For our final discussion this week, we’ll be analyzing the nonfiction texts of James Baldwin and Gloria Anzaldua: two writers who vividly engage with issues of racial and ethnic marginalization in the United States by writing about their own autobiographical experiences with the violence of this marginalization. Respond to Baldwin and Anzaldua’s texts by answering the following prompts:
Social issues, family issues: how do the surrounding sociopolitical and cultural struggles of racial and ethnic discrimination impact family structure in both Baldwin and Anzaldua’s nonfiction texts, and to what effect? What does this suggest about the relationship between sociopolitical landscape and family life?
Individual identity: how do both Baldwin and Anzaldua’s nonfiction texts depict the struggle that individuals experience with their sense of personal identity as a result of experiences with racial and ethnic discrimination? What does this suggest about the relationship between the surrounding sociopolitical environment and the self?