Culture and Women In “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid and “ How to date a Brown girl, Black girl, White girl or Halfie “ by Junot Diaz, both authors elaborate on culture and how it shapes outlook on women. In Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” a mother enforces her culture’s strong beliefs on her daughter. As the result, she displays her parental authority with a sequence of short commands influenced by her culture. A sense of judgment can be seen in the young girl, after questioning her mothers’ request. The culture associated with “ Girl “ has a definite attitude towards women, believing they should live a modest and conservative lifestyle. In Junot Diaz “ How to date a Brown girl, Black girl, White girl or Halfie”, the culture associations with women is …show more content…
The culture that these two boys uphold with these women of different race, behaves differently during shifts of intimacy. Junot Diaz states “ A white girl might just give it up right then. Don’t stop her” (396). A stereotype amongst Caucasian women suggests that they are loose, shows how a males culture has negatively influence the views of other groups. A wide range of the comments led by him was associated with stereotypical ideas of specific race associated with the women. The economic status the boys would like to perceive themselves as differ from their current economic status and behavior. The older boy suggests that the younger boy should take down family pictures, if a female of a higher rank pays a visit. Removing evidence that the boy was from another country will ensure the boys self-confidence (394). They believe that women will view them as better providers if they are higher in economic status. Therefore, men in this culture tend to have less difficulty with women believed to be on the loose end, they feel this way is more efficient and able to spend less money. Whereas, the conservative girls with high status create an annoyance for the boys who try to represent themselves as equal or higher. These groups of girls are classified as “ the girl that never shows up” (394). Junot Diaz quotes “Give one of your boys a shout and when he says, Are you still waiting on that bitch? say, Hell yeah” (394). Therefore she’s stuck up; the negative reference made towards her was in regards of her cultural
The section of “White Woman, Black Man” further delves into his views of white women and the role that society has in shaping gender relations between black men and white women and also in influencing masculinity and femininity.
Up until the 1960s Anglo social scientists wrote most of the literature about the people of Mexican- descent in the United States. Their analysis of Mexican American culture and history reflected the hegemonic beliefs, values, and perceptions of their society. As outsiders, Anglo scholars were led by their own biases and viewed Mexicans as inferior, savage, unworthy and different. Because Mexican scholars had not yet begun to write about their own experiences, these stereotypes were legitimized and reproduced in the literature. However, during the mid- 1960s scholars such as Octavio Ignacio Romano, Nick Vaca, Francisco Armando Rios, and Ralph Ricatelli began to reevaluate the literature written by their predecessors.
She employs many literary devices that support her specific claim in this passage as well as she provides many clear examples of how stereotypes have shaped young girls’ lives throughout the book. Through these examples she succeeds to use them as evidence so the audience does not conform to
She seems to be out of place. First of all, she is a stranger to the rest of the class. The strangeness is expressed in her Vietnamese body with the
But many will not.” This show that he understands not everyone is going to be effected by this cultural phenomenon in a monumental way but it will still effect everyone and some people could have catastrophic reactions. The author is saying that this is exactly the reason that boys act out the way they do and it would benefit society to try to change
The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María is an essay by Judith Ortiz Cofer that addresses the impact of stereotyping on Latino women. Throughout the essay, Cofer relates her personal experiences with stereotypes to discuss how they have negatively affected her life and the lives of other Latinas. She also explains how these stereotypes originated and calls on her audience, the majority-white non-Latino population, to stop propagating the stereotypical portrayals of Latino women. In The Myth of the Latin Woman, Cofer speaks out about how stereotyping hinders the process of assimilating to a new culture by appealing to ethos through her personal experiences, using similes that show how stereotypes create isolation, and adopting
Gender Expectations in Different Cultures “Women are supposed to cook and do house chores… Women should be responsible for raising children… Men should tell women what they should do… Men are superior than women.” Gender expectations are evident in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and the society in Korea. Due to their different culture and lifestyle, The Youngers, the African American family, in A Raisin in the Sun have gender expectations that are different from the those in Korea.
