First, we have to investigate the validity of Womack’s argument and the effectiveness of his argument when he examines the theory of gender in Harjo’s poetry. In the gender and queer theory, feminist writers always concern about gender oppression. It means that one gender is privileged over another gender that is disadvantaged because of her or his gender. Different groups use their power to befit from other groups. This oppression and domination can be practiced in different sexes based on their sexual orientations such as bisexuals, gays, lesbians, or heterosexuals. When Critics, including Womack himself in Red on Red, examine the poems of Harjo, they do not find any evidence of gender oppression. They realize that the historical movements …show more content…
She travels to the south through writing a book that is called A Map to the Next World. In this book, Harjo writes about Native American experiences that she has found in different place. She combines these experiences with mythical stories of her culture in order to create culture memories. Harjo says, I feel strongly that I have a responsibility to all the sources that I am: to all past and …show more content…
He starts to read her poems from a different perspective through depending on his sexual orientation in interpreting Harjo’s poetry. He makes his realization of Harjo’s same- sex desire as his personal matter. He declares that he is the only writer that he is able to understand Harjo’s feelings. This makes Womack’s argument less valid because he relies on his personal opinion rather than relies on the existing facts. Womack claims that Harjo tries to hide her actual feelings through using ambiguous style of writing. He also thinks that Harjo prefers to hide her same-sex desire. In the twentieth century, Feminists use writing as a way of expressing their feelings and thoughts. They try to raise their voices in order to defend their rights. Critics consider Harjo as a feminist poet, and feminists are not ashamed of expressing their feeling, so what it prevents Harjo from writing about same-sex
Harjo uses wisdom of the medicine wheel to reveal her life lessons and their often misunderstood, yet meaningful, directions. The first direction she writes of in Crazy Brave is that of ‘The East’. She opens the memoir with The East as being ‘the direction of beginnings, and the direction of where she was born, on the Creek Nation in Oklahoma” (Harjo 15). Setting the beginning of her story ‘at the beginning’ is rather misleading, as the direction she goes with her story does not follow an expected chronological order. Instead, she tells her story through patterns, memories, and settings that seem to come and go in and out of her consciousness. Her natural way of telling a story is very poetic and does not follow the standard rules of genre or memoir. The use of poetry and italics reveal these types of wanderings and ‘stanzas’ in her own life. Life to Harjo is not linear, and it shows in the beautiful rhythms, words, feelings, and experiences that she so ‘bravely’ places on each page of her
In the text “Seeing Red: American Indian Women Speaking about their Religious and Cultural Perspectives” by Inés Talamantez, the author discusses the role of ceremonies and ancestral spirituality in various Native American cultures, and elaborates on the injustices native women face because of their oppressors.
Although primarily known as a poet, Harjo conceives of herself as a visual artist. She left Oklahoma at age 16 to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, originally studying painting. After attending a reading by poet Simon Ortiz, she changed her major to poetry. At 17, she returned to Oklahoma to give birth to her son, Phil Dayn, walking four blocks while in labor to the Indian hospital in Talequah. Her daughter, Rainy Dawn, was born four years later in Albuquerque. For years, Harjo supported herself and her children with a variety of jobs: waitress, service-station attendant, hospital janitor, nurse’s assistant, dance teacher. She then went on to earn a B.A. in English from the University of New Mexico in 1976 and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Iowa’s famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1978. She then went on to an impressive list of teaching positions beginning with the Institute of American Indian Arts and ending with her current position with the American Indian Studies Program at the University of California at Los Angeles.
She draws a picture of her equality to men by expressing her strength and hard-working efforts as she “ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me.” Again, following this statement, “Ain’t I a woman?” She rhythmically continues this pattern, making a claim to her equality she feels with males and then following it with the powerful question “Ain’t I a woman?”.
...mely carefully chosen rhetoric, she has demonstrated how women can break free of men. She has taken away the fear than many women feel when they want to stand up against the male figure in their life. When women are able to be strong, and use the power that they have always had, they are able to move mountains with that power. They can remove themselves from a man who takes advantage of them or objectifies them, and reduce them to nothing more than the coward that they are. Larcom’s poem painted a clear picture of progress that women have made against men, and how they are tackling the issues set before them. Because of Larcom and her ability to use her voice through writing to portray and strong vision of women, has empowered many others to do the same. They are able to break free from the chains of repression that so many men have restrained women by for so long.
Ihara Saikaku’s Life of a Sensuous Woman written in the 17th century and Mary Woolstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman written in the 18th century are powerful literary works that advocated feminism during the time when women were oppressed members of our societies. These two works have a century old age difference and the authors of both works have made a distinctive attempt to shed a light towards the issues that nobody considered significant during that time. Despite these differences between the two texts, they both skillfully manage to present revolutionary ways women can liberate themselves from oppression laden upon them by the society since the beginning of humanity.
