I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Book Review

Describing his stressful emotions, which happened to be situationally ironic, creates an effective emotional appeal to sympathy similar to the childhood chapters. Douglass also used verbal irony to denounce the contradictory and abusive behavior of his masters, which emotionally appealed to anger and ethically to shame; he achieved the same thing through situational irony which logically appealed to an audience well acclimated to sympathizing with a black man. Douglass’ use of irony appeals on multiple levels as he continues to protest slavery and move towards advanced devices, the latter of which will conclude when he recounts

The movie clearly exposes the many ways that the human dignity of African- American maids was ignored. They had suffered daily embarrassment but were able to claim their own way dignity. The film described about empowerment of individuals as well as about social justice for a group. It is a moving story depicting dehumanization in a racist culture but also the ability to move beyond the unjust structures of society and to declare the value of every human being. A young college graduate, Skeeter, returns home to be with her ailing mother, and in her ambition to succeed as a writer, turns to the black maids she knows.

A life burdened by rude comments and one-dimensional views is no easy life for a person trying to break the stereotypical mold set by years of media promotion by people who do not know of the cultural. In Judith Cofer's essay "The Myth of the Latin Women" she sets for the reader a theme of a women who for her whole life had to deal with people constantly trying to put her in the same pigeonhole. In Cofer's essay she takes the reader through her own life as a Latina women with her individual moments facing the adversity of being who she is. Cofer's essay is about her life from growing up in school and being out casted as the hopeless Latina. Then to her life as a young adult being harassed by college student boys who find it amusing to try and imitate the Spanish characters they see on TV.

Critical Lens Essay #2 In the 19th century women begun to rise up against gender roles and social expectations that have had oppressed women throughout history, women yearned to be just as equal as men. Authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a feminist author during the 19th century, would create characters and stories that would get her message across as shown in one of Gilman’s most famous stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” which touches upon a woman’s mental and physical health as well as the main character’s oppression which holded her back for a long time. The main character from “The Yellow Wallpaper” expresses throughout the story how she wishes to break free from all that is holding her back and live the life she has always wanted. “How wrong it it for a woman to expect the man to create a world she wants, rather than create it herself” (Anaϊs Nin)

As Karl Marx famously said “[People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." Likewise, the foundation that affected Baby’s development was fractured prior to her birth. Baby was born in an unstable and derelict environment, paired with minimal parental support from a heroin addicted father, which hindered her childhood development. This significantly affected the choices she made -- especially during the formative years of twelve and thirteen years old. Consequently, her understanding of social and moral values deviated from societal norms.

She was going to school to get educated either, the neighbors started getting suspicious and also realized that the girl wasn't going to school. They both were being mistreated, they wasn't getting the proper care and assistance as a average kid should. Which runs into the similarities to the life story of Frederick and the article slave girl. They weren't even giving the chance to maintain relationships with their families before both of their freedom was taken right before their eyes, there was a little difference with Shyima situation because she was born with her mother, but right before her eyes it was taken from her. Which leads us to the second common theme that both the Slave Girl and the “Life story of Frederick Douglass” has in

In Black men and Public Space, Staples uses his diction to come off as sarcastic, to add humor to his text. Hsiang, on the other hand, uses her word choice to demonstrate the fear and pessimism her race endures everyday. Although their diction used is a difference, the other difference is who their intended audiences were to be. For Staples, his targeted audience was geared towards young women who are afraid of black males. The audience he preferred to write this for was gender based, to make these young women who are frightened by him aware of unconscious prejudice and racism.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s transformation as a woman of color is explored throughout the novel. Janie’s husbands are shown for what they are along with other characters such as Janie’s grandmother and Mrs. Turner. Still, race is a big topic in Hurston’s novel in several scenes, including when Janie recognizes she is different than her white peers as a child, when Nanny implies that she was raped by her White male slave master, when Janie is let off the hook for killing her last husband in self-defense, when several characters admit that they prefer lighter skinned Black women, and finally, with Jody being the first Black mayor of a Black town. Wright and Hurston both do a great job of keeping readers entertained and informed about the way people act, and how structural problems like racism and sexism are at

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is an influential book that teaches a simple lesson: life is not perfect, but we can still find our happy ending. Hurston demonstrates this by following the life of Janie Crawford. Janie is a headstrong African American who is caught up in the mess of early 20th century America attempting to get used to living with free African Americans. Additionally she must decide for herself what it means to love another person, discover who she is, and thereby, what she wants. Even though Janie is born after the American Civil War, she lives in a society still learning to come to terms with the reality of civil equality.

The world is no stranger to oppression. Madness driven from an inferiority complex based on racial stigma. Prohibition of freedom being yet another way to inflate this expanding social divide between the oppressors and the oppressed, between white and black. Within the poem I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, this concept of social division due to the desire of freedom and the desire to restrict the freedom of others is explored through the implementation of a variety of literary devices: symbolism, metaphors, sudden tone shifts, and a constant underlying allegory. Driven by her own experiences being raised during a time period where segregation and racism were acceptable behavior amongst the masses, Angelou illustrates this problematic normalization of discrimination through the juxtaposition of a free bird to a caged bird to convey the theme of oppression and the hope of freedom brought on by such.