August Hernandez

The Black Woman’s Attempt for the "American Dream"

It seems that black women appear as double minorities to white America. By being African, they were ripped from their country, husbands, and children to be sold into slavery. Because they were also female, they were subjected to elements the male slaves were not. The women lived in fear of getting raped by their masters: "Somebody owned our flesh, and decided if and when with whom and how our bodies were to be used" (Internet). Harriet Jacobs’ master denied her getting married because his lust for her was so strong he demanded she have sex with him and only him. Although the sex between the two was not as violent as some people tend rape to be, it was still rape; because he was the one with power, she was forced to have sex with him (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl). Black women have had an ever-continuing position as objects concerning gender and race which limits their rights to voice and choice.

How are the black women of a modern era becoming part of the "American Dream" besides only contributing to it? The idea of the American Dream is that if one works hard enough, he or she will prosper or maybe if one falls on luck, success is in the waiting. The twist to this idea is that in order to qualify for the American dream, one must have a voice and a choice to act upon such novel ideas to seize the "dream". The dominant culture definitely reached the American dream of rags to riches through the commercial art of buying and selling slaves. Moreover, poet, Michael Weaver, proposes that the wealthy are building from the existence of black poverty in his poem, Black Man’s Sonata. This proposal shows the dominant culture’s voice and choice of their economical stature while blacks are continually oppressed, thus limited to resources enabling economic elevation. Also, society has a set of particular ideologies passed down from the dominant culture, powerful white males (ideologies such as women being emotional and dark skin portraying animalistic traits). Therefore, what chance do the opposite, black women, have of reaching the American dream?

The works of Audre Lorde and Maya Angelou show that black women have set up a set of strategies as an alternative to reaching the "American Dream". Because the American Dream is more available to white male -- especially white males in high status groups --, Angelou and Lorde represent an alternative route that produces the end result usually produced for whites through the "dream". Their strategy encompasses an awareness of self and society usually generating themes such as sexual freedom, self-reliance, confidence, and independence. An awareness of themselves, their culture, and the dominant culture is demonstrated in their strategies to the dream. This awareness eventually leads into a kind of "stand on your own feet" or "depend on no one" idea as with the dominant culture’s American Dream. Poets, Audre Lorde and Maya Angelou reveal this awareness and strategy. As black women, their poems reflect similar ideas, however, as two different characters they achieve the "dream" in different fashions. This paper will show the two authors different expression techniques in obtaining rights, and it will show how their poems represent the strategies of black women for the American Dream.

Lorde and Angelou are prevalent poets in contemporary America, and as poets they use their poetry to represent the alternatives to catching the "dream". They experience oppression as blacks and as women. However, their strategies for the "dream" contrast. This is good. This allows a variety of strategies for other black women who plan to catch the "dream". Lorde has a "warrior"-like character in seizing the American Dream (Internet). Lorde’s warrior spirit is demonstrated in her work as she has even been called a "warrior-poet". On the other hand, Angelou displays a grandmotherly quality, and her poetry sends an inviting message allowing a variety of individuals to read her work. The two women were raised in different cultures, which could have impacted their different tactics.

Lorde was raised in Brooklyn, which most populated cities represent a Darwinian society. A survival of the fittest concept is placed on its residents. Life in the big city tends to make success more available to the toughest and the smartest individuals. Lorde had to incorporate herself in such a society through struggle and competition. She had to fight to succeed, so she decided to a fighter. Her son remembers witnessing her fighting spirit when she would say, "We could lose. But we couldn’t not fight" (Internet). Lorde’s strategy for capturing the "dream" entails struggling and fighting, thus creating a warrior.

Angelou was raised in rural Arkansas. Here, Angelou was introduced to country charm and the advantages of grace, patience, and the sheer joy of taking it easy. It can be speculated that as a result of this lifestyle, her poems are critique as "graceful and elegant" (Internet). Although Angelou personally underwent troubling times in her childhood, the environment surrounding her tended to be calm and slow. Her environment lacked competition. Because rural Arkansas was underdeveloped technologically, there was not a push-and-shove type of existence in Angelou’s town. Angelou did not have to continually compete or fight for survival. Therefore, Angelou’s attempt for the "dream" tends to not be as aggressive as Lorde’s. Lorde and Angelou’s different techniques in managing life produce their differing strategies for the "dream".

