Jhumpa Lahiri Selections- Last material to read

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Frida Kahlo Quote

Two part reading response "The bluest eye"

"The bluest eye" novel written by Toni Morrison talk about the life of a young African-American girl whose name is Pecola.  She was a black girl who comes from a poor and depressive family.

Facing domestic violence, sexual assault, and living in a community that associates beauty with whiteness, she suffers from low self-respect and views herself to be ugly. She hated the fact of how she was, she couldn’t accept her appearance that way. She couldn’t even think that beauty means ‘Her’ in all the different ways possible, and the idea of it was more forced by the non-educational way of her parents. Even though she has her thoughts she never had the support of anyone to change her ideas of herself. She believes that whiteness is beautiful. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. Her madness at the end of the novel is her only way to escape the world where she cannot be beautiful and to get the blue eyes she desires from the beginning of the novel. Eyes have the ability to reveal our inner emotions and they’re our window to the outside world and she wanted them blue because blue eyes are said to be the most desirable and loved and at least that was all she ever wanted, to be loved, once.  I really believe in illustration of the fact that we don't need to be perfect in no way, we need only to make an effort and to keep learning about the world, and to take care of ourselves and people around us, no matter how we may be look like ,or how old we are in years.
Let us love wisely, unconditionally for once!

"Two part reading response" Incident in the life of a slave girl.


This story is about a female slave and her experiences. Her story is terrible since at the beginning, since at her birth as she claimed. She describes the "life" of a slave and her suffers and how difficult is to be a slave and let your destiny in a man's hand. Especially when the man abused the women. Even all this things she is a strong woman and brave and the mainly reason is because of her children. Harriet speaks for the human rights especially the women's rights and the ending of slavery.

Two part reading response "The Bluest Eye"

The Bluest Eye is a novel written by author Tomi Morrison.

The story of this novel takes place in Lorain, Ohio which talks about an American-African girl named Pecola.

Pecola is grown up during the years of Great Depression, in a community which associates beauty with whiteness, she is grown up in a family with low incomes and whose parents are constantly fighting, verbally and physically.


The title of this novel ‘The Bluest Eye’ refers to Pecola’s wishes for blue eyes. She feels that if she had blue eye she would be considered beautiful instead being called ugly and thinking she is ugly herself. She believes that if she had blue eyes her family life would be completely different and people would love her.


This novel treats social problems such as: racism, violence and bullying.


For my opinion beauty nowadays is important and is admired by everyone but in fact inner beauty is the one we should be focusing all of our lives because outer beauty fades as we age but our inner beauty never fades no matter how old we get.

Final Research Paper Instructions

Please identify one or two crosscutting themes in two of the books you have read in this course. Once you identify the theme(s), state what theme you have chosen and make a brief analysis of the theme  in both books, pointing out if there are similarities and differences in terms of feminist analysis . The length of the paper may vary, but a 4-5 paragraph paper that states and supports your position is sufficient. 

For ideas on your themes, please visit:
https://literarydevices.net/a-huge-list-of-common-themes/

For support regarding Feminist literary criticism, please read information below: 

Tools of the Feminist Literary Critic

Feminist literary criticism may bring in tools from other critical disciplines, such as historical analysis, psychology, linguistics, sociological analysis, economic analysis, for instance. Feminist criticism may also look at intersectionality, looking at how factors including race, sexuality, physical ability, and class are also involved.

Feminist literary criticism may use any of the following methods:

• Deconstructing the way that women are described, especially if the author is male. This applies to both fictional characters in novels, stories, and plays, and women characters in nonfiction including biography and history.
• Deconstructing how one's own gender influences how one reads and interprets a text, and which characters and how the reader identifies depending on the reader's gender.
• Deconstructing how women autobiographers and biographers of women treat their subjects, and how biographers treat women who are secondary to the main subject.
• Describing relationships between the literary text and ideas about power and sexuality and gender.
• Critique of patriarchal or woman-marginalizing language, such as a "universal" use of the masculine pronouns "he" and "him."
• Noticing and unpacking differences in how men and women write: a style, for instance, where women use more reflexive language and men use more direct language (example: "she let herself in" vs. "he opened the door").
• Reclaiming women writers who are little known or have been marginalized or undervalued, sometimes referred to as expanding or criticizing the canon—the usual list of "important" authors and works. The retrieval of Zora Neale Hurston's writing by Alice Walker is an example. Another example: raising up the contributions of early playwright ​Aphra Behn, showing how she was treated differently than male writers from her own time forward.

• Reclaiming the 'female voice' as a valuable contribution to literature, even if formerly marginalized or ignored.
• Analyzing multiple works in a genre as an overview of a feminist approach to that genre: for example, science fiction or detective fiction.
• Analyzing multiple works by a single author (often female).
• Examining how relationships between men and women and those assuming male and female roles are depicted in the text, including power relations.
• Examining the text to find ways in which patriarchy is resisted or could have been resisted.

Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/feminist-literary-criticism-3528960

The urgency of intersectionality
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=akOe5-UsQ2o&t=360s

Plot Overview

Nine-year-old Claudia and ten-year-old Frieda MacTeer live in Lorain, Ohio, with their parents. It is the end of the Great Depression, and the girls’ parents are more concerned with making ends meet than with lavishing attention upon their daughters, but there is an undercurrent of love and stability in their home. The MacTeers take in a boarder, Henry Washington, and also a young girl named Pecola. Pecola’s father has tried to burn down his family’s house, and Claudia and Frieda feel sorry for her. Pecola loves Shirley Temple, believing that whiteness is beautiful and that she is ugly.

Pecola moves back in with her family, and her life is difficult. Her father drinks, her mother is distant, and the two of them often beat one another. Her brother, Sammy, frequently runs away. Pecola believes that if she had blue eyes, she would be loved and her life would be transformed. Meanwhile, she continually receives confirmation of her own sense of ugliness—the grocer looks right through her when she buys candy, boys make fun of her, and a light-skinned girl, Maureen, who temporarily befriends her makes fun of her too. She is wrongly blamed for killing a boy’s cat and is called a “nasty little black bitch” by his mother.

We learn that Pecola’s parents have both had difficult lives. Pauline, her mother, has a lame foot and has always felt isolated. She loses herself in movies, which reaffirm her belief that she is ugly and that romantic love is reserved for the beautiful. She encourages her husband’s violent behavior in order to reinforce her own role as a martyr. She feels most alive when she is at work, cleaning a white woman’s home. She loves this home and despises her own. Cholly, Pecola’s father, was abandoned by his parents and raised by his great aunt, who died when he was a young teenager. He was humiliated by two white men who found him having sex for the first time and made him continue while they watched. He ran away to find his father but was rebuffed by him. By the time he met Pauline, he was a wild and rootless man. He feels trapped in his marriage and has lost interest in life.

Cholly returns home one day and finds Pecola washing dishes. With mixed motives of tenderness and hatred that are fueled by guilt, he rapes her. When Pecola’s mother finds her unconscious on the floor, she disbelieves Pecola’s story and beats her. Pecola goes to Soaphead Church, a sham mystic, and asks him for blue eyes. Instead of helping her, he uses her to kill a dog he dislikes.

Claudia and Frieda find out that Pecola has been impregnated by her father, and unlike the rest of the neighborhood, they want the baby to live. They sacrifice the money they have been saving for a bicycle and plant marigold seeds. They believe that if the flowers live, so will Pecola’s baby. The flowers refuse to bloom, and Pecola’s baby dies when it is born prematurely. Cholly, who rapes Pecola a second time and then runs away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola goes mad, believing that her cherished wish has been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes.

Two part reading response:I know why the caged bird sings

Maya Angelou addresses the issue of racism, where thousands of black people were discriminated by white people, and freedom, where black people have no rights to be free. Their life’s where determined by white people(“ black students are expected to be come only athletes or servants”). They have no rights(“ I would rather place my hand in a dog’s mouth rather than yours”). She rises her voice against these issues(“ I know why the caged bird sings”), and even though she may has not have the life she wanted, but what is more importante is that white people can not force her do or live how they says. 

Two part reading response: "The Bluest Eye"

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison weaves stories of violation and hardship to examine the ugliness that racism produces. In this novel, the childhood icons of white culture are negative representations instrumental in engendering internalized racism. For the black child in a racist, white culture, these icons are never innocent. Embodying the ideals of white beauty, they expose the basis for Claudia's bewilderment at why she is not attractive and Pecola's desperate desire for beauty. They nourish neither innocent desire, nor the need for acceptance, but denigrate the very idea of blackness.
Appearing on screen with male and female, African-American actors, Shirley Temple also symbolizes the directed energy of African-American adults toward the care of white children. Subservient to her needs, and trapped in the stereotyped roles available to them, the adult actors who appeared as her caretakers often appeared to be childish, rather than child like, a demeaning position, especially when contrasted with the simulated adult behavior exhibited on screen by Shirley Temple. She keeps them "in their place" partly by imitating Little Eva, the wise and noble, white child of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and partly by her mere presence on screen. As a representation of Little Eva, Shirley Temple characterizes the saintliness of the "good" child, a saintliness "worthy" of glorified attention and near worship. If we think of Shirley Temple as Little Eva, then we might also visualize her companions as Uncle Tom or Aunt Chloe, who love their own children, but in embracing the conditions of slavery, willingly put the welfare of white children above their own.
On screen, the presence of Shirley Temple as a white child signifies the neglect of the African-American child. For Claudia, Shirley Temple represents her own absence in the attention of her family.
Claudia does not agree with the assumption of her own ugliness, or lack of beauty. Nevertheless, she is stymied by those around her who buy into the cultural construct of white beauty. She recognizes that while she can destroy her dolls, and can even think negatively about Maureen, she cannot convince those around her that the cultural assumption of beauty is wrong.
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison rails against the concept of the superiority of white beauty through the thoughts and actions of the narrator, Claudia. Claudia resents the assumption of beauty being measured by whiteness, and attempts to destroy it, while at the same time fighting against the converse: that her blackness should be equated with ugliness.