The novel seemed to me to be an examination of the struggle of one woman for individual freedom and identity in juxtaposition to overwhelmingly mixed messages from her family, tribal community, and the white community into which she tries to assimilate. Cecelia stands in for native American women as the poster child of assimilation and achievement, her struggles, identity crisis, and inability to blend in either world. I liked that Ms. Hale did not let Cecelia off the hook as a protagonist, I believe that Cecelia received a thorough scourging from both the indigenous community and the white community. What I did not like about the novel were the feelings of victimization and the reasons for Cecelia’s victimization I grasped from the novel. I began at some point in the novel to feel that Ms. Hale’s portrayal of gender and income based discrimination were too unfairly tied to Cecelia’s ethnicity. I do not dispute that this is likely, but I do disagree that the types of gender based bias Cecelia experienced were solely because of her ethnicity and color.
The struggles Cecelia faced as a single mother working to complete a degree and support herself and her son did strike a familiar tone with me. Although I did raise my daughter as a single mother in California for almost six years, unlike Cecelia I was well employed, had completed my bachelor’s degree, and was in my thirties. Even so I also struggled more than occasionally with bias against my status as a single mother, albeit a successful professional, and the unanticipated ways this affected my daughter. There were clear biases evinced by teachers, child care workers, doctors, childless friends and coworkers, who all believed that they had not only the right to judge my d...
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...re aging from hard work. Throughout the story Cecelia’s relationships with women were portrayed as flat constructs, showing the reader the contempt of all women for a woman of color who refused to accept her place in society and try for something more. In the end Cecelia finally seems to reject these societal constructs and makes yet another decision to isolate herself from her culture and assimilate into white society on its terms. I did feel that the ending of the book was too pat, the author paid insufficient time exploring and developing the complex relationships between women in the book, and that the protagonist did not truly change in the end only persevered in the same manner she had since the inception of the story. In this way I see Cecelia making the same decisions repetitively throughout the novel but in a little higher sedimentary strata each time.
Celie is a victim of mistreatment and isolation in a world that considers women inferior to men. To instill fear and obedience in women, men conduct themselves in a hostile manner towards women. They manage women similar to slaves and sexually dominate them. When Celie is barely fourteen her stepfather, causing her to become pregnant twice, violates her multiple times. In a letter to God, Celie writes “I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it” (Walker 11). Intended merely to satisfy Pa, Celie...
Her realization that she is not alone in her oppression brings her a sense of freedom. It validates her emerging thoughts of wanting to rise up and shine a light on injustice. Her worries about not wanting to grow up because of the harsh life that awaits her is a common thought among others besides the people in her community. As she makes friends with other Indians in other communities she realizes the common bonds they share, even down to the most basic such as what they eat, which comforts her and allows her to empathize with them.
This book is a study of the personal tales of many single mothers, with intentions to understand why single mothers from poor urban neighborhoods are increasingly having children out of wedlock at a young age and without promise of marrying their fathers. The authors chose to research their study in Philadelphia’s eight most devastated neighborhoods, where oppression and danger are high and substantial job opportunities are rare. They provide an excellent education against the myth that poor young urban women are having children due to a lack of education on birth control or because they intend to work the welfare system. Instead, having children is their best and perhaps only means of obtaining the purpose, validation and companionship that is otherwise difficult to find in the areas in which they live. For many of them, their child is the biggest promise they have to a better future. They also believe that though their life may not have been what they want, they want their child to have more and better opportunities and make it their life’s work to provide that.
This book is a story about 4 sisters who tell their stories about living on an island in the Dominican Republic , and then moving to New York . What is different about this book is the fact that you have different narrators telling you the story , jumping back and forth from past to present . This is effective because it gives you different view point’s from each of the sisters . It may also detract from the narrative because of the fact that it’s confusing to the reader . This is a style of writing that has been recognized and analyzed by critics . Julia Alvarez is a well- known writer and in a way , mirrors events that happened in her own life , in her book . Looking into her life , it show’s that she went through an experience somewhat like the sisters . I interviewed an immigrant , not from the same ethnic back ground as the sisters , but a Japanese immigrant . This was a very
...cess that led from the Garcia girls' past to their present. In so doing, Alvarez illustrates the realities of assimilation for the Garcia family. It is a poignant story as Alvarez dramatizes the multiple complexities that permeate family life, but it remains a story of ordinary life-not tragedy.
