Advanced Composition

M-W 3pm Class

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Reading Reflection 4

           There is much more to the term ‘African American’, to the race of African American then what we are taught in history class. After reading both “From Dead President to the Benjamins” and “Grammar”, I have only become more open minded to the history of African American Vernacular English, AAVE for short, or Ebonics, that had previously gone unnoticed in my brain. I have always accepted the diverse dialects and languages that run relatively unrestrained within families: my parents were extremely adamant about respecting anyone and everyone’s backgrounds, so there were no racist remarks spoken in my household growing up without verbal punishment. I might not speak using the dialect of AAVE, but I wish to understand and give it the proper recognition when I learn more about it. You can always be further educated by the people around you, so I am happy to have read something that is so important to others. With these two pieces of literature under my belt, I feel like I know a bit more about the linguistics and distinct differences between the various parts of AAVE. I loved the use of dialogue from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” in “From Dead Presidents to the Benjamins” and how it compared Alice saying that “you can’t make words mean what you want them to mean” to American society’s strict literary embargo on the English language and all of its subtle intricacies. There seems to be no limit to how far people will go to avoid relinquishing established power to someone else, no matter how conscious they are of the fact.

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Rhetorical Analysis 3

           The picture I chose to rhetorically analyze is a photograph taken in 1956 that went untitled. It illustrates a normal African American family in that time, what appears to be a parent with his three children, buying concessions from a blatantly segregated establishment. The speaker of the piece would be the photographer, Gordon Parks, who framed his photograph to verbalize the feeling of separation and inferiority that these individuals felt from having to order at different windows for ‘coloreds’. His authority to speak on the issues of African Americans comes from being alive to witness these horrid laws and actions with his own eyes; he captured the atrocity of discrimination on camera film in order to speak out against something that already permeated American society, not something that he, himself, discovered. As an African American, he would have almost certainly been a victim of these same treatments and wanted to do something about it: if he could remove the veil of ignorance from the eyes of people who ignored this reality, then that would make a difference in itself, I think.

           The audience for this piece would definitely have been mostly people that were influenced by African American Literacies, or AAL, back in the 1950s. In the present day, anyone can look back on this picture, regardless of race, and appreciate just how far society has come.  At the time, internalized racism would have prevented most non-African Americans from paying attention to Gordon Parks’ work. If the majority of white Americans refused to order from the same concession counter as non-whites, then why would they care about a photograph that condemned the practices to which they were accustomed? The audience’s expectations of the speaker, from a non-white perspective, would be to refuse to make this image of segregation the norm. It did not openly state Gordon Parks’ opinion on discriminatory practices, but it also did nothing to commend them. He was a major advocate for social justice, so his history gives more context to his work than the work itself ever does. It is all about subtly and unyielding determination. The speaker is communicating to the audience because the act of segregation, at the time, was sick and destructive: there are countless stories of African American people being harassed and mistreated due to these discriminatory practices. The family in this picture just wants a few hot dogs, maybe some ice cream, and yet they are forced to order at a counter separate from identical, white paying customers.

           Some events that preceded the communication would be the enacting of the Jim Crowe laws back in the 1910s, which came as a result of public outrage towards the ending of African American slavery via the13th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Segregation, such as the separate counters at the photo’s concession stand, was just one of the many routes that America took to try and retain control over its non-white citizens. This piece does appeal to AAL, because segregation and racism, internalized or blatant, have always been key obstacles to racial equality, which relates back to the discrimination of AAL and African American Intelligences. This photograph is completely necessary, because without acknowledging the fact that segregation existed and still exists, we will never move past what has already been done. Ignoring your mistakes does not make them go away.

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Rhetorical Analysis 2

             The speaker for this rhetorical analysis was Maya Angelou in her written piece, “My First Lifeline”. She wrote this short story in a first person perspective, highlighting her main character, Marguerite Henderson’s encounters with Bertha Flowers, and the influence that these encounters had on the young girl. Although Mrs. Flowers is the story’s fountain of information on African American Literacy in the story; it is Marguerite who analyses and repeats it to the audience, making her the speaker. Her authority to speak on the issues surrounding the potential for spoken African American literacies, or AAL, comes from Mrs. Flower’s intellectual discussion on AAL’s importance and the positives that it brings to the lives of African Americans.

