English 1301 Section 006
Second Paper
10-16-07
Images of African American Woman
The images of African American women experiences during slavery and after the Emancipation portrayed in Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices is different than how African American women are portrayed in Frederick Douglass's The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass. Both writers give vivid imagery of the lives of African American women. However, Richard Wright's imagery of the Queen Cotton and Mammy marginalize the oppression of African American woman, This is not the case with imageries presented in the writing of Frederick Douglass and Julia Brown in the Slave Narrative. The interpretation in Wright's book shows that women suffer less oppression because of their gender, while Douglass and the poets shown that women suffer the same or more oppression in general during the slavery era and after.
Before one can begin to examine how the authors portrayed the oppression of African Americans women, one must first come to a decision on what "oppression" is exactly.
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass portrait
English: Portrait of Frederick Douglass as a young...According to Webster's Dictionary, oppression is an unjust or excessive exercise of authority or power and also a sense of being weighed down in mind and body. However, in order to fully understand the word, one must explore deeper into the concept. To be oppressed, one is molded, immobilized, and reduced due to the amount of pressure that is exerted upon him/her from forces present. Oppression cannot be mistaken for how a person feels but is rather a concept that includes feelings. Just because one suffers, does not mean she/she is oppressed. Under these circumstances, there is no doubt that the slave owners had oppressed the blacks during the slavery era.
Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices is an emotional essay filled with expressive images of the African-American women experiences. Wright's images of the...