...appreciate how my physical traits influence my life and identity. Being a woman, certain expectations are thrust on me and I certainly internalize them to an extent. Blackness functions in the same way. From an early age, my race has influenced and impacted my life. I have also interacted with and within my race to form my racial identity. My racial identity is the result of an intersection between my personal history, inter-racial experiences, and societal interaction. My first interaction with the concept of race came abruptly at the age of four. I was in preschool signing the lyrics to the Britney Spears albums that my sister played on repeat when I was...
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...The Gender Politics of Narrative Modes I want to challenge two linked assumptions that most historians and critics of the English novel share. The first is that the burgeoning of capitalism and the ascension of the middle classes were mainly responsible for the development of the novel. The second is that realism represents the novel's dominant tradition. [note 1] I want to propose instead that, as surely as it marked a response to developing class relations, the novel came into being as a response to the sex-gender system that emerged in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. [note 2] My thesis is that from its inception, the novel has been structured not by one but by two mutually defining traditions: the fantastic and the realistic. [note 3] The constitutive coexistence of these two impulses within a single, evolving form is in no sense accidental: their dynamic interaction was precisely the means by which the novel, from the eighteenth century on, sought to manage the strains and contradictions that the sex-gender system imposed on individual subjectivities. For this reason, to recover the centrality of sex and gender as the novel's defining concern is also to recover the dynamism of its bimodal complexity. Conversely, to explore the interplay of realist and fantastic narratives within the novelistic tradition is to explore the indeterminacy of subjectivities engaged in the task of imposing and rebelling against the constraining order of gender difference. ...
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...married in 19th century Cuba both romantically and strategically. I argue that there needs to be further research around Afro-Chinese marriages in Cuba and a recentering on women. I had originally planned to center this paper around African slave women who married Chinese men in Cuba in the 19th century but was not able to because of the lack of literature available. However, I aim to focus on a reading against the grain for indications of women’s agency and voice in this set of literature. My personal stakes in this topic are two-fold. First, my mother’s side of my family lived in Cuba for a few decades from the late 1920s to 1960 as a part of an entrepreneurial endeavor and as refuge from persecution from the Communist Party of China. Because of my personal tie to Chinese in Cuba, I seek to uncover untold stories and hidden transcripts. Second, this paper is a part of a larger project on Chinese in Cuba in the 20th century, specifically looking at race and the transition to socialism. My specific interventions in this topic is a rereading of the secondary sources written about Afro-Chinese marriages for resistance and erasures with a feminist and diaspora lens. For this paper, I will not be using the term “Coolie” or “Coolieism” as a form of resistance to the violence...
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...start reading a story it is easy to get caught up in the tale being told. The descriptive nature of the works makes it easy to relate to them. Throughout my readings thus far in the class I have noticed some common themes that reoccur in many of the stories and poems. Of course slavery was a very common topic but there were others such as inequality between the races and sexes, injustice and resentment, the black identity, and a strong faith and religion. Even though the words can be separated in the end they all come back together. There were many narratives written by fugitive slaves before the Civil War and by former slaves in the postbellum era. These narratives document slave life from the perspective of first-hand experience. The stories they tell are dark and ugly. The authors like Douglas and Jacobs reveal the struggles, sorrows, aspirations, and triumphs of slaves in absorbingly personal story-telling. Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was the first autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman. In it she describes her experience of the sexual exploitation that made slavery especially oppressive for black women. She also recounts her life in slavery in the context of family relationships with her escape and her struggle to free her children. Fredrick Douglas who wrote Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas, an American Slave, Written by Himself depicts the grim life of slavery as well. He vividly describes the brutality that...
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...hopes to show that silence is not necessarily imposed; it can be voluntary. Silence is not simply a sympathetic characteristic of the victims; it can also be a sign of resistance and, possibly, a threatening force to the inflictor. In the exploration of silence in writings by female Asian American authors, students will consequently consider the relationship between gender, race, and national identity. Silence is more common caused by an intersection of politics, culture, and gender, but the resulting silence can also be a defense or weapon Asian Americans use to protect themselves. They will discuss how silence is an essential part of the process where these authors regain their voice in mainstream politics and enunciate the part of their history or culture that has been overlooked or distorted. The first book students will be reading is We, the Dangerous by...
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...The Social Science Mixed Racial and Cultural Groups in the United States ENG COMP II/ABE1314D Dr. Nicole Martinez and Mrs. Karissa Sullivan May 6, 2013 Mixed Racial and Cultural Groups of the United States is a huge topic being discussed recently because mixed racial relationships are increasing daily all around the world, but especially with-in the United States. There are many individuals who elaborate on whether or not each group expects to be treated as a separate entity, or be considered just Americans without the hyphen. Is the United States better off by classifying individuals by their ethnic background? What do we actually gain by these separate entities? Why is the government so concerned on everyone’s ethnic background? These are just a few of many questions that are being discussed and I will answer based on facts. While mixed racial and cultural groups continue to rise in the United States, it seems that the vast majority continues to pursue their separate ethnicity with-in the United States, but when approached abroad with-in another country, they seem to consider themselves as Americans vice African-American, Mexican American, Asian American, etc. (Perez and Hirshmann, “The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the United States). Many Americans have multiple identities that reflect complex ancestral origins, tribal and communal associations, and varied ideological outlooks on race and culture. In general, people do not change their ethnicities...
