Images of women; building connections across texts

While reading Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman" I felt strong emotion coming from the text. You can tell that this woman had been through things that seem almost unimaginable. Her heart ache and challenges contributed to her believing she was just as strong and deserving of respect as men are. When Truth wrote, " Nobody helps me lifted into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere", this to me was so empowering to hear a woman with no fear or contradictions. She was speaking her beliefs in a time it was almost unheard of for a woman to stand up for herself. I felt this specific passage to be empowering and refreshing.

The next passage I read was Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus". This poem was more difficult for me to understand, but by the end of the poem i really started to feel the woman's pain in the poem. This to me, was a poem about a woman who dealt with immense pain through out her life, and she was so burdened by her pain she felt she could no longer live. When she talks about the "lives" i took it literally and it felt like the woman was talking about suicide. A specific quote that stood out to me was, "Out of the ash, I rise with my red hair, And i eat men like air," this was intriguing to me because the woman felt that after she was gone she would get her revenge of the men who caused her the pain she dealt with during her life.

The last passage I read was Nellie Wong's "When I Was Growing Up". This poem dealt with a woman and her struggles with her own race. The woman was brought up to believe she was different and because of that she always felt she was inferior. When the woman states, "When I was growing up and a white man wanted to take me out, I thought I was special, an exotic gardenia, anxious to fit the stereotype of an oriental chick" I actually understand why she felt like that, because i can definitely relate to feeling like you need to live up to what people think you are on the outside. The fact that she compares herself to a flower makes me think of our class discussion about women and flowers, and how woman were often seen as just beautiful and dainty, and nothing more.