Please Excuse Me While I Geek Out

A Raisin in the Sun takes place “Somewhere between World War II and the present”. Lorraine Hansberry’s choice of the word “present” is significant since it sends the message that her purpose for writing the novel is not yet fully achieved and that racial equality is a prevailing fight. She leaves her novel open ended in the belief that others will continue the fight against racial discrimination. Her faith in the future and the hope she possesses reminds me of my latest obsession with the TV show Super girl. For those who are unaware of who Super girl is, she is Superman’s cousin who was sent to Earth to look after him.  However, she instead faces many of her own villains and it is through her unyielding hope and determination that she always manages to pull through as a true hero.  This relates to Lorraine Hansberry’s faith she has in others since Super Girl is also someone who sends others a call to action to never lose hope in a better future. Although there may still be much to do in the battle against inequality, for now I will leave you with some wise words from the hero herself, “Now, in each and every one of you, there is a light, a spirit that cannot be snuffed out. That won't give up. I need your help again. I need you to hope. Hope... that you will remember that you can all be heroes. Hope... that when faced with an enemy determined to destroy your spirit, you will fight back and thrive.”

Green is Greed

Although most will argue that money is not the most important thing in the world, it touches everything that is. The more money you make, the more people you can help and the bigger impact you will have as exemplified by “nothing” getting in the way of Mama’s money being put towards Beneatha’s education to be a doctor. Correspondingly, Walter’s obsession with the check drives him “crazy”. This is symbolic of the damaging effects greed and desire can have on a person. This is also seen in The great Gatsby through Gatsby’s incessant desire for the American dream. Money is the key not only to “success” as in The Great Gatsby, but also the key to being able to aid others in A Raisin in the Sun.  The character’s necessity of money is much reflected in today’s society as well. Our society depends upon wealth in order to prosper. I would classify it as something close to oxygen on the “gotta have it” scale. But to measure real wealth, how much would you be worth as a person if you lost all your money? Ignoring what would be the majorly affected factors such as the necessities, would you still go out of your way to help others? I once read about a homeless man who lived on the streets in New York. When he found spare change on the ground, instead of saving it for himself, he used it pay off other’s parking meters so that they would not receive a ticket. So in terms of real wealth, how much value do you have?

Beautiful Little Fool

"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. she told me it was a girl, and so i turned my head away and wept. 'All right', I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

In this passage Daisy allows a glimpse into her character when she describes her hopes for her daughter to Jordan and Nick. Although Daisy is not a fool herself, her wish for her daughter to be one is due to the lack of value women received in the 1920's for their intelligence. Daisy implies that a girl can have more fun if she is beautiful and simplistic. After all, "ignorance is bliss". Not to mention, the absence of the father in this scene. Tom is not even pacing the hall with a cigar as the way dads were supposed to back in the 1920's. This signifies how Tom is withdrawn as a husband and fears intimacy as I read about in the psychoanalytic reading. Daisy's weeping shows her sorrow for her daughter who may in the future end up in a relationship such as her own and also her expected disappointment in her husband's lack of appearance. The placement of the word “boy” in the sentence is also significant. Since it comes prior to “girl” it signifies how daisy wanted a boy instead of a girl. A daughter may have had to face the same problems that Daisy endured for years such as her unfaithful husband. In The Great Gatsby era, Women were valued only for their looks and ability to be a good wife. Nobody wanted to hear what an intelligent woman had to say. Daisy wishes for her daughter to be “a beautiful little fool” because that would  make her the perfect wife and she would be able to have a  much better life than an intelligent girl in the 1920’s.

Beauty The Queen

Appearance rules the world. The tan skinned and toned bodies on magazine covers, the sparkly and tall buildings lining the streets of New York City, the glamorous lives of stars such as Selena Gomez or Channing Tatum who are idolized for their hotness. I am guilty too of worshipping these “pretty things”, and I love doing it. Who doesn’t? Our idealizations and love for glamour and richness has pillared Beauty up on stilts. It sits there above us like a God and this perpetual knee-bruising worship has created a divide within our society between the successful and those who are not. It is the split between the rich and the poor, the pretty verses the pretty ugly. Beauty is the key to success. If you want to be rich then be beautiful, but make sure to follow society’s terms. You can do it too just like Kylie Jenner, and once you are admirable enough then you will make millions at your leisure. You can surround yourself with fast cars and money and people. You can drown in your riches, immerse yourself in the glamour of it all for we love glamour in only the most Gatsby of ways with “a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden”. Worship worship worship then drown, sink down into the standards you need and want to meet in order to be loved and worshipped too.

