Grace Nichols Poems essays

Grace Nichols Poems essays Discuss the presentation of women in Grace Nichols poems. Use quotations to support your observations. Grace Nichols, and afro-american woman, lived amongst women which had to work and fight for a living. In her poems, she shows how her life was and how women had to live in those conditions. She shows many aspects of the life conditions. Firstly, Grace Nichols presents women as very hard-working and spiritually and physically strong. This is clearly shown in the poem "Those Women". For example, in the first line "Cut and contriving women", the poet wants to show that women had to do a great effort since the word "contriving" gives the idea of something hard and difficult to do. Added to this, in the first stanza, when she says "hauling fresh shrimps up in their sines", it is clearly seen that the women were physically strong since this was a tough work. Another good poem which shows the physicall and spiritual strengh of women is "Waiting fot Thelma's Laugther". In this poem the author uses vocabulary which gives the poem a sense of strength. For example, the words "crush", "scream" give an idea of a powerful and physically strong woman. In addition, in this poem, the spiritual strengh of women is underlined. When she says "You wanna scream cause your head's too small", it is shown that this woman had a great spiritual strengh since she wanted to scream out her problems. Grace Nichols also presents women by how they relate with other people, for example, with men or with their children. In the poem "In my name" the persona is a woman who describes her feelings for her unborn child. The lines when she says "and command the earth to receive you" or "Let the snake slipping in deep grass be dumb before you" show that the future mother takes good care of her child and wants the world to receive him well. Another poem which shows the relationships of women is "Be a butterfly". Lines 12, 13 and 14, "watching our mo...