The poem "homage to my hips" by Lucille Clifton is meant to convey the author's embrace of her femininity and her body. She uses metaphors throughout the poem to convey her acceptance of her own body and to urge other women to do the same. The poem also challenges social norms that apply to women and the beauty ideal. Additionally, Clifton alludes to the need for empowering women. In the opening lines of "Homage to My Hips," Clifton describes how her hips are big and how "they don't fit into little petty places." This line explains how the size and shape of her hips do not fit into the socially accepted beauty ideal of thinness. She then talks about her hips being free and how "these hips have never been enslaved." This line is meant to be…
Beautiful, pretty, good-looking are all the adjectives that women and girls aspire to be or encouraged to strive for in their life. From the first years of a young girl’s life, she’s told to wear dresses and comb her hair so when she looks into the mirror, she’ll see beauty reflected back at her so that consequently this shallow image of beauty is adopted by her consciousness. Yet as the years pass, she comes to a point in her life where the very aspect of her being is put into question because of what she’s seen on television or heard on the radio so that as a young woman she constantly feels the need to conform to a patriarchal society’s standards of beauty in order to be accepted. Now let’s look at this transition in a young female’s life through the eyes of an African-American girl who grows up being told to wear this and to do her hair like this in order to look pretty. At such a young age, she may not have been affected by the demands and expectations of beauty that was put upon her, but as she grows and develops a deeper understanding of the images around her, she will realize that the images of beauty presented before her do…
Written in 1969, Maya Angelou accounts for poverty, prejudices, and belittled identity through her poem, “Harlem Hopscotch”, in order to encourage one’s acceptance of identity influenced by the challenges they endured:…
When Alvin Ailey’s Cry premiered in 1971, Judith Jamison was praised for her tour-de- force 16-minute solo. An original New York Times review expressed that “She looks like an African goddess”. Cry - originally a gift for Ailey’s mother - was dedicated to “all black women everywhere, especially our mothers”. This work, one of Ailey’s greatest successes, evokes an emotional journey, as the performance depicts the struggles of African American women suffering the extraordinary hardships of slavery. Through self- determination, these women overcome their tribulations to attain justice and emancipation. [insert argument here]…
For African Americans, the pain of racism is ever present, and Walker 's world is devoid of the sinless and the passive black victim. “It 's born out of her own anger. "One thing that makes me angry," Walker says, "is the prevalence of so many brown bodies around the world being destroyed.”( 1. Combs, Marianne. Kara Walker 's art traces the color line. ) Walker mines the source of this discomfort from submerged history and goes so deep that everyone is involved. She knows that stereotypes have not disappeared: they have only been hidden. The animated figures of her cut-paper wall murals attempt to change a painful past into satire. Consequently, African Americans can conquer a fear of racism in which the themes of power and exploitation continue to have deep meaning for them in contemporary American society.…
The horrors of slavery is one that should not be made light of. The dehumanization of blacks during this time, forced our ancestors to endure the most devastating genocide in human history. On one episode of the tv show, Saturday night live, Host and cast member Colin Jost and Leslie Jones discuss the actress Lupita Nyong’o being named as People Magazine's “Most beautiful person”. Jones questions the standards that defy beauty by comparing America today to America in slavery times. Although Jones's rant is seemingly subversive because it emphasizes the fact that black women are undervalued, while simultaneously challenging the standards of beauty, Jones reference to a sensitive topic in our county’s history in order to prove this point-…
It is hard for me to admit that I'm afraid. Being a black woman in today’s society, I constantly feel the pressure to prove something. The pressure to destigmatize, and rise above—to be better than the ill-gotten images depicted of my race and sex. The pressure to carry the entirety of my race and sex wherever I go, yet still be an individual. Facing all the pressure to become the model “strong independent black woman,” I am hesitant to admit I am afraid because fear is seen as weakness. Picture a horse or deer with their stick-like legs shaking in fright in cartoons—the stark opposite of historically mightier figures like lions or jaguars which portray power and confidence. However, what one may forget is the legs of that horse help pull the weight of 400 pounds, and the body of a dear can annihilate a two-ton vehicle. So fear—or what looks like fear—isn’t always a bad thing.…
“Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.” By Lucille Clifton. Poets, Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou wrote poetry based on their experiences in life and during their own time period. Langston Hughes was a social activist and a poet, he wrote about his personal experiences and is the author of “Dreams” and “Mother to Son.” Maya Angelou, the author of “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” and “Still I rise” was a civil rights activist and her poetry was mainly about autobiography, in connection with her life story. “Still I rise” , “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings”, “Mother to Son”, and “Dreams” are being analyzed, showing similarities and differences between the poems. Each poem is trying to tell us about how racial segregation…
Respect is something that everyone in their life wants to have and knows that it takes a lot to gain it. During the 1940’s and the 1950’s woman in general did not have a lot of respect, but if you were a Black woman during this time, it was even worse. In Gwendolyn Brook’s novel Maud Martha, displays the idea that Black woman had to be beautiful, obedient, and is able to produce children in order to have respect. Gwendolyn Brooks brings this idea forward with her characters Helen and Martha in her novel Maud Martha.…
What do you think when you hear “Woman”? Maybe you hear beautiful, unique, and strong, but have you ever heard of read between the lines? Women have breaking points – when we feel pain, childbirth, suffering, hurt, abuse, rape, help, etc all what a black men put her through. For so many years, black women have been the inferior of black men; we have not had a voice to speak up and tell people what we want or what we have been through, so I’m here to tell you, not to change, but to inform about what women have been through and still go through.…
Alice Walker is considered one of the most influential African American writers of the 20th century, because of her raw portrayal of African American struggles and the injustices towards black women. She was the first African American female novelist to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Color Purple. Her work is appealing and powerful because “Walker's novels can be read as an ongoing narrative of an African American woman's energence from the voiceless obscurity of poverty and racial and sexual victimization to become a reshaper of culture and tradition” (Gray 527). Through Celie’s experiences in The Color Purple, Alice Walker stresses the importance of womanism, the African American community as a whole, and the regeneration as an individual.…
The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast the representation of black female identity in “On Being Young – a Woman – and Colored” by Marita Bonner and “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston. Both literary works deal with black women experiences during the Harlem…
Even though “we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike”, as so eloquently stated by poet Maya Angelou, African Americans have been the subject of racial discrimination in the United States since their roots based in slavery. Many challenges and barriers exist in their struggle to overcome bias, stereotypes, and prejudice that lead to discrimination.. Although various laws have been enacted to lift these barriers and provide equal opportunities in employment, housing and education, many African Americans still feel they haven’t broken free of the restrictions placed on them historically. The Black Lives Matter movement has reignited a passion for justice and equality that is comparable to the Black Pride movement that followed the…
Even though the speech “ Ain’t I a Women” by Sojourner Truth and “Equal Rights for Women” by Shirley Chisholm show how black women were limited to their rights, they also showed it in a different way. In the article “ Ain’t I a Women” , Sojourner Truth…
How do Maya Angelou and Grace Nichols communicate what it means to be a black woman in today’s society?…