"First Writing Since" - Cassie Wolff

                I thought Suheir Hammad’s speech was beautiful. I got the chills just watching and listening to what she had to say. While listening to her poem I analyzed it using Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals pathos, logos and ethos. Suheir does a great job getting her audience of many races to feel the pathos side of her poem. She used the most vivid descriptions from September 11, 2001. Hammad mentions, “My hand went to my head and head to the dead Iraqi children the dead in Nicaragua and Rwanda” (Hammad 1:21). Ethos and logos are also utilized in her poem, “One more person ask me if I know the hijackers... assume they know me or that I represent a people” (Hammad 2:09). The point she gets across with this statement is that she gets looked down upon just because of her ethnicity that maybe she knew personally who did this to the United States, twin towers, families and loved ones. The main points in her poem come across with pathos, it is what goes to heart to all of her audience and what gets the main message noticed.

 To me, she does make a huge argument with her poem; the whole poem expresses what feelings, thinking and reasoning she believes in. When she is speaking you feel as if you relate, even if you don’t, by the way she is passionate about what she is expressing to her audience. To me her argument is that Bin Laden does not represent her terrorists do not represent her; the people that wanted to kill thousands do not represent her. He is one person who represents himself and himself only. I find her argument to be beyond persuasive she makes many good points and uses many emotions to make her point.