This Tumblr blog post by a Berkeley undergrad reflecting on her Race and Gender class in Feminist Studies is an example of the use and effect of O’Grady’s article “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity” two decades later.
by Carve Her Name With Pride, 2010
Photo: Manet, Edouard. Olympia (1863)
Seeing as how I haven’t blogged in a while, I thought I should hop right back on the train and begin with this: the very painting which has taken up the firsthalf of my semester and all of my mind. Taking the LGBT 100 class on Race and Gender here in Berkeley has probably been one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made in my life. Given, the class comes with its own bias (for how can it not, being that it falls under Feminist Studies here at UC Berkeley—which, believe me, says a lot), I think it’s done a pretty good job of engendering within me (and, I believe, my colleagues) a new—or, even, a stronger—avenue of thinking about ourselves as women and as human beings.
I think the most important thing about growing up and, I suppose, just growing, is being able to gain a clearer and stronger perspective about yourself and the world and your place in this world as you go along, and for all it’s worth, that class—for me—has done just that. It is almost impossible for me to view anything—art, film, literature—completely detached from the feminist perspective, and on the walk home today, I couldn’t
help but think that maybe that’s what I’ve done all my life all along. This class just gave me the term for it: the “woman-identified woman.”
I write this in accompaniment to this photograph because from the very first days of the semester, this is the very painting we have viewed and revisited as we continue to “grow” in that class. The painting of Olympia is so invested with meaning I was once unable to see and realize, and the experience of finally being able to do so feels almost spiritual. Women always speak about finally “doing something for myself.” Taking this class and drenching myself with their (albeit sometimes incomprehensible) philosophy, now mine, I suddenly realized that this is better than anything I have ever ventured to reward myself with. A new perspective, a new and better way of seeing myself through a history of oppression (I say this with some distance; it is easy to manipulate this concept and stray into the zone of radical femininity which I would like to clarify I do not belong to) is the best gift any young woman can ever bestow upon herself. Seeing Olympia and “Laura” (the African American maid complementing
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© 2009 Lorraine O'Grady | All rights reserved.