Race Ethnic Relations Book Comparison Term Paper

In Kingston's more feminine rendering of identity, although she resists the ideals of silence and sexual repression, she accepts the idea that women have more permeable boundaries of selfhood and stronger ties to their family in the telling of her text.

Both works point to the inexorability of the past, especially for individuals of ethnic or racial minorities who consider themselves 'other.' Obama is 'other' because of his multiethnic heritage that alienates him from parents as well as friends, and because of the Americanness that separates him from his father. Kingston sees herself as Chinese, but female in a culture as well as a nation that mistrusts this aspect of a woman's self. Both make claims to how their lives speak for other lives -- Obama explicitly with his overly political narration, and his determination to use his struggle as fuel for success as an advocate of community enfranchisement, Kingston because of her mythical language.Although individuals of their heritages may disagree about the universality of their struggles, both texts are still powerful in the way they highlight how identity is not merely a personal psychological crisis that comes and goes with adolescence, but a national, cultural, and familial challenge.

Works Cited

Kingston, Hong Maxine. The Woman Warrior. Vintage, 1989

Obama, Barak. Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

Three Rivers Press,….....