The Hungry Woman Cherrie Moraga Pdf Creator
While reading “La Guera”, I could not help but feel saddened by the stories Moraga told, especially when speaking of her experiences as a gay woman. When she was speaking to a man about him trying to be a woman for a day, it was disappointing to see her describe various attitudes within the women’s movement. When she said, “Within the women’s movement, the connections among women of different backgrounds and sexual orientations have been fragile, at best,” it was upsetting to see that even at the time this passage was written, the relations between various women have been tense and shaky.
Even today there are incredibly similar feelings between the movement at the time and the efforts being made today with organizations that led events like the Women’s March, A Day Without A Woman, etc.In Anzaldua Gloria’s reading, one phrase in particular really stood out to me: “We speak a patois, a forked tongue, a variation of two languages” When she was describing the struggles between people who have another language, especially Spanish, as their first language, it makes it much more difficult to be accepted and adapt to societies that only accept English as the main language. The issue of discrimination and prejudice back then still exist today, too, unfortunately. There are racist beliefs that circulate when people of different colors and backgrounds come into massive, mostly white, cultures.
I liked how the author put original words of various Hispanic languages throughout the passage because it gave the author’s stories a bit more of a personal flair and really showed a more cultural perspective about her experiences. Being of the white middle class culture it is sometimes hard to imagine the oppression people from other cultures face on a day to day basis.
It is texts like these that are eye opening and allow everyone to step into someone else’s shoes and hear their story. Both stories were about Mexican chicana’s and chicano’s and how they compared to the anglo white person and the oppression they faced because they were Spanish speaking and how they were made to conform to the english language and english ways.
I found it particularly interesting in the story La Guera, how she says that she gets to have a foot in both world because she can be white passing by the looks of her skin but by blood she is chincana and and of Spanish decent. She finds it hard to split the two world but why should she have to? It seemed to me as if she wanted to use her skin to her advantage but she didn’t want to insult her culture because she is proud to be Mexican which she should be, but it is sad that she felt like it was almost a good thing that she was so light skinned so that she would not be oppressed since she could be white passing. But when she lifted the lid to her lesbianism she would face oppression anyways so it wouldn’t be worth it nor is it ever worth it to take away from her culture.
She should be proud of who she is and where she comes from, but she also should not feel like she should have to conform to the white culture. That to me is absurd and sad that it has come to that.
Both stories also imply that language is a very powerful tool because it is the key to ones culture. It is how a culture communicates with each other it is who they are and to make them conform to other cultures languages is taking away part of their culture. Like how in How to Tame a Wild Tounge she talks about how at school they were trying make spanish speaking people learn english and not just learn english but take away their accent.
Like it wasn’t good enough for them to learn another language but they have to completely betray their language by getting rid of their accent. The whole idea of making other cultures completely conform to the english language is baffling to me I get it from a point of communication if people are traveling to an english dominant country but then it should be the same for english people raveling to a spanish country or any other country with a different language, but they take it to the next level by trying to get rid of peoples accents and such. All in all i thought both articles were very eye opening especially to someone who is white and comes from a middle class family and has not really been exposed to much oppression first hand. 101 secrets of highly effective speakers pdf merge. My example that speaks to this weeks theme is the song Glory from the movie Selma, this song reminds me that one day the glory will be in the hands of those who keep speaking up for what they believe in because so much progress has been made becasue of people who have been oppressed that will not stand to let it happen anymore and have fought for their equal rights and i think this song is a perfect representation of the bright horizon that will come from standing up for yourself and being proud of who you are and what you believe in. (originally posted as a comment)I cannot fully understand the struggles represented in the readings, as I come from a very privileged position, but there are certain parts that really spoke to me, specifically in “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”. I am neither white or asian, but according to my cultural background and country of provenience I am white, all under American standards. I say American standards because where I come from we don’t identify ourselves by race, but nationality.
So, I am fundamentally Italian, but Americans see me as “white”. I think this is also a way how Americans try to generalize people: you come from Europe, you are white, you come from Asia, you must be asian. Don’t say you are a Mix or Other, because then they would ask too many questions. But, if I grew up in a specific culture, knowing things that only those who grew up in my country know, then how can I be something that you tell me I am? I might have slightly slanted eyes, but I can tell you about how on the Tower of Pisa there has been the devil with his claws.And while the American tells me that I am white, my Italian friends tell me that I am asian. But didn’t I say before that we identified ourselves by nationality?
Well, yes, but only if your physical aspect is on par with the “normal” others. I am Italian, but also asian.My English professor in Italy believed that I spoke tagalog, the national language of the filipinos. Even when I told her I didn’t, she still made me present a song in tagalog. What is this general assumption that if I look part asian I must know the language? My mother didn’t teach me, and for that I resent her a little.
I look asian, so if I spoke the language I could validate myself when I am called out on that. My mother also taught me a lot of stuff about her culture, but I’ve never experienced them apart from eating their food, so I cannot say I am asian. It would be unfair. However I still look filipina, so I must be asian for others.In both readings there has been mentioned how language impacts one’s self and sense of worth. That is true.
By living between Italy and America, I have started to use slang words, but also americanized or italianized words, mixing everything together in a sentence that to outsiders would make little to no grammatical sense. Sometimes I really struggle to keep a discourse fully in Italian or English, and I am afraid to be judged for that by puritans of the languages.
It is difficult to be sure of one’s worth when you are biracial and bilingual but these aspects don’t fully coincide. I have never really felt oppressed because of the language I speak, the way I look, because of my gender, or because of my sexual preference. My family doesn’t focus much on our culture, either. I’m not even really sure what I’m made up of. No one I know in my family is ‘first generation’ either.I do, however, feel sympathy for the women of the two stories, especially Cherrie Moraga in La Guera. Statistically, I feel like I should be as oppressed as them. I’m a minority, and I’m a woman.
