The short stories of “Snakes” and “Virgins” are two stories from the Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self series written by Danielle Evans. (Evans) The series deal with a variety of characters undergoing a wide range of experiences in a contemporary time period. The first two stories mainly focus on the struggling of black female and the thoughts come associated with the coming age. This paper will exam both stories, compare them and understand how the setting specifically reflects the meanings and messages of the narrative. (Evans) The Story In “Snakes”, Tara (narrator) travels to Tallahassee to visit her Caucasian grandmother and her cousin Alison, while her parents travel to Brazil for a study tour. The grandmother’s behavior against the girl and Tara’s ‘uncontrollable hair “The situation escalated, and grandmother tried to control the child by telling the lie of the snake. These lies caused the narrator to panic and cause the fight between the cousins.
After the grandmother cuts Tara’s hair, Allison pushes Tara from the tree – leading the narrator to hospital. Many years later, when Alison visited Alison in an attempt to commit suicide, Allison and Tara stated that Tara jumped from the tree instead of Alison pushing her. In “Virgins”, Erica becomes the narrator. Jasmine and Michael relax by the pool of a white teacher, discussing the death of Tupac. The group decides to go to the movies where they run into a boy Jasmine has recently had sex with and his current girlfriend. Erica and Jasmine make the decision to go to the bars in the city using fake ID’s to find men, ultimately ending up with a group of unknown men in Brooklyn. Erica leaves with Michael and ends up sleeping with his brother; Jasmine stays with the men, presumably sleeping with one of them. Although the narrator changes, the core of the stories are the same. It follows a flow of time and focuses on the subtle relationship among characters. (Evans)
The Characters Tara, a parent of a nine-year-old alien (white mother and black father), is visiting her grandmother in the summer and her educated parents are visiting Brazil. The main battle of this story is between the grandmother and Tara, which stemmed from the grandmother’s inability to control her granddaughter. At first, the main point of tension was about Tara’s hair and the fact that Lydia and Tara did not seem able to tame or suppress it. This can be seen as Lydia’s rejection of her daughter’s lifestyle – after all, Tara is the ultimate product of her mother’s decision. At first, Tara took action against any child – by taking action – she was married to the rebellious Caucasian cousin Alison, and Alison was rejected because of Lydia’s bad grades and behavior. However, as the rebellion of the cousins escalated, Lydia decided to tell a horror story about pythons, trying to subdue these girls, which showed that she needed to control Tara had surpassed her desire to dominate her granddaughter’s aesthetics, but had transformed into Aspire to become a movement that can determine Tara’s body.
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Tara responds to this new type of control by literally closing it. Her fear of ‘life-threatening’ leeches can also be seen as an expression of her grandmother’s attempts to control and subvert her emotional distress. Tara was also isolated by this new type of control because her cousin Allison rejected Tara because she was frustrated with her grandmother’s reaction. Allison then began to reflect Lydia’s desire to control Tara and reflect her refusal of her disapproving behavior. Behind Lydia’s lovely Tara’s hair, Allison pushed Tara from the tree and almost killed her. This short story finally revealed after many years, in fact, Tara himself jumped from the tree. Although many readers respond to this moment may be one of the anger caused by unfair circumstances, it can also be seen as a nine-year-old girl trying to regain agency and control her body, her family tries Plays dominance and control in all aspects of her physical presence. Lydia tried to control Tara’s aesthetics and body in order to manipulate her gestures to control the long-term history of black women’s aesthetics in order to control their dominance.
As Barbara Christian pointed out in her text, the shadow rises. In the era of slavery, some stereotypes about black women appeared in literature. These stereotypes greatly influenced the perception and treatment of white women by black women and were accustomed to ‘rationalization of slavery'(Peelle). Although each stereotype is accompanied by certain personality traits, the physical portrayal of black women who play each ‘character’ is seen as a manifestation of these traits, and thus is an important symbol of inequality and black inferiority. The stereotypes produced during this period did not die out with the end of slavery. “Virgins” is focusing on the brief moment in the life of our 15-year-old African-American protagonist Erica. Erica lives in a poor community and spends most of her time on her. Good friend Jasmine, she is also 15 and African Americans. Although the title of the story is ‘Virgin,’ the only real virgin in the story is Erica. Her overall attitude toward men is that they are not trusted. Even Michael, the only male character in a short story that girls seem to trust, tends to be as if the girl is his property.
