Art and Literature - Sarah B.G's Portfolio

Critical Research on Art and Literature

Among my creative writing on art is my art reviews and my critical literary research where I apply critical theories or relevant idea on literary works.

My focus is on finding new and compelling points of view to look at art and literary works. This method of writing can be applied to writing about any art form from classical literature to mainstream music.

Research paper titled:

The Color Purple and Post-Patriarchy

In the novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker, we get an in-depth look into the life of an uneducated woman through her personal letters to god and her sister, Nettie, who she was separated from. The novel starts with Celie, our main character, describing a an assault scene by her stepfather in a letter to god. This brutality follows the character as she is married off to another abusive man. She is treated as a caretaker for kids that aren’t hers and plays the role of a servant in this man’s house. The novel explores the sexual oppression and abuse of women in her community. With a great turn of events the novel ends with a celebration of the fourth of July with her children who she was separated from representing a post-patriarchal scene.

This paper explored the patriarchy within relationships in the black communities and how they are intertwined with the hierarchy and racism in the novel. It was explored through Audre Lord’s black feminism theories in Sister Outsider showing us how a post-patriarchal world view is reached at the end of the novel.

-Sarah Bin Ghayth

Research paper title:

Death in Motion in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a novel that shows the disconnect that is experienced between a second-generation immigrant and his mother. He writes the book as a collection of letters to his illiterate mother. The novel depicts characters adjusting in another country after experiencing the war in Vietnam and the trauma and pain which accompanies them. The writer describes his reasons behind writing the narrator as he did by saying, “I wanted to turn the ‘I’ into a search light, so that it can cast itself outward. So that the speaker when looking upon, in this case, the women who raised him. You get the sense of who he is through how he looks at the world, rather than how he presents himself to the reader.”(Vuong 4:43-5:05). Therefore, the language in the book is a clue to understanding the narrative. This paper argues that a psychoanalytic reading of the figurative language in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous manifests gaining power over trauma through a detachment from the body or the self.

-Sarah Bin Ghayth

This art piece review is a post that is part of a three part series discussing an exhibition by Arthr Fundation titled "On Purpose."