Alexie & Baca: Rhetorical Situations/Literacy Narratives

The narratives “Superman and Me”, by Sherman Alexie, and “Coming into language”, by Jimmy Santiago Baca, are both inspiring stories about how literature changed their lives and saved them. Growing up as a poor Native American living at a reservation he didn’t have much other than books and learned at an early age that he loved reading. Through his appeal to pathos and anecdote, Alexie conveys that although there might not be many resources, it is in your hands to overcome that by getting an education and making your life successful. Similar to Alexie, Baca, a Mexican American that was forced to go through the injustice hardships of jail due to the lack of education to fight back, illustrates that reading can not only give you a successful future but just help you live, Baca only had reading to be his savior. Through his appeal to pathos and imagery, he was able to express himself conveys the message that reading can help you even at the lowest points of life.

Alexie didn’t have the easiest of childhoods. He grew up living in the reservations with his parents that were working minimum-wage jobs to support their family through “irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food”. Through his father, who was an avid reader that filled up their whole house with books, Alexie discovered his love for literature. Unlike the other children living on the reservation that just wanted to stay quiet and be stupid as they were expected in the non-Indian world, Alexie spoke up and expressed his passion for reading in school. “I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky. I read books late into the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open. I read books at recess, then during lunch…”, He did not want the same life as all the other Indians, he fought his classmates on a daily, spoke out and showed his intelligence and potential in school. Through the use of anecdote, he was able to give the readers little snippets of his life that showed his passion for reading and how much he cared for his future. For example, in paragraph 3, Alexie says, “I can remember picking up my father’s books before I could read. The words themselves were mostly foreign, but I still remember the exact moment when I first understood, with a sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph”. His first time trying to read even at the young age of 3 and figure out what words mean and the sounds they make illustrates his hunger to learn more and be more.

Alexie’s challenging journey showed how he went from being just a regular Indian kid that was expected to be stupid, to a writer that started visiting schools and inspiring other Native American children were told that they should just stay uneducated. His struggle appeals to the readers emotionally and gains sympathy from them. His poverty depicts that he didn’t take things for granted and when his father bought all those books from places like Dutch’s Pawn Shop, Goodwill, Salvation Army and Value Village when they had a little more cash, it shows the love and appreciation Alexie has for books. His struggle with bullying also created a connection with many readers and demonstrated that he never gave up on reading and fought back every day. He broke the stereotype of all Native American children being stupid and encouraged others to do the same.

Jimmy Santiago Baca was racially profiled and sent to jail. His inability to understand and speak up for himself locked him up in a jail but his thrive for reading and learning in jail more made him feel freer than he ever did outside in the real world. At the age of 17, he still didn’t know how to read because he dropped out of school in 9^th grade. His pain and defeat in life created a connection through the use of pathos. From the beginning, we were sympathetic of him because he was ashamed of not understanding and feared to ask any questions. “From the time I was seven, teachers had been punishing me for not knowing my lessons by making me stick my nose in a circle chalked on the blackboard” (paragraph 3), the readers feel bad for Baca for the little child that had to go through that. The injustice that was served to him appeals to pathos because he has to go to jail without even committing a crime and waste his life in a small locked cage. But the most touching part about his story is when he said, “never had I felt such freedom as in that dormitory” (paragraph 5). It just makes the audience question just how ironic that is because he felt freer inside of a jail than he ever did when he was a free man. Reading and learning chanced his life, he began to see the “light”, he enjoyed living through reading, he forgot about all his misery through just a couple of simple words.

Baca’s great use of imagery made the audience feel more connected to his life. His description of every emotion, every act, the setting gave a clear picture of everything he went through. “On slow nights I would lock the door of the administration office, search the reference library for a book on female anatomy and, with my feet propped on the desk, leaf through the illustrations, smoking my cigarette” (paragraph 1), the image of a 17-year-old smoking and looking through the picture of a book showed just how much he cares about learning but just didn’t know how. “His shrill screams raked my nerves like a hacksaw on bone, the desperate protest of his dignity against their inhumanity” (paragraph 9), Baca’s use of words hits the audience with passion, pain, and suffering. They can hear the screams and can feel the ringing in their ears from Baca’s use of imagery. It is one of the most powerful rhetorical devices used in his story because it truly helped the audience understand a little more of the hardship he went through.

