Blog Post #5: Adrienne Rich

I really enjoyed Adrienne Rich's essay Notes toward a Politics of Location as a whole but the part of the essay that intrigued me the most was when she talks about her skin, her body, and how there are more things that define who she is on the surface than what meets the eye. Rich says "When I write "the body" I see nothing in particular. To write "my body" plunges me into lived experience, particularity: I see scars, disfigurements, discolorations, damages, losses, as well as what pleases me." This section really resonates with me. No two bodies are the same, no two bodies have had the same experiences, have the same scars, have the same marks, every body and everyone is different.
I also like when she starts to talk about her race and how people just portray her as "white" because of her complexion, instead of her actual ethnicity. Adrienne Rich states, "I was viewed and treated as a female, but also viewed and treated as white-by both black and white people. I was located by color and sex as surely as a black child was located by color and sex..." My ethnicity is Puerto Rican and Italian. When I was younger no one believed me when I said I was Puerto Rican, as if an ethnicity is something you would need to lie about, because my skin color is so fair compared to other Puerto Ricans. People viewed me as a white female and, something so simple as race can be so personal. Rich goes one to talk about how she is not only white but she is Jewish. I really enjoyed her insight into how important it is to look beyond gender, skin color,  race and view people for who they are as a person.