¶ … structure and content of the outline met the objectives of the assignment. I narrowed down the topic further to differentiate between Angelou and Cisneros because I recognized that Angelou sends her readers an optimistic message of self-empowerment, while Cisneros opts to use the medium of traditional storytelling more as a warning to women about how patriarchy strangles their power and self-reliance. Essentially, both send the same message using different media and different tones. Race and gender are features that often determine access to power in a society. Moreover, race and gender are critical to personal identity formation, just as they locate an individual in the stratifications of the society.

Sandra Cisneros's short story "Woman Hollering Creek," and "Still I Rise," a poem by Maya Angelou both make statements about race, power, and gender in America.

Author Backgrounds: Cisneros is a Chicano author and Maya Angelou is an African-American author and poet.

Brief Text Summaries: "Woman Hollering Creek" touches on issues like domestic violence and the subjugation of women. "Still I Rise" celebrates black female identity in a culture that is both racist and sexist.

Thesis: Although different in both form and intent, Cisneros's "Woman Hollering Creek" and Angelou's "Still I Rise" both reveal the intersections between race, power, and gender in American society.

Topic Sentence 1: The intersection between gender, race, and power is one of the most salient themes in both Cisneros and Angelou, as both write from the perspective of minority females.

Focus on Cisneros

Example 1: " ... there isn't very much to do except ... to watch the latest telenovela episode and try to copy the way the women comb their hair, wear their makeup," (p. 220).

Here, the author shows how women have few strong role models and thus only learn their position in society from male-dominated discourse.

Example 2: "Maximiliano who was said to have killed his wife ... when she came at him with a mop. I had to shoot, he had said -- she was armed," (p. 225).

Cisneros is uniquely concerned with the way patriarchy and sexism can lead to domestic violence.

Focus on Angelou

Example 1: "Does my sassiness upset you?"

For Angelou, it is important for women to be unafraid of being "sassy," confident, and sure of themselves.

Example 2: "Do you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes?"

Here, the poet uses the question form to antagonize those who would believe that women should be subservient, especially women of color.

Topic Sentence 2: Angelou capitalizes on the form of poetry to convey empowerment, using rhythm and rhyme schemes, whereas Cisneros employs the short story to encapsulate the systemic problem of misogyny. Angelou's narrator has already achieved the goal of self-empowerment, whereas the protagonist of "Woman Hollering Creek" fails and suffers the consequences.

Focus on Angelou

Example 1: "Does my sexiness upset you? / Does it come as a surprise / That I dance like I've got diamonds / At the meeting of my thighs?"

The rhyming here presents a powerful musicality that parallels the content of the lines about dancing.

Example 2: As Higashida (2011) points out, Angelou's popular success is based on her ability to use the universal form of poetry to show how patriarchy and colonialism share much in common in terms of abuse of power and systematic oppression.

Focus on Cisneros

Example 1: The form of story is integral to the culture of indigenous people, which is why Cisneros's chosen form is significant in establishing the main themes of the story (Garcia, 2014).

It is significant that Cisneros chooses the storytelling format, which traditionally had allowed women to have positions of power in their community as repositories of cultural knowledge and transmitters of that knowledge.

Example 2: "Was Cleofilas just exaggerating as her husband always said? It seemed the newspapers were full of such stories," (p. 225).

The author ironically juxtaposes the traditional art of storytelling to preserve cultural identity with the "stories" in the news about domestic violence.

Topic Sentence 3: The intent of both "Woman Hollering Creek" and "Still I Rise" is to encourage women of color to empower themselves and resist succumbing to patriarchal social norms. However, Angelou phrases her message in a positive and optimistic light, whereas Cisneros uses traditional storytelling as a warning to both women and men about the pitfalls of patriarchy.

On Cisneros:

Example 1: "Maintaining native cultures and traditions ... is a form of political as well as personal resistance to continuing oppression,"...

4).
The form and content of Cisneros's work is important for promoting the core goal of encouraging resistance and feminist critique.

Example 2: "Sometimes she thinks of her father's house. But how could she go back there? What a disgrace. What would the neighbors say?" (Cisneros, p. 224).

The protagonist of Cisneros's story is an example of how not to act, as she is too afraid to leave because of social stigma.

On Angelou:

Example 1: "Angelou can be productively read within the genre of Black Power autobiographies alongside ... Malcolm X," (Higashida, 2011, p. 160).

Angelou aligns herself with the greatest figures of black power movements by encouraging empowerment rather than submission.

Example 2: "I rise / I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, / Welling and swelling I bear in the tide."

Using rich diction and imagery, Angelou shows how black women can control vast amounts of power in a graceful way like the ocean itself.

Conclusion

Multiple forms of literature can convey similar themes related to the intersection between race, gender, and power.

Essay

Race and gender are features that often determine access to power in a society. Moreover, race and gender are critical to personal identity formation, just as they locate an individual in the stratifications of the society. Authors like Sandra Cisneros and Maya Angelou use their personal experiences to critique perceptions of female sexuality, female power, and particularly the power of women of color in America. Sandra Cisneros's short story "Woman Hollering Creek" is a potent and disturbing tale about a woman's power to give life but also to kill. The story raises serious questions about the role and status of women in society, as well as about the connection between domestic violence and patriarchy. Cisneros also models her modern folk tale after a traditional legend of a woman like her very own protagonist Cleofilas, who kills her children and is forever haunted by her deed. Whereas "Woman Hollering Creek" remains tragic throughout, Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise" offers an uplifting and positive message about self-empowerment. "Still I Rise" celebrates black female identity in a culture that is both racist and sexist. Angelou is an African-American author and poet who devoted her career to writing about the black female experience and identity. Although Cisneros and Angelou use different poetic and literary devices, they make similar statements about race, power, and gender in America.

The intersection between gender, race, and power is one of the most salient themes in both "Still I Rise" and "Woman Hollering Creek." Cisneros and Angelou both write from the perspective of minority females to convey their central themes. In "Woman Hollering Creek," Cisneros paints a portrait of a woman who is deeply dissatisfied with her role as housewife because "there isn't very much to do except ... to watch the latest telenovela episode and try to copy the way the women comb their hair, wear their makeup," (p. 220). Cleofilas has been typecast in her stereotypical female role. Her worth is based only on her relationship with her husband. The author also shows how women have few strong role models and thus only learn their position in society from male-dominated discourse. Cisneros is also concerned with the way patriarchy and sexism can lead to domestic violence, a central theme in "Woman Hollering Creek." Cleofilas muses on other instances in which battered women resorted to violence themselves, as foreshadowing her own violent response to patriarchy: "Maximiliano who was said to have killed his wife ... when she came at him with a mop. I had to shoot, he had said -- she was armed," (p. 225). As Wyatt (1995) points out, Cleofilas "wrestles with Mexican icons of sexuality and motherhood that, internalized, seem to impose on them a limited and even negative definition of their own identities as women," (Wyatt, 1995, p. 243). Angelou also recognizes that powerful women seem to upset the status quo. "Does my sassiness upset you?" For Angelou, it is important for women to be unafraid of being "sassy," confident, and sure of themselves. Instead of allowing herself to become broken down by patriarchy like Cleofilas, the narrator of "Still I Rise" asks, "Do you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes?" Here, the poet uses the question form to antagonize those who would believe that women should be subservient, especially women of color.

Angelou capitalizes on the form of poetry to convey empowerment, using rhythm and rhyme schemes, whereas Cisneros employs the short story to encapsulate the systemic problem of misogyny. In "Still I Rise," Angelou also addresses women's sexuality as a core component of their self-empowerment. "Does my sexiness upset you? / Does it come as a surprise / That…