40/50 words response to paragraph.
With the readings, we can see that the American West did provide opportunities for women that they might not have had elsewhere, but this idea can also be argued to be heavily flawed because 'the land of opportunity' did not exist and was not guaranteed for most women, especially minority women like Native American and Chinese women. Cathryn Halverson, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, goes into greater detail on chances like writing and becoming writers, which, while crucial, cannot be said to have been given to ALL women. According to Halverson, women in these positions frequently had the ability to romanticize their lives in the West and write about it in "letters, journals, sketches, essays, and stories for eastern magazines and presses." As "they frequently portrayed western sites as not wild and liberating, but provincial and claustrophobic," easy living for these women was probably not the full truth, but it did grant them access to settings like exotic desert outposts and mountains, which gave women writers positive feedback and success from a variety of readers. Furthermore, in order to discuss opportunities, we must also draw attention to disadvantages, such as the possibility of mobility. As Asian American studies and history expert Judy Tzu-Chun Wu points out, "Asking about specific opportunities for women in the West also suggests that same opportunities didn't exist elsewhere." Tzu-Chun uses Margaret Chung, the first Chinese woman physician born in the United States, as an example of how for some women, options for economic mobility and self-reinvention existed. However, it also points out that her accomplishment wasn't achieved without the use of "foreign womanhood" and identity manipulation. Reading into these possibilities can bring to mind Josefa (Chipita) Rodriguez's story, who was accused, tried, declared not guilty, and hung despite the existence of proof to the contrary. Knowing her life and her experiences, it is difficult to say with certainty whether she would have benefited from life in the West as many minorities did. For example, Indigenous and Mexican women who lived in this region before Anglo-Americans frequently underwent "forced physical, cultural, economic, and political dislocation to make space for "pioneers." Although it is impossible to say for sure how her life would have turned out in the West as opposed to Texas, there may have been a tiny chance to benefit from lax enforcement of some property laws and/or employment regulations.
40/50 words response to paragraph.
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