Ma Rainey's Sissy Blues

This main claim of this article is that the sexual legislative issues of women’s blues singers of the 1920s and relates it to African American women’s ' fiction around that same time frame. Carby also claims that great soul vocalists such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Ethel Waters had more insight to contest society led by men and uncover the disagreements of African American women’s ' experience than African American essayists. As Hazel V. Carby has illustrated, women blues artists were for the most part disregarded by the black middle classes, particularly women who saw blues as a declaration of the most corrupted or regressive parts of African-American life. With the National Association of Colored Women and the Black Women movement,

In 1971, Alvin Ailey choreographed Cry, a three part work solo dance set to gospel music that describes an emotional journey filled with struggle, hardships, defeat, survival and joy. It was intended as a birthday present to Alvin’s mother and a dedication to all black women everywhere. The first part of the dance is the struggle of trying to maintain pride irrespective of the opposition faced from outside. The second part reveals the sorrow within after the woman’s pride has been shattered into pieces and finally the third part is a spirited celebration of finding strength and joy in God. Even though cry was dedicated to only black women, i argue the notion that all women both black and white of the nineteenth century could relate

Women’s Blues music in the 1920s and early 1930s served as liberation for the sexual and cultural politics of female sexuality in black women’s dissertation. Hazel V. Carby explores the ideology of the white feminist theory in her deposition, "It Jus Be 's Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women 's Blues", and critiques its views by focusing on the representation of feminism, sexuality, and power in black women’s blues music. She analyzes the sexual and cultural politics of black women who constructed themselves as sexual subjects through songs in blues music and explains how the representation of black female sexuality in black women’s fiction and in women’s blues differ from one another. Carby claims that these black women

She has given a voice to the black minority. As an African-American female writer, her writings are profuse in rank about black culture. Her accountability as a black artist is to uphold black cultural perception, to enlighten and reinforce the values of black cultural legacy. The repressive life experience of African-American women in a racially prejudiced culture is treated with an eccentric voice in Morrison’s work The Bluest

Essay question 1. Starr and Waterman note that “the use of encoded, or hidden, meaning in the blues has its roots in many earlier genres of African American music.” These coded messages often take the form of referencing local landmarks (i.e., “where the southern cross the dog”) and sexual references (i.e., “That Black Snake Moan”). How do these traditions continue to impact popular music?

Despite the claim that the world has made progress towards gender equality, women are expected to depict feminine characteristics and mannerisms deemed suitable by society. Sandra Cisneros challenges these societal expectations in her poem “Loose Woman” by embracing the negative connotations of a masculine woman. Cisneros faces the pressures of conforming to the American and Latin American status quo of being a woman. Because Cisneros chooses to defy many womanly ideals, she is labeled with “undesirable” identities heavily influenced by religious beliefs. These religious views impact the social expectations of a woman’s sexual orientation as well as her social behavior.

It is often said that a new definition of a woman arose in the 1920s. But is that true? While most women experienced many newfound freedoms in the 1920s, black women could not explore these freedoms as easily as white women. In the novel Passing by Nella Larsen, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry grew up in Chicago together and are now both two wives and mothers in New York City during the 1920s, but there is a big difference between them. The novel’s title refers to light-skinned black women masquerading as white women for social benefits.

In O’Grady’s essay Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female, O’Grady criticizes the subordination of black female subjects in art. Culturally, art has constructed the identity of black females to be inferior compared to their white counterparts. As a consequence, viewers objectify black female bodies and tend to ignore the subject all together.

He provides the image of feminine elegance from the dancer to draw the attention of the crowd. He continues to present a sensual image when describing her with “shiny curls” while the men “tossed coins in praise.” This gives the sense of judgement from the crowd as the men devalue her. The dancer’s “falsely smiling face” implies that the dancer dreads her job and paints the overall image of a sexist audience of men portrayed as superior to the oppressed dancer.

Most songs are designed to entertain, however, they also communicate a certain message that the rhetor(s) intend to share with an audience. Songs can defy societal norms and provide a new perception of a problem in our culture. Dr. Funnell uses Beyoncé’s song, Flawless, as a prime example in her “broad based discussions about the women, the industries, and the messages in popular culture that are being presented to our society and what effects they have”. So when she uses

She calls her daughter a “slut” and wants her to see she is not a boy. She tells her, “on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn’t speak to wharf-rat boys...” (180). She must keep her reputation up. She thinks her daughter already knows too much about sexuality and that she is being disobedient by singing the benna in Sunday school.

Both Angelina Weld Grimke and Lorraine Hansberry play key roles in redefining Black theatre. This is done by utilizing means of social resistance and documenting cultural resilience in their works Rachel and A Raisin in the Sun. Though their writing styles differ in characterization plot, and intent, both women’s writings have played monumental parts in redefining Black theatre and the roles of Black women playwright in American theatre. The two plays portrayed stark contrasts of how African Americans internalized racism and means of coping with day to day trials and the way of the world during this time period. Though each play was created nearly 40 years apart, much of the same anguish African Americans experienced in 1920 when Rachel was written prevailed through to 1959 when Hansberry released A Raisin in the Sun.

The use of both the bottleneck and the bending of strings by the left hand delivers the player with the capability to slide from one group of pitches or chord to another. This sliding or “bending” of pitch is also a hallmark of the blues vocal style. Johnson’s singing style also proves the “holler” that is strongly characteristic of Delta blues and a number of other African-American musical

Elijah Wald published the book Escaping the delta in reference of the music genre of the blues, in which he explains some of the myths that surround the blues genre, in which according to him were misleading about the culture of the genre. Derived from a lot of history, the foundations in which were perpetuated to promote the genre according to Elijah Wald were not accurate, and he tries to explain in detail the misconceptions in the book. One of the main ideas that Elijah Wald tries to explain is the concept of the blues being described as a definite genre. According to Elijah Wald, the genre exists but also does not exists (Wald, p 23 ).

Standing Female Nude, written by Carol Ann Duffy, is a poem which describes the condition of a prostitute who is struggling to make a living. Duffy, as with a majority of her other works, attempts to give a voice to voiceless women in the middle and lower economic classes in an effort to promote her feminist agenda. This poem is in fact very layered and explores multiple aspects which may not be spotted on a superficial level, and enables her to transmit her ideas to the readers. Duffy puts across her main ideas of society’s treatment of the prostitute versus the treatment of males, and the prostitutes introspective views. Duffy creates a society, not too distorted from our own in fact, which objectifies the woman and values her purely for her physical assets.