American Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

American Culture - Essay Example Gloria Anzaldua defines the â€Å"mestiza consciousness† as the transition from â€Å"convergent† to â€Å"divergent thinking† (16). It means that the Chicana should stop accommodating and integrating the dominating languages and sets of thinking of the white people, which is a â€Å"converging process,† and instead, they should express themselves according to their own language/s and experiences, which concerns divergent thinking and behavior. Language is a specific indicator of the â€Å"mestiza consciousness,† because Anzaldua asserts that it is unnatural for Hispanics to be always interpreting or translating themselves in English, when they would rather take pride in speaking, and hence, legitimizing, their wide range of languages, including Chicano-Texas Spanish, Spanglish, and other forms of combined or pure Hispanic languages (9). Anzaldua is concerned that the law has not properly accepted these languages as legitimate, with the constant use of English in laws and social institutions. She mentions the difference between natural and unnatural geographic borders that impact Mexicans’ cultural development. The ocean acknowledges natural borders, while the U.S. has erected unnatural borders to keep out illegal immigrants. Unnatural borders intend to keep out the â€Å"other† race, which is an effort to maintain policing racial relations. Furthermore, as American citizens, who are supposed to be equal with the whites, Anzaldua emphasizes the importance of not allowing the state to dictate the Chicana’s linguistic and individuality development. Somerville and Discussions of Sexuality and Race Siobhan B. Somerville examines sexuality and race in light of the history of sexology in the United States and the rise of eugenicist and antimiscegenation attitudes and legislation in the essay, â€Å"Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body.† As the nineteenth century ended, sexologists wa nted to define and examine sexuality using medical discourse, instead of legalistic terms, which was the practice during that time (18). Somerville emphasizes that from here, the discourse on scientific racism developed, where the â€Å"homosexual† body is invented based on both gender and racial lines. These studies, for instance, highlighted the biological, sexual differences between white and black women, where the latter were separated from the former through their â€Å"remarkable development of the labia minora† (26). This emphasis demonstrated how racial differences lead to â€Å"peculiar† sexual boundaries and that this peculiarity also affected attitudes toward the colored races (Somerville 26). During this time, eugenicist and antimiscegenation attitudes also abounded. Eugenics lamented about the rise of mixed races (i.e. mulattos) and immigration, because it diluted the white stock. Eugenics promoted â€Å"selective reproduction† (30) to purify the white race once more. Anti-miscegenation laws were then enforced levels of racial segregation at marriage and intimate relationship levels. Plessy v. Fergusson, for instance, is based on racial discrimination that focuses on sexuality, because it imposes racial purity through physical segregation of the races (Somerville 37). Hence, it can be seen that the state used the law to impose racial discrimination based on primitive assumptions about race’s impact on sexuality and human behavior. Alexander: Heteropatriarchy, Heteronormativity,

An Artists review Essay -- essays research papers

Nusrat Ahmad: Pioneer of Pakistan   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   As I walked up to the future interior designer of the Ahmad family, I wondered the extent to which Nusrat Ahmad had taken her designing career. I saw Nusrat sitting on the lush green sofa in the corner of her family room, thinking that one day she would be strategically placing sofas in other people’s houses. Belonging to a Pakistani family, I wanted to question the extent of approval she received from her family and relatives and inquire about other South Asians artists in today’s community.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Just like any other Pakistani family, Nusrat’s parents always wanted their daughter to be a doctor. As she struggled through high school with her science classes in order to please her parents, she started drawing as a hobby. Sitting bored in her Biology class, she developed a habit of drawing pictures of different organs of the human body in her notebook. She had no interest in the field and she bluntly told me that â€Å"I enjoyed drawing more than physics or biology.† (Nusrat) Her parents were unaware of her art, which started to show up at her school’s art exhibitions. Even until the end of her high school career, she did not tell her parents that she was serious about her art and wanted to pursue it, and only when she started college did she tell them that she had an avid interest in that field. They disregarded the idea, thinking of it as a childish interest and still forced her into pursuing a medical career. After the end of her first year in college, she started taking an afternoon art class with a famous abstract artist in Pakistan, Mansoor Elahi, who was well known for his murals in The Parliament, the President’s house. Even though her parents did not want her studying art, they allowed her to take that class due to her incessant nagging. Nusrat studied abstract art with him for about a year and a half, â€Å"encouraged by Mr. Elahi† (Nusrat) and most of her paintings were a reflection of his ideas. These paintings were exhibited at local art exhibitions on and off. Eventually, he told her that her paintings could be sold for about three thousand dollars a piece.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  At the end of her particular 2 year college career, her peers granted her the title of â€Å"Nusrat daVinci,† a tradition where the juniors award a title of how an individual has been throu... ...estion as to why there are not that many Asian Americans represented in American literature is one that Nusrat could ask the same of South Asians.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When I asked Nusrat about the reason behind the scarcity of Pakistanis enrolled in art school, she agreed with Amy Tan’s comment about being â€Å"rebellious in nature and enjoy[ing] the challenge of disproving assumptions†(Tan, 264) Being brought up in Pakistan has given Nusrat an insight as to why there are so many restrictions on Pakistani children in their pursuit of art. The fact that being rebellious in nature has led both these artists to rise up and do what they desired is very stereotypical of artists, yet it has proven to be beneficial for both Tan and Nusrat.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Nusrat’s defiant nature has enabled her to explore horizons that are not normally delved into by Pakistani women. She is one of the first female artists from Pakistan who has dared to rise up and portray her artistic skills to the world. As I got up to leave the room where we sat for the interview, I could not help but wonder if this future interior designer and architect would be willing to design my future home.

