The Power Of Black Motherhood In The Sky Is Grey By Alice Walker

The author of “The Black Beauty Myth” Sirena Riley has encountered multiple experiences concerning body image throughout her life. At a young age, she started to feel the pressure to have a perfect body. The struggle of making herself perfect ultimately lead to eating disorders for instance, bulimia and compulsive exercising. In her journey from a young age to her college years she has learned better ways to deal with negative body image through therapy. In her article, she states “I was in three body image and eating disorder groups with other young women on my campus. I was always the only black woman.” (Riley 2002, 229) This quote supports her belief that black women have body image issues but are not open to seeking help or expressing

Additionally, mothers teach their daughters how to be nurturing and independent. Belgrave (2009) asserts that historically, African American mothers were the breadwinners and assumed the responsibility of caring for their families given the restrained prospects for African American males. As a result, girls observed the dual identity of their mothers and other prominent women in the society and internalized these identities (Lee & Ashcraft, 2005). Despite so many challenges and stressors during parenting, African American mothers play a significant role in development of perceived self-identity and goal oriented behaviors among their adolescent daughters.

The poem “Mothers and Daughters” is written by Pat Mora. Pat Mora is a contemporary award winning writer, who writes for children, youngsters and adults. She was born in El Paso, TX in the year 1942. She attains a title of a Hispanic writer; however, the most of her poems are in English. In her literary work, one can observe the different aspects of the immigrants’ lives such as language issues, family relationships, immigrants’ experiences and cultural differences (1187).

“We must open the doors and we must see to it they remain open, so that others can pass through it”

In Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts describes the history of African-American women and the dehumanizing attempts to control their reproductive lives. Beginning with slavery, to the early beginning of birth control policy, to the sterilization abuse of Black women during the 1960s and 1970s, continuing with the current campaign to inject Norplant and Depo-Provera along with welfare mothers, Roberts argues that the systematic, institutionalized denial of reproductive freedom has uniquely marked Black women’s history in America.

Ruta Sepetys is the author for Between the Shades of Gray, a novel that captures the truth of Siberian camps and the annexation of the Balkans by Stalin. Ruta Sepetys got the idea to write this fictional story when she visited her family in Lithuania and got the chance to discover more about her heritage. She got very fascinated about her family’s struggle to keep memories of her grandparents because of the annexation of Lithuania to the USSR. This conflict urged her to find out more about the feelings and people’s memoirs during this period in World War II so, she started interviewing the survivors from the Siberian gulags and gathered information to write her novel. The book was also inspired by her father, Jonas Sepetys, who escape

The essay "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens" by contemporary American novelist Alice Walker is one that, like a flashbulb, burns an afterimage in my mind. It is an essay primarily written to inform the reader about the history of African American women in America and how their vibrant, creative spirit managed to survive in a dismal world filled with many oppressive hardships. This piece can be read, understood, and manage to conjure up many emotions within the hearts and minds of just about any audience that reads it. However, Walker targets African American women in today's society in an effort to make them understand their heritage and appreciate what their mothers and grandmothers endured to

   Historically, the job of women in society is to care for the husband, the home, and the children. As a homemaker, it has been up to the woman to support the husband and care for the house; as a mother, the role was to care for the children and pass along cultural traditions and values to the children. These roles are no different in the African-American community, except for the fact that they are magnified to even larger proportions. The image of the mother in African-American culture is one of guidance, love, and wisdom; quite often the mother is the shaping and driving force of African-American children. This is reflected in the literature of the

He explains, “I was only an American Negro—who had loved the surface of Africa—but I was not Africa. I was Chicago and Kansas City and Broadway and Harlem. I was not what she wanted me to be” (Hughes as quoted in Cobb 44). Hughes wants to make sure people are aware that the life and culture of African Americans differ drastically from the romantic view of the Negro in Africa. In his poem “Mother to Son,” Hughes provides the story of struggle, poverty overcame by hard work, and hope for a more dignified life for the entire African American people (Niemi 1). Hughes recognizes that despite being oppressed, the black community is strong enough to empower itself with determination to succeed. When discussing working-class life, Hughes consistently “asserts blacks as fully complex, fully human, and equals in the American democratic experiment” and does not play into the thought that blacks should be kept down (Sanders 107). Langston Hughes’ “concern for the lives and oppression of poor and working-class blacks” is apparent in most of his work (Sanders 107). Through his writing he makes the population aware of the deep-set oppression put upon the black community.

Marie Louis Anderson writes black matriarchy to critically analysis the African American household, in which she examines the household culture and the matriarch in which the house operates under, many points are raised during this book. The most important of these points being , The Black matriarch regards the Black male as undependable and is frequently responsible for his emasculation, is often very religious, regards mothering as one of the most important in her life, attempts to shield her children from and to prepare them to accept the prejudices of the white world.

Majority of African-Americans, about 89% of all black ethnicity, lived in slavery from the 1700’s to about 1863. (Mintz, “Facts about the Slave Trade and Slavery”). A fictional African-American is Nanny, a woman who grew up in times when slavery was very popular. She passes on her experiences and stories to her granddaughter, Janie, which affects her decisions and choices in life. Janie Crawford receives Nanny’s advice and multiple traits in her adolescent years. Everything she had accomplished in life was based on what Nanny thought was best for her, only because she didn’t want Janie to be submissive like she was in her time of slavery. Janie, the protagonist of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, is shown to be complex by her dialogue, thoughts, and actions. Janie was both serene and gleeful yet turbulent and upset.

Staple’s states the way racial identity affected his life, from being seeing as a threating to being confused for a criminal. Unfortunately, this has become a sad/true fact in Staple’s life, in his story Staples implies “My first victim was a women-white, well dressed probably in her early twenties” (188). The author was doing a social

African American mothers provide for their children’s physical survival and attending to their emotional needs happens, but there is a collective responsibility to look out for other mothers children as well (Collins p. 328). This community-based childcare and reliance on others stems from the exploitation of Africans as slaves. No one more could nurture her child and take that up as an occupation; they had to look out for one another at their place of employment. Even when the Emancipation came about and the political role of women changed in America with domestic jobs, the meaning of work and the way women handled family never changed (Collins p. 330).

“the mother” was written by Gwendolyn Brooks in 1945 who was born in topeka Kansas on June 7, 1917. “the mother” was published in her 1945 collection “A Street in Bronzeville”, in 1950 Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize.(bio) “the mother” is a great description of a mother going through a time of remembering her wrongs and pondering on what could have been. The poem “the mother” is a anti-abortion poem, it is a emotional outpour of the sense of guilt by a mother who has regrets, she speaks of mothers who have had abortions and how they will never forget. The title “the mother” is not capitalized so it makes it feel as if the writer is making the mother less important or not important at all.

As many radical feminists blamed motherhood for the waste in women's lives and saw it as a dead end for a woman, Walker insisted on a deeper analysis: She did not present motherhood itself as restrictive. It is so because of the little value society places on children, especially black children, on mothers, especially black mothers, on life itself. In the novel, Walker acknowledged that a mother in this society is often "buried