Speaking Of The Unspoken Places

On September 11, 2001 tragedy struck. The sky was blue and it was a beautiful morning. I was walking down the street to get some breakfast with an old friend. I opened the door to the old Copper Lantern restaurant where we were suppose to meet, and there she was. She looked so amazing it was great to finally see Amanda again! Midcoversation there was suddenly a loud boom, and the ground rumbled. Girls in the restaurant screamed, with in minutes everything was chaotic. I grab Amanda's hand a pulled her through the waves of families till we finally got to the door. I took my first steps outside and everything was in a haze.

Not a word was spoken as an array of people, including myself, studied the pictures of that horrific day that aligned the wall of the dimmed entrance to the 9/11 Memorial Museum. The silence was an eerie and somber stillness that invoked grief into the hearts of all, even those such as myself who were too young to even remember the terror that took place nearby. Projected on the pillars were the stories of people and their reactions to the attack as it was happening, adding to the solemn mood. Already, even before I had reached the part that was the museum, a heavy grief for people that I never even knew swelled in my heart.

If there is one day I dread most upon its arrival, it would be 9/11. Sure there was an immense amount of strength as a nation represented, following the terrorists attacks, but it also brought a great amount of grief and sorrow. I remember watching videos of innocent people jumping from windows in the twin towers hoping to escape the terror. These people believed there was no one to help and no one to help them. They lost hope. In “Remembering a Hero, 15 Years After 9/11” written by Peggy Noonan, published in The Wall Street Journal on September 11th 2016, Alison Crowther—Welles Crowther’s mom—recalls the courageous actions to save the lives of others, made by her son on this horrific day. Noonan utilizes pathos, ethos, asyndeton, and

On the morning of September 11, 2001 millions of people were in shock the moment they received news that the World Trade Center was hit. The images from this horrific day flooded the media’s television screens and newspaper articles. Perhaps the most gruesome images shown were those of people jumping out of the building as they were collapsing. Tom Junod, a writer for the Esquire magazine, illustrates his perspective of this shocking incident through pictures, media coverage, and depicting people’s reactions in his article The Falling Man. Tom Junod’s article should be read by anyone who believes they have felt all there is to feel from the 9/11 attack. He will prove otherwise that there is indeed still much emotion to

They are matters which have literally torn our country apart and utterly divided the American people. Adichie urgently seeks an equal yet peaceful world, powerfully declaring, “The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar” (Adichie). This is imperative in regards to creating a new standard; furthermore, to persuade others to look at the world with an open mind. Adichie further urges, “Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a person, but stories can also repair that broken dignity” (Adichie). The significance of Adichie’s speech thus reaches a pivotal peak. Adichie is referring to the sources in which we receive our one sided story. Sources such as television, radio stations, newspapers, social media, all of which are considered normal entertainment, but are in fact broadcasting stories that are not told from all involved participants thus leaving a fixated conviction. Therefore, it is difficult to disregard the single story when it is constantly in our presence. Through words, Adichie hopes to alter the strong influence of said

She emphasizes that the life of a slave woman is incomparable to the life of a slave man, in the sense that a woman’s sufferings are not only physical but also extremely mental and emotional. Whether or not a slave woman is beaten, starved to death, or made to work in unbearable circumstances on the fields, she suffers from and endures horrible mental torments. Unlike slave men, these women have to deal with sexual harassment from white men, most often their slave owners, as well as the loss of their children in some cases. Men often dwell on their sufferings of bodily pain and physical endurance as slaves, where as women not only deal with that but also the mental and emotional aspect of it. Men claim that their manhood and masculinity are stripped from them, but women deal with their loss of dignity and morality. Females deal with the emotional agony as mothers who lose their children or have to watch them get beaten, as well as being sexually victimized by white men who may or may not be the father of their children. For these women, their experiences seem unimaginable and are just as difficult as any physical punishment, if not more so.

