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Many times cultures of a non-European descent are forced to find their cultural identity or background from someone without the true "knowledge" that is embedded within their culture. Many times people from a non-European culture do not get to experience any of the actual history or the actual pain and suffering that there culture has endured because they do not get exposed to meaningful writings from their own culture. Many text books, and books for that matter, show some pain and struggling from non-European cultures; the books rarely tell a story of the pain they felt daily. Furthermore it is very difficult from a non-European perspective to really understand your cultures" struggles unless they are presented with writings and information that come "within" your culture itself. For example, from Alice Walker's book, The Color Purple, Alice writes about the pain and experiences that she has faced or has witnessed. Alice writes, "Your daddy didn't know how to git along, he say. Whitefolks lynch him. Too sad a story to tell pitful little growing girls, he say. Any man would have done what I done"(187). The message that Alice is conveying is that through racism and the African-American culture, many times African-American men felt inferior to Europeans. Also, within African-American culture both African-Americans and European men looked down upon African-American females. The relationships between men and women from an African descent are quite different from that of other cultures. To many other cultures, the underlying racist message is easily picked up because that is what those cultures have learned through their examining of literacy meanings, yet there is an underlying message that most non-Native cultures could hardly grasp. Many times people from other cultures can misinterpret the actual meaning behind a non-European author. Alice writes and communicates in her book the way her culture engaged and wrote when using their own literacy, thus, helping her keep her cultural literacy meaningful.
