Cheryl's Lesbianism

It is hard to imagine what it is like to lose everything, and Cheryl was not accepting her new reality. At the start of her memoir she viewed herself as the victim, along with the fact that she wished she had, “A father who loved you as a father should [that] was greater than his parts” (133). Her biological father was a really father in name only, and he was extremely vicious and abusive to the children and their mother. When a stepfather, Eddie came into the family, he was by no means a good father, however in comparison to their biological father Eddie was an amazing man. After her mother’s death, Eddie tried to move on and Cheryl was upset because she expected more from him. She wanted him to be there for her. She cannot imagine a good father because both men fell short of her expectations of what a father should do. In this painful time, Cheryl longed to find a way to run from all her problems:

In Cheryl Strayed's Wild, she gives readers vivid exposure to her turbulent and harsh past. She tells her journey from the beginning of what was the turning page in her life- her mother's death. Strayed goes through a roller coaster with unfortunate events both in her control and out of her control. She makes several poor choices, and she shares all her triumphs with pure honesty. Strayed speaks of her past with a distant remorse, as if she is looking at her past in a movie. She doesn't come across as ashamed of her past, but why should she? As all humans do, Cheryl Strayed makes mistakes and suffers their consequences as well. Everyone handles situations differently, and the best anyone can do is learn from the mistakes and apply it to

The female dancer first falls victim to the prominent white men and the African American boys in the derogatory ideas and thoughts they are having. Before the physical actions of the men, the dancer was already a victim by their degrading thoughts and lustful feelings. The men looked at her like she was a “circus kewpie doll”, already likening her to a toy for their amusement making her nonhuman to them (270). By likening her to a kewpie doll, they could rationalize their animalistic thoughts, making their feelings seems appropriate. By viewing her as inanimate, they allow themselves to continue their lewd thoughts about her

In the Autumn chapter, starting on page seventeen, Claudia describes her hatred for Shirley Temple. She continues to describes her hatred for a white babydoll, and explains how she dismembered the doll. This turns gruesome when Claudia describes not only taking apart of her white babydoll, but also taking apart little white girls. However Claudia is not an evil character, in the book she represents innocence, and the reader gets to see the book through that innocent lens through her perspective. How can Morrison have a character that describes such gruesome acts, like squeezing the eyeballs of little white girls, and still be lovable and innocent? What is Morrison saying about jealousy and rage, directed not at a specific person, but more at the concept of whiteness? Claudia then goes on to reflect that she was shameful of her violence, motivated by this shame she hid her hatred in love, thus bringing her one step closer to loving Shirley Temple. Can a shame for such an intense hatred for something really move someone to love that hated thing? Is that true in other areas of supremacy, including gender and class? What does this say about the socialization of young girls and beauty? More specifically is the hatred Claudia possess towards whiteness stemmed from

When Andrew, her docile servant, punches her in the face during sex, what made him the perfect companion is gone. He not only denies her physical pleasure, but causes her unwelcome pain. She sees that Andrew was not worth her devotion, because the only things that deserved her allegiance were those that brought

The slave owner’s exploitation of the black woman’s sexuality was one of the most significant factors differentiating the experience of slavery for males and females. The white man’s claim to the slave body, male as well as female, was inherent in the concept of the Slave Trade and was tangibly realized perhaps no where more than the auction block. Captive Africans were stripped of their clothing, oiled down, and poked and prodded by potential buyers. The erotic undertones of such scenes were particularly pronounced in the case of black women. Throughout the period of slavery in America, white society believed black women to be innately lustful beings. The perception of the African woman as hyper-sexual made her both the object of white man’s abhorrence and his fantasy. Within the bonds of slavery, masters often felt it was their right to engage in sexual activity with black women. Sometimes, female slaves made advances hoping that such relationships would increase the chances that they or their children would be liberated by the master. Most of the time, slave owners took slaves by force.

Wild has been one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. While I honestly don’t get to read as much as I would like, I am very grateful that we were assigned this reading for the semester. Once we were assigned the reading, I decided to watch the film on HBO. I really enjoyed the film and thought that the book would be even better, I was not let down. The film did the book justice in my opinion.

