During the Antebellum Era, slave narratives were prominent historical sources that gave great insight to the first-hand experience of slaves in America. As they signified to white America the true horrors and exploitation of the institution of slavery from the witness accounts of enslaved African Americans who actually experienced it. In the narratives, the enslaved stressed the horrors of slavery through their various life experiences in the south with their slaveholders and their great will to escape their bondage. Thus, demonstrating the immorality of such an institution to their intended audience of white America in order to not only tell their story but move their audience to see the demeaning and inhumane institution for what it is to hopefully abolish it. Through Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and the story of Harriet Jacobs documented in the documentary Slavery in the Making of America’s “Seeds of Destruction,” their struggles reveal the horror and triumph of surviving and escaping such…
Heterogeneous Narrative Perspective Absalom, Absalom! is a novel written in 1936 by William Faulkner, the winner of two Pulitzer’s and a Nobel Peace prize for his many literary masterpieces. Faulkner has gained a celebrated reputation for his depiction of life in the American South. Though critics have established Absalom, Absalom! as Faulkner’s most difficult writing, it is also revered for its intellectually enriching metaphors and the complicated spiraling of events through narration. Faulkner, masterfully incorporates themes of miscegenation, progeny, race, class, and misogyny, into one captivating fictitious novel.…
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ experiences have resulted in a perception which lumps people into one group, discredits the work of others, and judges events from a subjective point of view. This is a flawed way of evaluating events that one comes across on a daily basis. It will lead to misunderstandings caused by the influence of one’s biases, and it may inflate and dramatize actions which had no ill-will behind them. It may lead to the oppressor to justify his actions stating that he is oppressed. It kills the individuality of a person, and makes assumptions regarding an individual based upon the actions committed by a few of the many people in the vast group which that individual may be associated with.…
Storytelling is a way to communicate to society in a way that creates a relatable instance such that the reader can see themselves, or a version of themselves, within the story. Storytelling also is a way to demonstrate the struggles of other individuals within a society that a reader my not experience directly, but can nonetheless gain a broader understanding of different struggles within society. Although there are many ways to utilize storytelling techniques, I will apply the approach of Rites of Passage to three of the novels we’ve read this semester. The Rites of Passage that I will be analyzing are those within the stories, Houseboy, Woman at Point Zero, and A Walk in the Night. In these stories I will argue that through the characters ', Toundi, Firdaus, and Willieboy, Rites of Passage there is a physical altercation that caused a stunt in their ability to grow emotionally as a character, thus disabling them to continue to their ultimate stage of their reincorporation into society.…
The speeches “Ain’t I a Woman?”, “What Time of Night It Is”, and “Keeping the Thing Going while Things Are Stirring” by Sojourner Truth and the autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs discuss the critical combination of racial and gender equality. Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs are former slaves and are credible, trustworthy speakers on the topics of race and gender, but because of their different experiences, they tackle the issues from different angles. Jacobs seems to speak on racial and slave issues from a woman’s perspective, whereas Truth speaks on women’s issues from the…
My three identities are America’s worst fears. My identity is what prevents those who are closed-minded to sleep at night. Men disrespect me. Those who are privileged look down on me, and the racist fear I will bomb their “Land of the Free.” Kwame Anthony Appiah wrote his article “Racial Identities” explaining our different identities and how each of our “collective identities” makes up a script or narrative of shaping our life.…
In the world we live in, here in Canada, we have a lot of independence. We are free to do what we want with some obvious limits outlined in the laws set forth in Canada. This freedom allows us to make our own identity in Canada. Now imagine if that freedom was taken away and the identity you created is lost. This is what is outlined in the books 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale.…
Arguments Against Epistemic Relativism Yet, despite arguments that show the validity of epistemic relativist thought, for some scholars, relativism has remained controversial and “untenable” (Kalderon, 2009, p. 236). For example, it could be argued that Black Feminist Thought has risked closing off discourse when dealing with false consciousness. Since subjugated knowledges like coloured women’s resistance develops in cultural contexts, dominant groups can attempt to influence an oppressed group’s experiences by gaining control and normalising standards of conduct. For example, Collins (1991) argues that internalising Eurocentric gender ideology about race, masculinity, and dominance could in some cases normalise the practice of coloured men…
Little remorse ever made its way to the forefront of Ishani's mind. Every life that had been lost by the grace of her jaws never once pulled on the strings of her heart to question as her morality. Long ago had she become detached, long after her first kill. A tragic ending that made a new beginning. Abandonment - that had been the end.…
Identity of human beings is one subject which has affected humanity for ages. Whether one wants to belong to a certain community or gender is a matter of nature’s choice. However, there are instances in which people choose to be what or who they want. Nonetheless, these choices are replete with criticisms from the public, families, co-workers and even friends. This emotional issue has affected many prominent individuals of our time as depicted in two articles ‘Being A Woman: Who Gets To Decide’ and ‘Why Rachel Dolezal Can Never Be Black’ as written by Barbara J. King and Denene Millner respectively.…
It focuses on her struggle for growth and meaning in New York and the South as an African American whose childhood and young womanhood was full of racism. Hard-multiculturalism has allowed her to free herself and her black communities and their consciousness from whites control by joining Black Power movements. She believed that the Civil Rights movement never had the chance of succeeding due to the benefits that Whites received from the oppression of Blacks, regardless of if they were from the North or the South. The Civil Rights movements wanted to integrate, but she argues that everything would not be better even if the South became like the North. The freedom of one has never been given to them by “appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them” (Shakur, 139).…
In society now until eternity, women of color are facing oppression in their lives. There are four readings that connect each book together. Within those four readings there three main issues that women of color facing oppression are their racial model minority, gender role, and how the way women are look down. What ties all these main issues is what happened in the 19th century when racism, stereotype, and inequality was exits until now.…
From our interpretation of the fictional short story "One Good Story, That One" by Thomas King, it suggests parody of the religious account of The Garden of Eden (i.e. Adam and Eve). We, as a group, came to the consensus that King seemingly writes from the perspective of a stereotypical Indigenous person who is recounting the story to the best of his ability. Looking at this piece of literature from an educational perspective, it offers an opportunity for students to critically examine the intention behind what is being presented throughout the story. As a group, we decided that this story would be most effective for students to examine in secondary grades. With elementary grade level students, they may have not yet received enough education to have creditable knowledge to draw from when examining this rhetorical piece of literate and, as such, might interpret this differently than King has intended.…
Pressures, expectations, comparisons, negotiations of self-worth, and ah- more expectations… these are common problems many South Asian diasporic women face growing up. Is it not true, girls? We have our whole lives set out for us through families, elders, or our community – always ready to put others’ needs before anything else, and never allowed the time or given the support to understand our own emotional and mental concerns. Some of us even suppress them our whole lives. As young women we are expected to keep silent, to contain our righteous feelings of anger or resentment, to follow along with what others (often men) want for us, typically to promote a “good” family image and along a false idea that elders will always know what’s best…
As I write the above poem, I reflect on my time at my first ADTA conference, the words of a Billie Holiday song, Why Not Take All of Me, come to mind. In this song, she speaks very candid about a man taking her heart due to a breakup and decides that it is best to take her life since one has taken the better part of her. For me, in this journey of therapy and Counseling, as an African American, one of my strongest assets is that I am a black man. As it is who I am, providing a very specific lens for which I see the world. Being my unauthentic self, (which has been the more accepted version of myself), has been the aching thorn in my back.…