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...Cultural Globalization Culture, Identity, and Globalization, for quite sometime, has been the topic of discussion. Generally culture is perceived as “the way of life” of a person, from language, imagination, arts, music, patterns of eating, and images such as dress and conceptions of beauty are all added into the set of norms, beliefs and values that form the culture. It is important to understand identity because we are faced with the challenge of accepting and appreciating other culture systems in order to avoid ethnic nationalism and hostility. Everyone has a natural idea of what cultural identity is, just like anybody else I can tell you about my background and where I come because of the ideas I adapted growing up in life. But the change in awareness is that I can identify my self as a Bosnian American because I understand the shared beliefs and behaviors of the people that raised me. While changes in cultures are ongoing and inevitable, the change in understanding globalization has facilitated a greater transfer of ideas for me from both Bosnia and the United States. These concepts manifest themselves to my culture because it creates the idea that norms and practices can be shared amongst each other. Whether one lives in the United States, China, or Bosnia and Herzegovina, globalization is having a profound affect on how people live their lives. In order for you to understand how globalization has helped me better understand my culture and identity I would like to clarify the...
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...of Art and Language: Recovering Ancestral Identity in Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow “People who can’t call their nation. For one reason or another they just don’ know. Is a hard thing. I don’ even like to think about it.” --Lebert Joseph, Praisesong for the Widow Paule Marshall’s autobiographical article “From the Poets in the Kitchen,” published a month before her novel Praisesong for the Widow, describes stories from her childhood that reflect the immigrant experience, addressing the constant presence of the Caribbean and its influence on Marshall’s life while growing up in the United States. Marshall’s mother and her female friends, immigrants from Barbados, would gather in the Marshall kitchen after their days of working in low-paid jobs to chat, gossip, and “tackle the great issues of the time” including the economy, politics, war, and their nostalgia for home. They discussed their adopted home, America—acknowledging both the racism they endured, and also the wealth of possibilities that the country offered. These women and their stories were, for Marshall, the origins of her fiction. She asserts that a writer’s ability to render everyday speech is derived from close listening, and the talk that “filled the kitchen” additionally functioned as a kind of therapeutic catharsis, a release of creative energy. The special kind of language used between certain groups of people gives writers their own narrative and unique language: “The principle means...
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...Compare and Contrast The theme I chose to centralize my paper on is race and/or ethnicity. I will compare and contrast two poems: “Child of The Americas” by Aurora Levins Morales and “What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl (For Those of You Who Aren’t) by Patricia Smith. Morales is a woman if mixed race; Puerto Rican and Jewish, while Smith is African-American. We all want to think that someone’s race or color of their skin wouldn’t determine how they are treated or how they are perceived, but this is not the case. When talking amongst friends about someone they do not know we often describe them by using their skin color. And when meeting someone new one of the first questions we ask is “what race are you?” or the harsher “what are you?” Both of these poems give the reader a look into the mind of two young women of different races, one being mixed and the other being an African American, and how each girl views herself. The poem, “Child of The Americas” by Aurora Levins Morales, the reader looks into the consciousness of a young multi-racial woman. Morales herself is a multiracial woman “Puerto Rican-born and Jewish American Aurora Levins Morales is a poet, essayist, historian, and activist” (Fiandt, 2006). Morales’ poem talks about finding ones identity. Morales starts her poem off by stating that she is an American “she does not claim any single identity beyond “American” and this “American” includes the multiple races and nationalities that have entered the Western hemisphere”...
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...The formation of self-identity is a process each of us must go through on our journey to adulthood. The development of a system by which to lead our adult lives is difficult for all children, but especially for African American children. In addition to defining their personal character, they must define themselves in terms of their culture and nationality – African American and American. One of the ways in which black children create their self-identity is through the illustrations they see in the literature they are exposed to. We look to African American children’s books to help promote self-esteem, cultural identity, and pride for African American children. As books are read to them, children concentrate on the images, and become subject to the impressions these images create. Children’s books that are authentic to African American culture, physicality and intelligence are few and far between. With consideration to our theme, “Black Literary Contemplations on Thomas Jefferson and Western Enlightenment Ideologies of Race and Humanity” and Thomas Jefferson’s Query XIV, it is my belief that the images in children’s literature are important to development of self- identity and esteem in African American children. In Query XIV, in his comparison of whites and blacks, Thomas Jefferson commented on the beauty of whites and blacks, and critiqued blacks because of their “immovable veil of black” and lack of flowing hair. He then stated that black men favored white women over black...