What is Feminism? How does feminism affect the world we live in today? Was feminism always present in history, and if so why was it such a struggle for women to gain the respect they rightly deserve? Many authors are able to express their feelings and passions about this subject within their writing. When reading literary works, one can sense the different feminist stages depending on the timeframe that the writing takes place. Two such works are ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by, Charlotte Gilman and ‘Everyday Use’ by, Alice Walker; the feminist views within each story are very apparent by the era each author lives in. It is evident that a matter of fifty years can change the stance of an author’s writing; in one story the main character is a confident and strong willed young woman looking to voice her feminist views on the world, while the other story’s main character is a woman trying to hold on to her voice in a man’s world which is driving her insane.
For hundreds of years, women are fighting a war of inequality in the male dominated society. Heather Savigny addressed a very important question in her article, what is Feminism? By definition, “Feminism” is a moment started by women to end inequality in all fields of society. Women in the society started this protest to gain rights that were deprived by the males in the society. A feminist can be a normal person who fights against the discrimination on based on sex, age and gender. The feminist movement is very important in our society, to protect women for sexual harassment and violence. To fight this problem, and to find a possible way to end it, many great writers wrote very influential poems and stories. A very few writers who chose to
I am going to analyze this text using the intrinsic and feminist literary theory analysis. With the intrinsic analysis, I will brood mostly on the style and characterization of the text. According to Eaglestone, 2009, intrinsic analysis is a look into the text for meaning and understanding, assuming it has no connection, whatsoever, to the outside world. “Style is said to be the way one writes as opposed to what one writes about and is that voice that your readers hear when they read your work” (Wiehardt, n.d). The text uses mostly colors, poems and songs to deliver its messages. The main characters in the...
“I've told her and I've told her: daughter, you have to teach that child the facts of life before it's too late” (Hopkinson 1). These are the first three lines of Nalo Hopkinson's short story “Riding the Red”, a modern adaptation of Charles Perrault's “Little Red Riding Hood”. In his fairy tale Perrault prevents girls from men's nature. In Hopkinson's adaptation, the goal remains the same: through the grandmother biographic narration, the author elaborates a slightly revisited plot without altering the moral: young girls should beware of men; especially when they seem innocent.
...e, women are the weaker of the two sexes. Women are slaves and spoils of war, if they are valued for sex they are used for sex. The universal portrayal of women causes a reevaluation of modern day gender balances by the reader.
“I've told her and I've told her: daughter, you have to teach that child the facts of life before it's too late” (Hopkinson 1). These are the first three lines of Nalo Hopkinson's fairy tale “Riding the Red”, a modern adaptation of Charles Perrault's “Little Red Riding Hood”. Perrault provided a moral to his fairy tales, the one from this one is to prevent girls from men's nature. In Hopkinson's adaptation, the goal remains the same: through the grandmother biographic narration, the author advances a revisited but still effective moral: beware of wolfs even though they seem innocent.
One definition of gender is the membership of a word or grammatical form, or an inflectional form showing membership, in such a class. Gender critics take masculinity and feminism, as well as male and female, and use those theories to analyze writings. In books, or other writings, masculinity and feminism are used in order to describe how a character is seen by other characters. Feminism is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. It is also a feminine character. After the women’s rights movement, women began to write works and put in their own views and beliefs. This era became known as the feminist writing era. Women felt that by writing their feelings and then getting their works published, that people would see why women should be equal to men.
Throughout history society has been controlled by men, and because of this women were exposed to some very demanding expectations. A woman was expected to be a wife, a mother, a cook, a maid, and sexually obedient to men. As a form of patriarchal silencing any woman who deviated from these expectations was often a victim of physical, emotional, and social beatings. Creativity and individuality were dirty, sinful and very inappropriate for a respectful woman. By taking away women’s voices, men were able to remove any power that they might have had. In both Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, we see that there are two types of women who arise from the demands of these expectations. The first is the obedient women, the one who has buckled and succumbed to become an empty emotionless shell. In men’s eyes this type of woman was a sort of “angel” perfect in that she did and acted exactly as what was expected of her. The second type of woman is the “rebel”, the woman who is willing to fight in order to keep her creativity and passion. Patriarchal silencing inspires a bond between those women who are forced into submission and/or those who are too submissive to maintain their individuality, and those women who are able and willing to fight for the ability to be unique.
Romance writers and readers are themselves struggling with gender definitions and sexual politics on their own terms and what they may need most from those of us struggling in other arenas is support rather than criticism (p. 76).