Letitia Elizabeth Landon's 'The Power Of Words'

“Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Someday we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.”

― Maya Angelou

An amazing thing about life is how peculiar it is, how each and every small detail in life has a meaning. The fact that human beings can take the innocent letters that we learnt in our preschool years for licit words like apple, and take these simple letters to turn them into forms of hatred, weapons of mockery used to eradicate the souls of

She gives words human characteristics which makes us imagine words are alive, which is done by giving words emotions by saying ‘Anger and fear are in them; grief and joy’, which is effective as words appearing alive emphasizes on the fact that they are powerful which is also seen when she says: ‘Life is in them, and death.’ This suggests that words have the power to determine life and death.

Still I rise by Maya Angelou is my second poem choice. Maya Angelou is a women who went through the tribulations of sexual abuse and at the same time the emotionally abusive oppression of black people {emphasized on that of black women} early in her life. She wrote this empowering poem which confronts the abusers by telling them she has overcome the hurdle and she is rising. She says: ‘You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.’

I just feel really empowered by this poem because it’s amazing to see that even through the pain and power of the words, she takes a positive route and says yes it may hurt me, but still I move

The Sextortion Of Amanda Todd which was documented by The Fifth Estate is a a documentary about a girl who met someone online and made the mistake of flashing for him as he revealed her this to the public.

After months of moving to different schools and going through constant cyber bullying with people encouraging her to kill herself, in the end she did.

My second non-fictional choice is Ugly by Constance Briscoe . It is a memoir about a young girl who attempted who was seen as only being an ‘it’ in her moms eyes, the abuse led to her even drinking bleach 'because it kills all known germs and my mother always told me I was a germ'.

Just because of her mother’s words, she believed that she was a germ, truly heartbreaking.

My third non-fictional choice Shaken: A story of emotional abuse and depression by Kerry Connelly is about a woman who has gone through psychological trauma since her childhood. The book reveals the seriousness of verbal abuse and how it can cause harm by causing physical illnesses.

It reveals the signs of verbal abuse and how an abuser manipulates a victim into believing he/she is wrong, which makes them believe what is said is actually