Comparing Women in Raisin In the Sun, House On Mango Street, and Yellow

Roles of Women in A Raisin In the Sun, The House On Mango Street, and A Yellow Raft In Blue Water      Ã‚  Ã‚   A Raisin In the Sun, The House On Mango Street, and A Yellow Raft In Blue Water all contain strong, defined images of women. These women control and are controlled. They are oppressed and liberated. Standing tall, they are confident and independent. Hunched low, they are vulnerable and insecure. They are grandmothers, aunts, mothers, wives, lovers, friends, sisters and children. Although they span a wide range of years and roles, a common thread is woven through all of their lives, a thread which confronts them day in and day out. This thread is the challenge they face as minority women in America to find liberation and freedom from lives loaded down with bondage. These women fight to live and in their living they display their strengths and their weaknesses. They demonstrate the opposition many women face being viewed as the inferior sex as well as discrimination against their ethnicity. In this struggle Hansberry, Dorris and Cisneros depict women attempting to find con fidence and security in the society around them. Comparing and contrasting the novels A Raisin In the Sun, The House On Mango Street, and A Yellow Raft In Blue Water, three principal images of women emerge: their strength, bondage and liberation. These images combine to depict the struggle of many minority women, regardless of their ethnic background, and shapes the character they draw from society.    "Now--you say after me, in my mother's house there is still God...There are some ideas we ain't going to have in this house. Not long as I am at the head of this family" (Hansberry 51). From Mama's ardent statement in A Raisin In the Sun, addressed to ... ... in the past has held them down. Finding strength in this new liberation they will be released to assist others in gaining their freedom and becoming whole individuals. We take courage and inspiration from the lives of Beneatha, Esperanza, Mama, Evelyn, Rayona and others as they display the struggle toward true womanhood and the strength to "come back. For the ones who cannot leave as easily as you" (Cisneros 105).    Works Cited: Blicksilver, Edith. The Ethnic American Woman. Kenall/Hunt Publishing; Iowa, 1978. Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Dorris, Michael. Yellow Raft on Blue Water. New York: H. Holt, 1987. Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Literature and Its Writers: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Eds. Ann Charters and Samuel Charters. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997. 1829-96.