According to both Gloria Anzaldúa and Audre Lorde, marginal bodies become silenced and invisible by hiding difference and the “whitewashing” of history. Through their writings, both authors recognize different ways for a marginalized body to be seen by those who would try to make them invisible. From their standpoint, there are problems with identity that requires exclusions, and as feminists, they are speaking against feminists. The identity that is being discussed is being proposed from women that “don’t fit”, by those who are going against the “norms”. Therefore, identity is being both embraced and rejected at the same time by these authors.
The black feminists are fighting against a deep-rooted history of the oppression of black people in the United States dating back centuries when their ancestors were stolen from their homelands in Africa to be used as slaves. The Asian women are fighting against racial oppression in work environments because of their immigrant status. The struggles of these two groups share some similarities and differences, both of these written pieces display courageous women organizing together to fight against oppression during a time when there
This essay examines how intersectionality impacts Black women, examining their various levels of struggle and the tenacity that defines their path. Crenshaw contends that comprehending intersectionality allows us to see the diverse identities of minority women and better grasp how various oppressive systems interact to produce compounded discrimination. She highlights the significance of viewing race, gender, and other social categories as linked components of one's identity rather than as separate and isolated issues. Black women reside at the intersection of race and gender, which exposes them to a unique set of issues that are sometimes disregarded or misunderstood. Black women face racism and sexism in predominantly White nations, making their experiences complex.
Crenshaw (1989, 1993) argued that race and gender are not mutually exclusive social identities that a Black woman experiences, the intersection of race and sexuality go accordantly with each other. Similarly, hooks argued that they are equally congruent values to the lives of those affected by such identities (2000). Crenshaw (1989) criticized the feminist movement for its failure to consider and promote the voices of women in the margins; the women who occupy more than one oppressed space and hold more than one oppressed status because of their race, sexuality, class, as well as gender. She noted, in “mapping the margins,” as did hooks, that some women are so oppressed in ways other than their gender that they do not see the feminist movement
Gloria Jimenez is a mother of two children, and had published her first article in 2013: “Against the Odds, & Against the Common Good” as a comparison essay at Tufts University. In addition, Gloria married right after high school and since had pursued her formal education. The key aspect that Gloria discusses in her essay: “Against the Odds, & Against the Common Good,” describes the misleading dilemmas of lotteries and their advertising methods. Besides the numerous examples, and statistics; she also breaks down the psychological effects it has on individuals who have a gambling addiction.
English 103, 10-16-16 journal # 7. I am neutral in most of the “Lorde’s Royals Isn’t Anti-Rap, It’s Anti-Imperialism” article. I do not like any rap (it makes my head tired) therefore, I do not know anything about rap. What I did not like of the song is the intense allusion to fantasy, we need to be realistic and try not to immerse ourselves in a fantasy world. I disagree with the part of the article that says “Americans are used to the rest of the world bending over backwards to blend in with their culture”, if foreign stars like Shakira sing in English is because their big success in their native language is not enough for their ambitions.
According to Howard S. Becker, American Sociologist, culture is defined as the shared ways of a human social group that includes the ways of thinking, understanding, and feeling that have been gained through common experience and passed from generation to generation. Thus cultural understanding expects its people to have same beliefs, and brings people to act under cultural norms. However, when a person in a community has different beliefs than them, then culture oppresses that person’s life in order to make he/she live under cultural expectation or eliminate that person from its culture in the name of deviant. Culture can be a community with encouragement, comfort and peace but it also can be a cold isolated place for people with different beliefs. In both stories, “No Name Woman” and Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, describe isolated life of women under cultural oppression who deviated from
Agency is the power of an individual or group to evoke change in their situation, given impeding external factors. One assumes agency when they realize that they have a capacity to act and in a sense, control of their situation and environment. In Dennis Medina’s essay, “We Are A Part of the History of Texas That You Must Not Exclude!” he illustrates the manner in which the latino/a community in Houston, Texas was no being incorporated in to the mainstream LGBT movement, with the exclusion of Latina/o representation in leadership positions in addition to lack of consideration for Latina/o issues.
