In the study of women’s literature, feminism has influenced the creative process of contemporary women writers. It is important to be aware of current cultural, religious and political concerns affecting women’s lives globally. Throughout the work of, Crenshaw, Megiste, and Adiche, are all communicating how “feminisms” have intersected and impacted women domestically and globally. A common theme in the readings is the unequal treatment of women of color and the power of storytelling. In essence, the materials show that despite the feminist movements and how women’s rights in other counties are significantly different then they are in the United States, women still remain victims of social injustices across the globe. It is important to look up to the brave women across the world that challenge the way the world views women.
In Mapping the Margins, by Kimberle Crenshaw, Crenshaw accounts for how feminism in America has tended to focus on white women. Crenshaw developed the theory of intersectionality. Intersectionality refers to the intersection of identities, and any identities could be considered. Crenshaw focused on race and gender in this article, centering Black women at that intersection. Crenshaw reflects on social organizations that have formed, largely by white feminists, in order to support survivors of domestic violence. She considers one case in which a shelter for survivors had a policy that women had to speak English. The idea behind this policy was that it wanted to empower women to make decisions impacting their lives, and in order to make those decisions, they have to be able to speak English, so they can advocate for themselves. But this “empowerment” was a barrier to many women of color who, unable to speak English, were especially desperate to find safe housing away from their abusers. (Crenshaw, 202) Instead of creating services that could accommodate such women—for instance, by incorporating translators to help with the language barrier—this organization neglected to center women of color and, by ignoring them, ended up hurting them. This issue still continues today of women being turned away from receiving the help they need. For instance, at the women’s shelter right near HPU a woman could not stay at the women’s shelter because she did not have a social security card.
In a similar way, feminists have tended to overlook how racism affects the lives of women of color. This is what Crenshaw seeks to change in her article. She wants to look at how different “dimensions” of identity intersect, or influence one another. A woman of color experiences both racism and sexism, for instance; an “intersectional” approach therefore must analyze her experiences in terms of BOTH race and sex, not just one or the other. “The problem is not simply that both discourses fail women of color by not acknowledging the “additional” issue of race or of patriarchy but that the discourses are often inadequate even to the discrete tasks of articulating the full dimensions of racism and sexism.” (Crenshaw , 202)
In the TED talk, called The Danger of a Single Story, Chimamanda Adichie makes a point how ‘single stories’ affect how one understands another culture. These single stories limit cultures into shallow criteria and as a consequence they cannot realize their full potential, because creating a single story shows people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. Adichie describes the racial and socioeconomic stereotypes that create a “single story” or dominant narrative of peoples ‘ lives’ and obscure other possible stories. She focuses mainly on single stories created because of racial stereotypes, but also single stories also are apparent with gender. “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” A common stereotype seen in the United States and discussed in Adiche’s TED talk is how the media coverage of Mexicans portrays them as “abject immigrant” just because of the single story the media covers leads people to associate a Mexican as an immigrant, which is not always the case. This is important to learn what effects the media can have on us and to not take a story as is but rather learn more about it.
In Creative Writing as Translation, by Maaza Mengiste orients readers to idea of “single stories” and the ways in which these ‘stories’ shape how we view people of cultures other than our own. In Mengistes article she talks about photographs of Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and Latin American and how they were noticeably different from the photographs of people in Europe and America. Examples of this: An eighteen-year-old Bibi Aisha, whose ears and nose were cut off by the Taliban for running away from an abusive husband and household, a decapitated head lying on a roadside in Mexico, a man in Haiti hurling the body of a child out of window and onto a pile of other corpses, a Kenyan woman in the quiet aftermath of a botched abortion. These are all photographs of brave people from all over the world getting their picture taken to be put up in a gallery. Mengiste makes a valid point when she states “When did it become acceptable for us to gaze at the humiliation, pain, degradation, and suffering of people of color with such dispassionate eyes?”. (Mengiste , 939) These pictures of colored people across the world and how they are portrayed in pictures gives viewers a perception of a “single story” about that place and culture.
In conclusion, the readings showcase the continuous flight of women most specially women of color. “Feminism” has succeed in promoting gender equality between heteronormative men and women but is still failing to take into consideration race, sexual orientation, class, ability, and other factors in consideration. Overall, not all women experience oppression on the same level and so feminists practice that don’t use intersectional framework can’t possibly “right the wrongs” for ALL women. Overall, these brave women experience or are the voice to fight for inequality and discrimination. If society wants to promote gender equality they need to address these problems and continue to support the rights of women.
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