TOW #14: Mixed Feelings by Sunny Bains (written, non-fiction text)

Animals have wider variety of senses that allows them to navigate, detect changes in electromagnetic field, or see ultraviolet light. Human generally have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. However, are we restricted to these five senses? According to Sunny Bains, a journalist and scientist who wrote about Udo Wachter and Paul Bach-y-Rita’s self repairing machines, the answer is no. Introducing a seemingly absurd topic of rearranging proprioception, human’s sixth sense that tells brain where and how the body is oriented, Bains successfully shifts the readers’ doubtful feelings into acclamation. Most notably, she uses hypophora to respond to the public’s general skepticism and the mechanisms behind self-repairing machines. When first introducing the concept of building another sense using the pre-existing five senses, she asks a series of questions: “Can our senses be modified? Expanded? Given the right prosthetics, could we feel electromagnetic fields or hear ultrasound? The answers to these questions… appear to be yes” (5). Bains answers her own series of questions that people generally consider impossible to evoke the audiences’ interest and curiosity on the topic. Bains utilizes hypophora again when discussing the new machine that uses a mouthpiece with weak electrical currents to garner different types of sensory information by asking, “So what kind of information could they pipe in?” (18). She answers her own question with the example of Mitch Tyler, who suffered with balance after having infected ears. The machine successfully restored Tyler’s balance and even worked after Tyler removed the mouth piece. Bains additionally establishes credibility of the machine by writing about her own experiences with the mouthpiece. Bains experienced a version of the mouthpiece made for divers to navigate them on which way to swim. With the use of  prototype, a joystick, and a computer screen depicting a rudimentary maze, Bains could navigate her way. “After a minute of bumping against the virtual walls, I asked Tyler to hide the maze window, closed my eyes, and successfully navigated two courses in 15 minutes. It was like I had something in my head magically telling me which way to go” (27). By including her own account, Bains makes the machine not only more believable but also appealing to the audience.

Article from: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp_pr.html

TOW #13: President Obama Speech: Back to School Event (written, non-fiction text)

Delivered on September 8th, 2009 during the beginning of school year, President Obama’s speech on education inspired numerous students to study harder and try their best. President Obama primarily directed this speech to students at Wakefield High School in Virginia, but it was directed towards all the students in America who would be returning to school after a long break of summer. President Obama appeals to pathos by addressing that “ we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities” (10). There are no excuses for failures, but it is the students’ responsibilities to do what they are supposed to do. While encouraging the students of United States to nurture their interest and work towards accomplishing their goals, President Obama establishes a greater obligation on the students by reminding them that their education “will decide nothing less than the future of our country” (15). President Obama also uses exemplification of prominent figures who suffered hardships in their lives to get to where they are now to remind students that failure is a stepping stone to success. He mentions the famous basketball player Michael Jordan, who was cut from his high school basketball team and the author of the Harry Potter series JK Rowling, whose book was initially rejected thirteen times. He wants to tell students to avoid being discouraged by failures because the hardships they experience now is something that everyone experiences. Even the most respected figures he previously mentioned struggled to succeed. He reminds students that “These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you” (35). President Obama’s speech doubtlessly touched many students’ hearts and inspired them to better not just for themselves, but for the future of their own country. Quitting just because it is difficult is like quitting America, as everyone should struggle to do their best for the future of the United States.


article: http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

TOW #12: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (IRB, written)

Freakonomics: A Rogue Scientist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is a book written by Steven Levitt, an economist at University of Chicago, and William Morrow, a famous journalist working for the New York Times. Out of the multiple economist articles in the first half of the book, chapter 3: "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?" was the most interesting. In this chapter, Levitt and Morrow discuss the fallacy of conventional wisdom. They use ethos of John Kenneth Galbraith, who claim that people "associate truth with convenience... [which is] simple, convenient, comfortable, and comforting-though not necessarily true" (57). The media and police officers utilize this conventional wisdom to imply that drug dealers are one of the most well-earning people of America. However, with real life research, Morrow and Levitt found out that this is only true for a few dealers. To establish credibility, Morrow and Levitt interviewed Venkatesh, an economist who actually had interviewed a large black drug organization leader, J.T. and found out that the drug dealers also had to spend a lot to mercenary fighters who help them fight turf wars and for weapons. While J.T. earns a conciderable amount, other workers who are in lower rank than him earns a minute amount an hour, approximately three dollars an hour. WIth the facts, the authors reveal the ugly truth, the fact that poor African Americans have no other choice than becoming drug dealers. Despite the fact that being a drug dealer is one of the most dangerous jobs in America and many earn much less than the minimum wage, many drug dealers are born into the business. In this article, the authors' audiences are those who might have been mislead by the statistics that media used, to warn them to question the credibility before trusting the information that is presented to them right away. 

