Ntozake Shange

The passage Lesson for Women is a work done by Ban Zhao that goes into detail on the proper ways a lady should act. Not only does the author explain the ways but she also goes into detail to help others understand what it’s like for a woman of that time period. When writing the author provides us with detailed sentences and a lot of informative material. Over the course of this essay we will be breaking down the key elements of this passage to fully understand it.

The theme of Colored Girls is mainly Shange 's view of other women of her

Being an author of several praised works, Maxine Hong Kingston has been deemed a noteworthy American writer since her first book debuted. Her unique style and interesting blend of myth and truth in memoir form garnered her international attention and won her several awards. Kingston’s works have put heavy emphasis on her family history and her experiences as a Chinese-American, so it is no surprise that she has been received well by many and misunderstood by others at the same time. A discussion on one of her most popular works, “No Name Woman”, and a look at the different ways Kingston’s works have been interpreted should reveal how literature can have different meanings depending on what one is looking for.

Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams into an upper white collar class African-American family. Her dad was an Air Force specialist and her mom a psychiatric social worker. Social icons like Dizzie Gillespie, Miles Davis and W.E.B. Dubois were consistent visitors in the Williams home. Shange went to Barnard College and UCLA, gaining both a bachelors and master degree in American Studies. Shange's school years were troublesome, on the other hand, and disappointed and hurt in the wake of isolating from her first husband, she attempted suicide a few times before centering her anger against the constraints society forces on dark ladies. While procuring a graduate degree, she reaffirmed her own quality taking into account a self-decided character

She describes how white women “ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness” when they ignore the black female’s point of view and focus solely on the white female’s view (117). She points out the hypocrisy of white feminists, in that they will refuse to read black females’ works because they are “too difficult to understand,” but will read the works of Shakespeare, Molière, Dostoyefsky, and Aristophanes (117) There’s an obvious contradiction between white feminists’ “incorporation” of black females into their movement and the exclusion of their literature, which Lorde later analyzes and determines is because white women would feel guilt upon recognizing and validating their experiences. Furthermore, the exclusion of black writings from the feminist movement weakens the strength of the movement, offering the opposite effect as desired. Lorde writes how “ignoring the differences of race between women and the implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to the mobilization of women’s joint power.” (117) Since the feminist movement seeks to apply social pressure to achieve social change, it would make sense to try to gain strength in numbers by including the most people possible; Lorde sees this strength in numbers and calls into question the consistency of the white side of the feminist movement with its

Maxine Kingston in “The Women Warrior” presents a traditional Chinese society that anticipates women not to decide what is best for them all by themselves. Kingston creates a woman who goes beyond this ritual culture constraint and who take up

The theme of “voiceless woman” throughout the book “the woman warrior” is of great importance. Maxine Kingston narrates several stories in which gives clear examples on how woman in her family are diminished and silenced by Chinese culture. The author not only provides a voice for herself but also for other women in her family and in her community that did not had the opportunity to speak out and tell their stories.

Akin to intersectional romance fiction, poetry is equivalently as radical. Poetry magnifies the significance of language as a revolutionary tool, one that liberates women and cultivates an environment in which women are free to address their aspirations and anxieties while condemning the ideals of a society that operates under the canons of male chauvinism. In a collection of letters published as a tribute to the late Audre Lorde in Off Our Backs, a feminist newspaper journal written for women by women, one anonymous contributor discusses how Lorde “encourages all women to find their own means of expression, their own poetry to value and to use” (Tyler 32) in her piece “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. In the piece, Lorde discusses how for women, poetry is not a nonessential indulgence, as Caucasian men throughout history have suggested through how they render poetry as an opportunity to “cover [a] desperate wish for imagination without insight” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde contends that poetry is a “vital necessity of [the] existence” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36) of women because it establishes the infrastructure on which women “predicate [their] hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde’s text motivates women to exercise “the power of the word, a freedom for women greatly feared by…patriarchal society” (Tyler 32). Lorde states the poetry

To do so, Levy turns to the experiences of several young women whom she interviews. From her interpretations of these experiences, Levy reaches the conclusion that these women’s sexual nature revolves around their need

In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston crafts a fictitious memoir of her girlhood among ghosts. The book’s classification as a memoir incited significant debate, and the authenticity of her representation of Chinese American culture was contested by Asian American scholars and authors. The Woman Warrior is ingenuitive in its manipulation of the autobiographical genre. Kingston integrates the value of storytelling in her memoir and relates it to dominant themes about silence, cultural authenticity, and the cultivation of identity. Throughout her work, Kingston reaches a variety of conclusions about the stories her mother told her by writing interpretations of her mother, Brave Orchid’s, “talk-story”. Brave Orchid’s talk-story is a form

In the article “ Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” by Audre Lorde , she talks about the differences between people in our society, the differences between black and white women, the different isms of society, and what we can do to change.

As African-American women address social issues that are important to their life experiences, such as class and race, instead to acknowledge “common oppression” of gender inequality, they are often criticized by “white bourgeois feminists” (hooks, 2000). Their ability to gain any form of equality within society is tarnished by such groups as they develop a “fear of encountering racism” from simply joining this movement (hooks, 2000). As white men, black men, and white women oppress them, their issues are often ignored due to reoccurring stereotypes and myths that claim black women are strong, independent, and “superhuman” (hooks, 2000). It becomes extremely difficult to seek liberation and equity within a “racist, sexist, and classist” society, as their gender and race causes them to be at the “bottom of the occupational ladder” and “social status” (hooks, 2000, pg. 16). As black women are perceived to demonstrate strength and dynamic qualities as white women perpetrate the image of being

Chinese Feminist Art is not only different from traditional Chinese female art as it clearly emphasises on female characteristics, but also distinctive from western feminist art in the way that it embraces Chinese culture to the greatest extent. Unlike Western Feminist Art which is tightly

Alice Walker’s historical novel Meridian proposes a complex story of intersectionality describing the unequal social power dynamics between Black women, White women, and Black men throughout the Civil Rights Movement caused by the overlapping combination of race, gender rather than standalone factors (Collins 2). The novel deals explicitly with the Women’s Liberation movement: a journey through which women of all races break free from internal domestic struggles, exemplified by Lynne and Meridian’s characters. At the same time, these women struggle to define themselves and the causes of their actions. I argue that by presenting and constructing three main characters-Lynne, Meridian and Truman who are struggling to define themselves against expected social roles, Alice Walker is demonstrating that women who participate in political movements for rights of oppressed groups experience greater struggles, sacrifices and social criticisms than men who have done so. Their struggles create a rebellious social dynamic in which women break free from their expected role. In this paper, I will prove her aims by analysis of characterization, the characters’ actions and their connotations in reference to their relationships with men.

These strong, and independent African women authors use insightful and educational language, which invites the western world to be a part of their world through the power of literature. One of the