In “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear,” Toni Morrison states, “I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.” Remaining optimistic in the face of adversity is essential for self-growth. Never give in to the world’s malevolence or your own. Giving in would be to pity yourself. I always tell myself never to feel self-pity because it limits one’s progress. It adds salt to the wound. It is vital to keep going, no matter the circumstances. Self-pity is a cousin of depression. It does no good, only evil, because it lingers. Self-pity can only exist if we create it. Thus, people must dismantle self-pity and any system that does more harm than good. Reflecting is different from ruminating. Art is a way of reflecting on your emotions. I enjoy art created in times of despair because I understand the artist’s feeling of isolation. Sharing feelings of isolation makes one feel less isolated. I feel their agony since their pain helps alleviate my pain. It is a shared pain, and it brings people together. Your reflection of the world shapes how you reflect yourself. Cynicism is only funny until one starts having low self-esteem. At that point, why risk hurting yourself for a laugh. One’s mental health is more important than laughter.

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie Mcmillan Cottom is a book with a collection of several different essays regarding how American culture treats black women. She writes about several personal  experiences in the novel such as  the loss of a child, sexual abuse, body image, and beauty politics. “Being too much of one thing and not enough of another had been a recurring theme in my life. I was, like many young women, expected to be small so that boys could expand and white girls could shine. When I would not shrink, people made sure that I knew I had erred.” This quote really opened my eyes to how hard it is for younger black woman having to meet certain expectations and having to shine brighter than others. Being a hispanic man I faced my own set of challenges but never as bad as the challenges that woman face let alone those of color. It is very difficult being a black woman in our society because you have to be “better” than those around you in order to be taken seriously. When you do shine brighter than those around you then you are viewed in a different light but sometimes you are still viewed in a bad light.

In Angela Davis’s “Are Prisons Obsolete”, she brings up a good point which is that we use prison facilities as a way to not face our problems in our society. Prisons are meant to help reform criminals back into our society but they do the complete opposite. The majority of these prisoners go back to prison because they can’t properly adjust back into society and most of them only know how to do what got them in prison in the first place. Angela says that ” Prison relieves us of the responsibilities of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.” Fortunately, our government is slowly realizing this and for example, is now slowly removing previous laws on marijuana which will positively impact our prison system. Once marijuana finally becomes federally legal which now is just a matter of when it will, then we will be seeing a lot of people leaving these prisons from marijuana-based charges. This is just the first step to help keep people out of prisons but one of the main roots is within the prison system itself. We have to give prisons opportunities within these prisons to learn several different trades so once they’re out they won’t commit these same crimes and actually try to establish themselves within our society.

In my Americanah presentation, I came across a song that I found to be really beautiful and wanted to share it with you guys. Solange is an American songwriter/singer and this song she created called “Don’t Touch my Hair” resembles the daily struggle that black women go through with their hair regarding racism. A quote from the song that really resembles this is when Solange says

Don’t touch my hair
When it’s the feelings I wear
Don’t touch my soul
When it’s the rhythm I know
Don’t touch my crown
They say the vision I’ve found
Don’t touch what’s there
When it’s the feelings I wear

Black women often are told to “tame” their hair when it’s for a job interview or any important ceremony. This part of the song really shows how beautiful their hair is and that it’s really apart of their own being and it shouldn’t be “tamed” but embraced in our everyday lives. These black woman shouldn’t feel ashamed either to have their hair out naturally because it’s something that that they should embrace themselves as well.

I personally feel like the people who have it the worst at this point in time are Black lesbians since they have to go through so much more than just racism. They have to worry about not only the problems that come with being black such as racism but also misogyny. Females, in general, have it a lot more difficult in our society than men do and it’s for the simple fact that things are still not equal between the different men and female. We still have wage gaps, discrimination in sports, sexism in sports/everyday life, and in some instances men feel above women. Lesbian black females have to go through all of these difficulties but also homophobia and the problems that homophobia brings such as finding jobs. In the Toward a Black Feminist Criticism by Barbara Smith she talks about how black females authors are undervalued and never given the credit that they truly deserved. This all goes to the roots of anti-feminism and the fact that the majority of men especially in the early years of feminism tried to block any forms of success for females.

