Gender and Identity Formation

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer discusses that both the novel "Housekeeping" by Marilynn Robinson and the play "Blues for Mister Charlie" by James Baldwin deal with coming of age identity, conflicts amongst marginalized peoples and long-simmering community conflicts that come to a boil after the homecoming of one of the protagonists. The writer describes how Robinson's text is framed around the coming of age of young women growing up in rural Idaho in the mid-1900s. The girls experience a crisis of feminine identity after they are deprived of their mother, who commits suicide at the beginning of the book. The writer also looks at "Blues for Mister Charlie", that deals with the Black experience of isolation in America. The play centers on the difficulty of young Black people, men and women, who must force their lives and souls to conform to the norms of the White 'Mister Charlie.'

From the Paper:

"For Black women, however, Baldwin has slightly less concern in terms of how the norms of their identities are formulated, even though women have a powerful stage presence over the course of the play. Thus Baldwin tends to reduce the importance of the Black female experience of marginalization in America for the Black community as a whole. It is how Black men formulate their new identities within oppressive structures that the author claims as his play's main concern. Continually, "Blues for Mister Charlie" stresses the commonality of all Black oppression and the investiture Black men and women have in creating a positive Black masculine ideal.
The play was written in response to the Emmett Till lynching of real life, a lynching spawned by a Northern Black youngster whistling at a White Southern women. Finding a way to create Black male sexuality in a way that is empowering, and will not bring the wrath of society down upon its head is Baldwin's concern."

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