Things change when you grow up in the suburbs instead of the city though. To my family, I became ‘white girl’, and ironically I am the lightest person in my family when it comes to skin tone; it’s sad, I can’t even tan. With the right hair style, and the way I speak along with my tone, I could pass for white too. It’s not my fault that I was moved at five years old to a place where I’d get a better, more advanced education, and would talk more ‘proper’. Growing up in the suburbs makes me feel normal, like that’s just who I am and people in the city of Buffalo believe I feel better than all of them. It’s just my identity. The difference is between this, and Moraga and Anzaldua is that no one tries to oppress that or me, it’s just acknowledged.Moraga and Anzaldua both have had struggles that aren’t fair, although most struggles aren’t.
You could only imagine the uproar there would be if some white people moved to another country that spoke a foreign language and they were told that they were to learn the new language and not speak their native tongue. There’s nothing that angers me more than oppression, or racism, or discrimination in general because if the situations were reversed and it was against whites, against Americans, against straight people, all those groups of people would be just as angry as we are now. That’s what’s not fair. While both of the readings, How to Tame a Wild Tongue and La Guera, and the video showed insight on the lives of Chicana women living in America, How to Tame a Wild Tongue told me of this reality that I had never considered one that I understood until reading it.
Although the passage was written through the lense of a Spanish woman who found herself compromising her nationality and her language, I understood that feeling of being silenced, policed and pigeonholed in terms of language and how you speak. I have spoken English my entire life, but English has very many branches, and there are certain types of English, like slang, that have found company in several groups. As a black woman I was surrounded by black people that used slang around each other for various reasons. I learned young, similar to this woman who wrote this passage, that slang was reserved for the uneducated, or for those who did not wish to progress in a nation dominated by white people. I learned to hear slang, and to filter it through my mouth so that what came out was ‘proper’, educated English.
The Hungry Woman Cherrie Moraga Pdf Creator Free
In turn, similar to the author of this passage, I also found myself being policed by those who used slang, and feeling that if I did not speak like them when I was around them then I was an outcast. Either way I was an outcast. I could not fit into groups of the white people speaking slang, and I could not fit into groups of black people not speaking it. I found myself switching between the two.
Although I experienced this, I obviously don’t share the exact same experience as the woman who wrote this passage. Spanish was her nationality, that is what her family spoke, that is what her people spoke, and English was not. Her story shows a lot more hardship than mine does. The best thing that she said was that she was her language and the best way to oppress people is to take that from them. White Americans both strip Spaniards of their language and nationality while simultaneously making it known that they are very different and will never measure up to the same standards of the white American. Take away a person’s language and you take away their identity, once their identity is taken away they are a blank slate that you can carve into whatever you want.The passage also shed insight on how “language is a male discourse”. Women and men of color alike do have to alter their language so that it may make those who are privileged comfortable.
Women had to become softer, more passive and less opinionated, the same goes for men of color. Moraga’s La Guera was similar in that she told of her troubles growing up as a Chicana woman, but her struggles were intersectional and complex. I like how she admitted that she was fearful of writing about being a Chicana woman when she used the privilege of being light skinned to her advantage so many years ago. But even though she was lighter, she was also oppressed because she was not fully white and even moreso because she was a lesbian.
I loved reading of her experience, because there were so many layers that had built up on top of each other over time. She admits that those who are severely oppressed also face being the oppressor, and that is an important fact to understand. But although she was afraid of writing in the context of a woman of color who has not experienced the same oppression that darker skinned brown women do, she says that “the only thing worth writing about should be unknown, and therefore fearful”. Both passages and the video talked about language and how monumental it is. Language is powerful in expression and remembrance of who you are as an individual and where you came from. Language can also break barriers and allow others to look through the lenses of an individual and experience a life that they never would have otherwise.Morgan Hamilton. I really loved Moraga’s essay and I could really relate to her struggle of self-identity.
I basically had the same upbringing, with my mother being white and my father being of Pakistani-Indian origin. I do not really fit in with other Desi people, as I do not look Desi or speak Urdu.
However, I cannot completely relate to White people and their culture. Moraga put my conflicting emotions onto paper, completely uncensored. It’s very difficult for white-passing people of color like me to be prideful of our culture and talk about how we’ve been oppressed while also being mindful of our privilege. I really like the quote “I have had a choice about making that claim, in contrast to women who have not had such a choice.” It really reminds me of myself and how don’t have to tell people of my origin if I do not feel safe, when my cousins and other South Asians do not get that choice. I really liked how she mentioned the “hierarchy of oppression.” It’s really common nowadays on social media for there to who’s-more-oppressed fights among minorities. Moraga states that this will get us nowhere. We cannot change our white-, straight-, and male-dominated society by fighting amongst ourselves.
We must acknowledge how we have oppressed others just like we acknowledge how we have been oppressed. It was very interesting to read Anzaldua’s essay. America’s history of assimilate-or-leave goes against it’s very creation and foundation. America is supposed to be the “Land of the Free” where there is no official language or religion. Yet many minorities are ostrosized for speaking their native language. It reminds me of my father and how he was abused for speaking Urdu as a child in England.
Because of this, he did not teach Urdu to any of his children. He did not want me or my brother’s to go through what Anzaldua and many others go through. He did not want my Desi origin to hinder my future in America. Overall, these two essays were eye-opening. It is sad how these essays were published decades ago years ago and yet so little is different. Posts navigation.