My parents are immigrants from Bangladesh. They moved across the world for me. They want to give me the best education, the best life, the best future, and America is the land of opportunities. So many of us take education for granted when there are so many countries all over the world that would not provide the opportunities that we get. Today, we still have countries that deny young girls their education, their freedom to learn. The two narratives about these two amazing and strong individuals prove that no matter what race, what gender, whatever it is, you should always fight for your dreams, your hopes, and never let anyone else degrade as a human being and take away your rights. One of my favorite quotes is, “I was no longer a captive of demons eating away at me, no longer a victim of other people’s mockery and loathing” (paragraph 16), from “Coming into Language”. I just love how powerful the quote is. Everyone has their own demons to fight and its never easy but if you just keep on going and trying harder to prove to them that you are stronger, that they don’t have any power over you, that what you think is what matters the most, you will never be the victim of people’s mockery. There will always be people that will try to make you fall but it is in our hands to pull ourselves up and never give them the satisfaction of seeing you down.

 

Young Poetry & Politics

Poetry is very hard to understand and easy to confuse, politics is another subject that is very hard and confusing, so when Erika Hunt put those two together it was another language for me. In her “Poetry and Politics” article Erika Hunt is explaining how poetry and politics go more hand in hand then we thought. However, while reading “Gloss”, I was even more confused as to where the politics were.

I resonated with the poem “gloss” the most because it was very relatable and it made my heart melt a little because of the stages of a cute teenage love. The structure of the poem really hooked me from the beginning because of the way Hunt used imagery to illustrate each stage by stating a word and defining it and its significance. At first, I was very confused at what all this meant but when I took a step back from analyzing it too much and looking at the words, I was able to see a crush, a relationship, a heartbreak, and a starting over. Through the use of ambiguity, she gave her own interpretation of what each word meant and even showed different perspectives. For example, when Hunt repeated the word “passion” three times and each time she gave a different POV.  She was trying to emphasize the importance of passion, from the male and female when it comes to love and a relationship. This is a poem many of us can relate to because of all the young puppy love that we develop and the breakups we go through. This poem broke down the process that we don’t think about at all, the same cycle that we go through over and over again until we find “Mr./Ms. Right”.

 

Pass the Mic

DEPRESSION

It’s hard to explain what this feeling is. The pain, the hurt, the tears, the emptiness. I hate it all. You would think once the semester ended, I would wake up breathing fresh air and have a weight off of shoulders, but instead it I was in bed miserable with my pillow wet from tears. I don’t know what caused it. Maybe it was there the whole time and I was just too busy and stress out to notice it. Maybe depression just couldn’t let me be happy for once. But what even is happiness. Its not lie I’m sad. I’m not, depression doesn’t make me sad, just I don’t know. That’s the hardest part of depression. You don’t know what is it, what causes it, what it makes you feel. Its just there, always lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to come out and ruin you, break you down, and bring out all the pain and misery. And you don’t want to burden anyone else by telling them because then you’re just ruining someone’s day, making them sad, have them waste their time on you when they got better things to do. “Its not always the tears the measure the pain, sometimes it’s the smiles we fake”. Anyway, I want this stupid depression to go away soon and not bother me so I can enjoy going out with my friends, go ice-skating, eat at the Nutella bar, go have some Black Tap again, maybe a little Max Brenner, ohhhh and definitely get me an eyeful of Aquaman. I can’t wait to watch Aquaman like omg he can have my legs if he ends up having a tail and cant get his legs back lol.

 

MARRIAGE

*sigh* Growing up in a desi family means that no matter what you can never run away from marriage. It will always find a way to tie you up and force you into confronting with the society. But I don’t understand the point of marriage sometimes, like why is this even a thing. Who made it a thing? Actually what was the first wedding? Like did someone just one day say, “oh hey you know what would be a great idea, to throw a party because I want to let people know who I’ll be sleeping with and making babies with. Like ew gross. It was probably either some old guy that was just a complete creep and wanted society to be okay with him sleeping with a really young girl or just a bunch of kids that just wanted to play house and have everyone be okay with it. Either way it’s because of other people, about society, about what they would think, and if they were okay with the idea of two people being together. Anyway, now I’m just ranting but its because the other day my friend told me how someone he knows is getting almost forced to marry when they don’t want and is against it. And he was just saying how its either saying no to getting married and making her family unhappy or saying yes and her being unhappy. I don’t understand why it has to some to that now, why are people stuck on the concepts of 1734 like get over it people, it’s a new time, new things, new world, new phone who dis AHAHA. Um yes, marriage, I plan to marry like I really want to but only after I finish my education and get a job and be happy with who I have become is when I’ll think about being happy with someone else and sharing everything with them and having annoying brats running around. Like they say, “Before I love someone else, I’ve got to love myself”.