Identity And Discrimination In Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex

Improved Essays
I endeavor to analyze what I have understood of identity and discrimination from Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer winning book Middlesex. Middlesex has developed my understanding of what I know of gender, gender identity, cultural and immigration identity, and race and discrimination but I will focus on gender identity as Middlesex concreted my view on the matter.
Middlesex is a narrative told by the protagonist Cal/lie, a hermaphrodite who is raised as a girl until his adolescence when he decides to be a boy Cal. But it is important to clear that it is more than a hermaphrodite story. Middlesex explores the middle ground not just between sexes but also between Greek and American culture. It is a broad and complex Bildungsroman (coming of age) that tells an immigration saga of a Greek family and explores gender identity among a various other themes like race,
…show more content…
One can even question why female to male transformation. Is it for the general power that is seen to be belonging exclusively to men? But that is apparently not so in this book as the author in a discussion at Guardian book club cleared that it was so because that was the truth of Cal’s condition 5-Alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome that he had as result of inbreeding in the family.

Apart from race discrimination that is rampant is the Middlesex, gender discrimination is rather subtle and often draped in sarcasm and humor as reflected in the conversation between Milton and Tessie about male- female sperm that shows the general prejudice but it’s still there in the very distinction between how girls and boys are brought up, in the culturally determined clothes and habits designated as suitable for girls and boys, something with which Cal deals with

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Scaffolding Essay1: Rhetorical Analysis Nell Bernstein ’s essay Goin’ Gangsta, Choosin’ Cholita seeks to examine the complexities of ethnic identity, and to evaluate the concept of claiming an ethnicity one was not born into. Bernstein explores the differing perspectives several Californian teens and young adults have regarding personal ethnic identification. For many of them it’s a choice, and as Bernstein puts it, “identity is not a matter of where you come from, what you were born into, what color your skin is.…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    La Guera Summary

    • 1017 Words
    • 5 Pages

    As for this week’s reading assignments, I was introduced to two pieces of readings: Judith Lorber’s “Night to His Day,” and Cherrie Moraga’s “La Guera.” Having read and thinking about the issues of the readings, I was aware of the process that the society has used to construct gender over the years (in “Night to His Day”) and how mistreatment, like racial discrimination or gender inequality, is involved in the construction of gender (in “La Guera”). Let’s talk about Lorber’s article. As I read, I noticed what the author indicates: “For individuals, gender means sameness,” and “for society, gender means difference;” I believed that it was true. From my perspective, each individual in this society complies with his [or her] group’s expectations…

    • 1017 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    What is the obsession with people’s need of identification. Don't they understand that in the outside we might be different, but in the inside we all are the same? In her article, “Being an Other,” Melissa Algranati gives a personal narrative of her life and her parent's life and how they faced discrimination and her struggles about being identified as an “other” even though she was an American born jewish and Puerto Rican. Michael Omi’s article “In Living Color: Race and American Culture” reinforces Algranati’s article since in his article he discusses about people ideas about race the stereotypes that they face. Michael Omi reinforces Melissa Algranati because they both argue about America’s obsessions of labelling people and how it affect…

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “Why Do We Make So Much of Gender,” Allan G. Johnson argues against patriarchal beliefs as well as gender profiling. He begins by proving that religion and history play a key role in how cultural expectations develop. Johnson follows by giving examples that support the fact that gender profiling still exists to this day and proves that the mistreatment of women is more than a biological issue, but social as well. Johnson, with samples from other authors, proves the irony between how men and women are supposed to be portrayed. Throughout the article, Johnson makes some strong points on the issue, but also includes weak ones as well.…

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The reading assigned is centered around the discussion of social identities given to the reader by Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. In this article the discussion of social identities are geared toward the identities we give ourselves and the identities society gives us. Kirk and Okazawa-Rey give plenty examples of how the social groups we tend to place ourselves might not be the same group society places us in. One example used was immigration in the United States. In many places all over the world most people identify with where they are from as their main “identity.”…

    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Summary Of Diaz's Book Owe

    • 1250 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Diaz’s book OW helps explain the concepts of social, sex, and gender inequalities. We are told the story of a family who lives through a variety of injustices and discrimination. Microinequities refers to ways in which people are either singled out, overlooked, ignored or otherwise discounted on the basis of unchangeable characteristics (Reading E:104). A person is discriminated for attributes that are not in their power to decide or change like race, gender, and age. Basically one is abused for the features we were born with.…

    • 1250 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The way we identify ourselves is very important in today’s society. We can identify ourselves through morals, clothing styles, or even by the foods we eat. Our identity can be part of our culture, but it can also us stand out from those around us. However, society often takes part in determining our own identity. Everyone falls victim to at least one or two generalized stereotypes, normally based upon race, and others often identify us by these.…

    • 1391 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    ‘“Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender,” Judith Lorber’s article written in the mid 90s, describes western societies as having two genders: men and women. Lorber explains that, while they not wholly separate genders, transvestities and transexuals are “crossover genders” (2007: 43) floating in between society’s two genders. Society’s framework for gender affects everything a person does from the moment that person is born, without them even knowing it. The clothes a person wears, the friends a person makes, the job that person ultimately does or does not get: all affected by gender.…

    • 1097 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Identity” can be seen as a person’s perception of themselves, however, it is becoming more prominent to define “identity” in a social way or how people express themselves based on the demand for acceptance by others. Chris Cunningham, in “To Watch the Faces of the Poor”: Life Magazine and the Mythology of Rural Poverty in the Great Depression”, details the desire for middle-class citizens to be viewed as or compared to “the pioneer” due to the positive reputation given by the media (200). Cunningham describes the effects of labeling through the changing attitudes of citizens towards each other once they were segregated into socio-cultural groups (200). Tom Delph-Janiurek takes an innovative look at the masculine-feminine discrepancies in “Sounding…

    • 1278 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Racial profiling is all too commonplace in modern society, and even in formal literature. Examples of such profiling are two poems, both entitled Incident, written by Countee Cullen and Natasha Trethewey respectively. In these poems a very tangible message of the difficulties faced by different races, is presented to the reader. Using the literary topic lens of values, we can dissect these pieces and find the similarities between them. Such similarities include the social stigma of being different in society, the emotional toll these differences inflict, and the eventual results of these differences.…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My Mother's Hand-Me-Downs

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages

    People are inquisitive by nature, and that inquisitiveness is arguably best reflected in the immediate desire to discern the various facets of someone’s identity. As surmised by Lisa Jones’ inclusion of the following quote: “Who are you, what are you, where are you from, no, where are you really from, where are your parents from, are your grandparents Americans?” This discernment is dangerous when it becomes linked up to structures of power and hierarchies that promote race, femininity, masculinity, and heteronormativity as the norm or in a marginalizing manner. That being said, the overarching theme of Lisa Jones’ Mama’s White and Is Biracial Enough?, as well as of Gina Mei’s Outgrowing My Mother’s Hand-Me-Downs is living up to the expectations…

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” says Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, explaining that names cannot change a person’s identity. The War of the Wall by Toni Cade Bambara also discusses the idea of identity, introducing that not only people, but communities can have identities. In addition, The War of the Wall points out that people and communities may have different identities, but they can also have things in common. A personal essay about identity, Names/Nombres by Julia Alvarez, examines the idea that people can have many nicknames, many identities with different people, but still be the same person. Both of these writings demonstrate the idea that identities from different points of view are what makes one who one is.…

    • 582 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The women’s struggle for equality with men is an age-old question that exists in American culture for thousands of years. Their fight for parity will portray gender role stereotypes and daily hardships they faced as individuals living in the United States. Cofer, Rewa and Hasselstrom will describe their struggle to establish gender equality in society. The author Judith Ortiz Cofer, highlights the principle that all females with diverse racial backgrounds struggle with issues from gender equality.…

    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Gender is an important characteristic in distinguishing an individual’s identity within society; but what if gender didn’t exist? Relating back to Adam and Eve, the first man and woman to exist on planet Earth, we’ve implemented a separation among the sexes of human beings and principles that pertain to how one should live their life accordingly. We have always been taught that we are either a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, but we have never stopped to consider the possibility that evolution no longer supports this idealized approach. In ‘X: A Fabulous Child’s Story’, author Lois Gould considers what may happen when a child is raised without a gender and is undistinguishable as either a boy or a girl. Her piece challenges the issues involved…

    • 1022 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays