Garnette Cadogen's 'Walking While Black'

The challenging component this semester was the transition from high school English reading and writing level to college level. It is mainly because High school writing did not have many expectations from students, its main focus was on the ideal five-paragraph essays. As compared to college, writing is mainly geared and focused on one’s ability to thoroughly answer the assigned prompt. Initially, I was not sure if I was capable of handling a fast-paced course, however, I quickly adjusted to the change and I am glad that I chose to stay. In English 10, I have learned many valuable elements that I can incorporate into my everyday writing. I have included my writing from project 2 a rhetorical analysis on, “Black Lives Matter”, which effectively demonstrates my growth as a reader, thinker, and writer.

This essay is a persuasive opinion essay the word choice the author uses is all to make the reader agree with him. Some examples of where word choice has a particular effect in the essay can be found throughout the essay. The first example can be found in the first paragraph in the first sentence,

Furthermore, this essay gives a perspective on what a Black man goes through. Brent wanted to enlighten his readers about daily life as an African American man. This meant explaining his view of the public from his perspective. By bringing these issues to light, he

Scrolling through the possible essays, it didn’t take long to find one that was eye catching. Walking While Black, by Garnette Cadogan, caught my attention for obvious reasons. The author takes a personal story that shows his interests-walking that is very current and understandable to most audiences. Cadogan depicts one of the terrors black men risk enduring everyday life in the United States. Cadogan’s storyline, quotes and informal language assist readers to reach a sense of connection with his experiences. The beginning of the essay takes us where his love of walking begins-his hometown Kingston, Jamaica. The storyline, starting from his late night strolls in his hometown, Cadogan walks us through how he ended up in the New York City

On the very first day of the class, Introduction to the Black Experience, we learned that people are defined by their culture and geography. We are also defined by the gaze of others and our own gaze. This realization led me to contemplate what the “black experience” means to me. As a first generation Haitian-American woman at Wellesley College, it has become clearer to me how important the language and culture of parents has been in shaping my identity. I have also begun to think more critically about how my identity as a woman of color separates me from black brothers as well as my white peers at Wellesley.

Generally, every individual’s learning experience has its own inspiring and meaningful stories; a learning experience that has its own unique distinctions, interpretations, complications, sacrifices, has its endless possibilities, and most importantly, a learning experience that has its own effective action and optimistic option for execution. For example: In “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie highlights his enjoyment of reading and writing. He claims that as a kid, he reminds himself that he is a “smart Indian boy” even though it is not recognized on a reservation or even when non-Indian teachers believe that Indian children are stupid. Similarly, in “Learning to Read and Write,” Frederick Douglass demonstrates that slaves are entitled to have the same rights to learn about reading and writing as any other Americans. He testifies that his masters, including his fellow slaves believe that slavery and education were not compatible. Moreover, in “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion stereotypes herself by constantly questioning her own writing due to her lack of confidence as a writer. She conveys that eventually, she masters writing through examining her own writing on a piece of a notebook about herself and other people. Likewise, in “Learning to Read,” Malcolm X expresses that books are his “Alma Mater” because he becomes proficient in writing in a course of copying every single word in a dictionary. He clarifies that he develops his skills in

In this unit I have learned many interesting things about being Black. For example, in the article by Awad El Karim M. Ibrahim, Becoming Black, I learned about BE meaning Black English and BSE meaning Black talk. Because where I am from I never was taught that there was a such thing as Black English, only talking black. Also, I did not know about Code meshing, which was mentioned by Vershawn Ashanti Young in the article, Should Writers Use Their Own Language.I have always mixed formal and informal talk my whole life and I never know it had a proper name for that style of talking. I thought it was intriguing that in the article written by Johannes A. Smit, Black Women, Writing and Identity, that women should be housewives and nothing else. I was told since birth that

Brent Staples memoir "Just Walk on By" is a short powerful story of what his daily life is like as a black man in America. Staples works for the New York Times as an editorial writer and also an author. He has written two books, the first a memoir named Parallel Time: Growing up In Black and White and second called An American Love Story (wikipedia.org). He is a well-educated man who not only received his BA in behavioral science but also continued his education as far as receiving his Ph.D. in psychology (thehistorymakers. org). Due to his successes, it makes his memoir more shocking to see that despite his life accomplishments, he still struggles in a world that has racial stigmas. Brent Staples is a great example of how to write a memoir due to his organization of the text, literary devices, and his use of rhetorical appeals. In the following essay, these rhetorical strategies Staples uses will be broken down further to show why his essay is a strong mentor text.

Ruta Sepetys is the author for Between the Shades of Gray, a novel that captures the truth of Siberian camps and the annexation of the Balkans by Stalin. Ruta Sepetys got the idea to write this fictional story when she visited her family in Lithuania and got the chance to discover more about her heritage. She got very fascinated about her family’s struggle to keep memories of her grandparents because of the annexation of Lithuania to the USSR. This conflict urged her to find out more about the feelings and people’s memoirs during this period in World War II so, she started interviewing the survivors from the Siberian gulags and gathered information to write her novel. The book was also inspired by her father, Jonas Sepetys, who escape

Essays should have organized thoughts, an interesting writing style, and most importantly get the attention of the reader. The essay, “African Women in Colonial Society,” by Carol Berkin was no exception. The claims were well thought out and clear, and the essay definitely hooked readers in with an anecdote that led into the story quite fittingly. She had three noticeable claims that were major that she talks about in the essay, and that is the struggles of African women, moreso compared to that of a man’s, the silver linings that the women found, and finally the unity of the Africans through common languages and religion.

Over the last several weeks we have completed many assigned readings, watched several movies in class and had many class discussions. I have enjoyed all the assignments so far and I feel that I have learned a lot from the time I wrote my first journal. In particular, The Color of Fear and Tatum’s description of white identity development models in Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? have really caused me to stop and reflect and have had an impact on me.

You must write a well informed, supported, organized and developed essay that is at least two pages double-spaced. Challenge yourself to attempt to use some of the vocabulary words we learned this year.

“Learning to Read” by Malcolm X is an explanation of how Malcolm gained an education as he went from a criminal on the streets into a world admired speaker for African American civil rights. And by doing so, Malcolm’s writing in this piece is a transition of his life as the complexity of his writing transitions from everyday, easy to read vocabulary into convoluted expressions. The beauty of his writing seems as a timeline of his life as it allows the readers to follow Malcolm X through the overall structure of his piece and the choice of words.

One of my strengths in this essay was my use to descriptive words. I used long

Upon reading Stephen King’s Reading to Write essay, right off the bat he states that “if you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: Read a lot and write a lot.” To me this means reading way more than I would like to, but it is important to me to become a better at writing so reading more will probably happen in the future. While reading his essay I did notice several different writing strategies that I could figure out myself. I will go over some of those strategies later on in this essay. This being the first essay or paper I have read that belongs to Stephen King it did get my attention in the opening paragraphs. His use of different techniques and writing strategies pulled me right in and made me want to read more.