Nicholas Barnard Women's Playwrights: Sisters May 10, 2002
1. I believe Ms. Jackson's quote about Love and Understanding is specifically between black women, about their histories. But I believe a deeper sense Ms. Jackson is calling for an understanding between people of all races, genders, backgrounds, and socioeconomic status, she has just chosen to examine the socioeconomic barriers between two black women.
There is also specific ambiguity in Ms. Jackson's statement, specifically, “it is necessary to love to understand.” There are two ways to interpret her statement. The first way is a procedural path, if you want to understand you must learn to love first. The second is that you must love the process of understanding others. While the first statement is the reading that I came away with first, it is logically unsound in my mind. It is possible to understand someone without loving them; many people understand their enemies. But people who heal wounds between groups of people are those who make a point of understanding, and love to understand.
2. My interpretation of Montclair is that she has made a stated effort to assimilate into the culture of the white girls around her, and thus this story is representative of assimilation by African-Americans. I honestly can't say I've witnessed any of the few black friends I have work at assimilating. This is not to say the people I've known haven't strived to assimilate, but I am unaware that they have strove to assimilate.
I would say though that I've witnessed people of Asian descent work very hard at fitting in and trying to outperform anyone and everyone. Specifically I had a friend, Paul Kwak, who was a very skilled musician who made great efforts at fitting in. I think the closest correlations between this and self-image issues in the white community, is that of white girls especially in their teens who are always striving to fit into a “group” that has standards that are set by pop stars and supermodels.
I also see a very specific correlation in the gay male community of men who make an effort to identify either as straight (masculine), or as flaming gay. These are both stereotypes that I have seen gay men strive to identify with. It has even been informally codified using the terminology “butch-points” where something more masculine garners one more butch points, and something more flaming garners negative butch points. This is also true for lesbians, but the spectrum goes from butch female to extremely feminine.
3. I honestly don't think many children who are not white, heterosexual, and male are shown positive “Hollywood” role models of themselves. While I think people of all races, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic backgrounds are displayed on television and in the media, the non-white characters tend to be more stereotypical than the rest of the characters portrayed. Gay men get portrayed as interested in partying and sex, black women are either welfare moms, or hard nosed professional women, white women fall into more categories, but if a woman is a professional on TV, she is often portrayed as a power monger. The lists of stereotypes go on and on, an while there are always exceptions to the rules, where people are portrayed as more complex and human than just a stereotype, these don't exist enough.
I believe that it is fundamentally important for everyone to see positive role models of people who are like him or her. As someone who rarely sees positive normal role models of gay men around (although, don't get me wrong there are more, but there are too many stereotypical characters hanging around) I think it is very important to have characters who are positive role models reflecting the whole fabric of American Society.
4. I think this couple of “Sisters” have given each other two things, first and most important is an understanding for each other, but also they have given each other the invaluable gift of a vision of the future. Both of these women are going to walk away from their encounter and try to make their lives better than they were.