Culture Clash: The Struggle with Racial Identity in "Strong Horse Tea" Caroline Stahl 12th Grade

Community is as life sustaining as food and water. It provides human connection, a sense of identity, and support. However, human nature leads individuals to seek experiences separate from their communities. In Alice Walker’s story “Strong Horse Tea”, Rannie goes a step further, rejecting her community in search of validation from a different one. She believes that connection to white society will come only through the rejection of her black identity. This belief leads to her mistrust of Sarah’s medicine. The mailman, who gives the reader white society’s perspective, shows white culture’s disinterest in Rannie’s struggle. After white society fails her, Rannie gives herself completely to black tradition, allowing Sarah to practice her medicine on Snooks. However, her initial resistance to her community destroys her opportunity to save her child. Cultural division makes Snooks’s death inevitable. Through Rannie’s struggle with community identity, Walker illustrates the consequences of cultural division.

Rannie’s rejection of Sarah’s traditional medicine shows her subconscious desire to separate herself from pain that stems from her black identity. Through her invalidation of Sarah, shown in her statement, “I don’t believe in none...