In a time period when women were considered inferior, as were blacks, it was unimaginable the horrors a black woman in the south had to endure during this period. African women were slaves and subject to the many horrors that come along with being in bondage, but because they were also women, they were subject to the cruelties of men who look down on women as inferior simply because of their sex. The sexual exploitation of these females often lead to the women fathering children of their white masters. Black women were also prohibited from defending themselves against any type of abuse, including sexual, at the hands of white men. If a slave attempted to defend herself she was often subjected to further beatings from the master. The black female was forced into sexual relationships for the slave master’s pleasure and profit. By doing this it was the slave owner ways of helping his slave population grow.

During the times of slavery, colored individuals were labeled as “other” in the United States. Black families were categorized as pathological, deviant, and in need of fixing. Black families struggled a lot. Poverty rates were sky high for single women who were the head of their household, especially for Black and Latino women. They were also the face of the homeless community, which was growing rapidly. The government then decided to implement marriage and fatherliness encouragements to ease poverty which resulted in societal problems surrounding the Black and Latino women.

Reading the content in this book made me get a picture of what it was like to be a colored person in this time. My eyes were opened to the meaning of the word “nigga”. Nigga is such a derogatory term, yet now-a-days it is used by people so much. Kids in this generation use it as a term of endearment when they see their friends, or they say it when they are shocked by something. Frankly, I don’t believe they know how serious it really is. The fact that white people could look at a person and see less than a human being when they did nothing wrong distresses me. They (white people) treated them as if they were property and below them. Even though we don’t have racism to this extent

In conclusion, both Quindlen and Sitton show both sides of tragic events. The imagery used in the articles sets a realistic tone, emphasizing the great emotion that came with both of these tragedies. Innocent lives were taken, four little girls and other countless blacks in the civil rights era and innocent lives in the collapse of the twin towers of 2011. Both changing a nation, shaping it and bringing the people together. Unbelievable events of sorrow still impact America to this day, as the nation honor the lives to the people that sacrificed for all we have, for America. In the articles, both authors use vivid imagery of American disasters and the loss of innocent lives to emphasize its effect on the people that rise as nation through the debris of hate.

Such injustices that happened in the holocaust makes it so difficult to speak of the past, but when one finds a way to convey the horrors effectively, others will be able to understand one's silence as well as the hardships that come living with it. Elie Wiesel used multiple techniques to display the unspeakable, allowing others who chose to stay silent to be heard, and the people who heard their silence to be able to understand it. Furthermore, one can convey the unspeakable by explaining personal memories, displaying visuals and imagery, and comparing different word choices.

The author of the novel, James McBride, shows how being biracial affected him throughout his life. When James was younger his racial identity caused many situations that made him favor the black side and feel ashamed of his mother. An example of James’ racial encounter is when he says “I could see it in the faces of the white people who stared at me and Mommy and my siblings when we rode the subway, sometimes laughing at us, pointing, muttering things like, ‘look at her with those little niggers’” (31). This is important because it shows how it made him realize that people were being cruel to them because his mom was a different skin color than them. James then states “I thought it would be easier if we were just one color, black or white. I didn’t want to be white… I

Ignored by the community, the first symbol of indifference is sparked, provoking the detrimental chain reaction of events to follow. “He [Moshe the Beadle] only spoke of what he had seen. But people not only refused to believe his tales, they refused to listen. Some said he only wanted their pity...others said that he had gone mad.” (7) Elie Wiesel delivers a writing style that mirrors that of a reporter; its simplicity becomes its complexity. In turn, it enables the flaws of human nature to become obvious to the reader, in this case the community’s need to rationalize the frightening and seemingly impossible, which are

September 11th, 2001 is now a date discussed in history lessons. While the post-9/11 generations may not have witnessed the changes of this tragic event, which rapidly filled every crevice of US society, they have an entire generation ready to narrate what they witnessed on and after that day. The expeditious reaction made a permanent mark on American culture.

During the time of slavery, not only were African Americans were treated unfairly, but their women had it worse at times; African American women would be raped would be raped by their owners, or be trafficked around from man to man (Browne-Marshall). The white man was seen as evil, disgusting and cruel, so being a black woman carrying a white man’s child was basically