Similarities Between The Fourth Of July By Andre Lorde And Maya Angelou
How would you feel if you realized that your thoughts and personal views have been misconstrued to hide you from the harsh realities of this world? Could you imagine what it’s like to have your very innocence ripped from you without any preconceived notion? Both Andre Lorde and Maya Angelou know the feeling of these experiences first hand. Through the essays “The Fourth Of July” written by Andre Lorde and “Sister Flowers” written by Maya Angelou, the authors depict a specific event that altered their perceptions of society. Though the essays are quite different, the authors both characterize on the tragic experiences they had as children and how it lead them to a certain revelation. In “The Fourth of July” Andre Lorde was a just a young, thirteen year old girl. Innocent, and naïve to the world around her, yet it was all beyond her control. Her parents, being of African-Caribbean decent, did not cope well with the crushing reality of racism and discrimination they encountered after coming to America, “they handled it in a private woe.” (141) It became something that was often ignored by Andre’s mother, which in turn resulted in sheltering her children from certain truths. From Andre’s words we see this all too clearly, “My mother never mentioned that Black people were not allowed into …show more content…
Despite this, we have to think about what the outcome could have been otherwise. What if Andre was introduced to racism at an earlier age? What would have been the outcome if her parents never hid the truth? She may have been a completely different person. The same goes for Maya; who would she be if she never experienced what she did? She never would have met Mrs. Flowers and quite possibly never would have become a writer. Our experiences shape us to become the people we are meant to be in life. It’s those revelations that make the significant differences in our lives. This goes especially for Andre and
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The Fourth Of July Analysis
515 Words | 3 Pages“Fourth of July” Essay “Treat others how you want to be treated” (Golden Rule). “The Fourth of July”, by Audre Lorde, is about when a young girl (Lorde) experiences discrimination on her family’s vacation to Washington DC. Lorde encounters the obstacle of prejudice throughout the essay making her feel ashamed of who she was which shows that prejudice has a negative effect on everyone. To support this, the way people treated Lorde’s family made Lorde feel ashamed. To demonstrate, she explains, “The nuns had given her back her deposit in private, explaining to her class, all of whom were white, except Phyllis, would be staying in a hotel where Phyllis ‘would not be happy’, meaning, Daddy explained to her, also in private, that they did not rent rooms to Negroes” (240).
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Maya Angelou Sexual Abuse
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Maya Angelou And Langston Hughes Comparison
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Comparing Poems By Maya Angelou And Phenomenal Woman By Nikki Giovanni
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