           The audience for this story is both mainstream society and people influenced by AAl, because the book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, is a well-known classic. Still, I feel that the heart of this excerpt would speak more to someone who has been personally affected by AAL. This text emphasizes the heart and soul of vocalizing your thoughts and giving them life outside of the page, making them pop out amongst stanzas and bringing all new meanings to known stories. The audience’s expectations of the speaker is a simplistic, yet relatable discussion on verbal AAL, as the character holding up the story is a young girl with youthful opinions. An older woman teaching a child the fundamentals discussed in this story is what Maya Angelou wrote as a proud African American woman.  It is what people should expect from her as an established author. Marguerite, and in a sense, Maya, is trying to communicate her optimism and emphasis on dual modes of expression to the audience, willing them to go out and discover just how beautiful their own voices can be. Combining both the audience’s expectations of the speaker and the speaker’s reason for explaining verbal AAL both complement each other in this case.

The events that preceded the communication in the book would be the beginning portion of the story, which would give context to Marguerite’s lifestyle before the excerpt and how she met Mrs. Flowers. The story itself would have events that preceded it, such as Maya’s life up until that point and her many experiences involving AAL that influenced her writing and the story’s message. Yes, I think the story appeals to African American Literacy, because it encourages young African Americans to put effort into finding their unique voice, even if it seems pointless sometimes. The conversation between the two main characters and even the conversation between Mrs. Flowers and the main character’s mother creates this feeling of understanding and acceptance for the different ways that people use language. It is necessary to bring up these differences in how people speak, because even if two individuals can write the same way, it does not mean that they are the same. Both have distinct voices that they can use to express themselves, either through their dialect or just by using inflection, to change how a sentence flows. It will always be necessary to promote individuality.

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African American Literacies Rhetorical Analysis

The rhetoric speaker I chose was Billie Holiday, an African American Jazz singer from the 1930s to the late 1950s. Her authority to speak on issues of AAL, African American Literacies, comes from her race and influence as a popular singer, as well as her decision to sing the lines of the poem, “Strange Fruit”, by Abel Meeropol which speaks about the lynching of African Americans.

The audience for the song is rather hard to pin down: people who are influenced by AAL definitely would be a major part of the audience, as Billie Holiday was well respected, but some of mainstream society would also have heard it. The poem was considered a sensitive subject and unnerved Holiday for possible backlash according to many sources, but it was a well enough-received song about a horrid topic. The audience’s expectations of the speaker were likely that of any song with uncensored lyrics, to be drawn into the problem and remember the past. She was a proud female singer, developing her own on-stage image, so the audience would have high expectations for the quality of her thoughts and choices in lyrics. Holiday’s communication with the audience consisted mainly of her expressing the tragic fates of every African American who was killed and/or hung from the ‘poplar trees’. Her reason for telling the audience of these events was to build awareness for the dark side of American history, to remind others of what people have had to endure and to create awareness so that it is never allowed to happen again.

The events that preceded the communication would be the practice of lynching or otherwise abusing African Americans and the creation of the poem Meeropol wrote in 1937 documenting it. The mistreatment of African American slaves, and later freed African Americans, was unjust and ended with many people dead. This song uses the poem’s lines to paint a horrific picture for the listeners of maltreatment, murder, bloody executions, and public hangings. Holiday sings in order to inform the people of what is not right in the world.

I do think that “Strange Fruit” appeals to AAL, because the violence experienced in the past paved the way for the people of today to live as they do. It is not a perfect world, but public lynching in the United States and much of slavery has been shamed out of existence, never to hurt another person. This song is a memento of the past and a word of warning for its relevance to return. It is always better to learn from mistakes than to make them again. This poem and song is necessary for AAL because of its importance to people. When Billie Holiday sang this in the late 1930s, the world truly needed the message. Even today, the world needs this song to remind people: never fail to love your fellow man again.

