Walden University Week 5 Social Change Response

Respond to at least one of your colleague’s postings in one or more of the following ways:

• What insights into education does Shange’s work address?
• Build on the ideas presented by your peer by expanding on or providing a new example of how concepts of expression, perspective, and social change are apparent through the character chosen
• Respond to this: EN

• I chose the Lady in Yellow because she was the most interesting and exciting. The way she described herself, her friends, and graduation night helped bring my imagination alive and picture what I thought that night would look like. Lady Yellow seemed fearless with an air of innocence to her. She is cheerful and excited about the possibilities after graduation yet she has the playfulness of a youth. She was an excellent dancer “who won all kinds of contests with the cousins at the Police Athletic League dances” (Shange, 1997). She was a virgin “and everybody knew I always started crying if somebody actually tried to take advantage of me” (Shange, 1997) and she wasn’t afraid to admit it. Throughout the poem, she went on to say how she and her friends were “doing nasty old tricks” (Shange, 1997) and how graduation night had to be a night unlike any other. She was tempting fate by dancing provocatively to gain the attention of a boy whom she could have her first experience with and on graduation night, the result was she had sex for the first time which appeared to be what she was wanting to do from the start of the night. She was proud of her first sexual experience.Shange wanted everyone to know she was a virgin when she said “It was graduation nite and I was the only virgin in the crowd” (Shange, 1997), by expressing this in the first line of her poem she keeps the reader in suspense waiting to see if she loses her virginity by the end of the poem. Her perspective is one of moving on from childhood to adulthood. She is excited about no longer being a child and being an adult. The only thing that mattered to her on that night was losing her inhibitions and having fun with her friends. Lady in Yellow is living in a time where changes are happening all around her. The social change theme apparent in this poem is human rights, women are starting to have a voice about themselves, their bodies, and who, if any, can touch them. The female gaze style of poetry is apparent in Shange’s poem Graduation Nite in that the poem is being told from a female’s point of view and women are seen as “subjects instead of objects” (Cohen, 2017). Although there is much mention of sexuality in this poem, the reader is seeing it through the eyes of a teenage girl who is interested in losing her virginity but does not want to be objectified and needed to be respected.

• References:Cohen, A. (2017). Not Safe for Work. Retrieved on March 30, 2022, from https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/speaking…Walden University, LLC. (Producer). (2010b). Graduation nite [Audio file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.