After a reader first notices the title of Firoozeh Dumas’ essay, “The F Word”, it may be hard to believe her writing is not about curse words. Her writing is about her experience moving to America and living in a society that is unwilling to accept outsiders. Immigrants face hardship when they come to the United States and she knew that before she moved. But she never thought living with a foreign name would be so challenging. Dumas brings light to those difficulties and how she dealt with them through sentence structure, excellent word choice, and well-written metaphors and similes. “The F Word” is a finely crafted excerpt from Dumas’ piece of writing Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian In America. The author right away begins …show more content…
The emotions associated with words help a writer establish the tone of a piece of writing. The tone of her piece of writing is overall assertive. Even though she faces many problems with her race when she enters America, she overcomes in a very mature way. Of course, it was not easy for her along the way but she found a good way to deal with the issues she was facing. All through her essay she expresses her fight to fitting into her new world. In paragraph three she says, “All of us immigrants knew that moving to America would be fraught with challenges, but one of us thought that our names would be such an obstacle.” From the very beginning of her writing she tells the reader about the hardship her and her family were not prepared for. She also uses the word obstacle at the end of the statement. Obstacles are something that people are meant to face, battle, and overcome. By using this word she is telling the reader that yes, it is a problem, but she will try her best to conquer the issue. Dumas shows excellent examples of word choice that keeps the reader hooked on her every …show more content…
Dumas keeps the reader enticed in her work by including many metaphors along with similes. Her main metaphor throughout the entire piece is the talk of a spice cabinet. In paragraph three of her work she expresses her opinion that America is a better country if people are willing to learn new pronunciations and expand their outlook on different cultures. Her last sentence in paragraph three states, “It’s like adding a few new spices to the kitchen pantry. Move over, cinnamon and nutmeg, make way for cardamom and sumac.” and it perfectly captures the simplicity of many American minds. Dumas simply wants to be accepted for who she is. Another well-written simile in her work is in paragraph ten when she talks about her last name and how it is, as she claims, even worse than her first name. Many people already have a hard time talking to her with an Iranian first name. The last name makes it even worse. She states directly, “My first and last name together generally served the same purpose as a high brick wall.” Dumas felt that her name blocked her from the world. People made themselves unable to befriend her due to their inability of pronouncing or even accepting her full name. Racism, even though it happens everyday, is not a light topic to talk about. Dumas, however, speaks of her life and the racism in full stride. When Dumas was in high school the Iranian Revolution came into focus
In the article Skin Deep written by Nina Jablonski and George Chaplin, they discuss and look deeper into the diverse differences in skin color. Our skin color has developed over the years to be dark enough to prevent the damaging sunlight that has been harming our skin and the nutrient folate that it carries. At the same time out skin is light enough to receive vitamin D.
Claude M. Steele is the author of “ Whistling Vivaldi”, which mainly represents that the meaning of identity contingencies and stereotype threat, and how can these effect people’s ideas and behaviors. By writing this article, Steele tries to make people know exist of identity contingencies. Gina Crosley-Corcoran, who is a white woman suffered the poverty in her childhood. Through describing her miserable experiences in parallel construction to motivate readers sympathize her, moreover approving that she can as a powerful evidence for affirming the impact of identity contingencies. Crosley-Corcoran admits the white privilege really exist in some way in her article “ Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person”, and white privilege
He refers to all the immigration groups in a judgmental way. He complains about the intelligence levels of the Italians, how dirty and deceitful the Jews are, and even the immaculate cleanliness of the Chinamen. Although he does possess quite a bit of bigotry that boarders on the line of prejudice when it comes to African Americans he recognizes that they are suffering from racism and he sympathizes with th...
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story written in the first person about a young girl named Melinda Sordino. The title of the book, Speak, is ironically based on the fact that Melinda chooses not to speak. The book is written in the form of a monologue in the mind of Melinda, a teenage introvert. This story depicts the story of a very miserable freshman year of high school. Although there are several people in her high school, Melinda secludes herself from them all. There are several people in her school that used to be her friend in middle school, but not anymore. Not after what she did over the summer. What she did was call the cops on an end of summer party on of her friends was throwing. Although all her classmates think there was no reason to call, only Melinda knows the real reason. Even if they cared to know the real reason, there is no way she could tell them. A personal rape story is not something that flows freely off the tongue. Throughout the story Melinda describes the pain she is going through every day as a result of her rape. The rape of a teenage girl often leads to depression. Melinda is convinced that nobody understands her, nor would they even if they knew what happened that summer. Once a happy girl, Melinda is now depressed and withdrawn from the world. She hardly ever speaks, nor does she do well in school. She bites her lips and her nails until they bleed. Her parents seem to think she is just going through a faze, but little do they know, their daughter has undergone a life changing trauma that will affect her life forever.
For example, when a person in the store talked using their type of language: “‘I ain’t worried ‘bout this fight. Joe’s gonna whip that cracker like it’s open season. He gone whip him till that white boy calls him Momma’” (105). This shows the reader how the society felt when the fight was taking place and the type of language the African AMericans used during their daily lives. Also, there is an appeal to ethos when Maya talks about God: “True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end” (106). This shows credibility because this is how Maya Angelou felt as an African American. The style of diction that Maya Angelou conveys is to portray the way that African American people communicate threw one another and so the reader can have the sense of how the society was in the late
Racial discrimination has been an issue among different cultural groups, ethnic races and many religions. It is an issue that has stopped people from becoming well diversitized and embracing multiculturalism, especially during the olden days where slavery and wars were a huge part of the world. Racism has created a separation between people, causing many dilemmas’ to arise. This problem has been seen and touched upon throughout many works of literature and verbal presentations. A discourse on racial discrimination will be used to exemplify how individuals abuse their rights, categorize humans and ill treat others through an exploration of the texts in, Snow Falling On Cedars and The Book of Negroes. These novels have given an insight of the discrimination between different classes of people and the unfavorability of one’s kind.
