I have never really taken time to consider the many different aspects that play into what makes an author successful or sets them apart. Seeing writing styles and content differ in the aspect of gender is not hard, women will touch on issues that men have no idea about, and give us a first hand view of some of the struggles they face as women. When you look at female authors, their different cultural backgrounds also play into their writing style, and the impact it has on the reader as well. Being a successful women writer is tough enough, when you add in the fact that many of them are of a racial minority, things become even tougher. It is as if they are fighting a double battle, first to succeed as a women writer and then as a minority as well.
Maya Angelou is an African American female author. Angelou is recognized as a great writer, not only by women, but by African Americans as well. There is a difference in her writings when compared to other female authors. She is able to touch on things that other woman have no idea about, and some of this is a result of her being African American, as well as being a women. Not only do her writings focus on feminism, and what it is like to be female, but also they focus on what it is like to be an African American female. I believe that both the diversity of culture as well as the struggle these minority women writers face have a lot to do with setting their work apart from others. It plays a large role in not only who they are as women but, in the content of their work as well. They have a tough road to travel to reach success; that toughness comes through in their work and adds something far more than other authors have to offer.
"If there is a single distinguishing feature of the literature of a black women and this accounts for their lack of recognition it is this: their literature is about black women; it takes the trouble to record the thoughts, words, feelings, and deeds. It makes the reality of being black in America different than most men paint it" (Gates 35). In the African American experience, the autobiography seems to represent a clear and urgent manner. Angelou has several reasons why she believes that African American writers have something more to offer their readers. First, African Americans seem to have a desire to control their own lives. " The most important thing about black people in the US is that they don't control anything except their own persons. So that everything that black people think and do has to be understood as very personal" (Gates 282).
Angelou's book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the story of what it means to grow up black and female in the American South during the second quarter of the century. That statement shows us that it is one thing to grow up female, but it is something completely different to grow up female and black. In the book Angelou is a young girl abandoned by her mother, and raised by her grandmother. She is bounced around from mother to father to grandmother throughout her life. As if that was not traumatic enough, Angelou also writes about being raped at a very young age and the impact that had on her life. One of the most poignant moments in the book comes as Angelou describes her graduation from Lafayette training school. To begin with, the speaker spoke to the audience in a very racist manner, and Angelou realizes how terrible it is to have so little control over her life. "It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense" (Gates 288). Angelou believes that for her the same power, energy and honesty that characterized our examinations of our relationship with the oppressor class is now turned inward to examine some of the obstacles that have affected our personal development and our social liberation. It is this internal probing that characterizes this work and marks the writing of the contemporary Afro-American woman writer (Gates 288).
Another instance that Angelou shared in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, deals with her struggle to find equal opportunity in the working world. At that point in time, they did not allow colored people work on the streetcars. However she would no take now for an answer and pursued the job anyway. "I WOULD HAVE THE JOB. I WOULD BE A CONDUCTTORETTE AND SLING A FULL MONEY EXCHANGE FROM MY BELT. I WOULD" (Angelou 227). She goes on to get the job and be the first black women conductor on the San Francisco Trolley".
There is a common thread running through all her work, a theme derived from the lessons of her life and the lives of the black women for whom she speaks. For black women the sickness of racism is doubly hard, not only because they must bear up under conflicting internal impulses. But also because they must shoulder it alone" (Elliot 7). Angelou is able to write about racism in ways that most women will never even understand it. Most women will never have to experience what she does, and it is for that reason that her writing becomes so important. A great deal of her work is shared in the autobiographical form and it comes to the reader right from what she has experienced and gone through. " The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance" (Angelou 231).
Amy Tan is a writer that not only gives us a deeper look at the role of feminism in literature, but also adds a deeper meaning by writing from her Asian background. Her focus shows us how tough it can be for a women growing up in American culture with parents who desire her to hold on to her roots. To achieve success, she is required to be something but to hold on to her culture requires something different. She shows us exactly that in her book The Joy Luck Club. Although the book is fiction, much of it is based on her own life experiences of how she has struggled to fit into American culture and still hold on to your own heritage. Her life has been full of struggles, her parents wanted big things for her and yet she wanted the freedom to forge her own path, something that is not readily excepted in her culture. There is a deep struggle that goes on to find a middle ground between still holding true to your culture and being your own person as well. Tan is able to write with a feeling of American culture and with Chinese tradition. "She blends past and present in a collision of stories and voices and personalities, filtered through a point of view of someone who lives between worlds. She inhabits that border country known only to those whose minds and sensibilities cultures clash and battle for dominance" (Huntley 19).
