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Diversity in Literature - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The narrator is struggling with the stigma he faces as a Chinese boy, the symbol of the persimmon is used to represent the ways in which his cultural and personal identity can be related to and understood by the people in his life.
      - The mother furthers the connection between the narrator and the fruit as she describes each persimmon as having “a/ sun/ inside, something golden, glowing,/ warm as my face.”
    - - Uses the sonnet structure to explore the nature of calling, with the reveal at the end being that he cannot understand why "to make a poet black, and bid him sing!"
      - While family is not explicitly disscussed, the God character takes on a similar role as a source of stability and knowledge through which the narrator can understand their position.
      - Unlike the other works in this tree, Cullen is not relying on the traditions or identity of a specific culture or group, rather he is pulling on the common experience of living: "I doubt not God is good, well meaning, kind, / And did He stoop to quibble could tell why / The little buried mole continues blind, / Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, /"
    - - This essay autobiographically explores how "a body always returns to the place that shaped it". Something Osman struggles with is that to "Go or stay, either way something is lost", but also that in the moment her past self gets lost, it is her father who comes to find her.
      - "When I visit Somaliland for the first time, I stay long enough to imagine I will be there forever. Friends from Portland call me and ask me when I will return home. Their questions jar me. As I pack to leave, my grandmother asks me to stay with her. I will return soon. We are always making promises we cannot keep."
      - "'Follow me,' he says, and I do. I follow him all the way home." this excerpt comes from a narrative portion of the essay, SHOWING instead of ANALYZING how the family and father play an important role in Osman's connection to her home and identity.
  - - - The characters of Xiomara and Xavier are twins in all respects, except that Xiomara is a known and actively punished sexual deviant while Xavier is still closeted
      - The text explores the twin's relationship with each other as victims of the same abuser, but also examines how their mother's abuse forms and shapes them.
      - Xiomara's own complex feelings about her brother's queerness are also explored, as she wants to protect him but she also lacks understanding on some levels (the gay part) while having an abundance of it on others (the actual wanting and young love)
    - - Two aspects of the difficulties within the family dynamic are navigating: neurodivergence and assimilation as both of these factors make food and cooking a battle ground in the narrator's family
      - The narrative of the piece focuses on Lee and his mother, using food as a place to explore the ways in which Lee has burdened or wronged her. There are several references to a mutual hurt, yet Lee’s transgressions are explained in much greater detail than his mother’s, hers are left to implication. This narrative is punctuated by moments of symmetry between them as well, “we share a compulsion we don’t admire in the other but never call out”.
      - Both Lee and the mother are coded as neurodivergent in a way that impacts the quality of their family life, yet even though they recognize this in each other they cannot connect
      - Every sensory experience is described like food, such as the “oily nuttiness” of the table cloth, and also not at all like food despite being experienced with the mouth, such as the way his “tongue buzzes from the copper electroplating on the bottom of Revere Ware skillet, how it tickles my teeth the way a penny can’t.”
    - - This story is about a family grappling with the death of a loved one (a brother and son), the daughter/sister sees his ghost but the family cannot talk about the brother/sons death or the violence that they all experienced which proceeded it.
      - "Even when I screamed I could not hear myself, even though I felt my mouth opening and closing. The world was muzzled, the way it would be ever afterward with my mother and father and myself, none of us uttering another sound on this matter. Their silence and my own would cut me again and again."
- - - - Examines the way in which Anzaldua came to have a racialized and sexualized identity in the form of letters
      - The letters are interspersed with poems from other women of color, describing their similar experiences, which heightens the sense that despite the extremely personal tone of the work, Anzaldua is as far from alone as one can get in their experiences.
      - The piece also contains multiple calls to action by way of addressing white people who experience some element of the oppression Anzaldua does but not in the same multilayered manner. This reinforces the deep intersectionality of her narrative by not treating any one of the identities experienced in a vacuum, as neutral, or as associated with only oppression.
    - - Argues (in a very sociologically in tune way) that anger is neither universal nor neutral - the anger a black woman experiences produces an inherently different outcome and has intrinsically different from white and male anger.
      - "It is not the anger of Black women which corrodes into blind, dehumanizing power, bent upon the annihilation of us all unless we meet it with what we have, our power toexamine and to redefine the terms upon which we will live and work; our power to envision and to reconstruct, anger by painful anger, stone upon heavy stone, a future of pollinating difference and the earth to support our choices. We welcome all women who can meet us, face to face"
    - - Unlike the other texts here, this is a poem that is challenging the construction of the cultural God character in the Bible, rather than the social forces at play in the modern world
      - The poem presents an alternate reading to an all-loving, all-knowing God where the creator is surprised by the outcomes he caused and tires of the creation, even in it's conception.
      - One poignant socially oriented reading focuses on how God is presented as a source of unending love in American Christian culture but in reality, God is used as a character to shame and control people for acting as they were made to.
      - "he is tired of bone, / it breaks. / he is tired of eve's fancy and / adam's whining ways."
    - - Explores the ways in which racism, classism, and xenophobia intersect to create phenomenon's like the myth of the model minority
      - Specific institutions from the affect of the Statue of Liberty's poem as propaganda to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 are examined as tools of white power and colonialism
      - "In truth, my own own family is an example of the model minority... I won the Pulitzer Prize. We could be put on a poster touting how refugees make America great. And we do. But it shouldn't take this kind of sucess to be welcomed. Even if refugees, undocumented immigrants, and legal immigrants are not all potential billionaries."
  - - - Examines the ways in which male power is used to create systems of oppression for women that are tailored to their experience of race, sexuality, class, extc.
      - We cannot take the approach of men in constructing a society if we want to create meaningful change. This means not repeating the patriarchies choices OR following their guidance for how progress and liberation should be facilitated.
    - - A letter written to other women of color, acknowledging the complex and violent reality of navigating the world in a racialized and sexualized body.
      - Not strictly an essay, Anzaldua argues that women's voice - brown and black women's voices - are necessary. That as hard as writing and creativity is, there is value and strength in the rebelliousness of the act. That to write is to confront "the fears, the angers, the strengths of a woman under a triple or quadruple oppression. Yet in that very act lies our survival because a woman who writes has power. And a woman with power is feared."
      - The revolution she calls for is one of racialized and sexualized voices defining themselves outside of these parameters which objectify them. She wants a revolution of language, so that those facing oppression may speak for and about themselves - without the language of the oppressor. The inclusion of narrative sections and poems emphasizes this as it breaks down the "legitimate" structure of an argumentative essay into a medium that embraces Anzaldua's lived experiences.
    - - Argues for a relationship between people and the Earth where they are not seen as incompatible with one another - humanity is not the opposite of nature but instead working in concert with it, listening to the lessons it can teach us
      - Challenges the framework presented in European Christian Religion through the creation stories - Eve is cast out from the garden while Sky Woman is an active participant in its creation
      - Presents examples of what lessons plants can teach with the pecan trees, examining how masting seasons create unity and synergy and inertia among natural systems on every level - not just the ones affecting the trees.
      - Personal narrative is interwoven with scientific explanations in order to explore each stage of the process of listening and learning from the natural world.
- - - - An actual plant, the corpse flower is anthropomorphized to be a capable of killing humans for its own reasons, and the poem uses this agency to explore identity and how it can be understood, created, or destroyed by outsiders.
      - “But this flower does not want/ to be named. Does not want to be owned.”
    - - Machado explores the emotional effects of betrayl through sexually explicit scenes framed by classic and outlandish horror stories
      - The narrator moves from telling her own story to others. This blending makes her an almost archetypical as “The Girl” in each story, destined to suffer every tragedy, loss, and painful irony.
      - We fall asleep exhausted, sprawled naked in our bed. When I wake up, my husband is kissing the back of my neck, probing the ribbon with his tongue. My body rebels wildly, still throbbing with the memories of pleasure but bucking hard against betrayal. I say his name, and he does not respond. I say it again, and he holds me against him and continues. I wedge my elbows in his side, and when he loosens from me in surprise, I sit up and face him. He looks confused and hurt, like my son the day I shook the can of pennies.
    - - Two women, one white and one black, who shared a room at an orphanage keep running into each other as they age - each run in becomes more thematically charged and feels increasingly unlikely
      - The thematic change is marked by how race becomes an ever important aspect of their interactions as Roberta's racism is revealed as she gains wealth and power.
      - The unreliable facts surrounding Maggie as such a central tennet of the drama of the relationship emphasizes that this is a light box show, these are beautifully detailed but ultimately two dimensional experiences meant to emphasizes the dynamics of race in relationships during the late 1900s
  - - - This chapter explores the same subject as the poem, using the longer form medium to explore character and detail in the experience (such as how to dance)
      - "No one touched the pumpkin foot, except me. I cut a huge slice and dug in. To my surprise it tasted musty and earthy, just how I imagined the flavor of the color brown would be, though I couldn't admit it. Instead I went on faking my pleasure..."
    - - This is a poem describing the experience of a Cuban immigrant families first thanksgiving at the behest of their youngest member, a boy who is growing up in an Americanized culture.
      - Focuses on the sensory experience of the foods to explore the differences in the cultures of Cuba and America
      - Quote
        
