Marginality By: Jung Young Lee is one of the most profound books I have read. Every page draws more insights into the lens of those marginalized by society. Lee is able to take a word that has been used as a one-dimensional, negative term for articulating a people group and not only make it three-dimensional but establish a positive marginality for all. Based on the author’s first hand experiences of living on the margin, he invites the reader to learn through a personal journey of the margins. He articulates what the realities are for those of color and how it could be different with the refining of the understanding, terminology and practice of margin in context to the current practice of centrality. Lee introduces a new theological foundation rooted in marginality. Through the parable of a Dandelion he expounds on the struggle of the Asian-American experience while also laying out the historical situations that brought the first Japanese, Chinese and Korean’s to the shores of America. Through an intense amount of vulnerability and historical facts Lee articulates the story of many who have been unheard. From the example of Christ to healing of suffering through suffering, Lee challenges the reader to reimagine a world where the margins redefine the center. Through this book centrality is define based on the margins, in other words “without the center there is no margin; just as there is no center without the margins. They are mutually relative and co-existent” . Centrality is also defined as the dominate, white, and church force with holds the power and oppresses those on the margins; “In the history of civilization, the center attracted humanity more than any other thing in the world, for the center has been understoo... ... middle of paper ... ...to see a middle-eastern man who had no home, no place to call his own, who brought love through suffering and freedom through death as the real Christ that we worship. ‘For marginal people, suffering is more meaningful than pleasure, and love is more fundamental then power. Marginal people have learned to find meaning is suffering and power in love, while centralist people want to eliminate suffering from pleasure and find love in power” . Lee has helped me to dive deeper into the context of culture and gender specifically. To hear from a man who is marginalized explain the way in which he had to assimilate in-order to feel a part of the society he lived in exposed the very struggle and truth in the quote above ‘meaning is suffering.’ It also helps to see how even in the center, men and woman can have such a different context in which to view their theology.
Islas, Arturo. From Migrant Souls. American Mosaic: Multicultural Readings in Context. Eds. Gabriele Rico, Barbara Roche and Sandra Mano. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1995. 483-491.
Good evening and welcome to tonight’s episode of Learning Literature. Tonight we will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Gattaca by analysing the techniques text producers employ to construct representations of social issues relating to marginalised groups. We will focus on two classic pieces of literature, Ken Kessey’s, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as well as Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca. Through a range of techniques, the text producers have included representations of freedom and independence, power, as well as discrimination in each of their respective texts.
In this passage from the novel Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates utilizes meaningful, vivid imagery to not only stress the chasm between two dissonant American realities, but to also bolster his clarion for the American people to abolish the slavery of institutional or personal bias against any background. For example, Coates introduces his audience to the idea that the United States is a galaxy, and that the extremes of the "black" and "white" lifestyles in this galaxy are so severe that they can only know of each other through dispatch (Coates 20-21). Although Coates's language is straightforward, it nevertheless challenges his audience to reconsider a status quo that has maintained social division in an unwitting yet ignorant fashion.
In the first Chapter of the book ‘A Different Mirror’ by (Takaki, 1993) the author embarks on a descriptive narrative that tries to elaborate the concept of a multiracial America. The chapter begins with the author taking a taxi ride in which he is subjected to racial discrimination. The taxi driver questions the author’s origin owing to the fact that his English is perfect and eloquent. This incident prompts a discussion that transpires throughout the chapter as the author tries to explain to his audience that America is a multiracial country with different ethnic groups that moved from their homelands to settle in the United States. The chapter discusses the settlement of various racial groups such as; English immigrants, African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos and the Irish.
Written by Margaret K. Pai, the Dreams of Two Yi-min narrates the story of her Korean American family with the main focus on the life journeys of her father and mother, Do In Kwon and Hee Kyung Lee. Much like the majority of the pre-World War II immigrants, the author’s family is marked and characterized by the common perception of the “typical” Asian immigrant status in the early 20th century: low class, lack of English speaking ability, lack of transferable education and skills, and lack of knowledge on the host society’s mainstream networks and institutions (Zhou and Gatewood 120, Zhou 224). Despite living in a foreign land with countless barriers and lack of capital, Kwon lead his wife and children to assimilate culturally, economically, and structurally through his growing entrepreneurship. Lee, on the other hand, devoted herself not only to her husband’s business but also to the Korean American society. By investing her time in the Korean Methodist Church and the efforts of its associated societies, such as the Methodist Ladies Aid Society and the Youngnam Puin Hoe, Lee made a worthy contribution to the emergence and existence of Hawaii’s Korean American community.
