Cooper and Johnson

After reading these two pieces, the general idea I got was that each orator is challenging the idea of what a specific person of a specific background should be. Johnson mainly focuses on how people think about and view Indian women, while Cooper is more involved in black identity. Each author raises the question 'what does it mean to be (black/Indian/white/European/etc)'. But is it the same question for each one? 

One of the previous blog posts from tonight talked about hegemony, and defined it as "the dominance or dominant influence of one nation, group, or class over another or others."(Christina Palmer) I can see how this term can be applied to both of the pieces we were supposed to have read. This term plays off the idea that every person from a particular race/culture/country possess some similar quality. This generalization is not just false but is extremely prejudice. People tend to create categories and standards that a person must meet, or must have, to be considered a part of a particular group. Both authors challenge this idea. At one point Cooper states, "an authentic, at one aesthetic and true to life, presenting the black man as a free American citizen, not the humble slave of Uncle Tom's Cabin -- but the man." (Cooper, 382) 

Cooper is using the many current and past identities of 'the black man' to illustrate how standards and stereotypes can change. Cooper points out how far African American people have come from the outdated idea of Uncle Tom's Cabin. In comparison, Johnson does a very similar thing. In her essay, Johnson states, "Every race in the world enjoys its own peculiar characteristics, but it scarcely follows that every individual of a nation must possess these prescribed singularities, or otherwise forfeit in the eyes of the world their nationality."(Johnson, 385) With this statement Johnson is pointing out how wrapped up us humans are with labels and making everyone fit perfectly under certain labels. Johnson goes on to challenge the prescribed signatures that Indian's face. I really liked the pairing of these pieces, and I am excited about what we do with them in tomorrow's class.

Works Cited

Cooper, Anna Julia. “Excerpts from A Voice From the South” (1892). Wielding the Pen: Writings on Authorship by American Women of the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Anne E. Boyd. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U P, 2009. 379-384.

Johnson, E. Pauline. “A Strong Race Opinion: On the Indian Girl in Modern Fiction” (1895).Wielding the Pen: Writings on Authorship by American Women of the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Anne E. Boyd. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U P, 2009. 385-389.