Another example of different strategies is each poet’s concept of herself in society; their approaches to society are different. This concept, in turn, generates separate awarenesses and strategies for seizing the "dream". Audre Lorde is defined as a visionary and a warrior. Through her confrontations of all forms of prejudice, she is where conflict is present. Lorde is coined for "fighting societal oppression on every front" (Internet). She is black and fights for black rights; she is gay and fights for gay rights; she is a woman and fights for Womanism. Lorde resides within each controversial group and crusades accordingly to each group’s needs. It is not as if she presents herself as a problem to society, but society has told her that she is a problem. She speaks of herself as someone who always finds herself in a group defined as "other, deviant, inferior, or just plain wrong" (Internet). She has to fight for an identity where she is no longer a problem. Therefore, this awareness of herself and society gives way to an overall plan of combat because she must fight to survive. She has to fight for survival as a black lesbian in a white, heterosexual-male arena. In a tribute to Lorde, someone writes, "She believed that the worth she had learned to put on herself and her own perceptions were how she managed to survive being a ‘sister outsider’ and someone ‘never meant to survive’" (Internet). Lorde uses her personal insight on her life as a means of placing value on her individuality. However, she desires to go beyond her personal scope and ask society to also value her and place worth on her. Since this does not come easily, she must be louder and tougher which arouses her warrior-like character, and she fights. Not only is Lorde struggling for the rights of controversial groups, but for her own identity as a black lesbian. When Audre Lorde is no longer acknowledged as deviant and inferior, and when she survives as being different, a channel opens up to the American Dream. From her fighting and warrior spirit, her confidence, sexual freedom, independence, and the "worth" placed on her as an individual give way to the "dream".

Unlike Lorde, Angelou is not a fighter for specific controversial groups. She is concerned for women in general, not just African American women or lesbians. She was appointed by Jimmie Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the year (Internet). Angelou is a voice for all women. Angelou crosses racial lines for the good of the community as a whole; she does not put all her effort in incorporating any particular group in the American Dream. In "Our Power as Women", Angelou shares her wisdom and strategy for creating a great society for all colors of women:

Angelou is concerned with not only women, but also all individuals. She even admits, "men are phenomenal too" (34). Angelou mentions in an interview that growing older is difficult for everyone, not for only black women or women in general: "Growing up is so painful if you happen to be white in a white country or rich in a country where money is adored and worshipped" (Internet). She utilizes her talents for a range of issues and uses her Southern charm and etiquette to draw in different individuals to her poetry. This strategy allows her to grasp the "dream" because she shows her independence as a writer, and she is aware of the needs of society and not just those needs of black women. Because of this tactic, society tends to be more with her and not against her as in Lorde’s situation, and the gap shrinks between Angelou and the "dream".

Angelou also has different strategies for the "dream" from Lorde because unlike Lorde, she is not considered as "deviant" or "wrong". Angelou wrote a poem for Clinton’s inauguration. She cannot be seen as "inferior" when she is asked to represent America’s politics through her poetry. Also, Angelou helped Martin Luther King Jr. raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Because she speaks from a Christian realm, she is not seen as defiant or seen as someone with the wrong kind of lifestyle. Therefore, through Angelou’s broad range of contributing her talents, the American Dream makes itself more available to her than to Lorde. Angelou’s strategies to participate within society’s realm help her seize the "dream". She makes use of her poems by demonstrating courage, self-reliance, and confidence, which turns the tables a bit by giving society an awareness, and this allows her to participate in the American Dream.

Although Lorde and Angelou have different strategies for the "dream", they still reveal strategies in their poetry that are similar. As double minorities, black women are oppressed by the dominant, white male society to where the American Dream gets farther away. Black women need a technique so that their struggle for the American Dream is not in vain, but successful. Determination is a strategy acquired by some black women in their pursuit for the "dream". This is not to say that white males do not persevere for their goals – they work hard either by the sweat of their brows or mentally. However, there have been many black women who have in the past worked hard, slavery for instance, and work hard now, but as double minorities, many are not given the opportunity to reach their dreams or the "dream". Therefore, there must be a relentless pursuit, perseverance, for the American Dream added to their sweat and smarts. As representatives of the black women’s realm, Lorde and Angelou show perseverance for the "dream" in their poetry.

