The Struggle Continues Many feminists addressed the plight of African American women during the New Negro movement in the US. They shared the same problems and visions but some differ in strategy. The African American educator Elise McDougald’s essay “The Struggle of Negro Women for Race and Sex Emancipation” employs an interesting strategy to gain individuality amongst African American women. While displaying the direct issues similar to those of her allies, McDougald approaches her antagonists with an unusual method. This was an extremely audacious essay and a great subject to debate for that reason.
Their desire for self-improvement was evident in their quest to be educated. Most were self-educated and they also sought economic autonomy. This was a significant difference between the black and white women of the antebellum era. The white women continued to be taken care of their husbands and family and continued with their comfortable lives; however the black women, survivors of slavery, out of the need for survival, drew strength from the horrific treatment they endured as slaves. The desire to become educated motivated the black women to learn to read, develop an understanding of the white woman’s culture, and work to support themselves as they developed skills that would prove to be invaluable.
At first the African American battered women used the mode innovation, they tried to work their goal into the lives of their new husbands. Then the abuse started and the women had to adapt, so they, conformed their idea of a normal life around what was going on. Then it became evident that their goal was not going to be accomplished and the women took on the mode of
The project of finding a voice, with language as an instrument of injury and salvation, of selfhood and empowerment, suggests many of the themes that Hurston uses as a whole. Zora Neale Hurston draws attention towards her novels because she uses black vernacular speech to express the consciousness of a black woman and to let the reader know exactly how statements are said. This use of the vernacular is particularly effective in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Their Eyes Were Watching God exposes the need of Janie Crawford's first two husbands for ownership of space and mobility with the suppression of self-awareness in their wife. Only with her final lover, Tea Cake, who's interest orbit around the Florida swamps, does Janie at last glow.
Furthermore, it is important to recognize that hair is with out a doubt the most complex signifier African American women and girls use to display their identities in order to take on situated social meanings, and to understand how and why hair comes to matter so much in a Black women’s construction of their identity. Just as mentioned in Chris Rock’s, Good Hair, in Jacobs-Hueys’ book it is also evident that Black women feel the need to conform their natural state to a more common, typical look. It is through the hair salons, and educational seminars that teach individuals when hair is hair, and alternatively when hair is not just hair. These two seemingly contradictory stances hint at just
Maya Angelou’s book ‘I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings’ also deals with the problems of being female. How each woman deals with the stigma of being female is a deeply personal journey. Atwood’s Offred and Churchill’s Marline each have their own individual ways of coping. Maya Angelou has to deal with not only the fact that she’s female and the problems that causes but also the stigma of being black in a radically racist community. Because all three characters want to fit into their communities they are forced to hid their true identities and become either what society needs them to be, in Offred’s case ‘QUOTE’ And in Marlines case she’s changed because society demands that she has to be tough, rough and ruthless to reach the top.
Jacobs was a slave feminist that endured and actually went through hardship, while Terrell and Stewart did not. Harriet actually experienced the struggles which are why their methods of communicating with people were different. These woman acknowledged that black woman went through specific hardships that white woman did not, such as involuntary breeding and family separation. Another difference between these woman was that Stewart was the activist that started to encourage woman to stand up for their rights, while Terrell encouraged and acknowledged later on. Every action these women took were unique in their own ways and helped
Kate Chopin wrote about similar themes in all her short stories. All her themes in her short stories are related to women's search for selfhood, for self-discovery or identity. Also, they focus on women's revolt against conformity, against gender conformity or against social norms that limit women's possibilities in life. Kate Chopin wrote about female oppression and a woman’s emotional and sexual needs at a time where neither subject was acknowledged. She was more concerned with ideas such as freedom rather than the political ideas of her time.
She donated her correspondence with America’s great black cultural figures to Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Maya Angelou is the unequivocal example of a graceful woman. Her words throughout the years have uplifted women, spoke of courage for families and moved the nation as a whole. She has published literature for the masses there is something to motivate anybody that is anyone. Angelou created easy outlets for people in struggle.
There is a new movement for black women and “Women in the women’s liberation movement assert that they are tired of being slaves to their husbands. Confined to the household performing menial tasks. While the black woman can sympathize with this view, she does not feel that breaking her ass everyday from nine to five is any form of liberation” (Women’s Liberation Movement). She emasculates her man as a form of liberation. In the song If I Were a Boy, Beyonce, a black women, shares what black women think about their men.