It impacted Loreta Velazquez’s Life by her race, class and gender by first when she was growing up she was wearing dresses but doing boyish things like putting on her cousins clothes which her mother caught her one day and was not happy about it. Loreta consider herself not a Cuban girl but a white girl she didn’t want to do proper lady things growing up till she fell in love with a man named William when she was sent away for her ways that her parents didn’t like her parents wanted her to marry a man who they picked but she didn’t listen she married who she fell in love with and 2 kids with him and a third on the way but the 3rd had passed away during birth and only was alive for a second her husband at the time was away she also had lost
... boundaries of poverty. It would still take Ma a couple of years of hard work and dedication before getting out of Southie, but never as long as it took her in the nineteen hundreds. The truth is that single mother’s face far more challenges than marry couples with kids do, especially when combating dangers, crime, and poverty. According to the statistics released by The Urban Institute of Washington, “single-mother households become poor at a rate of 15.7 percent a year, compared with just 2.8 percent for married-parent households” (Ribar and Hamrick). However, it is proven by studies and statistics that the United States is slowly reducing its poverty rate by increasing the funding of services and institutions that help low income families; therefore, it is believable that in present years, Ma would be able to get out of Southie much faster than she did in 1990.
This novel is set in a time 300 years after a convulsion, a great war that was brought upon by men. It was men who were the diplomats and men who made the speeches about national pride and defenseand we died (pg. 301). The beginning of the novel starts out as a reflection and continues to be a reflection until the end, although the ways in which Tepper words happenings, put the reader in the moment so that he/she forgets they are reflecting and thinks that each happening is going on as you read, giving much more meaning to the piece. The reader is taken on a journey through the experiences of one girl from adolescence to adulthood, and as she comes to understand the way of life in Womens Country so do we the reader. Stavia (the main character) is reflecting everything that has made her who she is up to that point in her life. When Stavia was young the only worry she had to deal with was the coming and going of the male counterpart.
The narrator originally felt as if her hands were a burden as they could not perform the tasks that her sisters’ delicate hands could. This class has taught about the unfair treatment Chicanas receive for not only being Hispanic, but also being female. In patriarchal societies, females are often ridiculed for not being able to perform womanly tasks. Viramontes addresses this dilemma by using the narrator as a symbolic character who finds purpose in her flaws. The hands that were made fun of for being unable to perform delicate tasks were molded into hands used for labor. Viramontes is presenting to her audience that the different aspects of an individual can be empowering, and it is how one interprets purpose. Curanderas have the role of spiritual healing, but also the role of empowering women of color. Through the narrator, Viramontes takes a common hardship faced by Hispanic females and shapes purpose out of
The story can be analyzed using feminist criticism perspective. Feminist criticism is “" the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women"” (Brizee & Tompkins). When reading a text one can find how women were treated in contemporary times. It can be expressed in many areas listed by Brizee & Tompkins. Moreover, Delahoyde also gave more details on the subject when he said “Feminist criticism concern itself with stereotypical representations of genders. It also may trace the history of relatively unknown or undervalued women writers, potentially earning them their rightful place within the literary canon, and helps create a climate in which women's creativity may be fully realized and appreciate.” Women had been undervalued and taken for granted. Many things they do are not as...
...e relationship with men, as nothing but tools she can sharpen and destroy, lives through lust and an uncanny ability to blend into any social class makes her unique. Her character is proven as an unreliable narrator as she exaggerates parts of the story and tries to explain that she is in fact not guilty of being a mistress, but a person caught in a crossfire between two others.
...eedom was found and cultural boundaries were not shattered, simply battered, the narrator’s path was much preferable to that of her sisters (those who conformed to cultural boundaries). Through this story we can see how oppression in certain cultures changes individuals differently, creates tension between those who do not wish to be subjugated and those doing the subjugating, and we see the integral opposition between the path of Catholicism and that of curandismo.
When Celie’s mother left, she played the role of a mother to care and protect her sister, but she started to notice that Mr.__ was looking at her sister in a way that she knew was not okay. Nettie was afraid but Celie knew that God had everything in control (Williams). According to Tate, “The novel evolves as Celie, a fourteen-year-old black girl, confides in God through letters about what has happened to her. She has been raped by a man whom she assu...
In the Book women are looked upon as objects by men whether they are boyfriends, friends fathers or husbands. The girls in the novel grow up with the mentality that looks and appearance are the most important things to a woman. Cisneros also shows how Latino women are expected to be loyal to their husbands, and that a husband should have complete control of the relationship. Yet on the other hand, Cisneros describes the character Esperanza as being different. Even though she is born and raised in the same culture as the women around her, she is not happy with it, and knows that someday she will break free from its ties, because she is mentally strong and has a talent for telling stories. She comes back through her stories by showing the women that they can be independent and live their own lives. In a way this is Cinceros' way of coming back and giving back to the women in her community.
For all the talk about our inclusive society, there are still areas where inaccurate and harmful stereotypes get a green light from the media and politicians. Teenage parents must seem like the gift that keeps on giving for certain sections of the tabloid press, who leap at the chance to tie up all single parents in the same lazy caricature of feckless welfare spongers. But those who work directly with single parents know that these unjust stereotypes can be hugely damaging to young women or men taking their first steps into parenthood. Young single parents regularly tell us that the stigma they face is one of the most challenging aspects of becoming a parent at a young age.