Telephone Conversation By Soyinka

“‘Race Politics” by Luis J. Rodriguez was about him and his brother living in a place called Watts. They journey over the tracks, trying to get the “good food” for their family. They go to the store, and find themselves face to face with five teenagers who knock the food out of their hands, and beat up the main character’s older brother, causing him to vomit. The teenagers leave, with them on the floor. The purpose for writing this essay is to identify syntax, connotation, and imagery within this poem, and decide what makes it important to the overall poem. The overall impression that Luis conveys within his work is the feeling of separation.

The author uses tone and images throughout to compare and contrast the concepts of “black wealth” and a “hard life”. The author combines the use of images with blunt word combinations to make her point; for example, “you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet”. This image evokes the warmth of remembering a special community with the negative, have to use outdoor facilities. Another example of this combination of tone and imagery is “how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in”. Again the author’s positive memory is of feeling fresh after her bath combined with a negative, the fact that it was a barbecue drum.

The book, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is written as a letter to his son. Coates cuts into the experience of the father as advice too the son. He writes this letter to his son to educate and awaken his son to the logic of white supremacy and the obstacles he will face as a black man this world. However, Ta-Nehisi’s son isn’t the only audience. He exposes the readers too the effect of racism on Black America, from history until present day. The purpose of this essay is to conduct a rhetorical analysis on Ta-Nehisi Coates’, Between the World and Me regarding his usage of ethos, pathos and logos to unveil the ongoing effect of the system of racism that continues to cause major problems to our society.

First, he appeals to his audience’s commons sense in order to express the differences with black and white people. With this intention he starts by mentioning the difference of their rejoicing is not something he can enjoy and have in common. Furthermore, he explains about the “seventy-two lawbreaking

All in all, the poem “‘Race’ Politics” by Luis J. Rodriguez has multiple examples of connotation, imagery, and syntax which were used to enhance the story by helping us visualize what the main character went through dealing with racism in his everyday

In the work of African descended writers’, water is used as a common symbol. In Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak!, Jacques Roumain’s Masters of the Dew, and Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, tears, rivers, the sea and other forms of water are used to symbolize change. More specifically, it symbolizes the change between life and death; freedom and confinement. The three writers use water as an ironic symbol, representing life, liberty, and their contradictions.

In a late Tupac Shakur interview in the early 90’s he said, “it all comes down to we have to survive, we got to survive here in this country, because I’m not going back to Africa, we have to survive here”. Social injustice is what activist stressed during and after the civil rights movement. This paper is going to explore the poem “Mystery of Iniquity” by Lauryn Hill. In this poem Lauryn Hill warns you of the government, and the “free world”. This poem was written in 2002, during which police brutality was very prominent. In the start of this century African Americans still lived in poverty, and was treated unfairly in the court systems causing grief.

Allison Joseph and Sekou Sundiata are both great writers who engage the world by expressing their struggles through poetry. Both authors write about how people make assumptions because of what they hear and see around them. Their poems discuss the altercations and obstacles they have faced only because of the color of their skin. In the poem “On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black Person,” Joseph incorporates a wide breath of experiences from her point of view. She expresses her strong emotion by using descriptive language which allows us to read with emotion. In “Blink your eyes,” Sundiata shows the intensity of his feelings by using the repetition of phrases and reinforcing the poems irony.

Many poets have conversations with other authors within their literature. They do not talk directly, as if addressing each other face-to-face. Instead, they choose topics that relate and continue the conversation. This is what Nikki Giovanni’s “Nikki Rosa” and Terrence Hayes’ “Talk” does. These two poems exemplify the issue of racial misinterpretations using different literary devices to describe the issues that many black people, faced and continue to face today.

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, King strongly advocates for an immediate change in segregation laws. Give his audience of clergymen oblivious what life is like for black people, King uses pathos to enlighten the men of the urgency for change. He creates a very deep and passionate tone to convey the severe necessity for a reform. He also uses different kinds of figurative language like anaphora, to build the intensity of the paragraphs.

In Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have a Dream speech’, he proclaimed, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation…. But one hundred years later, the Negro is still not free.” For years people have fought for racial equality, but even now in the twenty-first century we still have not achieved that. Martin Luther King Jr fought for the rights of black people, and his words are still spoken to call others to fight this injustice. In Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, he uses many stylistic elements including structure, language, and figurative language to influence his readers thoughts and convince them to join the fight for racial equality.

Between the World and Me, is a framework of the American history and current crisis of racial ideals. The author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, discusses the damaging falsehoods race has caused on black men and woman throughout history and in current situations. Coates’ writes this book as an open letter to his son, with the intention of helping him understand what it is like to live in a “black body” within this world. As well as answering the question of how black men and woman can free themselves from history’s burden.

It is this dignity that many African people's all but lost in the colonial period...The writer's duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them, what they lost." (Achebe/Killam Eds. Pg. 159.)

Wole Soyinka (1934), Nobel Prize winner in literature, in his novels such as ‘King’s Horseman’ and ‘The Years of Childhood and Death’ portrays his life experiences and thoughts about Africa as well as Nigeria.

In her poem, “For all voices, for all victims,” Antjie Krog makes use of the metaphors in lines four through eleven to bring life to the redeemed South Africa in a post-apartheid time: