Insider vs Outsider: Who Really Knows?

This is by far one of the most significant questions to be raised in not only this class, but in my life. I often wondered if being a black young woman actually made me an authentic source for all african americans, but I can say now with absolute certainty that it does not. I don't know one person regardless of race, religion, sexual preference, political stance, or any other trivial and often over emphasized quality that is exactly the same as another. We are all different, with different experiences, which shape our actions and beliefs in different ways.

As a person, who has lived unintentionally a double sometimes triple and even more life due to a need to give in to social pressures, an urgency to prove my worth as an intelligent human being, to wipe away all sense of my ethnicity, and to prove that I belong in a place like our university without the help of any "actions"...I have played the role of token, oreo, a girl who may have been born into a poor urban community a.k.a. "the hood", but works herself beyond exhaustion to keep her and her sisters in North Face, Moosejaw, and whatever name brand that will do the trick to hide an identity that has long been seen as wrong, but rarely unless with family, close friends, or a class like this one do I have the opportunity to simply be me (loyal friend, sister, daughter, and scholar).

When I think about my background living in a entirely african american city who because of lack of funding has gone without a police department, fire department, a public high school without windows, a high school that covers eighth grade material to twelfth graders, and worst of all a city without a public library it makes me really sad. I know I would not be where I am today if my mother had not insisted on placing my sisters (adopted) into private schools in prominent suburban communities, where we often were the only people of any color. I know this helped me academically, but socially it took away my ethnic identity, instead of embracing the color my skin...I tried to overshadow it by doing the opposite of any generalizations about blacks that I heard. I was a vegetarian for two years in elementary school to prove to people that all blacks didn't eat fried chicken and "soul" food. I guess the point of me writing all this was to show that if I wrote a book on African Americans, it certainly wouldn't be authentic to all African Americans, but simply a book on my own experiences and beliefs. I feel that anyone can become an insider and it has nothing to do with what group you were born into.


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In writing all of this and then thinking back to our class discussions, the one question that I have is: Why does setting and language play such a large role in determining what people feel is authentic literature?

I never know whether to be amused or insulted...certainly people don't think slums are the only authentic setting for african americans and ebonics is not the language of blacks. I just never quite understood the emphasis on these two attributes.