struggle differently.

she wants the difference to be embraced.

please the patriarchy, and maybe, just maybe, be of enough merit to hover somewhere near the highest rank’s spot on the social pyramid

, it is easier, “[t]o believe the dangerous fantasy that if you are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right men, then you will be allowed to coexist with patriarchy in relative peace…” (Rivkin & Ryan 857)

pretense

intention that such a declaration

real world and literature

What are women?

Firstly, she is created from Adam

, because Lilith is aware of her value she is worth less in the eyes of both Adam and God, who are male

I would pull a Lilith

Because she considered herself his equal

lesser-known first woman: Lilith

to do more than accept the compliment

held a grudge against her mother for something she was unaware of

she feels the need to do more than her mother did

repressed memories about their mother, despite its initial happy connotation.

scent of her mother in her sister’s apartment.

husband’s attempted rape of her daughter

Volver—which is Spanish for the verb “to return”

he main antagonist of the novel seems to be the privileged white people she comes in contact with

Following this, her mistress dies, and she is put into the care of the novel’s antagonist, Dr. Flint. Although she is owned by his daughter, he pursues her vehemently, and causes her to seek out an affair with a white neighbor, Mr. Sands, in the attempt to flee. She has two children with him, Benny and Ellen.

Armed with only her will to survive,

To being pursued by a sadistic slave owner, to hiding in an attic for seven years, to being bought and sold like cattle, Jacobs, under the pseudonym of Linda Brent, possesses an unbreakable spirit, as she describes her hardships in the pursuit of freedom.

in the year 1861

didn’t comprehend her circumstances until the age of six

We see something that history books can never amount to; her complete storyline allows us to feel emotionally connected to her as a character

published in 1861, just as the Civil War was getting underway,

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl should fully count as an American novel.

As she was also so white as not to be known as of colored lineage, without a critical survey, and her child was white also, it was much easier for her to pass on unsuspected.

Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty.

paroxysm

I’ll be free, or I’ll die!”

she turned pale and gasped for breath.

“I always thought that I must obey my master and mistress, or I couldn’t be a Christian.”

“My master! and who made him my master? That’s what I think of—what right has he to me? I’m a man as much as he is. I’m a better man than he is.

burst into tears.

It’s a free country, sir; the man’s mine, and I do what I please with him,—that’s it!”

his master began to feel an uneasy consciousness of inferiority

as if it was white folks, that’s brought up in the way of ‘spectin’ to keep their children and wives

Wilberforce

Clear waste, sir, of a thousand dollars

These critters ain’t like white folks, you know; they gets over things,

quadroon

throwing him a quarter of an orange.

“Hulloa, Jim Crow!” said Mr. Shelby, whistling, and snapping a bunch of raisins towards him, “pick that up, now!”

hooplah

A work shouldn’t be considered worthy of canonization in American Literature because of its ambiguity or complexity, but for the magnitude of impact that it made on America as a whole.

a beach-read

sheer impact on a society

arguably more important than them to the American story.

support

Let that sink in, there’s a kind of selfishness to it

We get inklings of this sense of unease.

I’m going to be honest, I don’t really understand this blog post

The colonial encounter is romanticized

story meant for European or colonialist eyes.

white woman was hurt by a group of non-white people

she—and society as a whole—deemed the context of her captivity unimportant

By elevating tragic, white-authored colonial encounters, the image of indigenous savagery is maintained and with it spreads the toxicity of imperialism and systemic racism

One hour I have been in health, and wealthy, wanting nothing. But the next hour in sickness and wounds, and death, having nothing but sorrow and affliction.

“I watered my Couch with my tears”

our son Joseph was come in to Major Waldron’s, and another with him, which was my sister’s son

They mourned (with their black faces) for their own losses, yet triumphed and rejoiced in their inhumane, and many times devilish cruelty to the English. They would boast much of their victories; saying that in two hours time they had destroyed such a captain and his company at such a place; and boast how many towns they had destroyed, and then scoff, and say they had done them a good turn to send them to Heaven so soon

I can but stand in admiration to see the wonderful power of God in providing for such a vast number of our enemies in the wilderness, where there was nothing to be seen, but from hand to mouth.

preserving the heathen

Then I took it of the child

but I found no comfort here neither

But the Lord upheld my Spirit,

fortnight

and lie somewhere else

preserving us

invited my master and mistress to dinner

me to make a shirt for his boy, which I did, for which he gave me a shilling

my son Joseph unexpectedly came to me

passed this river

my wound

stoutest men

oaken leaves

I then remembered how careless I had been of God’s holy time; how many Sabbaths I had lost and misspent, and how evilly I had walked in God’s sight; which lay so close unto my spirit, that it was easy for me to see how righteous it was with God to cut off the thread of my life and cast me out of His presence forever.

viz.

But the Lord renewed my strength still

“What, will you love English men still?”

we

Glooskap

Since that time white men have come to America.

stone

water and fly up to the sky

point this stick at it.”

The beaver had a stick in his mouth; he gave it to her, and said

stranger

Once there came to her a strange boy; he called her mother.

House Made of Dawn is thus firmly rooted in a generalized "Indian" context, but it translates and interprets that experience for a non-Native audience. Abel is not "every Indian"-or maybe even "anylndian."

forty-thousand-year history of Native people on this continent

By far the greatest volume of fiction pertaining to Native Americans has been written about them by non-Natives.

Told in the right context by the appropriate teller and to a cued audience, this little story has great impact.

explorers' first reaction was one of irrational denial.