Gerald Early - Life With Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pagent

In Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant, Gerald Early describes how discriminatory the ideal beauty standards in America was. Due to heavy prejudice, black girls didn’t have any public cosmetic representation and faced inferiority to whites in the beauty department. For example, the annual Miss America contest consisted of all blond hair, blue eyed girls, giving no leeway to diversity. Contextually, Early is an American culture critic and also the author of many essays on African studies. In the text, he discusses the heartbreak of being a father and watching his two black daughters discover through outside influence how their skin color was considered inferior to white skin. The author’s chief purpose in writing this essay is to call out Western-idolize cosmetic companies due to the fact that they lack African representation. Early argues against white-washed television, such as the Miss America Pageant, and cultural norms such as the African-American child picking a white doll over a black one. Throughout the text, he uses rhetorical devices and strategies such as allusion and antithesis. In the beginning of the text, Early references the well-known Miss America contest and uses it to illustrate to the reader how whitewashed the beauty world was. He uses the allusion to ultimately create an antithesis between black and white standards in the fact that there is no black representation in the cosmetic world. Early shows how life with privilege and life without were very different. Consistent with his purpose, Early shows how white privilege, was representation in nationwide contests such as the Miss America pageant and the ability to be the “ideal face” in America. Black women didn’t have such privilege, as pointed out by Early. By exposing such a social injustice, Early succeeds in achieving his purpose of combating social injustice.

The Beauty of Dye // Harris S.

Edward Hoagland - Heaven and Nature

In Heaven and Nature by Edward Hoagland, he discusses the science and mindset of a person right before they take their own lives. Hoagland first states that it is against the nature of a human to end their own lives, but then after considering aspects such as marriage, jobs, responsibilities, and increased stress, he admits that the idea of suicide isn’t too far out of reach. An esteemed American traveler and writer, Edward Hoagland is best known for having published several essays regarding human behavior. His writes to understand and spread awareness of the rising numbers of people that commit suicide each year and argues against those who see suicide as an act of cowardice. Hoagland’s main audience are those in their 40s and 50s because he believes that their increased boredom and lack of excitement in their lives are what fuels suicidal thoughts primarily in this age group. In the essay, Hoagland employs the use of rhetorical devices simile and logos to add more detail to his writing. For example, he writes: “People sidle toward death, intent upon outwitting their own bodies’ defenses, or they may dramatize the chance to make one last, unambiguous, irrevocable decision, like a captain scuttling his ship - death before dishonor - leaping toward oblivion through a curtain of pain, like a frog going down the throat of a snake.” (Hoagland 509). Hoagland compares the act of committing suicide to a frog jumping down the throat of a snake with ‘like’, which is a key indicator of a simile. The purpose of the simile is for the author to connect to the reader on a personal level. In addition to similes, Hoagland also uses logos to seem more credible. For instance, in the passage, Hoagland says, “more than thirty-thousand Americans took their own lives last year [1987], men mostly, with the highest rate being among those older than sixty-five” (Hoagland 509). The speaker, Hoagland, appealed to logos, also known as reason, by offering clear, rational ideas and using specific details, which in this case are statistics, to back up his claim that suicide is a serious concern in America. Hoagland’s use of statistics and figurative language enabled him to keep the reader’s attention while advancing his argument. Through fact and figurative language, Hoagland succeeds in relating to the reader while still proving to society how big a problem suicide is. By the end of the tale, there can be no doubt in the reader’s mind that Hoagland’s thesis is accurate: suicide is not a form of cowardice, rather it is a serious matter that must be publicly addressed and ultimately stopped.

Midlife Crisis// Randy Glasbergen

Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an eye-opening autobiography detailing Maya Angelou’s childhood battles with racism and segregation. In the text, she recounts struggles such as going to sleep every night wishing she could wake up with Aryan features and also about her mistreatment as an African American girl. As a black writer during the Civil Rights Movement, her writings help readers shine a light on life under segregation; there is no one more qualified to speak on the subject rather than she who has lived through it. Maya Angelou writes to spread awareness of inequality in America and to show the privileged how tough life was under the hand of racism. Writing for a white audience, she utilizes rhetoric tools such as narration, allegory, and anthesis in order to use her experiences to deploy a feeling of empathy among readers to ultimately argue against segregation. In essence, the ‘caged bird’ that Angelou uses in the title is a parallel for herself; she is trapped in the cage known as prejudice, yet her strength prevails and she continues writing and demanding for equality among all Americans, thus the caged bird singing. Angelou doesn’t flat-out tell the reader what the cage bird symbolizes, rather she uses the symbol to represent an abstraction in addition to the literal meaning. In addition to allegory, Angelou also uses narration to show the audience how black lives have suffered enough racial inequality from whites and that it is time for a change. For example, an eye-opening experience for her is when she helplessly witnessed a group of entitled white kids harassing her grandmother. This experience also shows how different black and white lives were. The difference lies in the fact that white communities were basking in their own privilege, never having to worry about physical and verbal slander, yet black communities constantly had to endure slander and prejudice. By pointing out the injustice done on a daily, Maya Angelou achieves her purpose of enlightening her readers on the true colors of segregation.

Breaking Free - High School Musical