The affiliation between beauty and whiteness limits the concept of beauty only to the person’s exterior. The characters are constantly subjected to images and symbols of whiteness through movies, books, candy, magazines, baby dolls and advertisements. Another example of the images and symbols in the novel is when the black protagonist, Pecola, feasts on a ‘Mary Jane’ candy.

It not only threatens, but also breaks through. Betrayed by love once in her life, she nevertheless seeks it in the effort to fill the lonely void; thus, her promiscuity. But to adhere to her tradition and her sense of herself as a lady, she cannot face this sensual part of herself. She associates it with the animalism of Stanley's lovemaking and terms it “brutal desire”. She feels guilt and a sense of sin when she does surrender to it, and yet she does, out of intense loneliness. By viewing sensuality as brutal desire she is able to disassociate it from what she feels is her true self, but only at the price of an intense inner conflict. Since she cannot integrate these conflicting elements of desire and gentility, she tries to reject the one, desire, and live solely by the other. Desperately seeking a haven she looks increasingly to fantasy. Taking refuge in tinsel, fine clothes, and rhinestones, and the illusion that a beau is available whenever she wants him, she seeks tenderness and beauty in a world of her own making.

Whites and blacks could not create friendships and could not talk unless it was for business purposes. The roles of races play a major role in understanding the attitudes during this time period. With the understanding of the roles that the blacks and whites played in society, one can infer that Celie had to overcome more struggles than what she had originally dealt with in order to blossom and become herself.

Slave women were forced to comply with the sexual orders given, if they resisted, consequences were in forms of physical beatings. Violence was a willful effort in keeping African women in a state of hopelessness, depriving them of any feelings of control. The women had no choice but to obey, and after generations there were numerous “mulatto” offspring. At times, women slaves hoped that having sexual activity would increase the chances of having their children be liberated by the slave holder, but at the end, many mulatto kids were forced into slavery. The mulatto child symbolizes domination and vulnerability due to the fact that the white man and the black woman both held a meaning through their color of skin. The white man reflects domination for the reason that he has violently beaten slaves’ hence building fear in them, resulting in slaves to perform hard labor for they feared for their lives. As the color white symbolize pureness, slaveholder did not view objectification as a bad thing, on the contrary, they thought they were doing a good. White men mainly viewed African women as sexual objects that can be used whenever they felt like it, resulting in black women feeling meaningless for they felt ‘dirty’ in the eyes of

Cheryl prudham, 33 year old is a mother of twelve children and does not mind to take this count further to fourteen because thirteen is not her lucky number. The extravagant mother scrapes up nearly £40,000 a year in benefits. This woman loves to spend on her children as she used up £1,300 to make her son’s birthday memorable.

Celie’s world of gender roles and stereotypes was shattered by these women and many more in the novel. By the end of the book, she herself broke the cultural mode. She left her husband and moved to Tennessee with her girlfriend Shug. She started her own clothing business and became very successful. Celie becoming an independent woman, starting a relationship with another woman, being poorly educated, being African American, and becoming a successful entrepreneur breaks so many cultural modes. I was smiling by the end of the novel because of what Celie had

Richard also brings us to the attention of the black girl who admitted that she would be terrified to sleep with the black man. We realize that the sexual inclination of the black woman is a sale out to the black race. Their desire for the white man is a reminder of why black men are marginalized, considered as the designated depository of all evil, sinister, subject to maleficent powers and ugly. The black woman has humiliated the black man. She has left him feeling inferior. To be on the same level with the white man again, the black man has developed a taste for white women. Perhaps that is why Fanon married a white woman. In so doing, the black man possesses that which belongs to the white man and feels equal to him once more.

White’s feminist and racial analysis of slavery in the American South shows how white men used the perceived sensuality and promiscuity of slave women to justify their physical and sexual abuse. It also acted as a foil for the sexual restraint and virtue expected of white women. White women created an identity as the social and moral superiors of black women. This perpetuated the cycle of slavery and the mistreatment of black women in America.