The purpose of this article is to examine the issue of female identity and oppression in the works by Janice Mirikitani and Louise Erdrich, and how these two issues are represented in their literature. These concerns will be analyzed by considering the historical contexts of both ethnic backgrounds, Japanese Americans and Native Americans, and how they have been limited in their choices by the stereotypes created by White American culture. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In the years before World War II, Japanese-American writers who arrived near the end of the 19th century produced works that reflected the experiences of first-generation immigrants known as Issei. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, suspending all immigration of Chinese workers. Japanese Americans became aware of the question of identity during World War II, particularly the Nisei, second-generation Japanese Americans. At this time, internment literature reflected Americans' ambivalence toward the United States. Janice Mirikitani is one of the most famous Japanese American poets of the era. She belongs to the third generation, known as Sansei. She was born in Stockton, California in 1941. During World War II, she and her family were interned in concentration camps, along with 110,000 other Japanese Americans. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. During this time, she struggled with her ethnic identity. As director of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, she was dedicated to helping the poor, the homeless and victims of racism. She has collaborated on several anthologies (including AYUMI, A Japanese American Anthology – with a selection of writings, poems and even images in a bilingual way). She has also contributed to several periodicals, such as Asian American Heritage. Her work has always focused on social and political activism and she believed that poetry should embrace reality, but she also conveyed her messages through dance and even teaching. Through her poetry and activism, Mirikitani addresses the horrors of war, combats institutional racism, advocates for women and the poor, and reflects on her struggle with ethnic identity. Mirikitani was committed to Third World positions against racism and oppression, as well as rupture. stereotypes of Asian Americans prevalent in mainstream American culture. Asian American literature has emphasized distinctions between Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, and other Asian cultures, and this protest has been reflected in its main collections, Awake in the River (1978), We, the Dangerous (1995). ), and Shedding Silence (1987), which discusses racism and internment in association with scenes of sexual violence. His poetry was often angry, aggressive, direct, direct and melancholic. It was full of investigations and personal experiences. Indeed, she intensely experienced the social revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, which led to the cultural development of American minorities – who began to reclaim their culture. During this period, many writers began to highlight the differences within their communities and explore the implications of being a "minority." Aother writer…Native Americans suffered from wars, dispossession of their lands, and subsequent confinement to reservations. , and the poverty, illness and addictions that result. Most of these conflicts arose because white Americans did not understand the needs of indigenous peoples. Some well-meaning reformers believed that Indians could be saved through assimilation. The focus therefore shifted from attempts to defeat them to attempts to transform them into the image of white America. Thus, assimilation was attempted through drastic changes in the Indians' relationships with the land, a new direction in their education, and a revolution in their way of life. However, the assimilation process did not end well or often forced natives to abandon their own culture, which inevitably creates cross-cultural problems. Louise Erdrich is a popular Native American writer from the Chippewa tribe of North Dakota. However, she was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, in 1954. She studied and wrote poetry, which is reflected in her mastery of prosaic language. Regardless, her success as a writer followed the publication of an award-winning series of short stories in the 1980s. She attended Dartmouth College and her junior year coincided with the creation of the department of Native American studies. In these classes, Erdrich began to explore his own ancestry which would eventually inspire his poems, short stories, and novels. Furthermore, she has always affirmed that her childhood, surrounded by storytellers, influenced her work. In 1984, she published Love Medicine, her first novel. It is structured as a series of stories – several of which were first published as short stories – about the relationship between three Chippewa families. The novel presents a very intense religious experience in the cultural context of an Indian reservation in the 1930s. These reservations were known for their poverty, high mortality rates, chronic unemployment, and destruction of native culture. Culture was imagined as a number of practices, behaviors and customs which, if modified, would remove all historical obstacles between the Indians and the Anglo-Saxons. -The Americans. Indeed, the government passed several laws to assimilate Indians into Anglo-Saxon culture, and one of the ways to achieve this was through religion. Religion was merely a tool used by the European majority to pursue their goals. The question is: to what extent have the indigenous people preserved their culture? To what extent have they assimilated? These questions of identity are addressed in “Saint Mary,” the second chapter of Love Medicine. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, brings us the idea of ​​binaries. Society has trained humans to think in a binary manner, in which one member is always privileged and the other inferior. For example, white/black and male/female. Similarly, we can see in the works of Mirikitani and Louise Erdrich the reflection of this binary system in terms of ethnicity and female oppression. The issue of double consciousness is also very important. This term was coined by Du Bois to describe how an individual's identity is divided into many facets. This internal conflict is often experienced by oppressive groups who have internalized their oppression. This double consciousness and racism are closely linked. According to Du Bois, “it is a special sensation, this double consciousness, this feeling of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the yardstick of a world that looks on with contempt and pity amused. "First, the problem of ethnicity is undeniable in both authors, because it is a fact that we live in a white and racist society. As a result, racial minorities such as Japanese Americans and Native Americans experience oppression. This oppression has profound effects on every aspect of their lives, including their identity. Asian Americans and Native Americans have been limited by stereotypes imposed by white Americans and have internalized the insecurities and confusions resulting from these stereotypes. The internalization of these values ​​has caused a lack of self-knowledge and a lack of autonomy. The need to build Asian American and Native American culture arose, and almost all Asian American writing of the period called for the destruction of these negative stereotypes. In Mirikitani's case, as a Japanese American, she has experienced this issue up close and deeply reflects these experiences in her poetry. She writes in the first person (singular or plural) about experiences of oppression and trauma. In “Looking for America,” a poem from her collection We, the Dangerous, she presents a catalog of the racist stereotypes present in American media and that Asian Americans face. As previously stated, Mirikitani's poetry embraces politics and she proves this in We, the Dangerous, where she provides a voice that speaks on behalf of all Japanese Americans interned during World War II. In a 1976 interview, Mirikitani asserted that people of color can speak for themselves and that other people who attempt to write, study and speak about them can fall into distortion, myths and lies on the subject. The fact is that when white Americans write about immigrants, they continue to follow the same stereotypes or create new ones. On the other hand, Native Americans subjected to the assimilation processes imposed by white Americans also experienced confusions and insecurities. Louise Erdrich, in her work, addresses the problem of fragmented identities. In the short story “Saint Mary,” the protagonist experiences an internal struggle as she attempts to define her cultural identity. Marie Lazarre, an Indian woman who wants to be a saint in her town's convent. When she finally goes up to the convent, she meets Sister Leopolda, an Indian nun converted to Christianity. However, as the story progresses, we can observe a strange relationship between Marie and Leopolda which seems to be a competition between them, as well as a love and hate relationship. This conflict represents a significant tension between cultures. In this way, the main theme of the short story is identity formation in bicultural environments. In this case, Mary has opposing opinions: she wants to be a saint, but she does not want to give up her Indian identity. Thus, Mary may represent a syncretistic religious system, something between indigenous and Christian beliefs. Marie experiences a double consciousness, she perceives the world divided into two antagonistic cultures: the colonizer and the colonized. In addition, Sister Léopolda represents a set of values, both cultural and spiritual. Mary represents the Dark One: his pride, his resistance to change and his imagination. However, she struggles to choose between her former self (the Dark One) and what Leopolda has to offer her. However, in the end, she is ultimately proclaimed a saint due to poetic irony. Nevertheless, Marie Lazarre chooses to identify herself as Indian in front of the nuns – Christians, representing white America – by turning their own naivety against them, so.