The Color of Hate

Eye struggled with the concepts I was faced with and the words that I read in The Bluest Eye. I could not bear the discrimination, the women's sexualization, the rape, the overall lack of happiness within the story. But my mind was racked the most by the reality of it all. Pecola's story of how she becomes victim to society due to her lack of power is very real.

"It's the same hate that's caused wars from religion
Gender to skin color the complexion of your pigment
The same fight that lead people to walk-outs and sit-ins,
It's human rights for everybody
There is no difference"~Macklemore and Ryan Lewis Same Love

Pecola is raped and impregnated by her own father, abused by both of her parents, and has close to zero friends because of her family’s status. Thus, she carries with her the shame of her family which causes society to look down on her. The society which victimizes her and uses her to feel better about themselves. It is not her fault that she is raped, yet the ideological lie that she “asked for it” comes up from an adult within the book showing the amount of insensitivity that can come from a person. The society uses her to create their own personal “fantasy” where they are “strong”, “well behaved”, and “mature” people while in reality they are not. We are not. This issue of blaming others and being too much of a coward to face the reality of our situations is an issue prevalent today. We must not shy away from the harsh truths we are given but face them before “it’s much, much, much too late”.

The Portrait of a Lady Man

Kehinde Wiley (pictured above) is a New York-based painter who is widely known for his naturalistic paintings of people with brown skin in valiant poses. He claims his goal is to "tie the urban street and the way it's been depicted with elements that are not necessarily coded as masculine" as shown in his "Portrait of a Lady".

Portrait of a Lady

Kehinde Wiley has become famous due to his paintings of classical works mixed into contemporary images, where black males replace the former subjects such as a non black king or queen. His paintings are huge and tend to be very detailed as if trying to draw as much attention as possible to the race of the man in the painting. The largeness to his paintings compares with those from history since back then nearly all paintings were crafted at that size to be displayed. Through this Kehinde alludes to the detailed history behind race and sex through a great amount of detail within his artwork. Kehinde blurs the lines between gender, replacing images of women with men and giving these men feminine characteristics. He sends a message for equal ways not just for black men, but women too. His art is often criticized for the femininity of the men within the paintings. Art critics have claimed that the men are portrayed as gay which has caused him to receive quite a bit of hate. However, they are missing the real message to his art. It is the idea that not race, gender, or sexuality should be determining factors of someone’s value or importance and to shed light on this issue our society has struggled with for centuries. 

As Quiet as it's Kept: Rape and Sexual Assault

“In our day, it’s just become something you shut up about. You deal with it. It happens.” 

Sexual assault, "as quiet as it's kept", occurs every year victimizing anywhere between 300,000 to 1.3 million people according to the CDC. However, no definite number exists for this statistic since nearly 54% of sexual assaults are not reported! One of the most prevalent faults today is the casualty and lack of importance we have allowed to lessen such major issues. Victims become afraid of speaking up or are unaware of what truly occurs due to the societal standards that are instilled through its youth. The problem becomes concrete when you realize that since you were a ten year old child, you have either been being told to "cover up" because "you don't want to distract the boys in class" or you have been told that "it's not you who is to blame. It's their fault for not dressing 'appropriately'." The first of course being the mantra that has been chanted into every girl's mind and the second being the excuse that has been made and taught to all the young boys. A woman should not be raped and then told by a judge that it is her fault since her clothing was too sexy, tight, short, revealing, or provocative. As a whole, respect should be taught from a young age because people cannot control whether or not they will be sexually assaulted. We could all wear burqas, but that isn't going to stop it. 

