What Its like to Be a Black Girl?

  Comparison Essay     1

                      Thesis: The literary works The Welcome Table by Alice Walker / what it's like to be a black girl by Patricia Smith represent African American women who have faced   challenges of sexism, racism and stereotypes in American life.

                      Racism and Sexism are questions that I will discuss and examine. I will compare tand contrast similarities of   both poems. I will explain and give examples to show how these two poems exhibit different scenarios but similar views about how race and ethnicity can affect   women of color based on prejudice and stereotypes.

                      The main character is a nearly blind, old black woman with a lean build and a grayish tone to her skin. She wears a mildewed black dress with missing buttons and a grease-stained head rag covering her pigtails. She has blue-brown eyes, is ashen in appearance and much wrinkled. She is perspiring from her walk and is shivering from the cold. She enters the white Church and sits, singing in her head. She is physically thrown out of the church. After the woman is turned away she begins to feel a sense of loneliness, and an outcast. “She sees Jesus walking down the highway and is giddy with joy. Jesus tells her to follow him and she does, walking alongside him. He looks just like she thought he would, and he listens to her sing and talk to him. She feels great beside him and can walk as long as he wants. (Smith,).The women in my opinion feel that God will reward her in the end. Not because she is black but because she knows who she is through her faith. What its like to be a black girl, gives us view at a young black girl that is becoming a black woman. During a time where both being a black girl, and trying to come in to maturity as a women. Could possibly create questions and uncertainties in this young girl’s life. What it's like to be a black girl shows a young girl who questions who she is. Through trial and error the young black girl learns to accept who she is. And embraces becoming beautiful black women.

                    What its like to be a black girl gives us a view into the eyes of someone that does not feel accepted in society. And wants to change who she is to become like the people around her. The young women seem to succumb to her feelings and she trys to change who she is.  When Patricia Smith wrote the poem What It’s Like to be a Black Girl she focused on the young black gir’ls feelings and the added pressures of a racially jagged society. Certain aspects of the character could possibly make you believe that the young black girl is having a hard time accepting who she is. The character tells us how a young black girl tries to balance her newly formed body, with her still child-like mentality. Part of every young girl’s passage into woman hood includes a great white gown, which she wears on her wedding day, which she wears on her wedding day. On that day, when she’s joined with a man, a chapter ends and a new one begins in the young girls life (Smith 1991).

                      The comparisons that both women face are there race and ethnicity. In the poem the Welcome table the setting takes place at a church. When the white people see the old black women stagger in two there church. They start to envision all kinds of   bad images in there head. Some of   the white members see her (the old women) as a cook, chauffeurs, maids, or even as a mistress (Ficken, Carl 1985) too many these could seem like a stereotype of people of color.

                    Where as in the play What its like to be a black girl the young black women seems to also feel as though she is not as pretty as some of the girls around her.   She says “it’s dropping food coloring in your eyes to make them blue and suffering their burn in silence. It’s popping a bleached white mop head over the kinks of your hair and primping in front of the mirrors that deny your reflection.” (Smith, 1991). These examples of the bleached mop head and blues eyes could be the girl wishing that she could be white. Similar to the old women who begin to wonder if she were white, would she have been able to worship at this church that she stumbled upon.

                    What it's like to be a black girl, in my interpretation might suggest that it's hard to   explore and experiencing what it is to become a black woman in her changing social circle. The young black girl thinks of ways that she can alter her looks she says food coloring in her eyes,   and the bleaching of her hair can only symbolize her need to grow into the more “accepted” form of society, the white skinned, blue eyed, blonde haired men and women ( Smith, 1991). The writer uses these descriptions to show that the girl is not happy with her looks. Patricia Smith gives you a view from the young black girl. The irony of this story to me is that as the young girl developed and explores her body. She gets the opportunity to wear a great white gown on her wedding day. On that day, when she’s joined with a man, a chapter ends and a new one begins.

                    The Welcome Table is a story packed with similar characteristics. The story's main character is an aging old black woman. The beginning of the story is told from the white person’s perspective as they see an old black woman come to there church and go inside. Inside of the   church the writer switches to the usher who tells her to leave “He says “Go' Way” (walker, 1993).   The irony of this part of the story was that the usher had never turned any one away from this church. But due to his prejudice and racism he turns the old woman away. Some of the Christians speak words about her that are hardly fit to be heard; another group said nothing, the third group vague stirrings of pity and regarded her as if she were something other than human. The old women trys to give you a glimpse of how hard it is to be an old black woman.

                      According to Walker The Welcome Table the author depicts the perception of her wanting to be accepted into the white church as she is. The old black women looks get compared to the white women who also worship there. The old black women has been described as “being angular and lean and the color of poor gray Georgia earth beaten by the king cotton and the extreme weather” (walker, 1993).Could this this deception of the old black women be a description of the way that the woman’s skin looked to the church members?   That's the question that one could ask.

                      What it's like to be a black girl and The Welcome Table both deal with inner turmoil that each woman feels trying to be a black women in today's society. The black girl struggles as she faces as she grows up from a child to a women, as puberty sets in the girl's body she begins to change her views which are defined by the biological changes a young boy or girl’s body undertakes in my opinion. Smith's subjects seem to ask the question do we change or look or alter our looks to be accepted by society. Smith offers details of how she changes her looks to become more accepted in society. The “black girl”   that she refers to in her poem is feeling the awkwardness of her newly changing body. She hopes that by changing her appearance, she   will be able to be accepted in a white society.