In a country full of inequities and discriminations, numerous books were written to depict our unjust societies. One of the many books is an autobiography by Richard Wright. In Black Boy, Wright shares these many life-changing experiences he faced, which include the discovery of racism at a young age, the fights he put up against discriminations and hunger, and finally his decision of moving Northward to a purported better society. Through these experiences which eventually led him to success, Wright tells his readers the cause and effect of racism, and hunger. In a way, the novel The Tortilla Curtain by T.C Boyle illustrates similar experiences. In this book, the lives of two wealthy American citizens and two illegal immigrants collided. Delaney and Kyra were whites living in a pleasurable home, with the constant worry that Mexicans would disturb their peaceful, gated community. Candido and America, on the other hand, came to America to seek job opportunities and a home but ended up camping at a canyon, struggling even for cheapest form of life. They were prevented from any kind of opportunities because they were Mexicans. The differences between the skin colors of these two couples created the hugest gap between the two races. Despite the difficulties American and Candido went through, they never reached success like Wright did. However, something which links these two illegal immigrants and this African American together is their determination to strive for food and a better future. For discouraged minorities struggling in a society plagued with racism, their will to escape poverty often becomes their only motivation to survive, but can also acts as the push they need toward success.
Cone ends his book, Black Theology & Black Power with this thought, “The real questions are: Where is your identity? Where is your being? Does it lie with the oppressed blacks or with the oppressors? Let us hope that there are enough to answer this question correctly so that America will not be compelled to acknowledge a common humanity by see that blood is always one color.”
Religion and spirituality reach into the depths of the human psyche and strongly influence a nation’s way of life. In Margaret Cavendish’s “Blazing World”, the Emperor and the inhabitants of the Blazing World worship Margaret, who renamed herself Margaret the First. Highly revered as a deity by the people, Margaret is surprised to discover that females do not have a high place in the religious fabric of the Blazing World. Women are barred from religious assemblies, because it is “promiscuous” for men and women to be together during religious worship, so women must remain at home to worship in the privacy of their rooms (Cavendish 1767). Priests and governors are made eunuchs to safeguard them from women and children who, according to Margaret’s advisors, make too much disturbances in the church and in the state. In Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, women priests are highly regarded. However, churches here are also segregated – the men sit on one side and while the women sit on the other.
In “Racial identities” Kwame Anthony Apphia describes the different ethnic groups North America and how they are discriminated specialty the African Americans. In “Besides oneself: on the limits of sexual autonomy” Judith Butler states that sexual minorities suffer from discrimination and violence. In “Our secret” Susan Griffin describes the life of Heinrich Himmler which grows up to be a Nazi soldier. These passages describe the behavior of society and how individuals are affected it by it.
On account of cultural influences, gender roles are institutionalized and enacted at the levels of the family, community and society. Culture makes gender roles meet certain inescapable beliefs, assumptions, expectations, and obligations. Cultural practices are treasures of a social group as they are a mark of their identity and assertion. Moreover, certain cultural practices are gender specific and are mandatorymarks of a particular gender. Moreover, there is a lot of meandering in the name of culture that goes into the making of women by patriarchy,as "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" (Beauvoir 295). Gender politics camouflaged by cultural norms and governed by patriarchal interests and manifested in cultural practices like ‘Female Genital Mutilation’ or FGM, make the life of women difficult and burdensome. Alice Walker’s fifthnovel Possessing the Secret of Joy(1992)discusses a tabooed cultural practice called female genital mutilation, camouflaged by gender politics, that is used to subjugate women, to protect the interests of men. Walker through the novel has put forth the idea of Judith Butler of how“gender is performatively produced and compelled by regulatory practices of gender coherence . . . constituting the identity it is purported to be."
In this paper I will be sharing information I had gathered involving two students that were interviewed regarding education and their racial status of being an Asian-American. I will examine these subjects’ experiences as an Asian-American through the education they had experienced throughout their entire lives. I will also be relating and analyzing their experiences through the various concepts we had learned and discussed in class so far. Both of these individuals have experiences regarding their education that have similarities and differences.
He mournfully tells his audience he has “moved away from the periphery and toward the center of American life, [he] has become white inside” (Liu 1). As a young chinese boy growing up in America, he was taught the way to assimilation was to abandon the language, culture, and traditions of his ancestors, and his essay is a remorseful reflection on the consequences of his sacrifice. Despite giving away so much, despite doing it all to ‘become white’, he will always be an outsider – race and skin color can never be the uniting factor of a community. Eric Liu goes on to talk about how “the assimilist is a traitor to his kind, to his class, to his own family” (Liu 2). Why does it need to be this way? The ‘a-word’ (assimilist) need not be a negative one, if only assimilation meant adapting to an ideology rather than one race’s culture. If that were the true meaning of assimilation, the idea that to assimilate is to betray would be eradicated. The current method of naturalization to American culture is unacceptable: The only thing that will unite Americans will be a common goal to promote good values and hard work within
This struggle against marginalization is one of the principal elements that bind their sense of community, ...
perspective on the concept, arguing that gender is a cultural performance. Her careful reading of
To elaborate, it suggests that men are the virtuous ones – and that, by proxy, women are not. It claims men to be the saintly guide of the feminist revolution proposed, and suggests that women are incapable of realising their suffering and subjugation on their own. Of course this view is problematic (especially to those who are interested in a more intersectional feminism), but when looked at in its original context, it becomes even more fascinating.