In an article for The English Journal, Olive Burns was quoted as saying, “I never consciously had a theme. The publisher says the theme is family. My sister-in-law, a high school English teacher, says the book has many themes, prejudice being one. Andy [Bur...
She states that, “In many instances, anti-immigrant racism today camouflages itself and goes mainline in self-presentation, which is precisely my point about Ethan Frome.” Ammon’s strongly advocates the stance that it is vital for racism in Ethan Frome and similar works to be revealed and thoroughly examined as it is this literature that unmasks the extent of white anxieties in the United States. Bernard, in a stark contrast, proposes that the heart of the novel is the weakness of Frome’s character as well as his “negation of life.” He argues that the language usage in Ethan Frome is unparalleled and allows the reader to closely read and understand the point of Wharton’s work. In order to make this understanding easier on the audience, Bernard breaks down the complex ideas and symbols represented in Ethan Frome into simple, easy to digest concepts. Step-by-step, he goes through Wharton’s integration of symbolism and imagery, two elements of fiction, and the motives behind their usage. Through his breakdown of symbolism and imagery into three components, he provides a clearer insight into the mind of Wharton and the purpose of her work, while Ammons solely focuses on the racism in Ethan Frome. Although she dissects the novel as well, she also supports her analysis using previous works authored by Wharton to prove the racist perspective of Ethan Frome. This is evident as it is present in
According to the reader the danger of a “single story” is related to how people tend to attribute an image to something regarding to the background information that they have about the thing. In this case having less information or the same information about something is likely to impact on the idea that they will have about something. To support this argument she talked about how during her childhood she used to read book with foreigners characters and about things that she didn’t identify with such as snow and ginger beer. Because of the fact that all her book were similar, she ended up believing that all books have to be same and always include foreign characters with “Blue eyes” and are about things that she couldn’t identify with. Further, she also talks about Fide and how the fact that her mom kept telling her that his family was poor made her think that his family was poor and that it was the only story about them. She couldn’t see them as hard workers or anything else but as poor. Also, she talked about the stereotypes that she had about Mexicans related to immigration in the U.S and how during her trip to Mexico realized that her thoughts were wrong in many ways. Lastly, she talked about her roommate and how she felt pity for her because she was African. Her roommate was surprised to see that she speaks English as well as her and that she knew how to use a stove just because all the information that her roommate has about Africa was a poor conti...
In this Award winning novel the 1900 display an astonishing amount of racism, and makes us realize that is is still going on till this very day. “I was just shootin a negro in my collard patch” (pg72Lee). This quote shows us that even maybe the gentlest most kind people are very judgemental and racist. That's the problem even today before even getting to know someone we automatically process the way they look and say to ourself he is black so he will steal something or we will say he has tattoos so we have to hold our belongings a little tighter, and without even knowing, we ourself have become something that we have all feared which is not give everyone a fair chance based on what they look like. Today racism is still very much apart of our culture
In the poem pride, Dahlia Ravikovitch uses many poetic devices. She uses an analogy for the poem as a whole, and a few metaphors inside it, such as, “the rock has an open wound.” Ravikovitch also uses personification multiple times, for example: “Years pass over them as they wait.” and, “the seaweed whips around, the sea bursts forth and rolls back--” Ravikovitch also uses inclusive language such as when she says: “I’m telling you,” and “I told you.” She uses these phrases to make the reader feel apart of the poem, and to draw the reader in. She also uses repetition, for example, repetition of the word years.
In the article “In praise of the “F” Word” Mary Sherry discusses the “F” word, which means failure. Basically Mary Sherry stated that the kids of today are getting cheated out of a good education. They are passing through the school system because some are good kids and they do not create any problems in the classroom. But, at the same time employers are also being cheated because they expect graduates to have the basic skills. She also stated that Diplomas are considered meaningless because most of these kids who were awarded one could not read or write properly and therefore, they are back in night school along with adults who are trying to get their G.E.D.
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
Internal conflict caused by culture is a concept that Edward Hall explores in his book “Beyond Culture”. In this examination of intercultural interactions, Hall argues that people are born into the cultural prison of one’s primary culture. He then goes on to claim that from people can only be free of this prison and experiencing being lost in another (Hall). For Coates, this cultural prison is the permeating fear resulting from the blackness of his body. His internal conflict is therefore created when seeing the world of white, suburban culture. Because this world of pot-roasts and ice cream Sundays seems impossibly distant from the world of fear for his black body, Coates comes to feel the contrast of cultures. He tells his son, “I knew my portion of the American galaxy, where bodies were enslaved by tenacious gravity, was black and that the other, liberated portion was not” (21). As a result of the shocking divide, Coates comprehends the burden of his race. Coates therefore feels “a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an biding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape (21). The quality of life between the culture belonging to Coates’s skin in contrast to the culture of suburban America creates for Coates a sense of otherness between himself and the rest of the world. Disillusioned, Coates avidly pursues answers to this divide. Coates thereby embarks on a quest to satiate this internal conflict of cultures, beginning his journey towards
Powder, a short story written by Tobias Wolff, is about a boy and his father on a Christmas Eve outing. As the story unfolds, it appears to run deeper than only a story about a boy and his father on a simple adventure in the snow. It is an account of a boy and his father’s relationship, or maybe the lack of one. Powder is narrated by a grown-up version of the boy. In this tale, the roles of the boy and his father emerge completely opposite than what they are supposed to be but may prove to be entirely different from the reader’s first observation.