Toby's Cultural Self Portrait Reflection

My Mother’s Daughter: Three Generations of Womanhood

What is a cultural legacy, or better yet a cultural self-portrait? In Toby Jenkins essay on My Mother’s Daughter: Three Generations of Womanhood, she examines what it means to be African American by looking at the lives of her grandmother and mother. What separates this paper from typical reflective biographies is how she separates herself from those before her. Colored, Negro, and African American are the three distinctive titles that separate the women but are yet what provide her sense of culture and self identity. This essay defines one woman’s outlook on life, culture, and the significance of remembering where you came from.

When I first looked at my professor’s Cultural Self Portrait, I Immediately thought wow this is an extensive biography about one’s culture and self. I thought it would be quite drug out and simply boring in the least. But after reading the first few sentences, I learned that my predictions were incredibly incorrect and that this essay was more than a biography but an examination of what it means to have your culture shape who you are. It’s quite interesting how she separates the three different cultures into the decade in which the appropriate term was used, Colored, Negro and African American.

Within each chapter, the reader learns about how the women of the family continue to strive and grow and adapt to society’s role, while placed under the most scrutiny of being the minority race. In Colored, which describes the grandmother’s life, we learn about not knowing the specific date in which one was born, being scared of the unknown, and overall the separation between blacks and whites. In the Negro Woman, which features the author’s mother, desegregation is the central topic. She speaks of having to walk to school (up to 6 miles), the introduction to television, her parent’s work ethic and the all too familiar feeling of being seen as unequal and inferior when compared to whites. In the African American, which is the author’s view, we learn about how a young woman who is different yet quite similar to her past generations. She quotes “My grandmother was a wife in her mid-teenage years, my mother at age nineteen, and I am still unmarried. By twenty eight my grandmother had five children, by thirty my mother had two, and at thirty-two I still have none” (Jenkins). Though child bearing is an important distinguishing factor, she speaks of having continued to higher education (having three degrees), and other factors that separate the generations.

Though each chapter focuses on each woman’s different role and view of society, there are overarching themes that are present. Firstly, school, family and God are all significant values that are passed down throughout the generations. Family has provided support and the necessary encouragement needed. Academics and achievements are looked upon highly as something necessary to further ones’ self and promote equality between the races. Lastly, God and the spiritual faith have continued to be the higher calling and prayer needed within the daily challenges society places against all races.

What I have learned through this Cultural Self-Portrait is the need to understand what and who has shaped the person I am today. Most reflective essays that I have done in the past, haven’t focused on the generations before me in regards to what has made them who they are. My goal was then to attain the basic information, who, what, where, and when, but never really why. This cultural self-portrait answers the most important question and that is why. Yes, the others are important as well but understanding another’s background, provide the foundation needed to understand one’s self.

Everyone’s family history is unique and different. My professor describes her history as being a black individual faced against society’s challenges, but my own is much different. I am young biracial woman who derives from two of the most opposing races, black and white. Because of my upbringing, education, and my peers, I see things differently than a person who was “whole” in either race. As a pro, I have always been able to see both sides’ points of view, but as a con, I am often asked to choose which race I prefer or favor. I often find myself wishing that we could all be biracial, to avoid racial discriminations, but as humans if we were the same race, one would always find something to separate against. So my wish is merely a hope. Being Biracial has been a wonderful blessing and I am continually grateful for being born in a time where I don’t have to choose to sit with blacks or whites, but rather both. Yes, there will always be judgments and challenges but these are things that every race has to deal with. In my opinion, oppression does not see color. We all can be oppressed in ways that are the up most obvious to those and then obscure to others. What is most important is how we handle it and what we learn from it.