In his spoken words “Ebonics 101”, Steven Willis has amazingly described the struggles of an African American person by combining it with his/her way of talking in a brilliant way. Steven has successfully managed to keep a them throughout the whole poem that literally portraits a clear picture of how angry an African American person is because of a long history of racial injustice towards African American people, and how passionate he/she is about changing the stereotypical way an African American person is usually treated in our society.
It is safe to say that in this poem, Steven has reached a new level of creativity and the ability to combine several great thoughts in just one sentence. The whole focus of the poem is to defend the slang language which is spoken by African American people. Steven has made it real clear that “Ebonics” is not just some street language. As he defined it in his own words, “Ebonics is the official language of the undefined black culture”. To establish his claim, he literally created three grammar lessons of “Ebonics”. The most impressive thing I found was how he connected those three rules to all the oppression and racial injustice that an African American person has been facing for over a century now. Like when he explained the first rule which stated that “any English word that holds an (in) combination, the (i) becomes an (a)”. To elaborate this rule, he gave and example of Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. This clearly proves my above claim that Steven created a strong link between the way African American people speak and the racial injustice against them. Steven did the exact same thing with other two lessons and made sure that his audience understand the fact that African American people intentionally speak the way they speak. They want to have their own identity, culture and language, not the one their oppressor “White Person” has.
To sum up, the main goal of Steven is to tell the world that the way African American people speak, it’s not just some street words. There is a whole culture behind it. A culture that represents African American people, their identity, their thoughts, their rights and the fact that they are different then “the man”.
Questions
- Do you think that I was able to provide a general summery of the poem in my introduction?
- Do you see any broken thoughts in there?
- Do you think that I was able to mention all the main points?
- Is there anything that you would disagree?
- I always have hard time coming up with a conclusion, how successful do you think I was in summarizing my essay in the conclusion?
1)Do you think that I was able to provide a general summery of the poem in my introduction?
I feel like you can go a little bit deeper in the introduction and maybe add a line to make the intro stronger because how it is now is pretty good but I want to know more.
2) Do you see any broken thoughts in there?
I am actually a little confused on this question and don’t get what you are asking :/ I’ll ask you about it in class.
3) Do you think that I was able to mention all the main points?
I do actually, in your writing you talk about the spoken word of being oppressed and how he explains the injustice faced because of language.
4)Is there anything that you would disagree? No not at all I agree with your POV actually, it well written.
5)I always have hard time coming up with a conclusion, how successful do you think I was in summarizing my essay in the conclusion?
I too struggle with conclusions but I think yours was written pretty well maybe add a line or two and explain it to the point where you can connect it to your overall message for the essay.
Professor Polish Question-
1)My favorite part of your project so far is… your input in the essay and how you found certain things interesting.
2)I would love it if you expanded on these two specific ideas… One being the ending where you mentioned “the man” who is that referring to? Did the poet explain or elaborate on that? And you mentioned that African Americans are stereotypically treating a way in society. How are they treated in society? What emotions do you think are felt?
3)It seems like your target audience is…. people who are or have been oppressed in the past I can tell because you point out key point in the poem where it is explained. One idea to make it stronger would further explain what he means with the certain line you choose. Another would be building an idea and maybe connecting to it in a way? I feel like we all can.
4)Two things that you haven’t done yet that I really think would make your project more powerful are… add maybe a personal experience into your writing piece ( ONLY if you’re comfortable with this). And maybe even digging deeper into the emotion felt in the poem.
5)I’m not sure what you meant on “the man” (but I already mentioned this) can you explain further?
6) Overall I feel like your writing piece is pretty strong you explain key points and bring what you interesting to your writing. You carry yourself pretty well in the writing. I would fix from grammar mistakes (don’t worry I bet I have too because I do it all the time haha) but all in all your piece was very informative and straight to the point. Good job!
Saeed,
You and your team (hi Kat!) seemed to have a great conversation in class, and I’m really happy about that. To add on to what we were talking about, I really like the way that you describe — your language is beautiful, and I particularly love the way you say that he makes it “real clear”, which is a wonderful example of the kind of speech he’s talking about! 🙂 — his work. Your enthusiasm about the piece shines through your own writing, and I love that.
As you move forward with your drafting process, I encourage you to do some more thinking about the “inch wide, mile deep” thing we were talking about in class. You do a wonderful job reiterating what Willis argues with his poem, but I’d encourage you to pick a specific spot or two and really linger there and dig deep for a while. For example, you bring up his three lessons and his allusion to Martin Luther King, but you don’t dive deep into the impacts of, for example, his rhetorical choices to construct his piece as a lesson plan, the impact of his rhetorical choice to reference King. You know what I mean? Really go in deep, not just to the general theme of the poem — which you’ve nailed beautifully — but into his rhetorical choices at a very specific level. What impacts do his specific choices make on the reader/viewer/audience?
I’m so excited to see where you go from here: this is an exciting start!