The general public thinks he has a sexual relationship with one of the women. The fact is that the narrator is very clear. Erica and Jasmine live in an unavoidable environment, and at a very young age, they expect the girl. However, despite Jasmine’s recent loss of her virginity, Erica seems to be very concerned about this topic and has been refuting the sexual orientation of the men around her. However, at the end of the text, Erica decided to have sex with her brother Ron. He said: ‘There is no safe thing, only something more secure. If this does not happen now, then it will happen later, but Will not be better ‘(25). This moment can be seen as Erica’s pressure to give up social pressure to her, or she can be seen as Erika when she controls her sexual behavior. However, it really proves that Erica is a role, a realist, and understands the society she is in, and wants to operate it with as much control and agency as possible. The Comparison One of the main themes of the ‘snake’ is the struggling over the body control of herself for black female.
This can be seen from the point of view of the grandmother’s desire to control Tara’s aesthetics and her attempts to use the black female body as a tool so as to control her daughter. When Tara jumped from the tree, the desire to regain control and agency was reflected in the body and hurt himself. At the moment when my grandmother locked Tara and her cousin in the bathroom, the relationship between aesthetic control and the body’s own movement control, ‘We spent the whole morning locked in the bathroom. I was ordered not to come out until I used the hair What, ‘This moment created the relationship between aesthetics and behavior, and thus physical control of the black female body. In addition, because hair is a material property, it has become a source of pride and individuality for black women, and is a symbol of general power. In this case, the interaction is controlled and this interaction can be viewed as It is the grandmother’s attempt to obtain institutions and power from Tara and make up for lack of control. This can also be seen from the grandmother’s attempt to use Tara’s body as a medium to control her mother. Later in the short story, the narrator himself realized that her grandmother saw her as a solution.
However, by using Tara as a type of vehicle, she dehumanizes her and uses her. Before the grandmother’s story of removing Tara Hair, the two characters had a war with Tara’s mother. Tara said, ‘Daddy said you took everything from my mother.’ The direct response to this is to cut Tara’s hair. Once again, we see that Grandma associates Tara’s contempt and refusal to be used as a vehicle with the symbol of black female pride. The grandmother once again used Tara’s body to grab her and control her physically. Evans described this moment, ‘She began to cut short, unevenly, and her rhythm of anger was interrupted by the tighter black curls on the floor. I didn’t think of running. I didn’t think there was anything I could go with’. Tara’s sense of trap comes from her grandmother’s control of her appearance.
At this moment Tara completely lost the agency and led to the freezing of the body – she could not move and lost all the power she had in her lack of authority. Her only escape was personally taken away by her cousin. When Tara jumped from a tree, her grandmother lost power, but this was only reflected in her daughter/Tala’s mother. The form of struggle to control black women’s bodies is a relationship formed between black aesthetics and physical control and domination, and grandmother tries to use this relationship to deprive Tara of personality and freedom. In the end, the outcome of this struggle was that Tara was forced to take extreme measures after experiencing a traumatic event that was typical of the white controls of the black female body. On the other hand, one major theme of “Virgins” is the theme of ‘coming of age’, specifically concerning the issue of sexual agency. Evans seems to be asking the readers to question whether the two girls are truly taking control of their sexuality, or if they’re simply following the paths dictated to them by society.
Erica has a very ‘matter of fact’ attitude towards men and sexuality and repeatedly makes statements such as, ‘when you were alone, men were always wanting something from you’ and ‘we’d had enough nice guys suddenly look at us the wrong way’. As can be seen in this example, the community in which our main character lives in is one in which sexual interaction is inevitable and expected of girls at a very young age. On the other hand, as these examples also show, our narrator is not unaware of this and strives to avoid falling ‘prey’ to this lifestyle. However, it should not be thought that Erica sees sex as something she is too young for. In fact, she describes a forced sexual interaction between herself and a lifeguard by stating, ‘I wasn’t scared or anything, just cold and surprised’. Even in this moment of forced sexual contact from the lifeguard, Erica doesn’t describe the incident as a victim would – with feelings of fear or anxiety, or as a child, but instead as someone who has a high level of understanding and who has experienced an unfortunate event that is a symptom of the state of her environment. This is not because Erica is the type of female who allows herself to be taken advantage of, but because she is a highly aware narrator – meaning that she understands the environment in which she lives and the motives of the people around her.