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...social justice in tourism planning: racial reconciliation and sustainable community development in the Deep South Alan W. Bartona* and Sarah J. Leonardb a b Downloaded By: [University at Buffalo, the State University of New York (SUNY)] At: 06:29 3 November 2010 Social Sciences, Delta State University, DSU Box 3264, Cleveland MS 38733, USA; The College Board, Chicago, USA Tourism can serve as a vehicle for sustainable community development by contributing to equity and social justice. This happens as tourists learn about marginal groups through educational tourism, engage in development projects with host-area residents, undertake pilgrimages that bring greater meaning and cohesiveness to an ethnic identity, or encounter stories that transform their view of social injustice and spur further action to reduce inequities. Tourism planning can produce a sense of reconciliation when it brings historically divided groups together. An example is found in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, where a group of white and African American residents are collaborating to develop tourism projects designed around a narrative of reconciliation, while they use the process of tourism planning to work towards racial reconciliation within their community. This case illustrates strategies tourism planners employ and challenges they face when they envision tourism as more than merely a means of economic growth. Keywords: heritage tourism; Mississippi Delta; racial reconciliation; social justice; sustainable...
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...Ondaatje’s novel as a “mystery of identity” (449). Similarly, Aritha van Herk identifies “fear, unpredictability, secrecy, [and] loss” (44) as the central features of the novel and its female protagonist. Anil’s Ghost, van Herk argues, presents its readers with a “motiveless world” of terror in which “no identity is reliable, no theory waterproof” (45). Ondaatje’s novel tells the story of Anil Tessera, a Sri Lankan expatriate and forensic anthropologist working for a UN-affiliated human rights organization. Haunted by a strong sense of personal and cultural dislocation, Anil takes up an assignment in Sri Lanka, where she teams up with a local archeologist, Sarath Diyasena, to uncover evidence of the Sri Lankan government’s violations of human rights during the country’s period of acute civil war. Yet, by the end of the novel, Anil has lost the evidence that could have indicted the government and is forced to leave the country, carrying with her a feeling of guilt for her unwitting complicity in Sarath’s death. On one hand, Anil certainly embodies an ethical (albeit rather schematic) critique of the failure of global justice. On the other, her character stages diaspora, in Vijay Mishra terms, as the “normative” and “ exemplary … condition of late modernity” (“Diasporic” 441) — a condition usually associated with the figure of the nomad rather than the diasporic subject — and thus raises questions about the novel’s regulatory politics of diasporic identity. In contrast, Anita Rau Badani’s...
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...known for her painting, quilting, and activism. Ringgold’s artistic journey is intertwined deeply with her experiences as a black woman in America. Some of Ringgold’s most influential pieces are her narrative quilts. The designs, colors, and fabric are all woven together to represent the personal and historical stories from the African American perspective. Through her quilts, Ringgold brings attention to overlooked histories and celebrates the resilience of her community. Her artwork explores themes like race and gender, which challenge societal norms and advocates for equality. Born in Harlem, New York in 1930, Faith Ringgold was brought up in a community that embraced creativity. The Harlem Renaissance exposed her to many African-American artists, such as Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes. Additionally, art was very intertwined with her own family, particularly fiber arts. Her mother was a fashion designer who taught Faith how to sew and create patterns with fabric at a young age (Seiferle). Ringgold’s great-great-great-grandmother made quilts as...
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...University of Tennessee, Knoxville Trace: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 5-2010 Bharati Mukherjee and the American Immigrant: Reimaging the Nation in a Global Context Leah Rang University of Tennessee - Knoxville, lrang@utk.edu Recommended Citation Rang, Leah, "Bharati Mukherjee and the American Immigrant: Reimaging the Nation in a Global Context. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2010. http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/655 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Trace: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of Trace: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact trace@utk.edu. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Leah Rang entitled "Bharati Mukherjee and the American Immigrant: Reimaging the Nation in a Global Context." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in English. Urmila Seshagiri, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Lisi Schoenbach, Bill Hardwig Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) To the Graduate Council:...
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...by Earl Lewis, George Lipsitz, Peggy Pascoe, George Sánchez, and Dana Takagi 1. Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies, by José David Saldívar 2. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture, by Neil Foley 3. Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities around Puget Sound, by Alexandra Harmon 4. Aztlán and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War, edited by George Mariscal 5. Immigration and the Political Economy of Home: West Indian Brooklyn and American Indian Minneapolis, by Rachel Buff 6. Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East,1945–2000, by Melani McAlister 7. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown, by Nayan Shah 8. Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934–1990, by Lon Kurashige 9. American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture, by Shelley Streeby 10. Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past, by David R. Roediger 11. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico, by Laura Briggs 12. meXicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands, by Rosa Linda Fregoso 13. Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, by Eric Avila 14. Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, by Tiya Miles 15. Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation, by Herman S. Gray Cultural...
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