Why Sherlock Holmes Is Just as Original as C. Auguste Dupin

Why Sherlock Holmes is Just as Original as C. Auguste Dupin After reading two famous amateur detective stories by Edgar Allan Poe and two by Arthur Conan Doyle, I found myself questioning the originality of Doyle's stories as compared to Poe's stories. The stories in question are â€Å"The Purloined Letter† and â€Å"Murders in the Rue Morgue† by Poe and â€Å"The Adventure of the Speckled Band† and â€Å"A Scandal in Bohemia† by Doyle. All four of these stories had very exciting story lines and had very interesting mysterious aspects . Since the Poe stories of C.Auguste Dupin were written well before Doyle's stories of Sherlock Holmes, this leads to the question of whether or not Doyle's stories are genuinely original or if much of his stories ideas were copied from Poe. I believe that Doyle's detective stories are just as creative and original as Poe's detective stories. One of the biggest and probably most obvious similarities between the stories is tha t of the plots. In â€Å"The Purloined Letter†, Dupin is contacted by the prefect to help the police retrieve a letter that had been stolen.This letter was of great importance to a certain person and if this letter was released to the public it would reveal things that could ruin that person's reputation. The prefect knows Minister D- stole the letter. He also knows that the letter must to be very close the minister who stole it because the ability to produce the letter when needed is just as important to the minister as actually having it. The police have searched the minister's hotel room and were not able to find the letter.Dupin then goes to the minister's hotel room and easily retrieves the letter because he knows that the minister would hide it in plain sight, since he knew the police would come looking for it. Many of these aspects of Poe's story are repeated in Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia†. In â€Å"A Scandal in Bohemia† Holmes is confronted by an import ant king to retrieve a letter and a photo of him with his ex lover that proves their relationship. If the photo was released it could hurt his reputation immensely. The king has tried many things to retrieve the letter but was unsuccessful.Holmes then goes to the woman's house and tricks her into revealing the location of the letter by faking a fire thinking that the photo would be the first thing she would grab. Because of these similarities between the two stories by Poe and Doyle it appears that Doyle had copied his ideas from Poe who had written his story years earlier. In â€Å"Murders in the Rue Morgue†, Dupin goes to investigate a murder scene. At this scene there are many clues that would lead one to think it was a human that committed the murder.However, it was difficult to come up with a motive for that person because bags of money were still on the floor and the women that were murdered hardly ever made contact with others which makes it difficult to believe that t here is someone who would want to cause them harm. Dupin goes on to find some more clues that lead him to believe it wasn't a human that committed the crime but a sailors Ourang-Outang. Dupin then gets the sailor to come to his house and gets him to admit that it was his animal that committed the murder.Again these scenarios in Poe's story are very similar to those in Doyle's story â€Å"The Adventure of the Speckled Band†. In â€Å"The Adventure of the Speckled Band†, Holmes is consulted about a very suspicious case. A woman was killed a few years ago and before she died she had said it was the speckled band that killed her. Holmes goes to the house where she was killed to investigate. At first Holmes believes the speckled band was a group of gipsies that would hang out on their property, but after further investigating he had realized it was not gipsies but a speckled snake that the girl's father kept inside the house.Another huge similarity between the two stories t hat would imply Doyle had copied Poe's ideas is the narrator of the story. In â€Å"Murders in the Rue Morgue† and â€Å"A Scandal in Bohemia† the reader is given a lot of information by the narrator about the main character. In both stories the narrator is a close friend who lives with the detective. Also the narrator always tells the reader everything that is going on and he is also a fairly smart