In the "yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit" by Leslie Marmon Silko, Silko describes what is considered beauty and prominent in the outside modern day culture as untrue. Silko starts off the essay with her heritage and makes it clear that her culture is the only culture that except her. Silko realizes she was different from others; her skin color differed from her friends and family's. Silko explains how the Laguna Pueblo people have no gender roles and how sexuality is embraced. The structure of the story helps convince the reader that the Laguna Pueblo people work together as a community to benefit everyone as a whole. The stories told also give Silko hope, about how differences can bring great benefits to her people. The stories of the Yellow Woman entertain Silko, but also tell her beauty is character and not physical …show more content…
She also realized that close family members, like her grandma, we're not bothered by the color of her skin. Silko realized how different the culture of the Laguna Pueblo people and the modern world are. This became apparent to Silko because of how a tourist treated her compared to the rest of the class. The tourist removed her from the class pictures because she stood out from him and the rest of the class. Her grandma was not bothered by her skin color, she would tell Silko to remember the stories.
Silko would be comforted by stories of Yellow Woman they both told many stories of true beauty and power. Their stories that would represent all women, Silko's favorite stories were the ones with Yellow Woman. Yellow Woman's stories Taught Silko to be okay with her differences. Yellow Woman was considered beautiful in Silko's because of her strong, Daring, and clever personality. Yellow Woman's sexuality was also embraced because of how it could benefit her people. Great stories like these are what shaped the Laguna Pueblo's
But those desires are not strong enough to make her leave the domesticated life that she has chosen for herself. She becomes a storyteller herself as she recounts her own Yellow Woman story and believes that the other Yellow Women had names like she does, but they do not reveal them. The Yellow Woman stories allow the narrator to justify her actions as she considers herself another chapter in the Yellow Woman saga.
As a result of beginning this piece with the phrase “where I come from,” Silko immediately begins to build her credibility. Furthermore, the phrase “among the Pueblo people” reveals to the audience that Silko has a Pueblo Indian background. This fact allows the audience to have confidence that Silko knows exactly what she is talking about, since she has had personal experience with the culture of the Pueblo Indians.
In her book, “Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit”, the author clearly tells about how the culture of the Laguna Pueblo Indians were so different from that of the Western culture. For example, in Laguna Pueblo, there is no different class or social status. I find this very interesting. They also do not place too much value on one’s outward beauty as well. Instead, women were more attractive if they are strong, even stout, which is a great contrast to today's –Western definition: skinny and thin, flawless face etc. They are more interested in beauty within. How one is at peace with nature, his or her surroundings. It is more of having a good character, being selfless, and courageous at any age.
Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel, Ceremony, reveals how the crossing of cultures was feared, ridiculed, and shunned in various Native American tribes. The fear of change is a common and overwhelming fear everyone faces at some point in their life. The fear of the unknown, the fear of letting go, and the fear of forgetting all play a part in why people struggle with change. In Ceremony the crossing of cultures creates “half-breeds,” usually bringing disgrace to their family’s name. In Jodi Lundgren’s discourse, “Being a Half-breed”, is about how a girl who struggles with understanding what cultural group she fits into since she is a “half-breed.” Elizabeth Evasdaughter’s essay, “Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony”: Healing Ethnic Hatred by
As I read “Real Women Have Curves” by Josefina Lopez I was reminded of what it is like to be raised in Chicanx household and the beliefs that come with it . I was touched on a very personal level I felt many of the characters in the play reminded me of my own mother and the older women in my family. In much of the play Josefina Lopez brings to life the issues that Chicanx women face in our everyday lives.
In the essay of Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, Leslie Marmon Silko uses flashbacks, reflection, and details to enhance the points and to make the clear and convincing. An example of structure, though reflection is how Silko switches between the non-recent and recent past to give the reader an engaging experience. Therefore, Silko is able to use structure ti make her points clear, convincing, and engaging.
