What are the origins of Modern American Autobiography What changes have there been since c.1950-present - Essay Example

Number and of the Origins of Modern American Autobiography and the Changes Since 1950s A lot of American literature has been written in form of autobiography. This paper will compare the literatures in this category written at different times in history. Three different texts will be used to achieve this. One of the texts this paper is going to focus on is Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings which was written at the end of the struggle for civil rights in America in1960s. The second text that this paper is going to focus on is The Autobiography of Malcolm X which is based on the interviews Malcolm X himself had given to the journalist by the name Alex Haley and was published in1965. Lastly this paper will be based on Prozac Nation written by Elizabeth Wurtzel and published in 1994. Comparison between the Autobiography of Malcolm X, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Prozac Nation These three texts have quit a number of similarities despite the fact that they were written by different authors at different times. To start with they are all autobiographies. They portray deep inner conflicts within the individuals who they focus on. Malcolm X for instance having been born to a white father and a black mother had to deal with racial discrimination right from birth. He hates the discrimination against the African-American with passion and aggressively confronts it throughout his life (Clasby 19). Just like Malcolm X, Maya Angelou found herself in the midis of racial discrimination right from a tender age. She thought that she was ugly just because she was black. The inner conflicts affected her so much that she would even grease her legs with Vaseline and dust them with red clay just to musk the black color. Prozac Nation tells the story of Elizabeth Wurtzel who also had inner conflicts to deal with although hers did not stem from racial segregation. For her, she suffered a lot of depression after her parents had divorced and his father abandoned her and her mother. As she puts it, she became the casualty of her parent’s differences, despite her innocence and lack of active role in the same. Since the texts are autobiographies of different people written by different others, it goes with out saying that they have outstanding differences. Malcolm X hates segregation right from the word go. He never regrets having been born a black person but he fights to elevate the condition of the black people. He encourages the black Americans to focus their effort towards making their own assets. He also urges the black to patronize their own as much as possible and by so doing start building the ability of the black race to be self reliant. He goes further to argue that the white man cannot give the black man self respect. He suggests that the only way in which the black man can gain respect and be considered as being equal to other human beings is by doing for himself what other races are doing for themselves. He emphasizes that the black Americans bear the responsibility of lifting up his own sense of values. Although Maya Angelou of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is also faced with racial discrimination, she takes a different approach towards the monster. As a young girl, she accepts that being black made her inferior. In fact she considered herself ugly and even tried to musk the black color using some red clay that she dusted on her legs after greasing them with Vaseline. She admired the white girls and sometimes imagined herself being one. When she became an adult, she wrote that “If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat” (Cage Bird 6). Even though Maya has several admirable traits, she is made to feel like a second class human being by the white girls who laugh at her and under treat her. However as an adult, Maya outgrows this stereotype and she develops into a strong and independent woman. Her attitude towards the black women and the African Americans in general is also transformed (Dyson 23). Portraying her kind, beautiful mother and her loving steadfast and strict grandmother clearly illustrates this transformation. She now values the black race. Unlike the other two texts looked at, Prozac Nation has nothing to do with racial discrimination but it has everything to do with depression. Wurtzel traces her depressions from the tender age of eleven to her senior year in college. All this resulted from a failed marriage between her parents. Before she was eleven, she performed remarkably well in her academics and mad several other accomplishments including writing a children’s book. The family was united until her parents had some differences that they failed to mend, and they divorced. Her father abandoned her with her mother and ignored all his responsibilities to her. At that point Wurtzel started undergoing severe depressions that not only saw her deteriorate in performance but also exposed her to some ailments. Her deteriorating performance would be largely attributed to her depressed state ( Armstrong 8). She even attempted suicide. Her mother however could not identify the source of her problem and therefore could not of the solution. It is only in the last few pages of the book that she slowly recovers from her sorry state of depression. Black Civil Rights and the Problems of Young Black Women Growing Up In the States As much as Caged Bird is basically an African American autobiography, it found much motivation from Civil Rights movement and then established itself as one of the African American woman writers’ renaissance. In the course of her long journey in search for freedom, Maya realizes a sense of self, she gains pride in the black race and discovers the sense of community. As much as she is submerged in the sea of racial dissemination Angelou, like the caged bird manages to make herself be heard. Maya comprehensively tackles the plights of young back American women by narrating her own life experience as a young lady. The acute racial discrimination that the black women are subjected to makes them develop self pity and very low self-esteems. Maya for instance considers herself ugly simply because she is black. She imagines how wonderful she would be if she was a white lady with blue eyes and long blond hair. To her, this was a right dream that everyone pursued in the world. It is amazing that despite her childhood attitude and experiences, Maya emerges as a formidable character. The autobiography begins when the young Maya is suffering a lot of insecurity. She feels that she is not able to match the pretty white girls whatsoever and all she wants is to wake up from her “black ugly dream,” which is the symbol of disillusion in the American society. By the end of the story however, she feels proud of herself as a black