To help articulate and crystallize my students’ awareness of several aspects of the feminist approach to literature, I have chosen several poems: “Legacies”
by Nikki Giovanni and “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes. In Nikki Giovanni’s poems, we see the struggle of a child as she is torn between doing what is expected of her and what she wants to do. In “Legacies,”
a grandmother is proud of her homemade rolls and wants to teach her granddaughter how to make them. After all, this is the expected “role” of a woman -- one who nurtures, one who bakes for her family. Is this a denigrating image of womanhood? In “Mother to Son,” we see the struggle of a mother climbing life’s staircase, which is represented as dark, dangerous, and frightening. In the poem, the speaker explains that
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“Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
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It’s had tacks in it,
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and splinters,
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and boards torn up,
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And places with no carpet on the floor-
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Bare.
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But I’se been a-climbin’ on …”
These two examples will direct our attention to important discussions of the role of women within a family or community and whether women are relegated to inferior positions within a male dominated world. I would also explore the concept of constructed language, language intended to be recognized as “women talk” within a story structure. Is the voice of a woman different from that of a man? Where and how does gender identity show up? Is it in ideas, attitudes, cadence, or language? In the selected examples above, would my students be able to identify the feminine voice speaking and, if so, how? What happens to one of the most linguistically-marked concepts of narrative theory, voice, when gender changes? These are some issues I hope to raise within their consciousness. What happens if we have dissonant opinions on this? Is it OK that males have one way of looking at text and females another?