Because it is very credible, emotionally appealing, and slightly academically based, bell hooks's essay "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education" is an essay that I consider to be very touching. While arguing in her essay that the rich class and the working-class should come to respect and understand each other, bell hooks employs three elements of argument: ethos, pathos, and logos. With her usage of ethos, hooks relates her experience as an undergraduate at Stanford. Providing an experience from a time before she went to Stanford, hooks uses pathos to inspire the audience. However, hooks uses logos by appealing to the readers' logic. These readers are the working-class and the privileged, the audience of her book: "Ain't I …show more content…
hooks felt hurt because her dad was a janitor. That was why it was so hard for her to look down on the working-class. Would it be easy for you to be able to suddenly look down upon your parents if they raised you to respect them? Because Stanford even accepted her into their institution, hooks felt as though she needed to act privileged. When she refused, the university and its students considered her rebellious; however, if she had not refused, she would have been ignoring and forgetting the values that she had learned from her parents. Using pathos by inspiring the audience and appealing to its emotions and values, hooks relates an example of the hard times in her relationship with her parents before she went to Stanford. In the example, she describes how her parents were reluctant to allow her to go because they felt that a closer college had a good education to offer, also. hooks also expresses how she became upset with her parents and how her mama felt as though bell hooks lacked appreciation for her. bell hooks's mama says to her, "Your childhood could not have been that bad. You were fed and clothed. You did not have to do without - that's more than a lot of folks have and I just can't stand the way y'all go on" (86). Later, when bell hooks attends to Stanford and notices how students constantly feel anger and
Bell Hooks' rhetorical strategy is one that is very emotional and aggressive. Hooks does not hesitate to express her emotions, no matter what they may be. This rhetorical strategy is one that could potentially be a very powerful one to get a message across a large group of people. Being so emotional and aggressive it could be so powerful that it runs the risk of people taking her words in to action or try and create an unhealthy form of retaliation. Hooks point for using an emotional and aggressive rhetorical strategy is to let her point be heard and as a way to cope with her feelings and to release some tension or stress. People tend to deal with issues they are faced in multiple ways and this is how Hooks deals with hers.
The author tends to group individuals together based on her own biased belief. For instance, she implies “classmates believe that lower class people had no beliefs and values”. Instead of stating “some of my classmates believe that lower people had no beliefs and values”. Hooks grouped everyone in the class, she uses examples to get her point across, but the examples don’t correlate with the texts. Additionally, every individual in that class couldn’t have believed that biased, ignorant, and untruthful statement.
In “Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education”, bell hooks writes about her experience with her family as she, a young educated black woman, first of her family, goes off to Stanford University. While her parents’ attitude towards her leaving her home to further her education was not the best, hooks used this struggle to make an educated point that while pursuing a higher education, it is important for young adults to maintain family and community values. While reading this essay, I not only agreed but also connected personally with hooks’ point about never forgetting where you come from due to my family’s immigrant background.
Persuasion is a key focus in many essays, stories, commercials, and other forms of media. There are many methods to this, one of which is rhetorical devices. Bell hooks, the author of Feminism is for Everybody, writes to persuade the reader to her own cause: feminism. She uses rhetorical devices, which can be used to persuade—or dissuade—readers in comparison to the writer’s own point of view.
bell hooks ties in the three elements of argument, ethos, pathos, and logos in her essay, "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education," by telling us about the many events of her life. hooks establishes credibility, or ethos, unintentionally, through descriptions of her achievements and character. hooks appeals to the readers logic, or logos, by giving real world examples from her personal experiences. She also appeals to the readers emotions, or pathos. Pathos is the aspect of argument she uses most heavily. hooks does this by talking about family, peers, feelings, and change. hooks shows us ,in her essay, credibility, logic, and emotion using the stories of her life.
Using powerful, interesting vocabulary in an easy to understand manner is another way bell hooks strengthens her argument and persuades her readers. Minor use of hyperbole in her essay by using the term “no one” a few times challenges the reader to change what she states nobody does. There is a clear lack of fussy, confusing language in her work that allows her audience to easily read and understand her argument. Her tone aids in keeping the audience interested and aware of her passion on the topic, instead of muddying her voice with complex, sterile language.
Hooks writes that today she would be considered a well-paid member of the “Professional-managerial class” she rarely thinks of herself in relations to that class. She explains how she was taught at an early age, by her grandparents and parents, to assume that
Hooks’ monograph was written to inform people how feminism was not just for women, but also for men. For she illustrated her thesis in the introduction when she said, “Come closer and you will see: feminism is for everybody,” meaning that men and women should
1) How does Reagon's "Are My Hands Clean?" song about social justice relate to "feminism," as hooks explains feminism?
