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essay about feminist literature
Introduction to feminist literary criticism
essay about feminist literature
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Junot Diaz, author of “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie’’ is a “how to” instructional guide that is written in second person. This allows the author to offer different perspectives as in how to act and behave towards an individual according to their race and social class. With this way of writing it gives a realistic point of view because we are able to actualize it to real life. This suggests that the government cheese that the boy’s family has been part of his social class. By him hiding the cheese, it is an instruction on how he must act according to the ethnicity of the girl. In real life people may hide the fact that they purchase great value brands from Wal-Mart. The significance of this short story by Junot Diaz is to give the audience an instruction manual that allows us to recognize how …show more content…
Wallace presents a label saying “B.I #40 06-97 Benton Ridge OH” indicating the location of where the interview is given. The person that receives the interview is John. During the interview we can identify that the author left out the question.The significance of leaving the question out of the interview is to inform the audience more about the character. In the example above, we learn that John manipulates women through a system. This system soon makes them feel sorry for him because his arm looks like a “flipper”. John refers his flipper as an asset, an asset for sex. There is another significance to Wallace leaving the question out. Without the question our imagination is forced to wonder, questioning ourselves what the question is in accordance with the answer given in the interview. In the example above the reader may think the question is what is the most critical stage of your system and what emotions are there between you and the women? With Wallace’s structure of writing in “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” the reader is challenged throughout the short story wondering as to why the question is left out and what is the
The “F Word” is an essay about an Iranian girl’s struggle with finding who she is, in a foreign land known as the U.S. It acknowledges her inner struggle with an outward showing character of herself that she holds, her name. During the essay the reader learns about how the girl fights her inner feeling of wanting to fit in and her deep rooted Iranian culture that she was brought up to support. Firoozeh Dumas, the girl in the book, and also the author of the essay, uses various rhetorical tactics to aid her audience in grasping the fact that being an immigrant in the U.S. can be a difficult life. To demonstrate her true feelings to the audience as an immigrant in the U.S., she uses similes, parallelism, and even her tone of humor.
In the essay of Mr.Gary Soto, we learn about his experiences about falling in love with someone of a different race. Ever since he was young, he would be lectured that marrying a Mexican women would be the best option for his life. Gary’s grandmother would always proclaim: “... the virtues of marrying a Mexican girl: first, she could cook,second, she acted like a woman, not a man, in her husband’s home” (pp.219). Being conditioned into the notion that all Mexican woman have been trained to be proper women, Mr. Soto set out on finding his brown eyed girl; however, what love had quite a different plan. This paper will cover three different themes Gary’s essay: The tone, the mindset of the character’s mindsets, and the overall message of the
Junot Diaz's Drown, a compilation of short stories, exemplifies how the high standard of masculinity within the Latino community can have a detrimental effect on males. These stories are told in the first person by a narrator called Yunior. The different stories are told against the background of The Dominican Republic and the United States. The narrator highlights the different challenges that he faces throughout his childhood and into his young adult life. During this period, he struggles to find his identity which is expected by every Latino. In the Dominican Republic, a man’s manhood is closely tied to his identity, and Yunior is no exception. While in the process of finding his identity, Yunior is challenged with abuse, poverty and the lure of drugs, which leads to his addiction and his becoming violent .…
Much of life results from choices we make. How we meet every circumstance, and also how we allow those circumstances to affect us dictates our life. In Marian Minus’s short story, “Girl, Colored," we are given a chance to take a look inside two characters not unlike ourselves. As we are given insight into these two people, their character and environment unfolds, presenting us with people we can relate to and sympathize with. Even if we fail to grasp the fullness of a feeling or circumstance, we are still touched on our own level, evidencing the brilliance of Minus’s writing.
Although society advocates believing in a ‘sameness’ between people who are black or white, individuals are still organized by race, class, gender and sexuality into social hierarchies. These hierarchies essentially formulate stigmas that suppress certain races and discriminate against them. Caucasia written by Danzy Senna is focused around a young mixed girl, Birdie, who encounters obstacles in her life that help her form her own perceptions about issues regarding class, race, and sexuality. These obstacles fundamentally shape her to have a unique outlook on society where she begins to question white privilege and also sympathize towards the mistreatment of black individuals. Senna explores the fundamental problems that are associated with race, and the struggles that a diasporic individual faces due to the restrictions set by society. Although Birdie is a mix of both black and white, she is overlooked as a “white” girl, which has its fair share of benefits as well as hardships.