TOW #11: Girl in a Wheelchair with Horse(Visual Text)

Many believe that people tend to hang out and relate to those who are similar to them and share related interests. However, this photograph refutes the statement that friends have to share similar interests. The girl in the photo is in a wheelchair suggesting that she can neither walk nor ride horses. However, to many audiences’ surprise, the girl is hugging a horse. As the girl cannot ride a horse, one would expect that the horse and the girl cannot relate and share similar experiences. However, the ironical scene in this photo suggests that there are no limits to friendship and even the most opposite beings can become the closest friends just like the horse and the girl in this photo. Even more surprisingly, the girl does not look dismayed or depressed because she cannot ride the horse; she looks delighted and pleased just to be with the horse. In return, the horse looks peaceful and happy to see its friend. The anonymous photographer who took this photo intentionally juxtaposed the horse with a girl in a wheelchair. If it was a different animal, for example a dog, the photograph would carry an entirely different message and a weaker influence. Also the overall mood of the picture is very warm and pleasant with the sunlight shining on the two friends. Since interacting with a horse requires the person riding the horse, the photographer put someone who cannot ride a horse to demonstrate that a true friendship has no boundaries. This appeals to the audience’s pathos, as the irony and the overall mood of the photo evokes sympathy and warms the heart. It reminds the audience that even the most opposites can become friends and what really matters are the feelings not the similarities. Differences are just characteristics, they do not define friendship.

TOW #10: I Nearly Died. So What? (written, non-fiction text)

Grievances and adversities sometimes happen in life and people manage to overcome those hardships or recover from their failures. After these recoveries, most people realize their past mistakes and better themselves. However, Meghan Daum claims these realizations are people’s deceptions to the world and perhaps to themselves, come from the spectator’s expectations. With uses of her anecdotes, Daum, who has recently survived from a severe case of deadly bacterial infection followed by near-death coma, claims that nothing really changed for her. Although grateful for her fortunate case, she admits that she is the same “whiny ingrate” (16) she was when she was healthy. She claims that people really don’t change, including those who claim that they have obtained a kind of epiphany from their hardships, but are eager to meet the expectations of the society that anticipate redemption. She claims that “we’re obsessed not just with victory but with redemption” (17). Daum wants to criticize those who are so obfuscated by society’s expectations to the extent of not realizing that they actually had not become better persons. Daum also uses repetition of the word person to emphasize how the modern society stress what kind of person the survivors of some kind of adversities have become. She claims that she is “not a better person. [She is] the same person. Which is actually kind of a miracle” (21). When people refer to someone as a same person, people imply a slightly negative connotation as same means no progress. However, Daum eliminates this negativity that travels with the term same by adding that it is a miracle that she remained the same because she was not influenced by the society’s pressure and stayed adamant about her individual beliefs. Daum refuted actions that we believe we automatically do by stating that these actions are not so uncontrollable but are driven by our need for “stories of triumph over adversities” (17). Although her argument could have been very controversial, Daum’s use of anecdote and certain words made readers ponder about their tendency to succumb to the belief of popular culture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/opinion/sunday/i-nearly-died-so-what.html?ref=opinion

TOW #9: What's Eating in America by Michael Pollan (written, non-fiction text)