Writing this post late made it difficult for me to find this certain quote in the novel that really resonated with me but thankfully I managed to find it. The quote states “That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times”. This quote in general really made me think so much of the divide, not only the book but just our society in general between the poor or rich and the racial divide in our country. Most of us are really just trying to survive in our day to day lives and it’s such a terrible thing to even admit. The massive divide between our communities and the police is really scary to think about because we don’t know what will happen in the next couple of years. Especially now with Trump not conceding, it just keeps putting more wood in that fire, and it’s really unfortunate that we had to react the way that we did when George Floyd died but it’s just proof that the people have had enough of this divide.

The Watermelon Woman was a film about a young black lesbian woman named Cheryl Dunye who researches about a 1940 black actress called the Watermelon woman. In the film, Cheryl worked at a rental store with her friend Tamara and Cheryl gains a curiosity about films in the 1930s and ’40s. That’s where she comes across a film called the Plantation Memories that includes a black actress who wasn’t credited but simply put as “The Watermelon Woman”. Cheryl became very interested in this woman and decides to create a documentary about “The Watermelon Woman” in order to find out more about her life. While doing her research Cheryl found out that “The Watermelon Woman” used to sing in clubs in Philly and she also found out about a man named Lee Edwards who’s very informed about black films in order to help her research. Throughout the film, it became crystal clear that she wouldn’t exactly find out who the “Watermelon Woman” was but she discovered that she sees part of herself in the “Watermelon Woman”. Cheryl didn’t find what she was looking for but she did find out that she’s more like the Watermelon Woman than she thought.

I completely forgot to post my presentation for the novel Americanah by Cimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1d76s1N-jTxbEIFC-39VU-2p_rNbWMcoZgoLX1cVWBPI/edit?usp=sharing

In Angela Davis’ Are Prisons Obsolete?, she states, “Because it would be too agonizing to cope with the possibility that anyone, including ourselves, could become a prisoner, we tend to think of the prison as disconnected from our own lives.” (15).Having more privileges results in having a disconnection with prisons. There would not be a disconnection if everyone went to jail. Lawmakers would abolish prisons right away if they were treated like a prisoner for a day. There would be immediate reform because prisons strip away one’s humanity. Even a holding cell can scare people back into a “model citizen.” You have to take off your shoelaces in a holding cell so you don’t commit suicide. Taking off your shoelaces is so annoying. That simple act of removing shoelaces can be enough to prevent you from committing another crime. The fact that enough people have committed suicide in a holding cell proves jails and prisons’ harsh reality. People would rather die than live in prison. They know that life is exponentially more challenging after prison, as well. Parolees have strict curfews, and felons are blacklisted from jobs. A person’s life is out of their control from the moment when they get handcuffed. Lawmakers should abolish the death penalty because if one innocent person gets killed, that is too much. Their death is unjust, inhumane, and preventable. The lack of empathy in creating stricter crime laws shows the divide amongst classes. White people do not have to consider the possibility of imprisonment because they are not under as much scrutiny compared to other races. Those who commit white-collar crimes and those who have misdemeanors are too separate groups of people. Thus, not all crime is the same crime. Wealth prevents crime.

A major theme in Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the acute differentiation between being the American black and the African black. The novel explores themes of hierarchy within African communities in America, “so what if you weren’t “black” in your country? You are in America now,” suggesting that being black in America inherently puts you at the bottom of social hierarchy and once an African person steps onto American land they are initiated into the culture of past and present oppression. Later on in the novel, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie feels like she is intentionally concealing her nature, forcing herself into the acceptable American standard, giving up her culture and hearing a compliment in Ifemulu’s words, “you sound American.” In order to make it in the US society Chimamanda must essentially hide her “blackness”. Black women in America are continuously told to hide their natural hair, adjust their speech, tame their culture so as to not be too ethnic in the workplace. Americanah explores the ways in which American culture degrades women into fighting to not only feel competent but be perceived as such. The novel poses a question, how can young black girls growing up under this regime not grow up to be intrinsically ashamed of their nature? We must celebrate black culture and show young girls that they don’t need to change in accordance to American standards in order to be respected.