Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay on personal narratives
Essay on personal narratives
Essay on personal narratives
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Essay on personal narratives
Edwige Danticat’s Tones in We Are Ugly, But We Are Here
When I first read “We Are Ugly, But We Are Here,” I was stunned to learn how women in Haiti were treated. Edwige Danticat, who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1969 and immigrated to Brooklyn when she was twelve years old, writes about her experiences in Haiti and about the lives of her ancestors that she links to her own. Her specific purpose is to discuss what all these families went through, especially the women, in order to offer the next generation a voice and a future. Danticat writes vividly about events that occurred in Haiti, leading up to an assertion about the strength of Haitian women. Her essay is powerful in large part because of how she manages tone.
Danticat begins her essay with a tragic and bitter tone. She tells of the first people who were murdered when the Spaniards came to Haiti including Queen Anacaona, an Arawak Indian who ruled over the western part of the island. With bitterness she states, “Anacaona was one of their first victims. She was raped and killed and her village pillaged” (137).
After establishing this sad and bitter tone, Danticat moves to a more rejoiceful tone when she reminisces about the times when her grandmother would tell her stories: “My grandmother was an old country woman who always felt displaced in the City of Port-au-Prince—where we lived—and had nothing but her patched-up quilts and her stories to console her. She was the one who told me about Anacaona” (137). Danticat then shifts to a more neutral tone when she recalls her grandmother’s peaceful death with her eyes open. She took her grandmother’s death calmly because death was so frequent in Haiti. She further explains, “I have such a strong feeling that death is not the end, that the people we bury are going off to live somewhere else” (138).
Danticat’s factual tone becomes angrier when she remembers that the news broadcasts never mention women in places like Haiti. It was often hard to tell whether any women were living or breathing: “The women’s stories never manage to make the front page. However, they do exist” (139). The anger increases to outrage when she details atrocities committed including the shooting of a woman in her pregnant stomach because she was wearing a t-shirt that had an “anti-military image” on it (139).
Over the past few decades, research on women has gained new momentum and a great deal of attention. Susan Socolow’s book, The Women of Colonial Latin America, is a well-organized and clear introduction to the roles and experiences of women in colonial Latin America. Socolow explicitly states that her aim is to examine the roles and social regulations of masculinity and femininity, and study the confines, and variability, of the feminine experience, while maintaining that sex was the determining factor in status. She traces womanly experience from indigenous society up to the enlightenment reforms of the 18th century. Socolow concentrates on the diverse culture created by the Europeans coming into Latin America, the native women, and African slaves that were imported into the area. Her book does not argue that women were victimized or empowered in the culture and time they lived in. Socolow specifies that she does her best to avoid judgment of women’s circumstances using a modern viewpoint, but rather attempts to study and understand colonial Latin American women in their own time.
Granny seems to be bitter about somethings, but not about the life and love she had with her husband. Granny says, “I wouldn’t exchange my husband for anybody except St. Micheal himself.” (Porter, 210) Though not ready for death, “I’m not going, Cornelia. I’m taken by surprise,” (Porter, 270) she seems to have a purpose brought by love even in death. She had a loved one that she wanted to go see. “Granny made the long journey outward, looking for Hapsy.”(Porter, 270) Her loving, though full of loss, seems a prime example of what it means to be a
Chin Chin Gutierrez says that “Our investigation confirms the disturbing quantities of lead in some painted wooden toys that can harm our children’s smaller and still growing brains and bodies instead of providing them with educational and recreational benefits,”. We urge the authorities to take tough actions to rid the toys market of lead-tainted products, including recalling toys that are unfit and unsafe for children’s use. We can and must prevent lead poisoning of our children from toys.”
...s and has thus paved the way for foreign intervention. With this in mind, it is important to note that the political insecurity all stems back from the solidification of colour lines within Haitian society – of which is not a new concept to Haiti. The issue of racial supremacy was first laid down by the French during colonial rule. Colonialists truly believed they were the ‘superior’ race in all form and manner and so it was generally understood amongst the them that “nothing good and civilized comes” out of their colonies (Nicholls 1993). Hence, the mulattoes, believing themselves to be more closely akin to the French than their Haitian counterparts, have enshrined and upheld this view even long after French occupation. For this reason, it is thanks to colonialism that there is a gradual erosion of Haiti’s political autonomy during the end of the nineteenth century.