Nowadays, corn makes up not only almost everything people eat, but also almost everything that is around people ranging from fertilizers to wallboards around supermarkets. In Michael Pollan's "What's Eating in America," Pollan informs readers with damage of unnatural nitrogen, which is the building block of corn, and warns them that the manmade nitrogen that is used to make corn has many disadvantages that people were previously unaware of. Pollan has been writing on food production all his life, so he establishes some immediate credibility. Pollan is aware of the current society’s ignorance and unawareness of things they eat, the things that go directly into their body and become a part of them. Out of concern, Pollan tries to implement the same concerns in his readers with his uses of exemplification on the other uses of corn. He purposefully mentions Fritz Haber, the inventor of combining nitrogen with different elements to produce new, life-sustaining compounds, to claim that he was also responsible for the extermination of millions of Jews during World War II with his invention of poisonous gases. His inventions were so notorious that “his wife, a chemist sickened by her husband’s contributions to the war effort, used his army pistol to kill herself” (Pollan 303). With his use of horrifying examples, Pollan appeals to the readers’ pathos by helping them think about the negative contributions of corn. Pollan really makes readers question about the food that they have so trusted to come from natural plants; maybe these foods were manufactured in some egregious and unorthodox ways similar to how poisonous chlorine gas that killed millions of people was produced. Followed by his exposure on the true identity of corn that resulted from manufactured nitrogen, he reminds the readers that everyone has to rely less on synthetic corn and “build a more diversified agriculture… and give up our vast nitrogen guzzling monocultures of corn” (Pollan 305).

IRB Intro #2: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

The book I chose to read for my second IRB is Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.  I decided to read this book because Ashley Choi recommended it to me. This book is composed of short non-fiction articles on economics. I have a feeling that the style of this book will be similar to that of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I think it will be interesting to read what the author thinks about the issues he addresses in the book. 

TOW #8: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (IRB, written)

This week, I finished reading Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Throughout the book, Krakauer wrote about a very personal experience at Mount Everest during the Mount Everest disaster that happened in 1996. Started just from a curiosity and affinity for adventure, Krakauer’s expedition had not only taught him way more than about Mount Everest, but also changed his life completely. Even after returning home safely, Krakauer feels guilty for the deaths that have occurred within his travel group and wrote this book as a way to compensate and express his sorrow to the families of dead travelers. Although their death was not Krakauer’s fault, Krakauer’s intended audiences are the families of victims, who might have suffered even more due to Krakauer’s flawed article for Outside magazine on the deaths of the victims. Krakauer especially uses a sorrowful tone to deliver the truth about what actually happened during the horrifying expedition. Krakauer establishes his sorrowful tone from the very beginning by stating in his introduction, “The plain truth is that I knew better but went to Everest anyway. And in doing so I was a party to the death of good people, which is something that is apt to remain on my conscience for a very long time” (Krakauer XVII). He shows his regret and guilt by stating that he did not listen to the others who told him not to go, and that he is partly responsible for the deaths of those who died and that fact will remain in him for the rest on his life. Krakauer does not just end there, but again establishes his sorrow at the end in the author’s note, “my intent in the magazine piece, and to an even greater degree in this book, was to tell what happened on the mountain as accurately and honestly as possible, and to do it in a sensitive, respectful manner” (Krakauer 303). He again apologizes and states his true purpose of writing this book, to express his guilt and plead forgiveness although the families of the victims do not condemn him for the deaths. After reading this book, the audience not only understands his sorrow and guilt, but also feels sorry for Krakauer.

TOW #7: No Ice Cape for Polar Bears (Visual Text)

Global warming is a serious problem around the world. As critical as the problem seems, most people are aware of the melting crisis but do not do anything to ameliorate the problem. This picture which was used in a news article titled, “No Ice-cape for Polar Bears” was directed towards those ignorant people. The reporter of this article Jamie Pyatt first appeals to ethos by being the reporter of a UK news. She then maximizes pathos by describing the photograph as “A polar bear cub is comforted by its mother as they drift TWELVE MILES out from shore on a rapidly shrinking iceberg.” The picture of harmless and innocent polar bears is already unfortunate enough, but if the two polar bears are a mother and a child and if the mother looks like she is trying to protect her baby despite the situation, people will feel a stirring deep inside their heart. The baby polar bear also looks very intimidated, making people feel guilty. Also, Pyatt’s emphasis on distance by capitalizing “twelve miles” inflate the vulnerability of innocuous polar bears. Pyatt wants people to see that their danger is caused by humans not by themselves. The surroundings of the polar bears are also interesting to see. In the ocean, the only thing floating around is the broken ice with polar bears. The isolation of the bears shown in the photo symbolizes how no one, even the people who are aware of the gravity of global warming, is willing to do anything to change the situation. At the end of the description, Pyatt does mention that “amazingly experts said the pair probably made it safely back to the shore”, but she puts it at the end to make the photograph stronger and thus prevent people from feeling less guilty.

