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Throughout the United States and a good portion of the world, popular consensus claims a love for traveling to exotic locations, popular locations such as the Caribbean or any other warm and sunny islands dotted around the world. Avey, the protagonist in author Paule Marshalls Praise song for the Widow, engages in a cruise to and throughout the Caribbean islands with two of her friends. However, for Avey, this cruise would be a trip like non other. In what seems like a coincidental series of events, Avey is immersed into a culture to which she has been exposed to but has limited understanding, a culture she will soon explore in significant depth. Avey's cruise turns out to be an extensive expedition into a cultural world that will lead her to a profound understanding of her heritage, and more importantly, herself. Avey is introduced to the concept of cultural awareness by her Aunt Cuney.
Aunt Cuney emphasizes the story of the Ibos, which focuses on the hardships of African-Americans coming to America on slave ships. In her struggle to keep out of the poverty that encompasses many Afro-Americans, Avey develops a strong work ethic and succeeds in rising to a white-defined middle class lifestyle. Yet she is able to suppress the true meaning of the Ibos struggle to America, and although it provides Avey with a sense of her heritage, it became a remote episode to which she cannot relate to personally. However, the story is part of her sub conscience and gives her a base on which to build this dormant cultural awareness, This base, in fact, accounts for the nightmares Avey endures which reflect her struggle for social acceptance and her continuing struggle to find her social identity. Avey then embarks on a cruise aboard the Bianca Pride. Ironically, the English translation of the ships name is White Pride, a symbol that may have reinforced Avey's awareness of the cultural and racial status she holds.
While on this cruise, Avey is culturally sensitive enough to ascribe racial motives even to the insignificant and frivolous presentation of a parfait. The white cream covers the black cream, and to Avey, this layering represents the higher social and racial standing of whites over blacks and the subservient position of the blacks. This cultural confusion, combined with continued nightmares, nausea, and the feeling of being clogged and swollen, which complicate her search for a cultural identity lead Avey to disembark the Bianca Pride onto the island of Grenada. In Grenada, the cultural awareness and social identity that Avey is searching for come to a culmination.
Avey is dropped off at a hotel and is lost on a walk where she meets Liberty Joseph, who convinces her to accompany him on the "Carriacou Excursion, " an annual island festival honoring the long-time ancestors. Avey travels by small boat to Carriacou, becoming violently ill, and is cared for by a group of women on the boat, encouraging her in this "cleansing. " This journey and her illness prompt Avey to think about the middle passage of the Ibos and the horrors they endured in countless journeys much worse than hers. Once Avey is nursed back to health, she joins a celebration called The Big Drum, witnessing and finally joining the important Beg Pardon and nation dances. Each of these events contribute to Avey's self-growth. Through these events she comes to a reconciliation with her past, her heritage, and herself. With each of these, Avey's self awareness of where she came from grows and she begins to identify for the first time with the other members of her cultural past as well as present.
In contrast to Aunt Cuney's story of the Ibos, Avey is able to experience first hand these events and can relate very personally to them and truly see how she fits with the larger picture. As a result, her social identity now incorporates her cultural past. A journey which began with a limited and distant appreciation of Caribbean heritage becomes a metamorphosis into a deep and thoughtful understanding of what her cultural heritage is and how it helps her transform her social identity.
Free research essays on topics related to: awareness, cruise, social identity, cultural awareness, heritage
Research essay sample on Cultural Awareness Social Identity
