Geovanna Septimio Landivar

19 October 2022

In the essay “Strangers”, Toni Morrison provides a first-person point of view, stating her

experience when encountering a stranger, and explores the preconceived notions that people make

of others, and how there is so much within a person that we would never know without getting to

know them inside and out.

It took some time for me to understand my unreasonable claims on that

fisherwoman. To understand that I was longing for and missing some aspect of myself,

and that there are no strangers. There are only versions of ourselves, many of which we

have not embraced, most of which we wish to protect ourselves from. For the stranger is

not foreign, she is random; not alien but remembered; and it is the randomness of the

encounter with our already known--although unacknowledged--selves that summons a

ripple of alarm. That makes us reject the figure and the emotions it provokes--especially

when these emotions are profound. It is also what makes us want to own, govern, and

administrate the Other. To romance her, if we can, back into our own mirrors. In either

instance (of alarm or false reverence), we deny her personhood, the specific individuality

we insist upon for ourselves. (Toni Morrison, 161)

When we have preconceptions about a stranger, that idea is totally personal and

individual, and it speaks much more about ourselves than it does about the other. The pictures we

create are based on our own experiences and especially our prejudices and fears toward

ourselves.
 “far from our original expectations of increased intimacy and broader knowledge,

routine media presentations deploy images and language that narrow our view of what

humans look like (or ought to look like) and what in fact we are like” (138) (Toni

Morrison, 161)

We are often clouded by what we see on the outside, even though it might be

beautiful inside. We can hate or love at the first sign, this feeling is consistently based on

our lack of interest in the other, creating prejudgments based on our own ignorance,

which leads us to create racism, homophobia, xenophobia, i.e. a segregated world.