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Reading Reflection 5

All of the readings this week talked about ‘Spoken Soul’, which is such an interesting topic to me. A lot of the popular present-day mediums for expressing yourself verbally have at least a few vernacular deviations from ‘proper speech’. Although society as a whole would rather not accept these variations from the norm, and instead see it as either a fad or a mark of lower intelligence, it is an important part of African American culture. I, for one, appreciate that the readings expressed a sense of being able to choose just how much of one speech pattern or another a person uses: the world isn’t a place for an ‘all or nothing’ mindset, there can be compromises. Although, this gap between the vernaculars is taken in a negative sense in John Rickford’s Adele Givens quote: the existence of a ‘fake’ voice and a ‘real’ voice. I would never want someone to have to sacrifice their casual vernacular and feel any discomfort just to be able to talk to me. It wouldn’t be fair to them as my equal.

The use of African American vernacular is very soothing when you think about it in the context of it correlating to that person’s trust in you. If it helps calm the hearts of men and women in their churches, brings amazing songs into existence, and creates a casual atmosphere during comedy routines or even in daily conversations, it should be respected.

The readings also reminded me somewhat of one of my favorite comedians, Keegan-Michael Key, so I thought I’d add his Obama’s Anger Translator skit from the 2015 White House Correspondents Dinner.

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Reading Reflection 3

In both the past and present day, there have always been certain personas and stereotypes with which people tend to categorize the population. From the ‘Good Samaritan’ who must do no wrong in their life to the ‘perfect housewife’ who stays loyal to her husband and provides her children a safe home. The unrealistic expectations of perfection from categories like this will negatively affect the person branded with it, as evidenced by the stereotyped labels for African American women. Humanity will never fit into these neat, little categories, especially when these categories are as one-sided and unforgiving as the “Mammy” label: the lust-less, obedient African American female caregiver. This one still appears partly in media today.

Society causes a shift in the realistic perspectives of people; it shapes our understandings of ourselves and of others. Our experiences with the world help mold us into the people that we become and it really does not help anyone to be living with discrimination or physical punishments as seen in “First Lessons” and cultural erasure. “To Protect and Serve”, as Elaine Richardson commented on, the motto of the United States police, is also the motto for the stereotypes of African American women and should not be forced upon them.

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Reading Reflection 2

I personally really liked a line from the introduction of this week’s readings: “Here, African American Vernacular English is presented as a part of the culture of African American survival and development from slave ship to scholarship.” This sentence, along with expressing the importance of the revolutionary shift from being horrifically mistreated to becoming beautiful, shining stars in so many fields, helps to give African American culture the limelight it deserves in the English language. As I read through these pages that Elaine Richardson had written, I found a common connection between each chapter in how passionate Richardson is in providing African American history as well as personal, emotional aspects to her lessons. For every fact that she gives about the current and past state of the education system, literacy, civic and human rights interpretations, etc., a personal experience or opinion comes with it; it is a great way to write that speaks to the reader. She spoke of the negative results of a ‘white supremacy’-based system, as it will only help the people who can benefit from it. Everyone else is swept under the rug and ignoring entire portions of the population is never good. Many different aspects of cultural erasure, as well as the well-deserved gaining of societal rights, were discussed throughout these two chapters, but these only emphasize what still needs to be done to make total equality a reachable result for everyone.

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Reading Reflection 1

After reading both Frederick Douglass’s “Learning to Read and Write” and Shevaun Watson’s “Good Will Come of This Evil”, I found that the connection between the two lies in how widely important it is for people to have access to schooling. So many important revelations came to Douglass after he started learning to read from his mistress: he could finally recognize the unjust treatment of himself and his fellow men, as well as contemplate solutions for how to equalize the power and authority that everyone should possess over their lives from birth. If he had been kept from learning how to read, he never would have been able to gain the knowledge and confidence necessary to fight his oppression that he gained from printed works like “The Columbian Orator”.

In “Good Will Come of This Evil”, it talked about how even a Christian Church in Barbados, regardless of any good intentions of literacy, deprived its slaves of any education for many, many years. Without the ability to read and write, these slaves would not be able to express their dissatisfaction and downright hatred of slavery through written or spoken word, much less think critically on the subject. With our present-day society’s emphasis on functional literacy and education, I think a lot of people tend to forget how hard it would be to exist without the ability to define your values, morals, and personal opinions.

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Hello

I’m Crystal Stanley and I am taking an Advanced Composition class at Old Dominion University. I just finished the last classes I needed to take for my Associate’s from Tidewater Community College and now I am working for a Bachelor’s degree from ODU.