Rites Of Passage

Novels and plays often depict characters caught between colliding cultures-national, regional, ethnic, religious, institutional. Such collisions can call a character’s sense of identity into question. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, there is a cultural collision that takes the form of the missionaries coming to Umuofia and forcing their religion upon the people. Different people react differently to this clash of cultures, ranging from simply conforming to going as far as killing somebody.

If a black woman had dark skin she would resemble a man, therefore making her ugly in society’s standards. This pressures black women to constantly be "compatible with the white female standard of beauty" (Ashe 580) in order to be socially accepted in society. Intuitively black women understood that in order to be considered desirable, the less black they had to look. This unfortunate perception of beauty stems from a long pattern of "sociohistorical racial injustices" (Bealer 312) towards darker skinned African Americans. Maria Racine states in her review that since slavery black people who approximated closer to whites were sexually sought after by black slave men and white plantation owners and were considered to live a somewhat "easy coexistence" because of their appearance (Racine 283). Since it’s start, colorism laid the pathway of racial prejudice towards dark skinned individuals. The result of treating dark African Americans as subhuman beings led to the altering of the black psyche by creating a "pervasive hierarchy" of beauty that black woman constantly combated or were forced to accept. (Bealer 312).

that of an African woman, who is considered superlatively beautiful to the queen in the passage. Ligon

The Rite of Passage is about young females who file their teeth down into points. This ritual is done to show their soul, and to beautify yourself. The teeth sharpening is done in Indonesia specifically to the Mentawai tribe, to serve everlasting life, and to purify your soul.

The aesthetics of painted skin play an important role in Enlightenment concepts of race, especially of women. The painting above is by Thomas Lawrence, depicting a white woman. She is very pale, almost translucent, and there is a prominent rosy blush on her cheeks. There is a clear contrast between this painting and Benoist’s painting of the black woman, as Benoist’s subject shows no pink on her skin despite showing a fair amount of skin. Uvedale Price argues that the inability to blush places women with dark skin under women with white skin. He calls a white woman’s blush “among the highest pleasures of vision” that show her “softer

The representation of anti-colonialist struggles and post-independence milieu stem from the creation of artificial Africas, that perpetuates prejudices, and stock narratives throughout dominate media and film. The Kitchen Toto follows the journey of Mwangi, the son of a preacher who is killed for opposing an independence movement. The film portrays African’s as malicious, corrupt, and in need of colonial saving by depicting the Mau Mau, the independence group who killed Mawangi’s father, in a negative light. They are shown in the night with machetes, forcing people to swear allegiance, and killing their countrymen without sufficient reasoning. A Good Man in Africa depicts Africans as malicious, corrupt, and in need of colonial help as well. During a presidential election, the favored candidate, Sam Adekunle is attempting to get the land back that Britain conned his father from. His tactics come off as corrupt, and malicious; in actuality, Britain is attempting to keep control the Kinjanja’s economy. This story is representative of neocolonialism, and reflects Nigeria’s struggle to profit from their oil reserves after they were declared free from Britain. Anti-colonialist struggles and post-independence milieu are presented as malicious, corrupt, and in need of colonial saving through narrative strategies in The Kitchen Toto, and A Good Man in Africa.

In the painting, Virginian Luxuries (Unknown, 1800), it is possible to observe and describe the roles of those two man races in America of the time. First of all, the painting is related to the time of slavery (1619-1865) and the unequally of positions between the Negros and whites. Second, we can appreciate the gender role. For instance, the Black men who worked in crop fields is being used and deprived of his human rights by the land owner. In the case of the woman, as an object she is used as well to satisfying her owner. Finally, we can observed that the unknown painter detailed the whites’ men face very well, yet the black men and woman’s face appears faceless or without identification. This a representation of the European view towards Negros as a uniform object or animal.