Several of the problems that Haiti faces today have their genesis in the country’s colonial history. The country was like a toy being fought over by spoiled children. The first of these children arrived in the early sixteenth century in the form of Spanish settlers in search of gold. They enslaved the native Taino population and, poisoned by avarice, nearly eradicated the indigenous work force. Thousands of African slaves were brought in to take their place. Eventually, the Spanish left the island to grab their share of newly discovered treasure in other lands. Tiring of their toy, the Spanish
The birth of Rock and Roll Music was a mixture of popular music and African American country blues and hillbilly music. However, Rock and Roll music was influence since the 1950’s by two particular African American artists like Muddy Waters and Howlin` Wolf. Through their distinct voices, style, deliverance, and performances that helped the music in the 1950’s give rise to this new style of music genre Rock and Roll. During the World War II era, this style of music was looked at; as traditional music and, through the music people could tell their story, not just about their struggles but the real struggles going on around them, like, isolation between black and white people. Most artists were sharing their values and trying to associate through
With the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, the eradication of the original Haitians through disease, slavery, and slaughter executed by the Europeans, did not take long. According to Farmer, author of The Uses of Haiti 2006, massive development in agricultural labor triggered transatlantic trafficking of humans and beginning in 1540 over 30,000 Africans had been forced into slavery on the island known today as Haiti (Pg.54). Human trafficking continued to increase over the decades as the demand for more
The Haitian Revolution is widely considered as the significant event in Africans’ history in the new world. Indeed, the reduction of the Atlantic slave trade is conventionally accredited to the inception of Haitian Revolution. While it might have failed to inspire immediate revolutions within the Caribbean and eventually the world, the Haitian Revolution had a profound effect on the French Revolution as a case for many national emancipation movements. It is evident that the French Revolution determined the success of Haitian Revolution through the custom of racial hierarchy and subjugation in Haiti and through the spread of French Revolution’s ideals. These factors compelled the elite planters to either surrender some control or risk being subjected to violent rebellion.
In the night of August 22, 1791, which initiated the Haitian Revolution, Dutty Boukman, a slave and religious leader gathered a gang of slaves and uttered one of the most important prayers in the Black Atlantic religious thought.1 The prayer embodies the historical tyranny of oppression and suffering, and the collective cry for justice, freedom, and human dignity of the enslaved Africans at Saint-Domingue. The Guy who is not happy with the situation tha...
The rise of rock and roll into the limelight is to a large extent attributed to the teenagers of the 1950’s. Early rock music listened to by teenagers during the 1950’s was formed by blending together Rhythm and blues with country music. This kind of ...
The instructor that I choose to interview was Dr. Jennifer Donahue. She was my instructor last semester for my African Studies course. Dr. Jennifer Donahue is an Assistant Professor with a Ph.D. in Literature from Florida State University. Donahue research and work focusses in present Caribbean literature with an emphasis on the connection between history, suffering, and sexual political beliefs. For her exposition, she expanded her research into a volume script designated Trauma, Shame and Silence in Caribbean Women’s Writing. The writing in it disputes that body and sexual politics behave as systems of micro trauma that stimulate circumstances fluctuate from shame to psychosis. Donahue investigation and educational interests comprise of Caribbean
The first part of the book gives an account of Immaculée’s family background. The love she experienced from her parents and her three brothers is illustrated. Her parents cared for everybody, particularly the poor. Because of the love with which she grew up, she never realised that she was living in a country where hatred against the Tutsi, her tribe, was rampant. It was not until she was asked to stand up in class by her teacher during an ethnic roll call that she realised that her neighbours were not what she thought them to be – good and friendly. After struggling to get into high school and university, not because she was not qualified but because of discrimination against her ethnic background, she worked hard to prove that if women are given opportunities to...
...ael; Heinl, Nancy Gordon (2005) [1996]. Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492–1995 (2nd Ed.). Lanham, Md; London: Univ. Press of America
Toys can be fun but it can also be dangerous. There is a higher risk for ages 3 and under to be within that danger zone be used they are always putting things in their mouth which can lead to choking. Research has shown the increase of children ending in the hospital because of toys injuries. For toy injuries to decrease there guidelines that should be follow starting off with the manufactures. When a toy is being created they would put labels on the toy so the buyer knows age group. If the buyer gets a toy it's also their responsibility to follow certain guidelines, for example if a toy is made of fabric it should be labeled as flame resistant or flame retardant, art material should say nontoxic and stuff should be washable. The toy buyer has to make sure the toy is appropriate for certain child depending on the child's age. But what if the child comprehends or is advance and can handle toys that are for older kids, what do you do? When a toy buyer is purchasing a toy for a child the first thing that should pop into their head is safety, so they need to make sure that the toy has an appropriate age for the child therefore when a company makes a toy they make it for a specific age not intelligent. Once the toy has been bought and given to the child it's very important for the children to know how to use the toy.
Metaphors can help people relate to events and feelings that they have not experienced in their own time. However, Danticat manipulates Haitian parables to be metaphors that help people understand the pain and suffering Martine goes through. Along with helping one understand Martine’s pain, the parables also foreshadow her death, both mentally and