TOW #6: "The Disposable Rocket" by John Updlike (written, non-fiction text)

In “The Disposable Rocket”, John Updlike uses rich metaphors to describe what it is like to be a male and what it is like to have a male body. He begins his essay by saying that “Inhibiting a male body is like having a bank account; as long as it’s healthy, you don’t think much

about it” (1). With this sentence, he criticizes the majority of men who do not take care of their body. Although he values men’s never-ending thirst for adventure, he says it is important for men to take care of their body as they may feel the same kind of betrayal he had felt when he first felt weak and old. Also, he stresses men’s superiority over women and the difference between the two genders. He says that unlike women, men have an innate recklessness, “to take their body to the edge, and see if it flies” (5). He almost puts men over women by delivering a feeling to the readers that he is stating men can do whatever they want. These anti-feminist feelings readers receive from his works is not surprising. Although considered as one of the greatest American writers of his generation, Updlike was often criticized for his misogynistic depiction of women in his writings. Because of this background, his intended audience for this essay is other men who do reckless things just for the joy and temptation of it. Updlike establishes his credibility with age; since he was in his sixties when he wrote “The Disposable Rocket”, he has the experience and credit to warn other men to take good care of their bodies. Updlike successfully achieves his purpose of warning other men to be aware of risks, but fails to win women’s accord by undermining the importance and power of women. Also, his very distinct descriptions of roles of men and women makes it difficult for women to agree. Some women also have the audacity and desire for adventure that Updlike stresses are only ingrained in men.

TOW #5: Things We Think We Know (written, non-fiction text)

Chuck Klosterman is an American columnist and author who writes about American popular culture. In 2007, he wrote the short article “Things We Think We Know” for Esquire demonstrating his belief that stereotypes are incorrect and based on coincidence but people irresponsibly utilize them to “fabricate who we are (or who we are not)” (Klosterman 2). Klosterman starts his essay with the description of human nature’s hypocrisy, how people pretend like they hate stereotypes but passionately use them to make themselves be someone they are not. To illustrate this hypocrisy, he uses paradox. He writes “We all hate stereotypes. Seriously… Except that we don’t. We adore stereotypes, and we desperately need them” (Klosterman 1). People seem like they hate stereotypes because to fabricate their integrity and open-mindedness people will often equate stereotypes with ignorance. However, when stuck in a situation when stereotype is required to escape, the same kind of people will claim that all stereotypes are based on some facts. To establish more credibility for his point, Klosterman uses anecdotes in which he experienced Germans stereotyping Americans in his tour to Germany. He says a German teenager that he had encountered assumed American Dream meant “watching Baywatch twenty-four hours a day” (Klosterman 7), indirectly stating Germans’ view of Americans as sluggish and careless beings. By using an idea that most Americans would object to, Klosterman attempts to achieve his purpose that stereotypes are incorrect. However, overall, Klosterman fails to achieve his purpose. He would write about all the generalizations and stereotypes he had discovered about Germans during his tour in Germany, but hastily dismisses all these observations as stereotypes. He weakened his points by being overly obsessed with the idea of avoiding stereotypes that he is incapable of judging between what is actually based on fact and what is based on biased fabrication.

