Lack of Racial or Privilege Awareness in Dorothy Bryant’s Ella Price’s Journal

Abstract

The turbulent decades of the 1960s and 1970s included several movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Liberation Movement, and spawned a number of texts, such as Dorothy Bryant’s Ella Price’s Journal (1972), which discussed the lives and plights of women throughout America. As beneficial and impactful as these works are, some of them, including Bryant’s novel, focus on white female protagonists, which, unfortunately, further emphasizes the idea that the Women’s Liberation Movement of this time was dominated by white women and their personal causes rather than speaking for all women of different backgrounds, races, and classes. While Bryant wrote the novel during the 1960s, allowing her to reflect on and represent the struggles of all women, her focus remained solely on the troubles of a white, middle-class woman, Ella Price. Her novel offers little inclusion of other races, particularly awareness of ethnic women and their difficulties during this era. Instead, Bryant presents a female character that fails to recognize the role her race and heritage play in her life, as well as the privileges afforded her due to her whiteness.