Tag Archives: sexism

The Illusion of Control

Growing up as a woman of color Diaz was faced with varying forms of oppression from society and her own family, as was seen in the first section of the reading. The second reading began to explore her experiences with violence as a woman and how these experiences made her feel powerless. As Diaz was growing up in an unstable, violent environment she began to take back control with her fists, “just itching for a fight, begging for it…all those years of beat-downs barreling against me” (Diaz 116). Through the years of fighting with her brother and being slapped around by her mother, the anger began to build up and during late middle school, early high school, Diaz began fighting as a way to express her power. This can be seen when J.R. was antagonizing her in the hallway, “I was not and would never be, the kind of person who got bullied or made fun of…” (page 127). Diaz knew that she could not control her mother’s actions, but in that moment of powerlessness, she showed J.R. her power through violence.  

Diaz’s therapist tried to help by explaining that control could not be conquered in all parts of her life, but certain actions, smoking, and skipping, for example, could be controlled on her part. The lack of control that was felt in Diaz’s life was due to the instability of her mother. She describes her and her sister sleeping fully dressed in case an incident occurred. Diaz also feared her mother, “my greatest fear, the thing that scared me the most in the world, was my mother” (Diaz 89). She feared her mother’s sudden outbursts, her violence, the embarrassment of her asking her friends for money, but more than anything else, she feared being like her mother. Going from her father’s house where she was constantly in fistfights with her brother to her mother’s house where she was constantly on edge ultimately left Diaz looking for a way to exert power and gain control and she found this through fighting.

America Is in Crisis. That's Not New for Many of Us | Time
Jaquira Diaz at 14 years old.

Díaz, J. (2020, June 25). America is in crisis. that’s not new for many of Us. Time. Retrieved November 2, 2021, from https://time.com/5859204/america-in-crisis/.

Díaz, J. (2020). Ordinary Girls: A Memoir. Algonquin Books.

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Belonging in the Face of Oppression

While reading the first part of Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz there was a recurring idea of belonging. Diaz explored her feelings of belonging in childhood through telling stories in relation to gender and race. The lack of belonging that Diaz felt in her family occurred when she was compared to her brother. In comparison with her brother, she often felt isolated because she felt that he was often favorited due to his gender. The connection that she felt with her father during childhood was complicated by the secret trips her father would take her brother on to La Plaza. He would not allow her to go to La Plaza because she was a girl and this reasoning caused a fit of anger and left her, “longing for something to lift this burden of girlhood” (Diaz 9). The strong bond that she felt with her father was hindered due to his beliefs about what girls should and should not do.

The lack of belonging in her family was also felt because of her race. Diaz often felt disconnected from the stories she read and the movies she saw. “I’d lie in my own bed, imagining myself in those movies, writing revisions of them that included characters like me” (Diaz 42). The characters in the stories were people that did not look like her and therefore she struggled to see herself in the stories and connect. This feeling was reinforced by the racist comments that were consistently made by her grandmother. When giving her a haircut, her grandmother cut her hair short like her father’s hair and antagonized her with comments about not being able to look like her white mother. “It wasn’t the haircut, she said, chuckling, it was my bad hair…Your father’s fault. Your father and his black family” (page 50). While her Abuela proudly displayed her darker skin tone and hair, her grandmother put her down and made her feel like she was less than. Diaz’s lack of belonging has a strong connection to the intersection of multiple forms of oppression, and in this section specifically, it was sexism and racism.

Citations

Díaz, J. (2020). Ordinary Girls: A Memoir. Algonquin Books.

Grande, R. (2019, October 29). Abused, Addicted, Biracial and Queer: Jaquira Díaz Is Anything but

               ‘Ordinary.’ The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/books/review/ordinary-girls-jaquira-diaz.html

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