A recent rite of passage I went through was graduating from nursing school and becoming a RN. To complete this rite of passage I had to complete all the pre-requisites for nursing school which took me 4 years. Then I did the nursing program which was 2 years. To celebrate finishing the nursing program I attended a pinning ceremony which is a ritual where the nursing graduates get a pin that represents the completion of the education required to sit for the nursing boards. This pinning ceremony was more important than walking at graduation. The majority of my classes did not attend the graduation ceremony but all attended the pinning. Once I took the nursing license test I got a card that says registered nurse. I was finally able to call myself

The Different Shades of Beauty What is beauty? Is it determined by your body structure? Is it assessed by your skin color? Women of African American descent struggle with concepts of beauty based on complexion- dark skin or light skin. Colorism is discrimination against people based on skin color and it affects the African American women with regards to self-esteem and self-acceptance.

In the Era of Enlightenment, 1750’s, African women women faced great danger and threats from their white masters. They were at great risk of getting raped and it was common for them to be treated as sex objects for

Europeans, within their gender views, had categorized what a ‘man’ and a ‘woman’ was, what they can and can’t do in society, and gendered human characteristics. When African’s were introduced into European colonies in the America’s, the European gender roles and classifications were forced upon them, superseding their own, categorizing and determining their new lives. To European’s, women were generally depicted as ‘motherly’ and ‘domestic’, while men were depicted as the labourers. This was represented in the lives of the African slaves, with “woman typically work[ing] in house and yard, [while] men were responsible for field cultivation and animal husbandry.” These gender ideas even carried over to white settlers, as a woman who ran a plantation, like Eliza Pinckney, had to prove herself more than a man working the job, constantly under scrutinization as this job was “too burthensom to a girl,” and was more of a ‘mans job.’ Women, being considered ‘motherly,’ became connected to their children, with their child carrying the same social status they held, as decreed in the Virginia Slave Code and the Code Noir. For African women in general, an “image of the enslaved woman as capable of completing the field work of colonial production while simultaneously bearing children” became popular, resulting in gendered work patterns evolving so masters could further exploit their workers, and increase profits. Further gender classifications defined what was considered ‘manly’ or ‘womanly,’ carrying into ideas of how one should act. Things such as crying were considered a women’s trait and men became expected to “take things like a man,” such as meeting torture and death with bravery. These classifications of gender furthered the restrictions of African’s lives in the America’s, mixing in with the prominent racial and social class views. All three of these social

The rite of passage that is most significant to me is doing what you want to do and not what other people want you to do. It is the rite of passage because in the story “The Setting Sun and the Rolling World“ it states how, Nhamo wanted to pursue his dream but his father Old Musoni didn’t want him to leave the farm. Not having to rely on other people is my second rite of passage of this story because it helps the person to be more mature and grown up. The story sights Old Musoni :”You haven’t changed your mind?” Nhamo: “No, father.”

In Lucille Clifton’s poem “Homage to my Hips,” the female speaker explores, praises, and celebrates her own sexuality despite living in a confined society where people thought that having dark skin was not beautiful. Literary critic K. Anthony Appiah notes in his essay titled Race that, “we cannot deny that having one set of heritable characteristics—dark skin…can have profound psychological and social consequences…in societies…”(285) Despite the society in which the speaker of the poem lives, she to some degree turns the tables on the statement that Appiah makes in one of his essays. Clifton masters this through form, meter and precise word choice and the speaker is able to feel comfortable with her body and blackness in a society that rejects these “heritable characteristics.”

When referring to the race of the body described in “Portrait in Georgia,” Suzanne Lynch wrote “positioning this woman as neither black nor white, within a world so polarized by color, makes her a destabilizing force within the power dynamics of the culture… If the poem strips this Georgia woman of her wholeness and reduces her to a series of fragments, it also accounts for that effect by placing her in a social setting of violent white dominance.” In summary, Lynch’s response is attempting to convey the subject of Jean Toomer’s poem “Portrait in Georgia” is purposely not given a race, and might be a black, mixed-race, or raceless woman to make the reader acknowledge his pigeonholing: “Just in case the reader…feels an uncontrollable inclination

In 19th century, british men had begun to adventure into Africa and imperialize. In Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, it follows the story of Okonkwo; a clan leader in Umuofia, Nigeria. His world begins to collapse as the british start to change the clan's traditions and religion. The invasion of the missionaries struck terror into the clans. With the building of hospitals and trading centers, the people of Umuofia struggle to understand the forced entrance of the white men. The effects the white men leave change the clans way of life.