Two Worlds, One Girl There are many different cultures around the world, but you never really know what is like being between two different cultures, until you are experiencing it yourself. While growing up, I had the privilege and misfortune of becoming familiar with two different cultures: my family’s culture, from their birth country, Guatemala, and the culture of the United States of America. I say misfortune not because it was a disaster, catastrophe, or bad luck; I say it because sometimes you get so used to being in one culture that you start to forget about your family’s origin. Sometimes you even like something in one culture better than the other, and you feel guilty for having a preference.
Everyday people are judging and being judged by others with unique criteria that we, as inhabitants of Earth deem necessary checkmarks to be met to afford and be afforded tokens of civility. In Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “The Myth of the Latin Woman” the memoir is brimming with personal accounts of fetishiztation and discrimination the author experiences as a Latin woman that have vast influence on her life. Throughout the text Cofer conveys the significance of how deep the status “exotic” to describe Latina women is held inside the minds of people which the author alludes to on page 879, “I thought you Latin girls were supposed to mature early,” [1] after being given a sudden, non-consensual kiss at a dance by her date. The author expresses the cultural dissonance between
In her thought provoking essay “In History,” author Jamaica Kincaid explores the idea of naming things in a historical context through various anecdotes. Kincaid makes a purposeful choice to tell her story non chronologically, beginning with the tale of Columbus, putting her own reflection on plant nomenclature in the middle, and ending with an overview of Carl Linnaeus, the inventor of the plant naming system. This choice gives Kincaid the opportunity to fully vet out each point that she makes, an opportunity she wouldn’t have gotten had she written her essay in chronological order. Throughout each anecdote that Kincaid tells, the theme of names and giving things names is central. Kincaid argues that by giving something a name, one unrightfully takes ownership of it and erases its history.
In her ethnography account Women without Class, Julie Bettie explores the relationship that class along with race and gender work to shape the experiences of both Mexican American girls and white working class students. In her work, Bettie finds that class cannot only intersect to impact the school experiences of both working class and middle class girls, but also their transition to adulthood and their future outcomes. Thus, Bettie explores how working class girls are able to deal with their class differences by performing symbolic boundaries on their styles, rejecting the school peer hierarchy and by performing whiteness to be upwardly mobile. In women without class, Bettie describes the symbolic boundaries that both las chicas and the preps
Cultural theories by Kathleen Rowe, Laura Mulvey and Stuart Hall can help the audience seek an explanation to how these stereotypical gender roles are portrayed in the movie and how it can create power for the specific
Jamaica Kincaid writes “girl” A story or poem that is something like a lecture from a mother figure to a daughter figure. There is an enormous amount of ways to present the tone. The tone of “Girl” is loving, caring, but strict. Jamaica uses literary devices to achieve the tone. She uses characters, setting, plot, point of view and style to establish a tone.
A wise woman once said, "The more a daughter knows about her mother 's life, the stronger the daughter" (http://www.wiseoldsayings.com/mother-and-daughter-quotes/). As any girl raised by their mother can attest, the relationship between a mother and her daughter is a learning experience. As young girls, you look up to you mother as your greatest role model and follow in their steps closely. In Jamaica Kincaid 's short story "Girl", a mother uses one single sentence in order to give her daughter motherly advice. Her advice is intended to help her daughter, but also to scold her at the same time.
Many critics agree on one fact about Canadian author Alice Munro: one of her most notable qualities in regards to her work is the distinct use of realism in her writing. Her writing provides a strong sense of familiarity to the reader, while also containing stronger metaphorical meanings that one can note when they begin to closely look at her work. Her short story “Boys and Girls” portrays the socialization of a young girl, once very close to her father and unaware of any sort of gender bias within her society, into a young woman with a pessimistic view of femininity and her expected position in society. This story shows the socialization process in a way that makes it easy to recognize, illustrating circumstances that the reader can notice the blatant sexism and misogyny; however, its portrayal is extremely realistic, allowing the reader to recall how oblivious they may have been in the past during times that they have been impacted by social biases in our world. Critics of Munro typically agree on her overall theme of femininity and coming of age in her writings; “Boys and Girls” emphasizes the ways in which young girls are socialized into a seemingly natural understanding of the sexist expectations and gender roles.