Southern Black Female Identity Analysis

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Lillian B. Horace’s Angie Brown: Reconstructing Southern Black Female Identity Through Trauma: A Journey to Social, Political, and Economic Gain. “In many ways progressive cultural revolution can happen only as we learn to do everything differently. Decolonizing our minds and imaginations we learn to think differently, to see everything with the ‘new eyes’ Malcolm X Told us we needed if we were to enter the struggle as subjects and not as objects…an invitation to enter a space of changing thought, the open mind that is the heartbeat of cultural revolution.” –bell hooks, Outlaw Culture The evolution of Southern Literary Studies since the 1960s has led many scholars in varying directions in terms of scholarship. Previously, the only true…show more content…
“Edna then starts her own flight to freedom little by little when her body is in contact with the water, and she achieves an awareness of physical pleasures and bodily control through swimming…It is as if Edna is reborn as a sexual and independent person…” (Clark 338). Gloria encounters the same type of revelation. She begins to understand that her marriage, although failed, is not the end of her life as she led herself to believe. Her night time swim is thus a rebirth, an Awakening that is similar to that of Edna Pontellier. It is important to note that the end results are different: Gloria does not commit suicide whereas Edna does. Gloria is able to move away from what is oppressing her (on a literal note, her mother) while Edna cannot free herself from the oppressive patriarchal society in which she resides. It is also absurd to think that anyone will ever become free from the restraints of patriarchal society but Gloria has at least grasped onto the allusion that she can or the mere notion that there is more for her outside Sand…show more content…
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