Article:
http://www.esquire.com/print-this/ESQ0307klosterman?page=all

TOW #4: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (written, IRB)

Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air is about the author and his team’s expedition to reach the peak of Mount Everest. In contrast to the readers’ anticipations of typical glory and fame that comes with reaching the summit of Mount Everest, Into Thin Air depicts the catastrophe and the everlasting impact that the horrifying events, especially the Mount Everest disaster had on Krakauer and his teammates. Krakauer, feeling partly responsible for the death of his friends wrote this book to tell the world about the tragedy and deaths of his brave fellow climbers, so their courage would be unforgotten. After returning from Mount Everest and writing about their journey for a magazine Outside, Krakauer realizes that he had made a mistake while describing about the death of one of his fellow climbers. This mistake propelled Krakauer to write Into Thin Air to accurately deliver the information and therefore consoling the families of the victims who had been affected by his inaccurate reports for Outside. Krakauer also raises awareness of the dangers involved with Mount Everest and climbing with lack of knowledge and competence by mentioning the Taiwanese and South African teams he had encountered. Krakauer establishes his ethos by writing about his own experience as an expert mountaineer and renowned author. He also admits his past blunder of inaccurately reporting the incident of one of his fellow climbers and ensures the readers that to avoid his own perceptions, which were likely to be distorted by shock and exhaustion, he interviewed his teammates to reach a consensus of what actually had happened. Other than ethos, Krakauer also uses understatement when describing deaths of others. While acclimatizing, Krakauer comes across two dead bodies consecutively. Instead of describing the terrible conditions the bodies were in, he simply states “I came upon another body in the snow” (111). He explains his understatement of death by claiming that there was an unspoken agreement to pretend that the bodies were not real to keep the high morale among the team. Krakauer states, “The first body had left me badly shaken for several hours; the shock of encountering the second wore off almost immediately” (111). This describes the callousness among teammates as they grow increasingly exhausted and dubious.

TOW #3: Child Health Foundation Poster (visual text)

The young innocent-looking girl in the poster has a halo above her head and is looking distantly in the space. The halo in this poster is not the usual ring of light that gives a golden glow, but a ring of smoke that is coming from the right edge of the poster. To further explain the image, the poster has a text that says, “Children of parents who smoke, get to heaven earlier.” The creator of this poster is stating that smoking could harm not only oneself but also one’s child. This anti-smoking poster is from Child Health Foundation which promotes and raises awareness for children’s health. Child Health Foundation’s primary audiences are parents who smoke and adult smokers who will be parents someday. Child Health Foundation wants to avoid parent smokers from unintentionally abusing their children’s health. Its secondary audiences are the bystanders around smokers who normally ignore the smokers. Child Health Foundation wants to encourage these observers to help the smokers to quit smoking. When non-smokers only know that smoking impacts the smoker, they might scoff at the smoker’s foolishness, but when they know that smoking also influences harmless children, they get an urge to stop the smokers. Child Health Foundation intentionally uses pathos to appeal to the audience’s emotions. Child Health Foundation knows that everyone, even the smokers themselves know smoking is harmful for their health and that those who continue to smoke either do not care or think the joy of smoking is more valuable than their well being. So it utilizes the idea to make smokers think that smoking affects not only themselves, but their innocent children. The creator of this poster effectively achieves his purpose of making smokers reconsider before smoking. The idea that something that people do to themselves aware of its harmful effects will hurt their loved ones efficiently leaves a lingering feeling among the smokers. The poster reminds people that their transient pleasure of smoking could kill their everlasting joy, children.

TOW #2: This is the Life by Annie Dillard (written, non-fiction text)

“This is the Life” is a short essay written by an American fiction and non-fiction author Annie Dillard. Her work serves as a spiritual healing for many, as it makes reader reflect on their on actions and ways of living. In “This is the Life,” Dillard emphasizes how people of the modern society take everything for granted and therefore are unable to progress and think outside of the box that they were put in. Rather than having their own views, people are inclined to think what “everyone” else thinks, although that group of everyone might differ depending on their surroundings. To condemn the modern society, the author uses a sarcastic tone as well as a provocative one. She describes something that would have been considered fortunate many years ago, but is not so fortunate in the modern society. She purposely describes this idea as something “Everyone you know agrees: this is the life”(3), to demonstrate how lucky we are to take those things for granted, but how unfortunate we are to forget that we should be thankful for those things. Also, she outrightly describes the things people take for granted by saying “[T]hese are not universal”(1). She is emphasizing that people need to realize that their everyday pleasure is the greatest desire for others. Dillard’s main audience is the people who take things for granted and need to appreciate what they have, and her secondary audience is the future generation who might make the same mistakes of taking things for granted. She is afraid that the future generation will make the same mistakes again and this is evident as she describes humans “who were ever alive lived inside one single culture that never changed for hundreds of thousands of years,” but people still do not understand what they are doing wrong as they “scratch their heads at so conservative and static a culture”(12).