The Joy Luck Club shows us a lot of things about how hard it is to maintain the Chinese culture while adapting to American living as well. The book opens with the story of Jing-Mei Woo, She is the daughter of Suyann Woo who has just passed away and she has been asked to take her mother place at the Joy Luck Club. She fears that since she spent her life trying to fit in with American culture and pushing her Chinese culture away, she cannot take her mothers place. Her fear increased when she discovers she has two sisters and it is her place to tell them of their mother. "What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don't know anything. She was my mother" (Tan 31).
The book also shows us the battle that women often face when they strive for equality with men. The life of Lena St. Clair shows us just that. Lena is married to Harold who, like her is an architect. She talks about how she fueled him with the ideas that made him successful, yet now she works for him. She strives for independence however, and therefore they split the costs of shared items in the home equally between them. "So really were equals, except that Harold makes about seven times more than what I make. He knows this, too, because a he signs my monthly check, and then I deposit it into my separate checking account" (Tan 173). I find it very interesting that much of what Tan used to write the book comes from her own personal experiences about life.
Asian American literature shares with other literature a theme of concerns, such as love, acceptance, and a desire for personal freedom and a struggle against oppression and injustice. Like African Americans writing, Asian American literature is shaped by racism, both overt and disguised, and it corollaries prejudice and discrimination. For most Asian American writers, the Old Country and its culture are neither ancient or buried history. The immigrant experience looms large and consumes a large part of their writing (Huntley 20). Amy Tan shares a number of common concerns and themes with other Asian American writers. She writes about the identity of the hyphenated American, about the culture differences between the immigrant parents and their American-born children (23). Tan raises questions about the relationship between ethnicity, gender and identity. She writes about the many facets of biculturism, cultural dislocation, and the problems that arise when you try to integrate two cultures (30). Tan explores, through her fiction, the knotty issues of ethnic identity, and more specifically, the paradoxical nature of ethnic American identity" (35).
The more I look at how literature has been impacted by feminism, the more I see how the many different backgrounds of these women have played a vital road in being recognized. Not only do their experiences in life affect their writing, but also the tough path they have had to get to success at all impacts their writing. That is the real theme here. I do not think you can look at the issue of feminism in literature without taking into account the writers who produce this literature. It is one thing to look at how men have shaped literature and see the wide diversity in their backgrounds, but it is something completely different to look at women. Women not only had to fight to be recognized but many of them also had to face the obstacles of being a minority in the area of race as well. As stated before it has been a double battle for many of them and the literature they have produced, because of that, is something that every member of society can grow from.
Looking at both Angelou and Tan gives us an opportunity to consider two different women with two completely different backgrounds, and yet they both faced enormous struggles to reach where they are today. Angelou faced a childhood and adult life filled with pain and all types of emotional instability, while Tan faced a struggle to find a place in which she could hold on to her culture and also feel a part of American culture. People are a make-up of the culture they represent. Whether you choose it or not, you are identified by your race and it sets you apart in society. Therefore you really cannot get away from it, and ultimately, for that reason these writers have no choice but to write from the perspective that they know best – their own. However this gives others a chance, while reading their work. to view the world from their eyes just for a moment. That seems to be the beauty of literature, it gives the author a chance to express and the reader a chance to have a glimpse just for a moment of what it is like to see the world from someone else's view.
Most of the struggles and pain that these women authors write about and draw from would not exist if they were not of a different race. Each race faces different issues and each person deals with them differently, that is what makes literature so great. Without this wide range of diversity that these women bring to literature, something would be lacking for sure.
Work Cited
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Bantam, 1970.
Elliot, Jeffery. Conversations With Maya Angelou. Mississippi: University Press, 1989.
Gates, Louis Henry. eds. Reading Black, Reading Feminist. New York: Penguin Group, 1990.
Huntley, E.D. Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989.