Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Blog #8 "First Writing Since"

    Suheir Hammad shows all of the pain she is carrying in her "First Writing Since." The logos she uses, facts such as when she says, "last night Bush waged war on a man once openly funded by the cia" (Hammad 3.13). The information she includes are relative to the nation, but because of them, there were very personal effects on her own city. Hammad's ethos, or credibility comes from her identity with the city, that she "[has] never felt less american, and more new yorker" (Hammad 4.03). Because she has this connection with the city, her words have more meaning, or credibility to those who are listening, as the images she relates are a part of her emotional struggle.
    Hammad uses, of Aristotle's rhetorical appeals, pathos most profoundly. The emotion in her poem relates the hurt and anger towards racism; the despair and heartache for those who have lost loved ones; and the concern and sympathy for not only the people she knows, but those who are strangers, those who are hurting. She says, "i don't know what to think. but I know for sure who will pay. in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor. women will have to bury children, and support themselves through grief. 'either you are with us, or with the terrorists'" (Hammad 3.34). This conveys the awfulness of what mothers have to go through,  to bury their children and endure the agony that comes with it. It also shows that races are treated with prejudice: "one more person assume they know me, or that i represent a people. or that a people represent an evil. or that evil is as simple as a flag and words on a page" (Hammad 2.21).

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