Dillard achieved her purpose because after reading her essay the audience feels contrite and remorseful and makes them look back and evaluate their actions. Dillard’s bitter accusation makes people realize how fortunate they were.

IRB Intro #1 - Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

The book I chose to read for my IRB is Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. I decided to read this book because my cousin read Into The Wild by the same author, and recommended it to me, but I never had the chance to read it. This book is about Krakauer's expedition to Mt. Everest. I never attempted to read this book because I am not really a fan of adventure books. However, I decided to choose a different path than the one path that I always vhoose when picking a book.

TOW #1: How to Say Nothing in 500 Words

What if the way you wrote any paper for the past sixteen or seventeen years was all a hoax? What if the techniques of writing that you trusted to be indisputably important to a sound writing piece were rather harmful thus opening the many doors of possibility to giving you a D on a paper? Well, Paul Roberts, in his “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words” describes some common techniques that most juvenile writers use to either enhance their papers or get the assignment done, and how to refrain from using these errors. Intended towards inexperienced writers, Roberts tells the readers that every student is expected to make a dull subject interesting and it is the writer’s job to entice the reader into his writing with the style and wording. He informs the students to avoid the obvious: to refrain from general content and wordiness, to take the less usual side that would be refreshing for the teachers who have been reading the cliched essays for the past two hours. As an expert in linguistics, Roberts uses effective rhetorical devices such as coherence and didactic. Roberts does not conceal his points about how to be a better writer by using obscure and ambiguous wording; he clearly outlines his main points solely focusing on the idea to teach jejune writers about how to write more effectively. Under the bolded heading of his main points, the writer elaborates his points with explanations and real or unreal examples. For instance, under the heading, Call a Fool a Fool, he demonstrates how people euphemise the word “dead”, to avoid such harsh word choice, but only ends up making oneself sound incompetent. Roberts accomplished his purpose by clearly instructing what to avoid and what to carry out to readers. Although some juvenile writers might be tempted to argue against Roberts because he denounces the way they wrote for their lifetime, but Roberts’s coherent objective and analysis makes it difficult to argue against.

Bop by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes’s essay written in 1949, “Bop” begins with a dialogue between two African American slaves during the Harlem Renaissance talking about Be-Bop music. When a character named Simple begins to sing Be-Bop music, the narrator heedlessly declares that the music sounds like scat. Shocked by the narrator’s nonsense, Simple explains the origins of Be-Bop music, which came from the sound of “police beating Negroes’ heads” (191). Simple further elaborates by adding that whites cannot imitate the music because they do not know what they are singing about. Evidently, Hughes tried to reveal the brutality and unjustifiable violence of the society towards African Americans during Harlem Renaissance. Likewise, Langston Hughes was a renown African American novelist and poet known for his works that arouse African American nationalism during a time when it was difficult to be an African American and depict unjust treatments towards them. Evidently, his intended audience for this essay is the African Americans who are like the narrator: the ones that are more apathetic about their own ethnicity. In addition, Hughes wants to reveal that a type of music people simply enjoy originated from the sufferings of his and the audiences’ ancestors. To deliver his point more easily, Hughes uses rhetorical devices such as onomatopoeia and imagery. The pleasant and enjoyable Be-Bop music suddenly transforms into horrifying sounds of beating and moaning as Simple explains using onomatopoeia as well as vivid imagery. Although done harshly, Hughes accomplished his purpose by making people feel contrite about what happened to the African Americans during the era of injustice and racism. As SImple calls the narrator “nonsense” for having no idea about the origins of Be-Bop, he denounces not only the African Americans of his time who are ignore of the sufferings that their ancestor had to encounter and the racism during the time this piece was written, but also the future generations who might take the freedom that they were given so arduously by the agony of their ancestors for granted and remind them that they should never forget the former hardships.

