COVE

The artwork I chose to use for this selection is called , this artwork was done in 1946 by a women named Elizabeth Catlett. When it comes to the literary piece, I chose to use the short story Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston. The correlation between these two pieces of work, is the idea of hard work and African American women working hard in America to provide for their families, themselves, or even just their significant others like we see in “Sweat”.  While looking at the artwork done b Catlett ou can really see the hard work and the constant strain on the face of the women, you can see that she goes to work everyday to make a living and to make money in order to support the ones she cares about, which I think directly correlates with Hurston’s story as well, and the main characters in the story and how the women, Delia, works so hard and washes clothes to make sure that her and her husband both have a roof over their heads. Although, her husband is against her washing white people’s clothes, she still does it just so she has enough money to be able to provide for them. In “Sweat” when Sykes says, “Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks’ clothes outa dis house.” When Sykes does this in the story she is very upset, because she is the one providing for the family and doing all the work, so she feels heartbroken when instead of appreciating her work that she does in order to provide for him and herself. Another key moment to look at that shows the under appreciation for her work is when Sykes kicks all the clothes she had just organized all around, just to mess up the work she had just done to make it more difficult for her, “She saw Sykes had kicked all of the clothes together again…” When she sees this, she gets hit with a wave of sadness and defeat. But she ends up pushing all those feelings done and goes back over to reorganize the clothes. Both of these individuals’ artworks show the strength and the power that these African American women have.