Olympia's Maid Reclaiming Black Female Analysis

At times the assertions in Jennifer L. Morgan’s Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery can seem unexpectedly straightforward, for example when she merely states that, “African women were there” (197). At other points, the connections she proposes between race, gender, the body, colonialism, and ideology are almost overwhelmingly entangled and complex. But it is perhaps this mix of the explicit and the theoretical that make the book such an insightful and transformative work in the field of early Atlantic history. For while her topic is focused, the depth of her questioning, the scope of her research, and the attention she pays to the theoretical framework within that topic are profound.

American historian, author, and educator, Nathan Huggins criticized the movement saying, “whose sensibilities, tastes, and interests were being served by such art, the patron or the patronized?” Huggins doubted the value or merit of the art in his discourse, “When it is racial, there is, at first, the suspicion that the patron values negro-ness, not the art.”

Robert L. Boyd is the author of Boyd’s “Race, Labor Market Disadvantage, and Survivalist Entrepreneurship: Black Women in The Great Depression.” Boyd is an associate professor at Mississippi state university where he specializes in sociology, ecology, urban studies, race, human impact, and demography. He presented this article at a sociology conference in Chicago in the summer of 2000.

Nella Larsen, one of the major woman voices of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, when many African American writers were attempting to establish African–American identity during the post-World War I period. Figures as diverse as W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, A. Philip Randolph and Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston along with Nella Larsen sought to define a new African American identity that had appeared on the scene. These men and women of intellect asserted that African Americans belonged to a unique race of human beings whose ancestry imparted a distinctive and invaluable racial identify and culture.

As one of the most influential entertainment producers, Disney dominates the global market for ages attracting the countless audience around the world. However, Disney’s most famous “‘princess’ fairy tale stories” (Barker, 2010, p. 492) are criticized for racism and sexism. In 2007, Disney confirmed production of the film, The Princess and the Frog, featuring the first African-American Disney princess, Tiana. For Disney this film was the response to the accusation of racism and sexism represented in its animation. Also, it was filled with African American parents’ anticipation and excitement who longed for a non-stereotypical black woman on the screen (Breaux, 2010, p. 399). The movie is about a waitress, Tiana who strives to open her own restaurant

Walker’s essay shows the dehumanization and abuse that black women have endured for years. She talks about how their creativity was stifled due to slavery. She also tells how black women were treated more like objects than human beings. They entered loveless marriages and became prostitutes because of the injustice upon them. Walker uses her mother’s garden to express freedom, not only for her but for all the black women who had been wronged. Walker described her mother as radiant when she was planting, her work outshining the wrongdoings done to her and the people before her. The garden was where her mother could make truly make “art.” The garden was also a representation of the creativity of the women who hold a talent close to their heart

A mammy, as defined by Mirriam-Webster University, is “a black woman serving as a nurse to white children especially formerly in the southern United States.” However, in modern viewpoints, the title of “Mammy” is considered a racial slur.

The Help is an example of American drama film. It was released in August 9, 2011 and its length was 146 minutes and directed by Tate Taylor. The film was adapted to a novel, where there has been a long tradition of African- American women serving as “The Help” for upper-middle class white woman and their families. Descriptions of historical events of the early activities of thecivil rights movement are peppered throughout the novel, as are interactions between the maids and their white employers. 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.

“Everyday Use” is one of the most popular stories by Alice Walker. The issue that this story raises is very pertinent from ‘womanist’ perspective. The term, in its broader sense, designates a culture specific form of woman-referred policy and theory. ‘womanism’ may be defined as a strand within ‘black feminism’. As against womansim, feminist movement of the day was predominately white-centric. A womanist is one who expresses a certain amount of respect for woman and their talent and abilities beyond the boundaries of race and class. “Everyday Use” can be seen as a literary representation of this concept. “Everyday Use” is a story of a mother and her two daughters- Dee and Maggie.

Metaphors are an influential piece to the literary world due to, “the process of using symbols to know reality occurs”, stated by rhetoric Sonja Foss in Metaphoric Criticism. The significance of this, implies metaphors are “central to thought and to our knowledge and expectation of reality” (Foss 188). Although others may see metaphors as a difficult expression. Metaphors provide the ability to view a specific content and relate to connect with involvement, a physical connection to view the context with clarity. As so used in Alice Walker’s literary piece, In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens. In Walker’s writing, her metaphoric message is expressed as a journey to understand elders cruel unjust past life, searching for a connection for her own

Toni Morrison published her first book, The Bluest Eye, in 1970. In this novel, Toni Morrison shows how societies racist and false beliefs on beauty can be seriously destructive if believed and taken to heart. Toni Morrison displays the destructive nature of racialised beauty through the character in the novel named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola lacks self esteem and believes that she is the blackest and ugliest girl, and she believes that white is the only beautiful race. Morrison challenges Western standards of beauty and demonstrates that the idea of beauty is socially constructed. Toni Morrison shows how when one race is used as the standard of beauty, the value of the other races is diminished. The standard

Also, the fact that the lyrical I craves the gaze of Actaeon, represents the way the black maiden actually is not seen as a full person, she is just a maiden, a slave of the white and fair goddess. Regarding to dynamics of power and gender, white men, as mentioned before, have the most power and therefore are dominant, followed by white women. This issue is also indicated by the craving and want of Actaeon’s validation, therefore a black woman remains unseen, just as a

Mise-en-scene is the arrangement of everything that appears on the framing of the scene actors, costumes, lighting, decoration, props, makeup, facial expressions and body language and also the camera work. ‘Denial’ scene near the beginning of the film highlights black women’s questioning of themselves, their identity and how they are in pressure and forced to run away from negative labels placed upon them by the media. This essay is going to discuss the significance in the ‘Denial chapter, I am going to focus on where Beyoncé is under water, where she removes the black sweater that was covering her, where she swims and floats around in a beautiful bedroom. In my close analysis of the scene, I am going to show that in the film the technique mise-en-scene was used to show that the film Lemonade represents the character’s consciousness, thoughts and emotions.

The characters in Beloved, especially Sethe and Paul D are both dehumanized during the slavery experiences by the inhumanity of the white people, their responses to the experience differ due to their different role. Sethe were trapped in the past because the ghost of the dead baby in the house was the representation of Sethe’s past life that she couldnot forget. She accepted the ghost as she accepted the past. But Sethe began to see the future after she confronted her through the appearance of her dead baby as a woman who came to her house. For Sethe, the future existed only after she could explain why she killed her own daughter. She insisted on explaining the reason why she killed her daughter to the grown-up woman Beloved because Sethe felt

“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society” (“Famous Angela Davis quotes - We have to talk about ….). Angela Davis no longer accepted the philosophies or ideas she could not modify within others, but worked to change the beliefs she could no longer accept. Davis aimed for her voice to be heard, so that her perspectives would perceive and taken into account by society. Davis is best known as a profound African-American educator, extremist for civil rights, and other advocate of other social issues. She realized about racial prejudice from her experiences with discrimination growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. She emerged as an influential counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s as an authority figure of the