question_answer 1)

The two accounts that you read above are based in two distant cultures. What is the commonality of theme found in both of them?  

Answer:

Both the autobiographical extracts, based upon two distant cultures, depict the lives of two women from marginalized communities who look back at their childhood and reflect on their relationship with mainstream culture. The first account is by an American Indian woman born in the late 19th century. It expresses the indignations suffered by the Native Americans at the hands of Christians. She was ardently against the oppression of Native Americans in Western culture, though she saw it as an intimate part of the language of the 'palefaces'. Though she resented this mistreatment, she still aimed at bridging the wide gap between the vast differences of the dominant white and native American cultures. She did not let herself be seduced into believing that her Native American traditions were folly or sin. As a person of mixed blood, her life could be looked upon as an example of the beauty and accomplishments that are possible when the two cultures could live cooperatively. The second is by a contemporary Tamil Dalit writer. She looks back on her life from a moment of personal crisis in her life. She voices the discrimination she faced as a Dalit. She explores the impact of the discrimination, compounded by the poverty suffered by Dalit women. The caste system had been so deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche that institutions that ought to promote egalitarianism, became the means of prpetuating caste discrimination. Therefore, the commonality of them is the discrimination and indignity suffered by women in marginalized communities at the hands of the supposedly superior caste or culture.