woman. The story, though majorly based on racism, also reveals the truth about sexism. The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate, and Black lack of power (Angelou 265). Growing up in the states as a black lady must have been the most dreadful thing during Maya’s time. The black girl would find herself in the prison of racial discrimination wherever she was and in all that she does. At the same time, she was the victim of sexism that was deep in the society. Malcolm in his autobiography acknowledges that he was struck by the words of his teacher Mr. Muhammad who stressed that the history had been whitened by the white men who left the black man out as they wrote history books. This is an illustration of how the black man’s rights are abused since their contribution in history is ignored. The white man is very discriminative in recording the history, in the seventh-grade United States history that Malcolm Mason, the history of the black Americans had been covered in just a paragraph. Malcolm’s civil rights are also abused by his very teacher. Although he was very successful in his class work, his own teacher discourages him from his aspiration to become a lawyer on just on the grounds that he was a nigger. The teacher says, "Malcolm, one of life's first needs is for us to be realistic. Don't misunderstand me, now. We all here like you, you know that. But you've got to be realistic about being a nigger. A lawyer - that's no realistic goal for a nigger. You need to think about something you can be. You're good with your hands - making things. Everybody admires your carpentry shop work. Why don't you plan on carpentry? People like you as a person - you'd get all kind of work." (Malcolm 57). Malcolm, as he teaches about the different natures of the two sexes in his special class becomes very herd on women. Basing his teachings in Islam laws and doctrines he teaches that the man’s true nature is to be strong while the true nature of the woman is to be weak. In as much as the man is obliged to respect his wife, there must be an understanding that he has to exercise control on her in order to gain her respect. These teachings are potentially disastrous on the women and may make life unbearable for them. They may also lead to gross abuse of the women’s civil rights. Malcolm also advocates for violent revolution against the racial discrimination that is directed to the black people. He says that violence is not bad since the black are sent to different nations to go and practice it. He argues that the blacks bleed for the white people and they should be more ready to do the same on the account of their fellow niggers. In his opinion it is not realistic to go and become violent in other countries for the sake of America where they are highly segregated and remains no-violent in America. He encourages the blacks not to stop at anything even if it means violently liberating themselves from the claws of racial discrimination. Prozac Nation and How the Changes in Culture and Society Shifted. Prozac Nation presents an autobiographic account of an adolescent girl Elizabeth Wurtzel, who happens to be growing up in the New York City. She grows up amid depression which, unfortunately is not diagnosed until very late in life- in her twenties. Failure to diagnose her condition is attributed to low development in mental health, as discipline, then. The autobiography thus captures this protagonist’s life, her interaction with others and the influence of culture and society on her mental condition, especially with regards to her depression. Wurtzel while lonely and hurt gets a kind of solace when she recalls the traditional life as it was before Cultural Revolution had set in. She happens to have been a victim of a divorce between her presents, one of the factors that contribute immensely to her depressed condition. She remembers that prior to Cultural Revolution; her parents were deeply immersed into their marriage. The tradition as it was then demanded that a husband and a wife be committed to one another and is each other’s prime priority. Taking good care of the family members, particularly the children was yet another priority. Elizabeth notes that her parents were not fully immersed into their marriage and incidental obligations, but were also focused on her, being their only child. However, the setting in of a new culture in the course of Cultural Revolution leads to weakened family ties and dilutes the formerly valued marital commitment. Her parents become more loosely attached to one another and become discontented to each other. Eventually, staying together becomes unbearable and they resort to divorce as their best alternative. The changes cuase by Cultural Revolution is aptly depicted by Wetzel when she describes and responds to what she used to be told by the therapists whenever she went to seek out professional treatment. She says: They react as if my family situation was particularly alarming and troublesome, as opposed to what it actually is in this day and age: perfectly normal. I mean, I think about my development and I feel like a Census Bureau statistic or some sort of case study on the changing nature of the American family in the late 20th century. My parents divorced, I grew up in a female-headed household, my mother was always unemployed or marginally employed, and my father was always uninvolved or marginally involved in my life. There was never enough money for anything, my mom had to sue my dad for unpaid child support and unpaid medical bills, my dad eventually disappeared. But all this information is no more outstanding than the plot of an Anne Beattie novel. Or maybe it’s not even that interesting. (Wertzel 33). Whereas it cannot be denied that divorce existed prior to 1970s, the divorce that occurs in Generation Me (post 1970s) is characterized by a more destruction of social fabric and generational destruction. As reflected from Wetzel‘s own words, the father abandons her and his responsibility has to be enforced through the courts. The society also shifts from one where the man is the breadwinner and the family head to one where a woman, as represented by the author’s mother, is the family head and the breadwinner. Works Cited Armstrong , Thomas. Awakening Genius in the Classroom. Alexendria : ASCD. Angelou , Maya. I Know why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Bantam Books, 1969. Cain, G. and Cain , R. Making Connections: Teaching and Human Brain. Menlo Park , California: Addison Wesley. Clasby, Nancy. “The Autobiography of Malcolm X: A Mythical Paradigm. Journal of Black Studies, 5 (1) , (1974), 18-34. Dyson, Micahel, E. Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X. New York : Oxford University Press, 1995. Malcolm X ( and Alex Haley). The Autobiography of Malcolm. London : Penguin Publishers, 1965. Wertzel, Elizabeth. Prozac Nation. New York:Riverhead Books,1995. Read More