The concepts of change and identity are problematic for the characters within Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. Tayo’s hybridity represents all that the Laguna people fear. The coming of change and meshing of cultures has brought an impending threat of ruin to Native American traditions. Although they reject him for his mixed heritage, Tayo’s journey is not his own but a continuation of the storytelling tradition that embodies Native American culture. Through tradition he learns to use his white and Mexican heritage to identify himself without abandoning his Native American practices.
Finding my voice as a woman in the world has led me to have a greater appreciation of my Mexican-American culture. Although the women in Galang’s book are of a different cultural background I was able to understand and connect with the struggles they went through trying to balance those varying cultures and the difficulty they had in finally accepting it. The story that most exemplifies the two spectrums of acceptance of one’s culture is “Rose Colored”. While going through elementary, middle, and a small portion of high school I could identify mostly as Rose because I hadn’t yet accepted the culture I was from. I was ashamed of being part Mexican and thought people would automatically stereotype and not like me. I saw my curly hair as something that should be hidden, always in braids because it wasn’t straight like all the others and also avoided talking about my home life for fear of being cast out as different. As I grew up into a young woman I began reading more and more about my culture and researching what it meant to be a true Mexican-American. I learned to appreciate all the beauty my culture has to offer and realized that being from two different cultures was not about picking one over the over but combining both at the same time. After reaching this sudden realization I was able to
Leslie Marmon Silko transforms a mythological story about a traditional Yellow Woman who has little control over her own life into one about a Yellow Woman who is of interest to us primarily because she is allowed to take control over the events in her own life and to tell, in her own words, about her own actions, feelings and confusions and make it all adapted to modern society. Throughout this story Silko explores
Setting and characters go hand in hand in The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky. With Each new setting there is at least one new character development. A new setting in each part of the story makes for diverse settings and characters. From a train leaving San Antonio to around the corner in a small town in Texas, a drunken gunslinger to negro waiters, this story has it all.
In "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist symbolizes the effect of the oppression of women in society in the Nineteenth Century. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the author reveals the narrator is torn between hate and love, but emotion is difficult to determine. The effects are produced by the use of complex themes used in the story, which assisted her oppression and reflected on her self-expression.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane, a deep, twisted play by Martin McDonagh, is a symbolic work of art. The symbols within this play, powerful as they may be, do not jump out at the reader. They are instead embedded into the simplest objects and the relationship of the main characters. Martin McDonagh portrays his symbols with such an ironic eloquence; the dark, powerful symbols are inextricably linked in such a beautiful way, that once the reader makes the connections, the entire aura of the play changes. From symbols as simple as hot oil and a rocking chair to the mother-daughter relationship of Mag and Maureen, the reader learns more and more about Ireland during its time of troubles.
In the short story “Yellow Woman”, Leslie Marmon Silko uses characterization and symbolism to address personal and cultural identity.
This shines light upon her Native American roots and how it can be an inspiration for her Century Quilt, each square representing her family’s racial diversity and mixed roots. It is quite difficult to learn of all the harsh animosity they were enduring, such as Meema and her yellow sisters whose “grandfather’s white family nodding at them when they met” (24-27). The hostility is clear as the white relatives only register their presence; no “hello” or warm embrace as if they didn’t acknowledge them as true family. However, with descriptive imagery, the speaker’s sense of pride for having the best of both worlds is still present as she understands Meema’s past experiences and embraces her family’s complexity wholeheartedly; animosity and all.
Trapped in the upstairs of an old mansion with barred windows and disturbing yellow colored wallpaper, the main character is ordered by her husband, a physician, to stay in bed and isolate her mind from any outside wandering thoughts. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, describes the digression of the narrator’s mental state as she suffers from a form of depression. As the story progresses, the hatred she gains for the wallpaper amplifies and her thoughts begin to alter her perception of the room around her. The wallpaper serves as a symbol that mimics the narrator’s trapped and suffering mental state while she slips away from sanity reinforcing the argument that something as simple as wallpaper can completely