Literary Analysis “Everyday Use” In the story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, there are three main characters. The mother, youngest daughter Maggie, and Dee, the oldest daughter who is trying to leave her past behind while attempting to find herself and her African heritage as she thinks it should be. There has always been an unspoken jealousy between Mama and the oldest daughter. Dee is seeking a way out of the poverty and oppression of the times, so much, that while she was away at school she had changed her name to one that has an African meaning while omitting any trace of her current true history. Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo is Dee’s new name.
Brenda DoHarris’s Calabash Parkway, set in between the 70s and the 80s in Brooklyn, New York, in a novel about four Guyanese women named, Agatha, Evadne, Gwennie and Drupattie, who migrate to North America, to find love and to escape from tragedy. In the story Agatha, Evadne, Gwennie and Drupattie struggle for survival and discrimination. Feminism in Calabash Parkway, is represented in ‘Eunice’s business, independence, and the support of Evadne, Doreen, and Gwennie. Eunice’s business in this story is a very prominent feature of feminism. Agatha, one of the main characters, has been struggling ever since she migrate to Brooklyn, New York.
The way that this cultural change has been professed can be seen in many films and their remakes. One in which I have chosen shows not only the perception of African American people, but also of white. The 1967 film directed by Stanley Kramer, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, tells of a white woman who brings home her African American fiancé to meet her parents. The 2005 remake directed by Kevin Sullivan, Guess Who, has a similar plot, but instead the woman is African American while her fiancé is white. These two films demonstrate the cultural change in America of how we perceive relationships between different races.
In the film Real Women Have Curves Latina teenager Ana Garcia struggles on trying to balance her family’s culture and her own beliefs that seem to differ very much from her family’s. This becomes a problem throughout the movie. Her family wants her to be doing something that she is not nearly interested in. The problems mainly break through with Ana’s mother whose name is Carmen. Throughout the whole film you are able to see how the culture differences between Ana and her mother Carmen affect their mother and daughter relationship even till the last moments of the film.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Evoked Female Identity During the 1960s in America, where phallocentrism is still ruling society, many social problems caused younger people to be unsatisfied with reality and to become rebellious. In Oates’s story, the character of Connie is affected by patriarchal oppression. Oates gives Connie an independent identity while using her mother and sister as opposite characters to reflect her uniqueness and to let the reader understand the female identity. Connie's mother and sister portray typical females under patriarchal oppression. In the case of Connie’s mother, she rejected Connie’s attitudes because it often went against the patriarchal society's code of conduct.
In their younger years, they were told they would never fit in due to the color of their skin. In Helga's case because she was bi-racial she was always told. "If you couldn't prove your ancestry and connections, you were tolerated, but you didn't 'belong'." (Q.43). Even when Helga tries to get help from Uncle Peter she is rejected by his wife, Mrs. Nilssen, who tells her directly "Well, he isn't exactly your uncle, is he?
Like author Judith Ortiz Cofer writes her story “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl named Maria” that “As a Puerto Rican girl living in the Unites States and wanting like most children to “belong,” I resented the stereotype that my Hispanic appearance called forth from many people I met” (366). Parents raise their kids to become the stereotype instead making them see the better in them and the batter in
In paragraph four, Esperanza used a synecdoche to show that even though she inherited her great grandmother name, she did not want to follow the same path as her. Esperanza stated, “I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window “ (110). Her great grandmother was trapped in a compulsory marriage and longed for an escape. Esperanza was also teased at school she said, “At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth” (110). Meaning the kids at school had a difficult time pronouncing her
“In the new racism, as in the old, somebody always has to be the nigger.” In “black like them” Malcolm Gladwell starts by introducing us to his cousin Rosie and her husband noel. Both West Indians that want better for their lives, live with ambition to have a better life, something that is compared to “American blacks” who live a different lifestyle. Both West Indians and American blacks have dark complexions but are judge differently, even amongst themselves, “In fact, when she told one of her girlfriends, a black American, about this idea, her friend said that she was crazy–that Garden City was no place for a black person. But that is just the point. Rosie and Noel are from Jamaica.
She was trying to establish here new proud African identity but also authentic southern rural roots. However, Dee is a hypocrite because she is taking pictures of a house she despises to show her authentic southern roots, but in reality she’s confused about her identity. The conflict of the story arises when Dee asks for the quilts that were promised to Maggie on her wedding day. The quilts represent tradition and heritage. They are made up of old clothes in a patchwork pattern that began being pieced together as far back as the civil war.