LITR 4332 American Minority Literature 2013 Student Midterm Samples midterm assignment #3. Web Highlights

Niki Bippen

So Many Ways

When reading through the 5731 research essays, A Ambrosius’s “No Country for Old Women” stood out.  In this essay, he/she discusses how even in literature, there is seemingly no place for  older women.  They are either eliminated from the text, swept under the rug (metaphorically speaking of course), rewritten as a younger woman, or they are treated with malevolence.  Ambrosius states that, “in a Wikipedia list of popular literary stock characters, the only roles available for elder women seem deliberately unserious or disrespectful. According to this list, old women can be widows, who are considered foolish for engaging in or exhibiting sexual desire despite their lack of reproductive ability, or crones/hags, who are deemed malevolent, the devourers of small children and predators upon desirable, nubile young women.”     Sadly, this is true.  The majority of the older women depicted in literature are witches, hags, or evil by nature.  I cannot think of a single fairy tale off the top of my head in which there is an older woman who is not portrayed as useless, dumb, cruel, or ugly.  Cinderella was tortured by her evil older sisters, Snow White was poisoned by an evil old witch, and Red Riding Hood’s grandmother is too dumb and old to defend herself against a wolf attack and must rely on her daughter to rescue her.  Honestly, I had never even realized this until I read Ambrosius’s essay but it is shockingly accurate.

            Another one that caught my eye, was Marisela N. Caylor’s essay titled “’Who Am I?’ Identity, Myth, and Tradition in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon”. The title instantly grabbed my attention and I really like how she started the paper with two quotes at the top that provided little previews as to what her paper was going to be about.  I also like how she divided the paper up and labeled each with a mini title that explained what this particular paragraph was referencing to. Another effective tool was her ability to support her claims with a quote in almost every paragraph.  I have always thought that this was a good rule of thumb to follow, and it is nice to see that someone else thinks so too.  It lends a lot of credibility to her statements.

                        When I came across Yolanda Wilson-Harris’s “African Americans and the Dream Deferred”, I instantly wanted to read it.  As previously stated, I am a huge Langston Hughes fan and an even bigger fan of that poem in particular. I really liked when she stated that “while our Founding Fathers grappled and thus framed our principles through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, their concept of freedom did not include African-Americans.” I could not agree more with this.  I also agreed with her thoughts on how as Americans, the Caucasians have always taken what they felt like was “rightfully theirs” despite the injustices the other races felt when we took land, freedom, and lives away from them.  Her essay is particularly impactful because she approaches it with a brutal honesty and gives several reference points.