St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Birds

There are many things that influence how one portrays or performs race. Race is something that cannot be easily, psychically changed, but it is such an important part of one’s identity and can be manipulated based on ever changing surrounding forces. People perform race even within their specified “race” because of the influences of other races around themselves. In Flight of the Japanese Butterfly, Miura was a “modern” woman in her home country of Japan. Japan was beginning to take more after the “western” countries, changing how its residents portrayed their race. In her day-to-day life in Japan, Miura did not resemble a stereotypical quiet, submissive oriental woman who wore kimonos. She was “modern” and engaged in the activities and

Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, the girls have their identity stripped away from them. While Miura chooses to leave behind her “real self,” the way she performs in Japan, in order to please the audience, the girls of St. Lucy’s do not have a choice; if they want to succeed, they will be forced to change their performance of race. In both cases, whether intentional or unintentional, the race that surrounds them uses their majority to dominate the minority race. In Miura’s situation, she understands the need to perform differently for different audiences. However, the girls of St. Lucy’s have only known the “wolf way” of life and must change for “survival” purposes. In order to have had a “successful” time at St. Lucy’s, the final stage is for the girls to be able to easily move between the two races, human and wolf, based on the audience. Based on Miura’s actions and this information, we can see how important society finds it for a person to be able to “switch” between the portrayal of races in order to please whomever is the

Based on the actions of Miura and the girls of St. Lucy’s, we see that race can be a malleable concept; changed and shaped into whatever best fits in the situation. Each situation and location has a unique majority and superiority effect on the performance of other races. So if physically a person appears as one race, but acts or performances differently based on the effects of other races, are they trying to assimilate themselves into this other race, or are they creating a “hybrid” race of sorts with a mixture of the races involved? If there was just one universal race that everyone performed all the time, it would be very dangerous. Our race can affect our culture, traditions, and way of life. By taking that away, we would be taking away a major foundation of people’s