Leonie C.R. Smith gives a personal account of life growing up as the youngest of eleven siblings. Her story captures the essence of courage, determination and destiny in the face of social injustice and identity crisis. She reveals the struggles of being a foreign African American female in pursuit of a first-class education, expecting to get “a leg up in the world.”
It was often the perception that if African Americans had equal education as the Caucasian people then they would be treated equal as well. However, this mindset proved to be false in “To Be Black, Female, and Literate” especially when Smith, an Antiguan native, moves to America to complete her education. She too, along with other highly educated African American females today has had to continuously prove their intelligence in order to be acknowledged. This goes to show the underlying importance and significance of being literate. Otherwise, many like Smith’s grandmother who could not read or write and thus loss her estate to an obeah woman, would fall prey to the deception of more literate people.
Joanne Dowdy uses Smith’s narrative to illustrate the challenges of what it takes and means to know. To know is to understand and to understand is to apply. However, this is not the case when Smith has to fight to sustain her academic and social education. She was judged by the fact that she was foreign, dark-skinned, and ignorant of American history and was not familiar with multiple choice questions; hence, she was labeled as illiterate. Soon her idea of attaining an education, which was supposedly “accessible to anyone regardless of race, creed, religion, sex, ethnicity and all other divisions that society names” (195), did not compare to reality. Even today a promise as such, in a place where racism still exists, is to be taken very lightly. With any hope at all for the future, one must continuously ask, at what price?
On a personal note, I understand how difficult it can be sometimes transitioning from a place such as the Caribbean or anywhere as a matter of fact to adjust to a new culture and lifestyle as such as the one here in the United States. It is true that immigrants are often persecuted for having a foreign accent and being unfamiliar and are demoted illiterate in the American perspective. For example in school, children such Smith are labeled as geeks or nerds for exerting their brilliance in a “GEEKWAY” (191). Better yet, the African American students in the classroom who are demonstrating academic excellence or who do not act as the stereotype are sometime redefined as being “white.” By redefining what it means to be black, female, and literate, the African American community will be “more than equipped for battle” (199).
Work Cited
Dowdy, Joanne Kilgour., and Leonie C. R. Smith. Readers of the Quilt: Essays on Being Black, Female, and Literate. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2005. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment