The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism (benefit from what you know)

“The Authority of Experience” by Arlyn Diamond and Lee Edwards in 1977, is well known for the book that uses to teach something new, write something new and or read something new that you have experienced. It is true that one need to have an experience so they can tell the truth about it. In this case, it holds a strong merit in our society and literature. It helps one to write better because of the knowledge and experience that one has achieved individually.

Though you can try to write or make the story, but it will be very different. Everyone is different in the way they think, feel and experience live, so each individually has their own writing, teaching and reading skill. It doesn’t matter about race, gender or identity because it depends on each person’s experience. For example, in “Who’s Irish” by Gish Jen, the grandmother is describing her life and her perspective on her granddaughter life and compare her culture to the Irish culture. Even though she is Chinese, she can still tell the different between the Chinese and Irish. The grandmother relates her life and daughter’s story with a criticism because she sees her daughter’s overwhelmed life as resentful.  In the story the grandmother is still attached to her culture, her ideas and values not understanding her daughter’s different view of life. The influence of the western culture in her daughter has made her into a different type of person that does not support Asian ideas anymore especially when educating her children. Therefore it doesn’t matter what race a person is, as long as the author has experienced so he or she can write about what happened in their experience.

Another best example is “How is Feels to be Coloured Me” by Zora Neale Hurston. In her story, the author writes about how she was born and grown up being a colored girl. She talked about how being the black girl was like, and the struggle that she had overcome. Only who was in that situation could write it very well and detailed. She described that “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me” (360), only someone who has felt this unique discrimination could understand and write with their true feeling. Not only that, Zora also talks about the struggles that she has overcome. She talks about everyone reminding her of her past, and never letting her forget about things that had happened, “Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves” (358). Whose place is it to tell her how to feel, or how to deal with her struggles? No one can make up such a story if they had not experienced it before.

"I remember the very day that I became colored"

* Note: for "How is Feels to be Coloured Me" by Zora Neale Hurston, can either be view by the link provided or "The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English" by Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar, 2007. New York, N.Y: Norton & Company, Inc. (357-360).