The Sexualization of Women

The sexualization of women is not a newly developed concept. Our society has faced these idealizations of how and when and in what way a woman should be seen or portrayed and these standards are not just an idea, they are real and I have witnessed and been victim to it myself. The issue can be seen by the fact that my little sister, only 13 years old, comes into my room asking me if she looks fat because she is not as skinny or tall as the women she sees in the on the billboards. These women define for many young girls the image they wish to have, yet the women’s bodies are photo shopped and painted into something unrealistic and unachievable.

The issue is that in sixth grade I was not allowed to walk along Rochester road alone with my friends since one time we had been walking home from Dairy Queen and were honked at by four passing cars, I counted. One group of high school or college boys even had the courage to stick their heads out the window and holler at us. Keep in mind that it is less than a ten minute walk to my house.

The problem with our society can be seen by the fact that my mother, at the age of 16, was sitting on the school bus on the way home from a basketball game next to the team’s captain and he tried to slip his hand up her skirt. Did he think he was allowed to do this without her permission since they were in the dark? Or was it because he had just won the game?  No matter the situation. No one ever seems to notice the pink elephant in the room; that “Yes” should never be assumed.

Once upon a time it was the women’s role to do the house work, raise the children, and stay at home in her husband’s nice and cozy home. Today the role of women has evolved to where their role in society is not viewed as it used to be, but they are still objectified to certain standards. Women’s vulnerabilities such as body image are used against them by the impossibility of a “thirty-nine-inch bust and a twenty-three-inch waist”. We are defined by unattainable means and they are embedded in us from a young age. The worst part of it all is that it is OK with society. Jesus did not die on the cross so that everyone could be ruled by their appearance: height, waist size, the color of skin, eye color, clothing choices.

The color of skin

Imagine that you are a little seven year old kid. You attend an elementary school with lots of other kids, majority of which are caucasian; a stark contrast to your dark colored skin. Although you notice the difference, it doesn't mean anything to you and everyday you try not to let the exclusions effect you whether it be at the lunch table or recess. Besides, you have your best friend and that is enough.  Now, imagine being the white girl that is best friends with the little black girl. You, not knowing the stereotypical significance of her skin, try everyday to invite her home to play only to receive a constant "no" from your mom. She tells you that "people like us aren't suppose to affiliate with people that look like them". Now, I'm asking you, try to imagine being the mother of a daughter being told by another mother that she is no longer going to allow her daughter to be best friends with the little black girl because as she says "people like her aren't suppose to affiliate with people like that". This is a true story and more stories like this are occurring everyday. Children are being taught to hate, taught to discriminate, and as they grow up these become their own customs that they teach to their children. The repetitive cycle of oppression and discrimination has been in constant replay throughout history for so many occasions: the Holocaust, the slavery of African Americans, the Apartheid in South Africa, the oppression of women, the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of the Mayans or the Incas, and so many more. There is no easier statement to prove than "Discrimination brings destruction". When will we learn that one person is no better than any other when based upon the color of their skin?

In Black and White

In black and white, Art Spiegelman clearly depicts the gruesome horrors of the Holocaust and Nazi territory in the comic Maus. Art, struggling to figure out how to write about his father's story as a Jew during World War II, draws himself into the story. Sitting upon a pile of dead bodies, Art's struggle with his own comic can be seen and felt. The mice he sits upon symbolize how he cannot summarize within the book all that had occurred during the war and that neither words nor images could either. It makes the book seem as if it is not and could never be enough to truly represent all that the Jewish people had faced throughout the war and all the death that it had brought. Also within the same image, the speech bubble saying "alright Mr. Spiegelman... We're ready to shoot!.." characterizes those who attempted to publicize the war and create light from such horrific times. As we discussed earlier this week in class, to beautify Auschwitz would be barbaric; It would create an ethical dilemma. How could a person try to shoot a movie filled with cheesy lines and non realistic love scenes during a time period such as the Holocaust? That, I would consider, is the equivalent of stepping all over the bodies in the image below. However, Art does not make less of the gruesomeness and instead brings the pain into the light through his not so comical comic.  

