To Skate On Sun

HandsOnTheWheel-1
I'm a complex girl
with the simple desire to represent
everything I came here with.
Mon-Jan-2012
8 notes

A Small Essay I Wrote for my Humanities Assignment

 

I’m not really sure what I’m going to learn in Humanities. I know what I’m supposed to learn, the topics that are most likely to be covered, and the information that is deemed relevant to the aforementioned subject. 

In defining Humanities though, as a study of culture and its geographical relevance, I feel like the information we’re allotted only mimics the information we’ve already been given. 

What I want to learn, though, are the secret parts of the world that the textbooks don’t bother explicating. I want to know how these hidden parts of the world affect the way I’ve been taught to think or the way it could transform the conditioning of my thought process.

Recently, I found out that the popular television show “Xena: Warrior Princess” was based on Amina of Zaria, who was a princess of Zaria (a province of what we now know as Nigeria). She reigned the Zazzau kingdom around 1545, and enriched it with metal workers and skilled warriors. She built earthen walls, known as Amina’s Walls that still stand. 

As a child, I was obsessed with Xena. As I began to identify with my own growing ideals, she became a figure of feminine power and is generally coined as the “feminist hero” . That ‘feminist’ character is based on a black woman who understood and exerted her power, (and her legacy just reaffirms that traditional african culture have always been matrifocal). When I found out, I felt slighted and deceived. Had I known about Amina as a child - a real black female warrior, I would have been able to kill some of the victim inside of me. But the west will not willingly tell us the stories that we need to hear about our own cultures - to the west, we are a symbol of the greatest european conquer. Look what they’ve gotten from us; our strongest children, our resources. The humanities textbook we are reading for this class will not teach me about my humanity, but rather a thwarted one - plagued with years of taking the love from other people. 

  1. toskateonsun posted this