character.

    Read More

  • Examination of Women's Friendships through an Analysis of Katherine Philips' Friendship's Mystery

    4227 Words  | 9 Pages

    arose very few women poets; however, Katherine Philips not only became a poet, but she also displayed

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Parable Of The Sower

    1755 Words  | 4 Pages

    Survival should have been the priority of the chaotic world that Lauren lives in; however, gender, race, and class persist. In this book Butler shows that, although gender, race, and class insist, people in every class, race, or gender have to leave the tradition behind and not only prioritize their safety but to begin moving the world back toward equality. This story is told based on Lauren, the narrator’s point of view from her diary where she explains how society has broken in every aspect and how she tries to survive. In the story, Lauren, the hyper-empathy narrator, is an African-American preacher’s daughter, who has her own beliefs and philosophy about God and life.

    Read More

  • Racism In Karen Hesse's Witness, A Classic Book

    743 Words  | 2 Pages

    As racism continues on to thrive in the town, Esther Hirsh, becomes a young girl who also faces discrimination only because she was a Jewish. In the same school as Esther, was a young African-American girl named Leonora who faces bully about almost every day, and everywhere, just because of her race. Her family is very well in poverty, and her mother is badly sick. She died later that month. In one quote,”Why can’t white folks leave me alone?”(P7), explains how excruciating racism was.

    Read More

  • Comparison Of Alice Walker And Zora Neale Hurston

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston are similar to having the same concept about black women to have a voice. Both are political, controversial, and talented experiencing negative and positive reviews in their own communities. These two influential African-American female authors describe the southern hospitality roots. Hurston was an influential writer in the Harlem Renaissance, who died from mysterious death in the sixties. Walker who is an activist and author in the early seventies confronts sexually progression in the south through the Great Depression period (Howard 200). Their theories point out feminism of encountering survival through fiction stories. As a result, Walker embraced the values of Hurston’s work that allowed a larger

    Read More

  • The Color Purple Essay

    1090 Words  | 3 Pages

    Women have battled for centuries to be equivalent to men. In “The Color Purple," Alice Walker illustrates the theme of women’s heartache, racist acts, and complications of a day to day woman. The Color Purple took place during a demeaning era to not only African American women but African Americans in general were treated inhumane. African American women submitted themselves to controlling men due to the belief of that’s how it should be. During this time, women were used for manual and sexual labor. They were referred as one’s property, hardly spoken of or treated like human-beings. Women faced lack of self-love and identity therefore the definition of love was clouded.

    Read More

  • The Power of Female Friendship in The Color Purple by Alice Walker

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout The Color Purple, Alice Walker conveys the importance and the power of female friendship in all forms. It shapes and forms the strong bond of female companionship as means of refuge from oppression, male dominance and a world full of violence perpetrated against woman which the female protagonists wish to break free from. Walker constantly reminds the reader of the gruelling pursuit of identity that all are in search for, both in Africa and America; for females to gain equal recognition as individuals who deserve fair and just treatment in a patriarchal society where as Albert states “Men suppose to wear the pants" in soceity. In conclusion, not only leading Celies personal growth as independent woman but also to the extraordinary establishment of a female solidarity network within the novel. It is this network of female friends that wages a potent challenge to dominate over the patriarchal structure in the text.

    Read More

  • Female Empowerment In The Color Purple By Alice Walker

    1840 Words  | 4 Pages

    It is not until Celie is an adult that she finally feels content with her life and understands her capacity to be a completely autonomous woman. The concept of racial and gender equality has expanded greatly throughout the twentieth century, both in society and in literature. These changes influence Walker's writing, allowing her to create a novel that chronicles the development of a discriminated black woman. Her main character, Celie, progresses from oppression to self-sufficiency, thereby symbolizing the racial and gender advancements our country has achieved.

    Read More

More about The Challenges Of Friendships In Rebecca Walker's Rebecca Walker

Open Document