{"id":855,"date":"2022-09-29T21:21:42","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T01:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=855"},"modified":"2022-09-29T21:21:42","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T01:21:42","slug":"familial-influences-and-sense-of-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2022\/09\/29\/familial-influences-and-sense-of-self\/","title":{"rendered":"Familial Influences and Sense of Self"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saeed Jones\u2019s poem \u201c Boy Found Inside a Wolf\u2019 starts with a description of Jones fighting his way out of his father\u2019s body (or the \u201cwolf\u201d in this poem). Through this, Jones references the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Jones, like Riding Hood, is an inexperienced young individual who is still finding themselves in a complex world because of this, they depend on the authority figures in their life to help them understand the world and their role in it. Unfortunately, not all adults have their well-being in mind which can lead them to difficult places in life. In Riding Hood\u2019s case, she is misled and later consumed by the wolf. Jones opens his poem by using this as a metaphor for his life. Starting with his repetition of \u201c red\u201d and \u201cblack\u201d, he creates a vivid image of the gruesome and uncomfortable conditions of the body that he is fighting his way out of. (Jones 13) Jones also emphasizes the feeling of suffocation he experiences in his \u201cfather\u2019s body\u201d as a way of metaphorically representing the nature of his father\u2019s expectations, restrictive and overbearing on Jones\u2019s gender expression and sexuality. Jones being trapped in his \u201cfather\u2019s body\u201d also represents his father\u2019s attempts to make Jones like him, to the point where he feels trapped in his father\u2019s sense of self.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Similar to Jones, Eve Sedgwick also discusses the relationship between queer kids and authority figures or parents. She writes about how unaccepting and hateful parents can be towards their queer kids, to the point of either isolating themselves from Queer adults or rejecting them from the family. Jones and Sedgewick\u2019s discussion of the influence of familial relationships on queer kids and their sense of self highlights this common theme in LGBTQ+ literature and experiences. More specifically, Jones\u2019s poem highlights how despite parents\u2019 attempts to change their children, these attempts are futile as a true sense of self can not be stopped. He shows this resistance through his fist breaking through the wolf\u2019s body, showing how despite numerous challenges queer people face, they will always continue to resist and create change. (Jones 13)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saeed Jones\u2019s poem \u201c Boy Found Inside a Wolf\u2019 starts with a description of Jones fighting his way out of his father\u2019s body (or the \u201cwolf\u201d in this poem). Through this, Jones references the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Jones, like Riding Hood, is an inexperienced young individual who is still finding themselves in … Continue reading Familial Influences and Sense of Self<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5026,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}