person but not as smart as the main character. Holmes and Dupin also have very similar detective methods.Both characters are capable of seeing things that normal people are not. They will put themselves in the suspects shoes and think as they would to discover more clues. When they discover clues they will come up with a hypothesis and then investigate it until it is proven true or more clues are revealed to them causing them to come up with a new hypothesis. They also will never tell the narrator what they are thinking or ask him for advice. They do all of their sleuthing on their own and reveal it to the narrator once they have solved the case.In both â€Å"Murders in the Rue Morgue† and â€Å"The Adventure of the Speckled Band† the detectives inform their partner what they have been thinking all along and how they solved the mystery. Even though there are all these similarities between the Dupin and Holmes stories there are also many differences that give each story their own originality. For example, â€Å"A Scandal in Bohemia† is extremely similar to â€Å"The Purloined Letter† however, at the end Dupin is successful in his endeavour whereas Holmes is not.The ending of a story is always the most important and such a drastic difference between the two stories certainly provides Doyle with a little more originality. In â€Å"Murders in the Rue Morgue† which is very similar to â€Å"The Adventure of the Speckled Band†, Dupin comes up with his hypothesis and he is correct. In â€Å"The Adventure of the Speck led Band† Holmes comes up with his hypothesis but soon realizes that he was incorrect and is forced to come up with a new hypothesis. Dupin gives off the impression that he is the perfect detective that never makes mistakes and Holmes actually makes a mistake.This huge difference between the stories makes Doyle's story very original and not so much of a copy of Poe's story. One noticeably large difference between the Dupin and Holmes stories is that of the background story of the mystery or information as to why the crime happened. In the Dupin stories the plot jumps right to the events that happened and what Dupin does to solve it. For example in â€Å"Murders in the Rue Morgue† Dupin reads about the murder in the paper and then goes to solve it. There is no background information given on the people involved in the murder.In the Holmes stories the reader is given significant amounts of background information to the characters involved in the mystery. For example in â €Å"The Adventure of the Speckled Band† the reader is given much information on the background of the victims in the murder. Being given this information the reader understands more how the victim is feeling and can become more involved in the story. This effect on the reader is something that makes the Doyle stories very original and not an exact copy of Poe's stories.The biggest difference between Dupin and Holmes would have to be their personality. Dupin is described as a loner that sits at home and spends his time thinking whereas Holmes is a very well known person to other people and is also addicted to cocaine. Dupin can be seen as a very serious person where Holmes is more of a quirky and adventurous person. This difference between Holmes and Dupin gives Holmes a much more creative and interesting character than Dupin, implying that Doyle did not rip off Poe's detective character when he was making his own.All of the similarities between Doyle's stories and Poe's stori es would lead one to believe that Sherlock Holmes was just a rip off of Dupin. Since Poe was the first author to write about a detective it seems obvious that other authors would take ideas from his stories just as Doyle did. There was most likely something that Poe had read or experienced that gave him his ideas for Dupin so it is only natural for writers to get their ideas or concepts from other places.However, because of all the original ideas and differences to the Holmes stories I believe that Doyle's detective stories are just as creative as Poe's stories. It is the main ideas of the story such as the outcome or the personality of the main character that are different which causes the stories to actually be much different. For this reason I believe that the Holmes stories are genuinely original and that Arthur Conan Doyle made significant contributions to the detective story.

