The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston addresses prevalent topics faced in America today. How should women act? Should women be treated differently from men? In her memoir, Kingston faces many obstacles with her Chinese-American identity such as finding her voice as a young woman. In “White Tigers,” Kingston tells her own version of a popular Chinese ballad, “Fa Mu Lan,” while incorporating her own reality back into the section.
This journey and thirst for belonging inspired her poetry book Loop of Jade. Howe begins her book with the poem Mother’s Jewellery Box. The poem acts as a gateway to the main topic discussed in her other poems: the relationship between her and her Chinese heritage.
In the 1960’s, China was overrun by the idea that everybody must be equal, and those who are superior should be punished for their “wrongdoings”. Ji-li Jiang grew up in this unfortunate era, and her novel, Red Scarf Girl, describes the struggles that people in China faced every day of their lives during the Cultural Revolution. This unfair treatment of upper and middle class citizens is depicted by the author’s own memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Ji-li Jiang recounts childhood experiences in order to elucidate how her family’s political situation affected her education, her family’s financial stability, and her basic freedoms in life, providing readers with a deeper analysis and more personal communication of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
In the poem the narrator explains that she feels that she is more American than Japanese on the inside, but she is still Japanese, and is still seen as a threat to America. The narrator
In Response to Executive Order 9066" is told from the perspective of a little Japanese girl. In the poem the girl tells how she feels she is very American despite her Japanese appearance. She says things like "I have a white best friend" and "I don 't even like chop sticks" to show how she differs from the Japanese stereotype. The short story "Mericans" is told
She brought many problems forward with how Americans treat foreign names and she made an extremely valid point that all names no matter the ethnicity should be respected equally. This essay is about equality, in the essay she talks about how her and her family has had their names made fun of by Americans, and the only way that she was able to fit in she had to choose an American name. The setting takes place from her early childhood in America and it leads straight into her adult life and how it was difficult for her. The main focus is on the writer itself, she bases all her ideas and feelings
I realized that society determines what it means to be beautiful, through social media, Hollywood, and advertisement. In her essay, McIntosh discuesses her personal experiences and with it she invites the reader to partake in her apprehensions and fears of what it means to have privilege. While reading the essay, It has been brought to my attention about how I am being viewed within a different standard because of the way I look. McIntosh illustrates how she was “as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture” (31). Sometimes, I too have even been put on a pedestal, not because my have made an accomplishment, but because I stand out doing so.
As the poem comes to an end the speaker talks to the ladies from an experience that if you do such and such, it would make your more wiser and happier. A woman must remember her importance and cherish her values as a strong individual. “Value yourselves, and men despises/ you must be proud, if you’ll be wise” (23-24). She ends the poem with a strong inspirational opinion, that even if a man breaks you down and does not value you, you have to value yourself, and must be proud of yourself, and for that you will be
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. Skeeter is determined to collect their oral histories and write about a culture that values social facade and ignores the human dignity of many members of the community. Two maids, Aibileen and Minny, agree to share their stories, stories of struggle and daily humiliation, of hard work and low pay, of fear for themselves. It is a time of change, when
Some information about the author: She was born in China and studied in a local Chinese school for a few years before switching to an International school. It provided her the chance to experience first hand the real meaning behind "broken English", and understand how non-standard varieties of English have their own rules and shape a community 's sense of identity. In this article, she shares her views on Amy Tan 's "Mother Tongue" and talks about the power of language. I was reading Amy Tan 's "Mother Tongue" when I came across the idea of language being "fractured and broken". She gave examples of how her mother’s limited English caused her to be given poor service at department stores, banks and restaurants.
Anne developed a unique writing style that relied on metaphors and dialogue, both techniques most likely developed from her literary way of looking at the world as a young girl. Braden’s memoir about the sedition case, The Wall Between, is a metaphor in itself. Braden continually refers to a wall between blacks and whites and the negative effects its division has on the people of both sides. She uses this and other metaphors as a means to simplify ideas, like that of racial unity to overcome segregation: “For it can’t be crashed through – not from your side alone” (Braden, The Wall Between 8). In “Free Thomas Wansley” and The Wall Between, Braden recounts conversations like dialogue in a novel as a way to make her writing more approachable and vivid, something that is key to impacting her
“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 at the height of the Victorian era is often mistaken as a feminist short story. She tries to tell its readers how women have been confined in this “domestic role” since the beginning of time. The narrator uses the wallpaper to represent the society she lives in. Not only does the wallpaper affect the narrator, but also it influences everyone that meets it. And how these roles ultimately will drive any woman insane.
Do any words come to mind when one thinks of being “Spoken Into Creation”? The anonymous high school author, Ethel Song, writes about his own experiences during his junior high school years were his words were stolen away by his icon of adoration. Song writes about his feelings of weightlessness that came with the nothingness of lost words. The poem expresses his journey to realization. In “Spoken Into Creation,” the poet uses personification, similes, and tone shift to explore the idea that the actions of other people can have a great impact on one’s life.
In Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “Facing It”, he uses a regretful tone to successfully express the speaker’s memories of the Vietnam War. The poem starts out with the speaker looking at the memorial “My black face fades, hiding inside the granite.” (1), which helps visualize for the audience that the speaker is African American. However, this line is meaningful because it shows how he saw all the casualties that came out of the war, on the memorial, and visualizes the speakers hatred for the war. Later it becomes more evident that he was part of the war and how this caused the speaker’s ambivalence to surviving.