The Paradox of Being Female - Is there a Feeling of Belonging Together?

Poetry Analysis and Synthesis Paper

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Hawai'i Pacific University, course: 20th Century Women Writers of Color, language: English, abstract: Being female constitutes a kind of paradox. On the one hand, women constitute one group, one category because of their sex. On the other hand, the belonging to this group does not always mean that women have anything more in common than their sex. Genny Lim's poem 'Wonder Woman' shows how the category of being female is divided in itself by other master statuses that not all women share, and it reveals that one's sex is not an issue which make humans necessarily stick together. On the basis of Rosenblum's and Travis' work The Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race, Sex and Gender, Social Class and Sexual Orientation, this paper will focus on the way in which Genny Lim's poem illustrates the construction of the 'category of women', and how concepts such as 'Dichotomization', 'Othering', 'Aggregation'and 'Double Consciousness' come into play when the poem's lyrical speaker ponders about and also criticizes the differences and similarities that she finds in women.