Comparison Essay 1

Thesis: The literary works The Welcome Table by Alice Walker / what it's like to be a black girl by Patricia Smith represent African American women who have faced challenges of sexism, racism and stereotypes in American life. Racism and Sexism are questions that I will discuss and examine. I will compare tand contrast similarities of both poems. I will explain and give examples to show how these two poems exhibit different scenarios but similar views about how race and ethnicity can affect women of color based on prejudice and stereotypes. The main character is a nearly blind, old black woman with a lean build and a grayish tone to her skin. She wears a mildewed black dress with missing buttons and a grease-stained head rag covering her pigtails. She has blue-brown eyes, is ashen in appearance and much wrinkled. She is perspiring from her walk and is shivering from the cold. She enters the white Church and sits, singing in her head. She is physically thrown out of the church. After the woman is turned away she begins to feel a sense of loneliness, and an outcast. “She sees Jesus walking down the highway and is giddy with joy. Jesus tells her to follow him and she does, walking alongside him. He looks just like she thought he would, and he listens to her sing and talk to him. She feels great beside him and can walk as long as he wants. (Smith,).The women in my opinion feel that God will reward her in the end. Not because she is black but because she knows who she is through her faith. What its like to be a black girl, gives us view at a young black girl that is becoming a black woman. During a time where both being a black girl, and trying to come in to maturity as a women. Could possibly create questions and uncertainties in this young girl’s life. What it's like to be