the lady in red

So after reading Colored Girls, I definitely want to talk about how I think each "colored lady" dealt with a lot of internalized oppression, which I found much of it in the lady in red.

When the lady in blue begins with "a friend is hard to press charges against" in terms of rape and receives a reply from lady in red with "if you know him/ you must have wanted it," it immediately hit me with a sense of surprise simply because I had not expected such a response (17). It seems that the lady in red puts a lot of blame on womyn for such shortcomings in their lives. I basically felt that she was in denial with the idea of rape between "friends." To her, it seems preposterous, yet at the same time, it may be because she just doesn't want to admit that such things are actually realistic. Instead, she plays the blame game card.

It is not until the lady in red begins telling the story of a womyn who hurts many, many men by flaunting her sexuality that I saw the emotional oppression she had put on for herself. It is towards the end when another man gets kicked out in the morning and after he leaves, "she placed the rose behind her ear/ & cried herself to sleep" (35). Despite how "fierce" or "hard" she looks, and no matter how "cruel" she is to the men she sleeps with, whenever she is alone, she is not afraid of pain. Overall, I just see a womyn who carries huge weights of blame over her shoulders. I was definitely thinking about the idea of self-love for oneself when I read this portion since many womyn have a hard time being self-confident, self-loving, and self-accepting of themselves.

I don't know if that really answers any of the questions about oppression, but I wanted to mostly touch base on the internalized oppression that many womyn face and how the lady in red does a great job (at least, for me) at showing that internal "hatred" before showing a change towards the end.