Angelou expresses in her poem, Still I Rise, her perseverance as a black woman with a slave ancestry, and how her relenting effort to reach the "dream" triumphs over oppression: "You may trod me in the very dirt, But still, like dust, I’ll rise" (Poems 154). Society cannot keep Angelou pushed down because she has a will power stronger than theirs that makes her pop back up every time. She uses the connection to her past to reveal perseverance: Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise" (154). Angelou’s "rising" represents her perseverance through the struggle for the "dream". Because she is "trodden in the dirt" and because she is the product of slavery, rising above her situation does not come easily. She must persevere…and she does.

Lorde uncovers perseverance as an indirect attempt for the "dream". In Afterlove, she does not show the direct attempt for the "dream" and the persistence aiding in that capture. Instead, Lorde makes known to readers the attempt for the "dream" through the perseverance for those ideas usually associating with it. The American Dream typically produces the concepts of self-reliance, independence, and sexual freedom. This poem demonstrates that when these "dream" concepts are caught, the American Dream itself is captured. Lorde shows how perseverance is important for gaining these ideas and the making of a better individual through hardship. In Afterlove, Lorde expresses the negative emotions or ambivalence of some women after sex. Her character loses her identity and self-awareness, but through her unceasing desire to gain it back, she sets a plan to persevere until she is put together again. Lorde composes her character’s thoughts as this, "…my skin thrills bruised and battered…and never once did I abandon believing I would contrive to make my world whole again" (Coal 43). In the last line, Lorde’s character uses perseverance to gain self-reliance and sexual freedom. When her character becomes self-reliant and free, she participates in the "dream". Both Lorde and Angelou use perseverance as a strategy for catching the American Dream.

Another strategy Lorde and Angelou share in common encompasses an awareness of their race and gender – they are indeed black women, and they not only recognize this fact, but they do not hide it. Maybe to some individuals, understanding one’s race and gender, and finding meaning, and finding life through that understanding seems easy. However, growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, as a black female in America was not easy. It would have been easy to accept the heart wrenching limitations placed on her, and blend in with the rest of the non-whites who were pushed away from the "dream" until her existence as a black woman grew vague. This is not so with Lorde and Angelou. They use their blackness and their womanly characteristics as inspirations to themselves and others as they reach for the "dream". The two women do not pretend to be other types of people in order to work from the inside out within the dominant culture; instead they work as double minorities against the dominant flow. Although Lorde and Angelou write poetry concerning a variety of ideas, they have a lot poetry about their blackness and being women.

In On a Bright Day, Next Week, Angelou describes her blackness when the world comes to an end: "All my tears will powder Black in dust like ashes, Black like Buddha’s belly, Black and hot and dry" (Poems 27). In My Guilt, Angelou describes part of her female quality by composing, "My sin is ‘hanging from a tree’, I do not scream, it makes me proud. I take to dying like a man. I do it to impress the crowd" (44). In both these poems, Angelou assures her readers that when she dies, she will die as a proud black person, and as a proud woman.

Lorde writes about the exhilaration of being a woman in Now That I Am Forever With Child: "How the days went while you were blooming within me, I remember each upon each – the swelling changed planes of my body and how you first fluttered, then jumped, and I thought it was my heart" (Coal 21). In Generation, Lorde composes a piece about social awareness and growing up in society. She writes the poem in the perspective of a black female, and she uses her blackness as something dreamy and great. Lorde writes, "We were brown free girls, love singing beneath our skin, sun in our hair in our eyes, sun our fortune, and the wind had made us golden, made us gay" (13). As representatives of this particular sphere who take the alternate route in catching the American Dream, it is important that Lorde and Angelou recognize, understand, and project their identity as black women.

Audre Lorde and Maya Angelou show white America that black women can reach the "dream", and they show black women the strategies for obtaining it. The two poet’s awareness of themselves, their culture, and the dominant culture empower them with the poetic genius and the street-smarts for daily survival in white America while reaching for the "dream". Because their strategies for this attempt are different and similar, they show others the hope and the several routes that can be taken for the American Dream.

Works Cited

Angelou, Maya. Poems. New York, New York: Random House, 1993.

Lerner-Robbins, Helene. Our Power as Women. Berkeley, California: Conari Press, 1996.

Lorde, Audre. Coal. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996.

http:///www.newsun.com/angelou.html