The Feminist Divide

With Tue’s reading of “Family Affairs” by Maya Angelou, I saw two different themes in the two movements. The poem points out that white feminists complain about being put on a pedestal and locked what seems like a tower in a castle, much like Rapunzel (from arched Windows, Over hand cut stones of your cathedral, seas of golden hair). We also know that whatever tower they’re in was carefully made to both keep them there but also to make sure it’s nice.  While it may be a genuine concern for the white feminists, that tower is protecting them from the evils that lie on the ground. In no way do the white feminist complaints really compare with the history of hardship that African American feminists have to deal with. Having your flowing golden hair sucks if everybody's pulling on it from the windows of your castle, but would you rather be dragged by dusty braids to a foreign country and enslaved? She can’t accept that the other women are going to be able to recognize her. She says, “My screams never reached the rare tower,” this could be talking about how the more popular white feminist movement never sought out or listened to the complaints of the black feminists. Even if they do, such as when they refer to her as a sister, she mentions, “you Lay, birthing masters for my sons,” something that for her is unforgiving. I think that the narrator here does a much better job expressing why she doesn’t want to be referred to as sister, or in the case of Bigger, brother than Bigger in native son. She does concede that it is possible in the future for them to call each other sister, but only after the ruts created by her, or her African ancestors, are filled by dust. I thought that it was quite interesting that the poem had a much smoother and eloquent style than that of “Still I Rise” which was much more in your face. I saw “Family Affairs” as a letter to the white feminists and for her to be able to seem respectable she’d have to use fancier English to communicate her message. “Still I Rise” may be considered a letter to the white men, an equally bourgeois group of people, but I saw it more as a speech to her fellow African-Americans to follow what she’s doing. “Family Affairs” is a solemn but powerful poem that expresses Angelou’s need to say what is separating the white and black feminist movement and how it’s not something wrong with the current time, but rather a culmination of centuries past.