The movie, Save the Last Dance, goes along with all of our discussions and conversations about the visual difference between the black and white cultures and the stereotyping that Hollywood does of the two cultures. The movie shows the difference in the two cultures, according to Hollywood.you have your typical white middle-class suburban girl (Sarah) and your typical low-class black boy (Derrick).
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.
Throughout Anzia Yezierska’s novel “Bread Givers,” the character Sara Smolinsky goes through an elliptical journey from a rebellious youth appalled by the individual limitations of her cultural heritage to her gradual acceptance of her inability to escape her ancestry. At first rejecting her Orthodox Eastern European Jewish culture, Sara views the world in terms of a sole American identity. As ...
In this novel, the society is centered around dichotomies; “youth and dotage” (Balzac 67), “the young man who has possessions and the young man that has nothing” and “the young man who thinks and the young man who spends” (87). Any person who falls outside of either box is called a “[child] who learn[s]… too late” or can “never appear in polite society” (87), essentially meaning they are undesirable in a formal society because they cannot follow expectations. The titular character, Paquita, is an “oriental” foreigner, from Havana, domesticated in Paris when she was sold to a wealthy woman who desired her. She fits into no culture entirely, as she is “part Asian houri on her mother’s side, part European through education, and part tropical by birth” (122). She is bisexual, choosing neither men nor women over the other. She is controlling, dressing Henri in women’s clothing (119), but controlled as she is reduced to a possession. However, there are ways in which a person can still be desired even if they are not easily pigeonholed. With her golden eyes and sensuality, Paquita fulfills both of the main pursuits of this society, “gold and pleasure” (68). Consequently, unlike the Marquis and his irrelevance in society, Paquita is highly sought after, thus making her a valuable commodity. Her desirability is not because of who she is as a human, but instead what
Trends that can be noticed in these entries are the main focal point, which the authors all seem to cover, that is racism and the social-cultural problems created for young African American women. Many of the authors seemed to blame white culture, or the colourist culture for the problem of lost identity in black girls. They seemed to take the same direction in their articles, but many took different routes in explaining and proving their point. These ideas seemed to be arranged by the stating that Pecola Breedlove is a lost little black girl, who because of her idea that being white would solve all her family and life problems, loses her true self. The authors would then blame the white culture for this deficiency in the young mind of an African American girl.
America has had a long history of racism. This fact is more easily understood if racism is understood for what it really is. It is more than just personal hatred. Racism is the “belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics” (What is Racism). The 21st century has brought a lot of changes to the American society. Nevertheless, racism still exists owing to the truth that it is still impossible to persuade the hearts of mankind in terms of racism, which leads to many people wondering how and when black and white racism will end in America. Many solutions have been suggested, and one of the various solutions is black and white interracial relationships. Such relationships have recently been successful in the 21st century, which leads us to the definitive question: can interracial relationships help reduce black and white racism in the 21st century?
Sofia’s encounter with Millie is a daily occurrence in nations worldwide. Her “Hell no” is a justified response to the subservience white people have forced upon African Americans and the constant struggle against black women have against abuse and sexism. Millie is an example of the everyday white woman whose class and social standing prompt her unawareness about social problems and her own racist misgivings. Alice Walker’s novel explores this deep-rooted racism intertwined with social class and sexism. Walker’s writes from the events that have marked her life, other’s lives, and the cruelty that has scarred the black community for years. Hence, the softened racism in the form of stereotypical comments, white superiority complexes, and the sexism towards women of color that fills the
Brownies is a story by Z. Z. Packer, a young African American writer. This story appears in Packer’s short stories collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. The story is about a Brownie troop of fourth-grade African American girls from suburban Atlanta, Georgia, who go to summer camp. At camp, they encounter a troop of white girls and believe that one of the white girls addressed them with a derogatory racial slur. The African American girls resolve to beat up the white girls. This story is about racism and racial segregation as it is experienced by young black girls. Ironically, the story has a twist. Packer shows the reader about racial segregation and prejudice in the world through this short story. Prejudice among groups as well as within
The author of this short story, Sandra Cisneros used this myth to make herself different from other American writers. She used ideas from things and stories she heard growing up as a Mexican-American woman, living in a house full of boys that got all of the attention (Mathias). Cisneros also grew up in the 19...
My area of interest to research is interracial dating, and racial differences. I am interested in learning more about the dynamics of interracial dating, and the factors of an individual’s background that influences it. This topic is personally interesting to me because it involves interactions between races. Also, it involves factors that allow or hinder the bonds between races to form and grow. My first research question is: To what extent does social factors affect participation or views on interracial dating? For instance, does the parent’s race change an individual’s perceptions on interracial dating? In addition, if someone views interracial dating as the norm, are they more likely to participate in a relationship with someone of