In September of 1979, Audre Lorde, poet, spoke about the impossibility of dismantling the patriarchy through oppressive means. The black feminist woman, Lorde, who has cancer at the point of this speech, uses ethos, pathos, and logos in order to guilt the audience into making a change of how black feminists are represented. Ethos is the building of the author's credibility in order to become more persuasive because people tend to believe people who they deem likable or respectable. “I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for the Humanities conference a year ago, with the understanding that I would be commenting upon papers dealing with the role of difference within the lives of American women: difference of race, sexuality, class, and age. The absence of these considerations weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and the political.”
The article of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” the author Gloria Anzaldua experiences in a young age how many people are ashamed about their identity, where they belong and how they speak. Gloria had always struggled with identity. Gloria describes a moment where she is sent into a corner for trying to pronounce her name to the teacher, and these types of memories can put deep scars into one’s identity. Growing up, she was also surrounded by lots of sayings that only women had to follow, relating to how you should act and such. She identifies herself as a Chicana.
This section on gender features a passage from the Honduran human rights activist, Elvia Alvarado titled, “Childhood to Motherhood.” Throughout the passage, Alvarado retells her experiences as a woman growing up and having to deal with a violent, alcoholic father, an absentee mother, and the constant repression of her womanhood by Honduran society. All the while, her life experiences reflect on topics such as class, machismo, and femininity. Elvia begins by recalling her memories of her feeble imitation of a childhood. From her father going to work everyday only to come home empty handed and wasting away at the bottom of a bottle.
As with all theories, this feminist approach to Louise Halfe’s “Body Politics” does not come without its flaws. While it can be argued that this poem criticizes the performativity of feminine gender roles in a patriarchal society, this cannot be proven definitively without knowing the author’s original intentions. Furthermore, the poem does not give its readers enough information to conclude that the society the women live in is in fact a patriarchal society. This becomes evident, as there is no reference to any masculine figure – so any assumptions about the masculine-dominant culture are purely speculative. It is possible that Halfe wrote this poem in an attempt to challenge the gender binary, however one stands to question how successfully she is in doing so.
Morgan’s analysis is founded on the life of a black woman who lives in a complex world where her freedom is constrained. Feminist women have to have informal affairs so as to ensure that their freedom is not violated. Evidently, feminism has resulted in women realizing their freedom by bleaching the traditional
This story in its universality usually negates the women’s experience, Pérez argues that through the deconstruction of the historiography at play, history can be posed through a feminist lense, which includes rather than negates the perspectives, views, and adversities of women throughout history. Within her argument she also poses several sub arguments aimed at forcing the reader to think outside of the basic lines that surround Chicano/a history. She argues that the use of binaries can no longer be used as modes to determine whether or not someone is a friend or an enemy. She also argues that society has yet to reach a post colonial era based on the simple fact that in order to become a post colonial society, there was be a decolonization of the object, in this case women, to become the decolonial subject. This Pérez states will finally allow society to enter
Kareen Harboyan English 1C Professor Supekar March 15, 2018 Word Count: Crenshaw’s Mapping the Margins: The Marginalization of Women of Color Analyzed Through Generalization and A Feminist Lens Crenshaw's Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color expands on the multifaceted struggles of women of color and the generalizations ingrained in society that limit women of color and keep them in a box. In this text, Crenshaw builds on the concept of intersectionality which proposes that social categorizations such as gender and race are intertwined and have great influence on one another.
A Homage to Feminism Feminism revolves around the notion that men and women are equal, an idea that is seldom accepted or embraced at the end of the twentieth century in Latin America. In the autobiographical novel, The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende weaves a story about the lives of women through four generations during the revolution of 1970. The idea of male dominance is prominent throughout both the political and social arenas of Latino communities. However, Allende uses members of the Del Valle family to portray the theme of feminism evolving during this time. Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, highlights the intertwined lives of two Latin American women, Clara and Alba, to parallel the feminist attitudes that associate with