Blue

While reading the story Am I Blue? I found it particularly striking how Alice Walker explained the suffering that Blue the horse went through, and how this suffering greatly parallels that of women and people of color who have been abused throughout history because they are seen as "less than" or inferior to others. She makes the excellent and all too relevant point that people who think absolutely nothing about animals' rights are those who have been taught to believe animals want us to command them, and that "children 'love' to be frightened, or women 'love' to be mutilated and raped". Though I don't believe it is fair to say that people who do not consider animal rights are inherently dangerous or bad people, there is a connection between this misguided knowledge that you are superior to human and non-human animals alike.

She also tells us how, when Blue's partner is taken away, "The children next door explained that Blue's partner had been 'put with him' (the same expression that old people use, I had noticed, when speaking of an ancestor during slavery who had been impregnated by her owner) so that they could mate and conceive" I think that it is important that she realized this connection, because it shows the inhumane ways in which Blue was treated, and how they used him simply as a means to impregnate the female horse, without regards to the connection he would form with her or how he would feel when they took her away. Walker also describes near the end of the story how he seemed visibly upset, and not only upset because he was sad that his partner had been taken away, but even angry because of the way the humans had betrayed and mistreated him, and I think it is important to recognize that animals have feelings like we do, and form connections that will hurt them if broken.