Textual analysis Essay: English
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” The human experience is one that constantly barrages you with hardship and struggles at an excruciatingly fast pace. As the character of Ferris Bueller points out in Ferris Bueller’s day off, unless you stop to look around, the point of life might be completely lost on you.
Over the semester, I had the pleasure of reading several essays written by some of the most prolific and respected international artists of our time; people like Amy Tan, Ibram X Kendi, and Annie Lammott. Through their essays regarding authentic voice and cultural understanding, they reveal that the true magic of personal examination through writing is the ability to witness personal growth and development of an authentic voice, while Tan and Kendi are also able to deepen their understanding of cultural identity.
What is the importance of a rough draft? In her essay Shitty First Drafts, Annie Lammott seeks to answer this question in a decisive manner. Although she does admit that in the beginning, her first few rough drafts were very uncomfortable to write, she later states that “ But because by then I had been writing for so long, I would eventually let myself trust the process — sort of, more or less. I’d write a first draft that was maybe twice as long as it should be, with a self-indulgent and boring beginning, stupefying descriptions of the meal, lots of quotes from my black-humored friends that made them sound more like the Manson girls than food lovers, and no ending to speak of.” The next day, I’d sit down, go through it all with a colored pen, take out everything I possibly could, find a new lead somewhere on the second page, figure out a kicky place to end it, and then write a second draft. It always turned out fine,sometimes even funny and weird and helpful. I’d go over it one more time and mail it in.”(Pg1) It’s here where we see Lammott recognize the magic of that first draft and by extension, her authentic voice. She’s able to trust herself to let go and to write whatever she wants, no matter how incoherent or detailed it can get. Because of this, she’s able to let her authentic voice stand strong while writing something also satisfactory for the magazine she works at.
Tan and Kendi’s essays, on the other hand, focus more on their growth through cultural identity. As children, they often went through both internalized and externalized racism, which often made them believe in the racist ideas that were pushed toward them. For example, Kendi states that he often thought that he was “a subpar student and was bombarded by messages from Black people, from White people, the media — that told me that the reason was rooted in my race… which made me discouraged and less motivated as a student.”(17% of kindle sample) Here, Kendi shows how racist ideas affected his mindset, and caused him to believe he was genetically and physically limited in comparison to other races. Furthermore, Tan notes: “I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly, her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her.” (pg 1). Because of other people’s actions toward her mother’s “broken” English, she was conditioned to believe that it was a genetic flaw and something that needed to be corrected.
However, through their writing, Tan and Kendi are able to discover the beauty of the things they were once ashamed of. In the very endings of his first chapters of How To be an Antiracist, Kendi is able to come to a conclusion. “Denial is the heartbeat of racism, beating across ideologies, races, and nations. Many of us who deny Trump’s racist ideas will strongly deny our own. How often do we become reflexively defensive when someone calls something we’ve said or done racist? How many of us would agree with this statement: ‘Racism isn’t a descriptive word. It’s a pejorative word. It is the equivalent of saying ‘I don’t like you.’’ Through his personal examination, he’s able to recognize the roots of racism, why it exists, and most importantly, reveal his authentic voice without smothering his true ideas. Tan is also able to discover that, and while being ashamed of her mother’s English before, learns to embrace it: ““I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.” She wants to capture that authentic voice, the imagery, the rhythms, the language, and the nature of her thoughts in a way that translations could never do, in a beautiful display of letting go.
Authentic voice is something that’s surprisingly hard to come by. Oftentimes, people will autopilot to correct themselves because they think the ideas presented are “stupid” or “wrong,” . But, as Kendi, Tan, and Lammott passionately write, they learn the importance of those ideas, even if they are stupid. In a brilliant display of their own authentic voice, they’re able to write something that not only connects to the people who read it, but also develops themselves. Sometimes, all it takes is just stopping and looking around, just like old Ferris Bueller once said.
