What It's Like to be a Black Girl and Child of the America's

Abstract

In this paper, we will compare and contrast two literary works from this course that share the same theme.  I have selected Race / Ethnicity for my paper. In this paper, we have taken two literacy works to compare one is “What It's like to be a Black Girl” by Patricia Smith (an African- American) and “Child of the Americas” by Aurora Levin Morales (a Latino). The purpose of writing is to know what It's Like to be a Black Girl and Child of the America's.

Table of Content

Abstractii

Introduction1

Thesis Statement1

Background2

Methodology2

Discussion2

What it's like to be a Black Girl4

Child of the Americas6

Conclusion8

References10

What It's Like to be a Black Girl and Child of the America's

Introduction

“Child of the Americas” is a poem of many cultures, races and languages living together in a common place creating a new culture. The people contributing to the creation of such cultures accepted as they are, and as Americans. Their messages may not be a complaining but rather a strong affirmation of all their identities, and all the parts that make them who they are. Whereas, Patricia Smith written the poem “What It's Like to Be a Black Girl” in 1991.

This poem depicts the ordeals through which almost every black girl goes through during her course of life. Patricia starts her poetry in the form of narration, the opening words “First of all,” confirms the poetess' plan of narrative poem (Smith, 1999). She makes use of uneven sentence composition and strong, powerful words to illustrate to the reader the significance of her issue. Smith's poem gives the spectators an insider's observation into a young black girl's evolution into black woman-hood at a time where both being a black girl, and a black woman was not as welcomed.

Thesis Statement

The diverse cultural element signifies the individual as an American, beyond doubt an exclusive ethnicity on its own, this awareness of cultural diversity makes the inhabitants of America, Americans.

Background

The theme I chose for my paper was race/ethnicity. For the literary works, I will compare and contrast “What It's like to be a Black Girl” by Patricia Smith (an African- American) and “Child of the Americas” by Aurora Levin Morales (a Latino). They were both born in America, which is a noteworthy fact because Blacks and other minorities in the U.S. experienced extreme racism and prejudice compared to their peers in other countries (Burrell, 2010).

The poems tell how two young ladies, from different cultures, view themselves with conflicting beliefs. These two poems are important because they deal with racism and discrimination issues which occurred prior to the Civil Rights Era and still exist today. Although, each of them experienced discrimination their perceptions, its effects, and how they coped were very different.

Methodology

This research is going to utilize the qualitative method of research. The data in the study has been collected through both a primary and secondary methodology and both have been used to perform the ...