This essay examines how five authors — Brent Staples, Maya Angelou, Jamaica Kincaid, Zora Neale Hurston, and M. Scott Momaday — use personal narrative and emotional appeal to communicate the reality of racial and colonial prejudice more effectively than direct argument. Drawing on essays collected in DiYanni and Hoy's Occasions for Writing, the paper argues that anti-prejudice rhetoric loses impact when it relies on assertion alone, while first-person accounts of discrimination create genuine emotional connections with readers. Each author's distinct literary approach is analyzed, from Staples' journalistic word choices to Kincaid's colonial rant to Hurston's resilient optimism, revealing that prejudice carries many faces and that changing minds depends on authors connecting with readers at a deeply personal level.
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Browse any bookstore or search online and you will find hundreds — in fact thousands — of essays, books, articles, and speeches about prejudice. Most of them are predictably against it. Begin reading any of them at random and chances are good that they will contain phrases such as "don't have prejudice towards people" or "prejudice is a bad thing." What puzzles the mind, however, is whether phrases like these are enough to end prejudice. Do they actually convince people not to judge others and to treat everyone equally? The answer, most likely, is no.
In order to understand what prejudice is, does a person have to experience racially, ethnically, religiously, or class-based unfairness and maltreatment firsthand? Among the thousands of literary works that attempt to convince readers that prejudice is wrong, a small minority seems capable of doing so on a deeper, emotional level. Brent Staples' "Just Walk On By," Maya Angelou's "Graduation," and Jamaica Kincaid's "On Seeing England for the First Time" are a few essays that defy the norm by taking readers on a journey into what it feels like to be the object of prejudice — a journey many readers would otherwise be incapable of taking (DiYanni and Hoy).
The word choices Staples makes throughout his essay are crucial (DiYanni and Hoy). He uses three words repeatedly: black, night, and woman. All three are connected to each other and represent an important point Staples is trying to make. When someone thinks about "night," the first image that comes to mind is a black sky, dark streets, and the potential for danger. Staples adds an additional element of danger — himself as a Black male. He wants the reader to connect these words, possibly with the intent of triggering memories of when the reader has made the same connection in their own life.
The reader becomes aware that their internal biases have not gone unnoticed. Even though generalizations based on skin color may seem to make a kind of social sense — given that African-American males have been stereotyped as predatory figures in the public imagination — the essay provides the unique perspective that everyone becomes a victim in a racially charged atmosphere of fear, a fear made worse by the absence of sunlight. Through Staples' journalistic telling of his personal experiences as a Black man who enjoys walking the streets of Chicago and New York City at night, prejudice becomes a stain on civilized society, and the reader is left feeling regret for their own contributions to that fear.
Avoiding racially charged words can also be an effective technique for drawing readers into a world they have never visited before. Maya Angelou's "Graduation" spends a great deal of effort painting the ebbs and flows of a Southern community preparing to celebrate their children's end-of-year milestone (DiYanni and Hoy). The reader must pay close attention to the details, at least for the first few pages, to understand that this is a Southern African-American community largely insulated from the racist outside world. The children, at least through the eyes of the author, are full of dreams for a future of personal success. Readers are drawn into this optimistic, rosy world — like sheep to the slaughter — because Angelou is about to reveal what happens to the heart and mind of a child when that world is shattered.
The community is invaded during the graduation ceremony by a White racist bureaucrat named Donleavy, who reminds the children and parents that their fates are limited by the color of their skin (DiYanni and Hoy). This transpires during a ceremony intended to launch these children into the next phase of their lives with a healthy dose of optimism. Their hearts are broken by what occurs, and the full burden of their skin color is suddenly felt by the entire community at once. The girls can only look forward to futures as housewives, nurses, or maids, while the boys can hope for nothing more than carpentry, field labor, or mechanics — unless they find fame through sports. Becoming a doctor, lawyer, or national political leader was simply unrealistic in 1940s America, according to Donleavy. The reader's heart breaks along with the children and parents. Through this literary strategy, the innocent reader begins to grasp why prejudice is so ugly and tragic: racial prejudice tramples the dreams of children and breaks their hearts.
"Colonial subjugation fuels Kincaid's vitriolic rant"
"Hurston reframes prejudice as others' wasted time"
"Kiowa culture's destruction mourned through vivid description"
"Emotional connection determines anti-prejudice writing's impact"
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