Archetypes In The Lottery - 1164 Words

In various stories, the authors often use literary devices to express feeling and thought and to distinguish their stories from others. At times, similar patterns can be found once critically examined instead of simply being read. In two stories, The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho and â€Å"The Lottery† by Shirley Jackson, the main idea is the sacrifice of one person in a village and how other villagers are affected by it. In The Devil and Miss Prym, barmaid Chantal Prym meets â€Å"stranger† Carlos when he visits the village searching for answers. In â€Å"The Lottery†, the villagers have an annual drawing to rid of one of their own as tradition. While comparing and contrasting both stories, one can begin to see apparent types of conflict,†¦show more content†¦Thus, it was Chantal and Berta against society. In â€Å"The Lottery†, the families just went along with the tradition of drawing a piece of paper from a box and then stoning who ever drew the slip with the black spot. It was not exactly clear as to why the families kept the tradition because they did not seem to care for how it was carried out as stated, â€Å"there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory[] tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this p[a]rt of the ritual had been allowed to lapse. There had been, also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person who came up to draw from the box, but this also had changed with time . . . ,† (Jackson 2). The families just went along with this and had no intent to change it. Perhaps individually they did not believe it was fair, but they never did anything because that was how their society was. These two patterns of conflict helped shape the effect of the stories. A major archetype that was apparent in both stories was the mentioned idea of Good versus Evil. The symbol was represented by the Chantal’s and Carlos’sShow MoreRelatedAnalysis OfThe Devil And Miss Prym And The Lottery1027 Words   |  5 PagesDevil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho and â€Å"The Lottery† by Shirley Jackson are stories that talk about the sacrifice of one person in a village and how other villagers play a part in it. In The Devil and Miss Prym, barmaid Chantal Prym meets â€Å"stranger† Carlos when he visits the village looking for answers. In â€Å"The Lottery†, the villagers have an annual drawing to get rid of one of their own as tradition. Both stories have apparent types of conflict, archetypes, a certain philosophy. Coelho had two differentRead MoreThe Devil And Miss Prym By Paulo Coehlo And The Short Story The Lottery1426 Words   |  6 Pagesthe words â€Å"good† and â€Å"bad† in daily speech. Whether it is to describe how one is feeling or the nature of a decision made, the practice of binary labeling becomes a habit. In the novel The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coehlo and the short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, the villagers must choose between what they perceive as good and what is not. The issue presented in both pieces of literature is whether the good of the many is worth the sacrifice of one individual, bringing to light the questionRead MoreSummary Of The Devil And Miss Prym And Shirley Jacksons The Lottery1182 Words   |  5 PagesPaulo Coelho, writer of The Devil and Miss Prym and Shirley Jackson, writer of â€Å"The Lottery†, both reiterate the idea that a democratic government can be very dangerous if wrong propositions are voted upon by a public. L ikewise in both stories, wrong decisions are made by society, and bring conflict and chaos to a village. People are put in a life or death scenario, and little or nothing could be done because society chose to believe that doing wrong was justified morally. In The Devil andRead MoreResearch Paper on Shirley Jacksons â€Å"The Lottery†1141 Words   |  5 PagesShirley Jacksons â€Å"The Lottery† is a short story about the annual gathering of the villagers to conduct an ancient ritual. The ritual ends in the stoning of one of the residents of this small village. This murder functions under the guise of a sacrament that, at one time, served the purpose of ensuring a bountiful harvest. This original meaning, however, is lost over the years and generations of villagers. The loss of meaning has changed the nature and overall purpose of the lottery. This ritual isRead MoreLottery Essay Symbolism1249 Words   |  5 Pagesbelief. Symbolism can be used to represent an action, an idea or a person’s archetype as well. The term symbolism is the practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing in things with a symbolic meaning or character (â€Å"Symbolism†). Examples of symbolism are: an eagle repre senting freedom, a dove representing peace, and the color green can symbolize the feeling of envy. The following pieces of literature, â€Å"The Lottery† by Shirley Jackson, â€Å"We Wear the Mask† by Paul Laurence, â€Å"Richard Cory†Read MoreCriticism in the Short Story The Lottery1660 Words   |  7 Pagesï » ¿ Criticism in The Lottery This paper will examine the short story, The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, with the aids of lenses such as cultural criticism and feminist criticism. The story was written and published just as the twentieth century reached its middle point. The setting of the story takes place in small town America. The success of the story comes from Jacksons applied knowledge of stereotypes of things such as America, small town America, families, and women. Jackson plays on culturalRead MoreThe Lottery by Shirley Jackson Essay1712 Words   |  7 Pagesinfluential to most, are also controversial to some. Her most controversial story, published in 1948 in The New Yorker, is The Lottery. The purpose for the writing of the story varies depending upon the reader, but some might say that it expresses Shirley Jacksons abysmal opinion of her fellow creatures (Coulthard 228). Whatever the purpose may be, The Lottery remains one of the most famous stories to date. Despite the controversy, readers also n otice the symbols and underlying themesRead More Anne Sexton1732 Words   |  7 Pagesfollows this pattern. First, the speaker tells four stories: one of a plumber who wins the lottery, one of a nursemaid who marries her boss’s son, a milkman who makes a fortune in real estate, and a charwoman who becomes rich after a bus she was on crashes, and she collects on insurance. The progression of these stories themselves lay cynicism into the form of the poem. The speaker starts with a story about a lottery winner, which is something lucky and could be taken as the universe helping a man strugglingRead MoreSatire/Irony in ‘the Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson2034 Words   |  9 PagesSatire/Irony in ‘The Lottery’: The Lucky Ticket The use of Satire/Irony within literature establishes situations where the unlikelihood of the occurrence of an event will happen. Jackson’s manipulation of his story, The Lottery, provides an unexpected twist to what one may seem to be a normal subject. Northrop Frye’s The Singing School, suggests that all stories are told in either one of four ways: Comedy, Romance, Tragedy or Satire/Irony (Frye 18). The use of Irony and its conventional associationsRead MoreLuisaldo Mendiola. Professor Price. Engl 1302 Nt6. Research2132 Words   |  9 PagesLuisaldo Mendiola Professor Price ENGL 1302 NT6 Research Essay April 21, 2017 Tradition and the Sheep A Critical Analysis of Shirley Jackson’s â€Å"The Lottery† Traditions are common part of culture and religion in the world today; almost everyone has a tradition that they follow. The traditions you practice can be new and only just have started with your generation or the generation before yours. The traditions could also have been old, spanning many generations before your generation and your parents’