        pumpkin was a home remedy for ulcers, not a dessert.
        
        Faces fell when Mamá presented her ochre pie—
        
        and cranberry jelly—“esa mierda roja,” he called it.
        
        to drown the lean slices with pork fat drippings
        
        “DRY,” Tío Berto complained, and proceeded
        
        like a game of Russian Roulette.
        
        and the turkey was passed around
        
        I uttered a bilingual blessing
- - - - The poem uses a rhythm and key words to evoke the childhood game of hopscotch, not just in the reader's mind's eye but also in how they are physically experiencing the poem
      - The loose and fun structure contrasts with the difficult topics of racial discrimination and of not being able to afford basic life necessities, a tension that is relieved at the end as Angelou reveals that the black character is seen as loosing (based on the content of the poem) but actually won because of the shape and form of the poem.
      - Quote: Here the game is about being able to get people out but once the game is over (both feet are flat) the character has won, as they no longer have to play along or jeopardize themselves in order to participate.
        
        All the people out of work,
        
        Hold for three, then twist and jerk.
        
        Cross the line, they count you out.
        
        That's what hopping's all about.
        
        Both feet flat, the game is done.
        
        They think I lost. I think I won.
    - - Poem follows a black man through his Sunday from waking in the morning all the way to the end of his date night, examining the emotions and sensations he encounters throughout the day
      - There is almost a pattern of breathing the poem, as the world spreads out before him with wonder and possibility - descriptions of art and the fine touch to his clothes - to the moments when who he is and how the world has lead him to be this particular person whose existence means a particular sort of thing.
      - Throughout there are moments of joy and sensory pleasure, such as describing the closet, but the most important is that the poem ends with the promise that he will never be alone on Sunday nights, and that his partner will be present, engage, and excited to spend the night with him.
      - ".... You go out full. / (THe end is - isn't it? - all that really matters.) / And even and intrepid come / the tender boots of night to home. / Her body is like new brown bread / Under the Woolworth mignonette. / Her body is a honey bowl / Whose waiting honey is deep and hot."