"Windows" and/or "Mirrors" in the Creation of Sexual/Personal Identity through Multicultural Women's Poetry

Borrowing from Emily Style's metaphor of curriculum as either "windows" or "mirrors," this article shows how poetry written by women from African American, Asian American, Chicana, European American, and Native American backgrounds can function in one of two ways: as "windows" into the worldviews of someone from another culture or as "mirrors" that reflect our own cultures. It looks at racial/ethnic traditions, conventions, worldviews, historical events, and sociological conditions affecting the respective women's poetry, as well as readers' responses to the poetry. The poems of Marian Yee, Esmeralda Bernal, Kathleen Fraser, Carol P. Snow, and Lucile Clifton are illustrative of how women from different racial/cultural backgrounds claim their own sexual/personal identities while not ignoring the worldviews of their native cultures.