EWRT 1A Deanza College Race and American Dream in Ta Nehisi Coates Question
This is a sample essay of Between the world and me for a reference please read and follow the same method using MLA formate Considering Choices to Achieving Larger GoalsAuthor, Ta-Nehisi Coates, is a well-known writer who focuses his work on race in the United States. Coates has been well-received nationally, having authored four books that have earned him months at the top of the New York Times best seller list, as well as the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. In addition, Coates’s book, Between the World and Me, was awarded the National Book Award in 2015. Given Coates’s great accomplishments, it is productive for upcoming writers to carefully consider his writing choices. In his book, Between the World and Me, Coates has multiple audiences and purposes, both stated and presumed. Coates’s choices as a writer, especially his use of rhetorical appeals, makes him effective at achieving his purposes with his multiple audiences. Optional: 1 pgh summary of Between the World and MeThe stated audience for Between the World and Me is Coates’s then teen-aged son, Samori. Coates writes the book in the form of a letter to Samori with the intention of helping him learn how to live as a Black person in the United States. Coates explains to Samori, “that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it. I tell you now that the question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream, is the question of my life, and the pursuit of this question, I have found, ultimately answers itself” (12). Here Coates is explaining the internal challenges he has had to struggle with as a Black person in the US, given the country’s continued racism, especially against Black people. Coates is effective at achieving his purpose with his son Samori through his use of ethos, though his word choice may have been adjusted to better suit his teenaged audience of one.Last Name 2Coates use of ethos was very effective at achieving his purpose to guide Samori through living as a Black person in the US. Cal Poly professor, Dr. John R. Edlund, explains that a person’s ethos relates to having “good sense, good moral character and goodwill...” (1) and that the speaker “should also appear to have the appropriate expertise and authority to speak knowledgeably about the subject matter” (1). Ethos is about who a person is in terms of character and background. Coates is brimming with ethos when it comes to teaching his son about living as a Black person in the US because of his personal experiences as a Black person and because of Coates’s professional focus on race in the US. He explains to Samori the effort he has put into figuring out how to live in the US as a Black man. In discussing his negotiation with his own identity, Coates writes, “I have asked the question through my readings and writings, through the music of my youth, through arguments with your grandfather, with you mother, your aunt Janai, your uncle Ben. I have searched for answers in nationalist myth, in classrooms, out on the streets and on other continents” (12). Here Coates is listing all of his life-long efforts to understand the question that he is trying to prepare Samori to answer – how to be Black in the US. By enumerating such a long, broad list of his efforts, Coates is using ethos to show Samori the work he has already done to understand the topic that he is trying to teach to his son. This builds Coates ethos and makes him quite effective with his audience, Samori. However, Coates’s word choice detracted somewhat from achieving his purpose with Samori, because his language could have been better suited for a teen. For example, throughout the book, Coates refers to “the Dream” and “the Dreamers”. Yet, Coates does not give a clear, definitive explanation of what these concepts are. It is possible that these are illusive concepts with not clear, singular definition. Coates suggests that Dreams are “these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white” (7). He suggests that Black people cannot be Dreamers because “the Dream rests on our backs” (11). But later in describing Prince George’s county’s upper middle class Black residents, he says, “being black did not immunize us from history’s logic or the lure of the Dream” (53). So while these disparate points can be explained, on their face, they seem inconsistent, especially for a young teenager like Samori. If Coates’s audience was truly his teenaged son, he might have more effectively accomplish his goal with him by being more explicit and clear about his sophisticated language and concepts. The fact that Coates uses such sophisticated language and ideas suggests that he also had a broader audience and a separate purpose. I believe a broader purpose and audience that Coates had in mind was to offer support to members of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Black Lives Matter movement is an effort to defend Black people in the US against police brutality. By sharing his experiences of losing his friend Prince Jones years before the Black Lives Matter movement, Coates is communicating that he knows and agrees with the need to protect Black people from police violence. Coates’s use of Kairos makes him effective in achieving his purpose with this audience. Kairos is... Coates uses Kairos through the timing of his book... Choosing to publish his book in 2015 in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement helps him achieve his purpose because...By carefully considering the specific choices Coates makes in his book Between the World and Me, we can see what makes Coates effective in achieving his writing goals with both his son and the broader Black Lives Matter movement. We can see some of the many tools writers have to help them accomplish their purposes with their audiences, which then makes these tools more accessible to us as writers. A careful look at a writer’s choices pushes academic readers to look between the lines and make broader inferences that go beyond what is strictly on the page and to read more critically. If we are to achieve the sophisticated, nuanced understanding of difficult and important topics such as race in the US, we must pay close attention to how we use and understand language in order to make progress towards toward larger goals such as increased justice in our country. Works CitedCoates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.Edlund, John R. “[PDF] Ethos, Logos, Pathos: Three Ways to Persuade: Semantic Scholar.” [PDF] Ethos, Logos, Pathos: Three Ways to Persuade | Semantic Scholar, Semantic Scholar, 1 Jan. 1970, www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ethos%2C-Logos%2C-Pathos%3A-Three-Ways-to-Persuade-Edlund/f3b1996043f655bfd5474b31fc42f5e206e3ca0c.