Bebop is a Race MusicGuthrie P. Ramsey
Bebop music is a race music, because it originated from the cruel history of discrimination of African Americans.
http://www.tower.com/race-music-black-cultures-from-bebop-hip-hop-guthrie-p-ramsey-paperback/wapi/100802358

The Devil Baby at Hull-House by Jane Addams

Written in first-person point of view by Jane Addams in 1916, “The Devil Baby at Hull-House” concerns the rumor that was going around in the 1900s that there was a Devil Baby at the Hull-House. Addams defines different myths about the origins of the Devil Baby. All these different tales have one similarity, that the baby was a consequence of the husband’s harsh dominance over his wife. The poor mother, not knowing what to do with the cursed baby, took him to the Hull-House. Due to the fast-spreading rumors, people of all origins came to the Hull-House seeking the fabled Devil Baby, but Addams denied that such baby exists at the Hull-House. With Addams’s rejection, incredulous visitors, especially women, couldn’t hide their disappointments. Masked by a story of the Devil Baby, Jane Addams tries to reveal the lives of powerless women under man's control in the 1900s. Unsurprisingly, Jane Addams was a leader in women’s suffrage and rights. Addams indicates although unreal, the Devil Baby was a light of hope to the housewives and they dragged their husbands to Hull-house in search of such baby to give a lesson to the selfish husbands to treat their wives better. Addams also suggests that this story might have originated from women’s hopes of their men to treat them equally and not as an inferior being. The author uses rhetorical device known as allegory to emphasize her point. Disguised by this myth about a Devil Baby, the author indicates women's weakness and how the Devil Baby is perhaps present in every household as a consequence of the father’s ignorance of his family. In contrast to the father, the mother gives unconditional love for her children no matter their defects.

The author was successful in making women seem like victims, but she made it too extreme and made her purpose controversial to men. Also, because written by a woman when most men disagreed to grant equal rights to women, Addams’s essay might not have gained much recognition among the community. If written by a male author, this essay would have gained much more credibility.

Gender Inequality

This image shows the gender inequality that Addams tried to reveal in her "The Devil Baby at Hull-House". She wanted to stress the dominance of men over women.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/557630/gender-equality-society-not-ready-to-accept-women-in-politics/

No Name Woman by Maxine Hong Kingston

Maxine Hong Kingston’s “No Name Woman” is about Kingston’s no name aunt who killed herself and her baby by jumping into the family well the day that she gave birth. When her family found out that Kingston’s aunt was pregnant, her aunt’s husband had been gone for years, so they knew that the baby was obviously illicit. Such disgrace in China was considered egregious and her father’s family regarded her aunt as a “no one” after her death. The mother warns the author to neither question nor talk about her aunt, but tells the story to caution the narrator as Kingston begins to menstruate. As Kingston fantasize about her aunt and what her aunt had to endure, she is baffled by the difference between the restricted Chinese society and lenient American society and which to accept as a Chinese-American. With Kingston’s descriptions of her family’s severe treatments towards her aunt, Kingston tried to not only diminish her aunt’s sins but also justify her own lack of Chinese nationalism and ethnic confusion. Her antagonistic descriptions of Chinese society clarify her ambivalence towards the norms of China. So the story is intended for specifically other Chinese people who might not have understood the struggles of Chinese Americans before reading Kingston’s essay. Furthermore, the author’s no name aunt is not just an unfortunate lady rejected by both the Chinese society and her family, but a symbolism of imperfections of the repressive traditional Chinese society. Kingston’s revolutionary works that outlined the differences between Chinese and American beliefs were often regarded as an impurity of the traditional China, but Kingston continued to write about what she believed in. Thus the author might have offended those conservative Chinese with her subtle denounce of Chinese traditions. However, the author achieved her purpose to other Chinese-Americans who are as perplexed as she is and people from other countries who are unaware of the restrictive Chinese culture by making them think that the consequences of freedom are too harsh.

No Name WomanBy KellyMaryOnette
http://kellymaryonette.deviantart.com/art/No-Name-Woman-141688627
The No Name Woman is sitting by the family well that she jumped in. Even as a ghost, she does not have anywhere to go, because her family regard her as a no one.