Immanent Critique is the process of using work to expose the gap between the aspirations and the actuality of whatever issue is at hand. bell hooks stands for the process of helping create a world of mutuality. She also believes that we are able to learn and build a stronger understanding by educating people who are unable to process a new idea or “the right” idea. With hooks idea of mutuality she does not mean equality but mutuality in the sense that everyone agrees to agree that we are all different and have our own ideals that we follow. If that type of thinking was placed into every ones thought process we would not have to need for Immanent Critique. This is because we would all have created a world where there is no conflict. With everyone agreeing to look past our beliefs and ideals we arable to minimize the profound gaps and could lead to bigger and better ways of life. hooks believes that word of mouth and incidences will help break free from types of oppression and inequality. One quote from bell hooks ideas matches with the process of Immanent Critique, she goes on to say. “Feminist thinking helped us unlearn
I liked bell hook’s essay “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”. Bell assesses the light in which higher class people view the poor or lower class. Bell hooks, also known as Gloria Watkins grew up in a small Kentucky town where her father worked as a janitor for the local post office. As one of seven children she was taught that money and material possessions did not make her a better person but hard-work honesty and selflessness determined character. Her hard work landed her acceptance into Stanford University. Although she received various scholarships and loans, her parents worried that she would not have enough for books and supplies or emergency funds. Regardless of this, belle went on to earn a Ph.D. Her experiences and education earned her a very good reputation and even an authority writing critiques on popular culture and diversity (hooks 431-432). She uses ideas in her essay “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, that stem from her own personal experiences with poverty to add credibility to her writing, as well as examples from pop culture and mass media to demonstrate how these representations portray the lower class in ways that radiate negative stereotypes. She wrote the essay because she saw how the poor had many assumptions made about them. It wasn’t until college thought that she made that discovery. She discovered how unjustly they were represented due to the
It’s pretty clear that Bell Hooks hated her time in school, and the reasons for this go back to how her mother raised her. Bell was taught that it was wrong to strive for what you did not already possess, and because of this she did not make the most of her years in school. She believed wanting to be accepted by her peers, and wanting to resolve her other conflicts, was wrong, and because of this she grew to hate everything about her life at school. The “boundaries” that she believes were places upon her were the boundaries of her upbringing.
As I mentioned earlier, David writes about how education can change the social behavior of people and have them connect better, as said by Lewis. He says “...an acquaintance with the literature, both sacred and secular, that forms a culture’s legacy and its sense of community” (Downing, pg. 2). He is saying that this view of education and purpose is a moral component for people in communities to stand firm and connect with each other (Downing). This is the main point in bell hooks' text Keeping Close to Home. She says the most powerful resource to study and teach in a school setting is to understand and appreciate the beauty and richness of our family and community backgrounds (hooks). Communities will connect better and diversity needs will
Referring to these two stories or titles Virginia Woolf and Bell Hooks, I found very interesting topics on how women struggle with many difficulties on how to become a writers or to have a voice. Meaning that women’s didn’t have a voice or to have that freedom to speak freely, because they were marginalized. We can see how in the title “bell hooks” pg. 72 it explained how she struggle in their early years growing up in a segregated South community, where she didn’t had that help or that understanding why she need it to speak or write. Also hooks create a journey to help other women’s that were downgraded that had been victims of sexiest and racist violence. I can say both essays covers a great understanding on feminists challenge life and the
bell hook is a famous feminist author who wrote the book “Feminism Is For Everybody” hooks attempt to create a quick, simple start on feminist history, theory, and politics to the masses who receive a misinformation, misunderstood, and maligned version of the feminist movement. Hooks says “To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism”.We define feminism as the advocacy of women 's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.Where she simply define and shows that being feminism does not mean women have to become mean or they are better than men,she simply saying that men and women need to be equal like the civil right movements. The book begins with a brief statement of feminist political positions, then discusses some history of the movement.She discusses the change in the movement from personal to groups where women have close relationships with one another and began to feel personally empowered by their participation in the establishment of large, and how some women feel like they are working for the high middle-class women.Every single time it doesn’t matter you a women or men, you will always have someone in the higher level than you.hooks feel like it will very exciting for the women who have the power to work with other so they could build each other up..Hooks views the formation of large women’s organizations as the beginning of a stage where the movement took on the role of