My McDonald's Lollipop

Once upon a time there was a little, blonde, curly haired girl waiting in line at McDonald's to buy herself some chicken nuggets. This little girl was me and it just so turned out that my grandma had not given me enough money to pay for the order. So, nervous and embarrassed, I skedaddled my way back to Grandma, tripping over the foot of the soldier standing in line behind me, rushing for the few extra dollars. As I casually ran back to the cashier to hand over the rest of the money, I was told that the man next in line had paid for me. Being young and uncertain, I turned towards the soldier dressed up in his camo and attempted to hand him the cash, which he refused. After thanking him, I returned to Grandma and forgot of this moment from my childhood until approximately a year ago when Mrs. Kozuchowski asked us to describe one of our lollipop moments. She defined this as something someone does for a person out of kindness which leaves a positive and lasting impact. This soldier created one of mine. He is my earliest memory in life of a random act of generosity towards me. However, it wasn’t just the soldier who acted in favor of the young girl, but all the people waiting in line. They did not have to be patient, but they were, and maybe some of them had to make a conscious effort not to go find the kid’s parent and complain, but they didn’t and “petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in”. Similarly, the soldier who had been behind me in line did not have to pay for the little girl who tripped over him and ran way, but he did, and this choice of his created my very first lollipop moment.

On the Love of Eloquence

         Henry David Thoreau writes, “We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire”.  For those who do not know, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, eloquence is “the quality of forceful or persuasive expressiveness”. Thoreau believed that people did not fully absorb the meaning behind what was written or spoken to inspire them and simply took no action towards their standing beliefs.

          However, I cannot deem this philosophy to be true when in consideration of the protests occurring around events such as Black Lives Matter. Although we may love eloquence because it sounds nice, we also see it as the call to action or attention it can be.  Contrary to Thoreau’s belief, eloquence is used in many speeches towards inspiring action for Black Lives Matter and brings it into the light causing action to occur. Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke of how black’s “pervasive” and “persistent” distrust is not based upon “myths”. Government officials speaking out on the topic has created heroism among citizens and riled the people to protest and fight for what they believe is right. They are not merely sitting around and waiting for someone to prove that we, the people of the United States, are all equal. Protests have broken out in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Phoenix, New York City, San Francisco, and many more. How could it be denied that words create change? They are used as the matches to a person's passion and are the cause of our actions. 

What do Red, White, and Blue Mean to You?

            Do you know that the red in our American flag is hardiness and valor? It is our strength in battle and war along with our ability to endure it. Are you aware that white is pure intentions and high ideals? This color was chosen to represent our nation’s desire to humbly succeed. Have you been taught that blue is vigilance, perseverance, and justice? Our nation is cautious in our battles, yet we are determined for justice. Did you know any of these meanings? For most United States citizens, the answer is probably “no”. However, in some cases there may be a few who can answer “yes”. As Sarah Powell so clearly points out in the Partly Cloudy Patriot, our nation has forgotten what it truly means to be patriotic. We do not even know the meaning behind our flag or the fourth of July. Being patriotic is more than just waving a flag made in China. Patriotism is not watching fireworks, eating a hot dog, or sitting for the Pledge of Allegiance. Behind our nation as well as our patriotism stand our soldiers. They deserve our patriotism. Thus, Patriotism is standing for the National Anthem silently to show respect for our country. It is walking up to the person in the army uniform, shaking their hand, and saying “thank you for everything you have done for our country”. I believe our nation’s true patriotism can be brought back if we all learn the meaning behind it. 

The Color of Truth

Sitting in class this past week, I had been struck with a question. Why is it important to tell the truth?  Books such as The Things They Carried help people to recognize and understand moments from our history. Even though the author does so by writing mostly false stories, he manages to get his point across. The point in recreating the truth had been to convey the true feelings that accompany war. So, was the author in his right place to create false war stories? I believe he was. The author had not lied if you consider the fact that he had told the emotional truth. However, if he were to say that while posted in Vietnam he had the best time of his life then he would have been in the wrong. This would have been neither the emotional nor the factual truth and would have led to misconceptions about the Vietnam War. However, in terms of truth, not everything can be seen in black and white and I believe truth comes in gray. So, yes, it is important to tell the truth. Whether you tell the emotional or factual is up to you.