From the Poets in The Kitchen by Paule Marshall
Part 1. Identify the writer’s rhetorical situation
a. Context: Her discourse communities are Barbadian, writer/author, black American, New-Yorker.
b. Audience: New York Times readers; those who are interested in learning about different ways writers become writers.
c. Persona: Marshall presents herself as free-spirited human being.
d. Purpose: “To pay tribute to the women in her mother’s kitchen, who used language as a refuge from an America that overwhelmed them.”
Evaluation
In the essay From the Poets in the Kitchen by Paule Marshall, the author describes her experiences that contributed to shaping her life in as a writer. Marshall begins this essay by sharing the time she was a teacher at Columbia University where she encountered a male student whose choice of words came off as nothing but sexist. The male student said “women writers are luckier than those of his sex because they usually spend so much time as children around their mothers and mothers’ friends in the kitchen.” Feeling insulted at first, Marshall soon connects what the male student said with her own life experience growing up in New York as a West Indian and native black American.
To help the audience understand the factors that contributed to her profession as a writer, Marshall discusses the role that her “mother and other ordinary housewives” and the complexity that comes with broken English which in this case was a mixture of English and her native tongue.
“ I am indebted to those writers...whom I read during my formative years...But they were preceded in my life by another set of giants whom I always acknowledge before all others: the group of women around the table” (54). Marshall gives the greatest credit of how she became a writer to her mother and other ordinary housewives “who used language as a refuge”. Refuge to “exercise some measure of control over their lives and events that shaped them” (50). This was an important point that Marshall included in this essay because in their world it seemed they had no control in what was going on in their lives. They were poor, they suffered what Marshall called “triple invisibility, being black, female and foreigners” (50) which put them at the lower level of the social hierarchy in America’s society. They were made to seem as if their only purpose in life was to be used as cheap labor which benefitted those who hired them more than it benefitted them. But unbeknownst to them, they were the major contributors to Marshall’s success as the writer she became today. “They taught me my first lesson in the narrative art. They trained my ears. They set a standard of excellence. This is why the best of my work must be attributed to them; it stands as testimony to the rich legacy of language and culture they so freely passed on to me” (54). Marshall ties this last section of her essay back to the male student whom was her student when she was a teacher at Columbia University. At first, what he said came off as just another male who did not see women for their value outside of a kitchen. However, when Marshall reminisced back to her own childhood she discovered that “ the kitchen” was more than just “a woman’s place” as some parts of society still believes it is today. It was the environment where those who helped her shape her identity as a writer taught her the greatest lessons she could learn in writing .
The way Marshall incorporates the mixture of English and her native tongue in her essay serves as an example of how the beauty of language can still be prevalent in someone’s speech even if it is considered abnormal in one’s society. For example, “they [her mother and other housewives] had taken standard English taught them in the primary schools of Barbados and transformed it into an idiom, an instrument that more adequately described them” (50). Marshall is saying that one method of communication in which her mother and the housewives used to navigate themselves in a world that was foreign to them was by mixing what they learned in school with what they acquired in reality. “...and since language was the only vehicle readily available to them the made of it an art form that-in keeping with the African tradition in which art and life are one--was an integral part of their lives” (49). It is essential for people who come from foreign countries, in this case Africans, to find their rhythm, their voice, and other ways of communicating with the discourses they belong to so they can keep the beauty of their native language alive simultaneously with the new languages they are introduced in.
Part 1. Identify the writer’s rhetorical situation
a. Context: Her discourse communities are Barbadian, writer/author, black American, New-Yorker.
b. Audience: New York Times readers; those who are interested in learning about different ways writers become writers.
c. Persona: Marshall presents herself as free-spirited human being.
d. Purpose: “To pay tribute to the women in her mother’s kitchen, who used language as a refuge from an America that overwhelmed them.”
Evaluation
In the essay From the Poets in the Kitchen by Paule Marshall, the author describes her experiences that contributed to shaping her life in as a writer. Marshall begins this essay by sharing the time she was a teacher at Columbia University where she encountered a male student whose choice of words came off as nothing but sexist. The male student said “women writers are luckier than those of his sex because they usually spend so much time as children around their mothers and mothers’ friends in the kitchen.” Feeling insulted at first, Marshall soon connects what the male student said with her own life experience growing up in New York as a West Indian and native black American.
To help the audience understand the factors that contributed to her profession as a writer, Marshall discusses the role that her “mother and other ordinary housewives” and the complexity that comes with broken English which in this case was a mixture of English and her native tongue.
“ I am indebted to those writers...whom I read during my formative years...But they were preceded in my life by another set of giants whom I always acknowledge before all others: the group of women around the table” (54). Marshall gives the greatest credit of how she became a writer to her mother and other ordinary housewives “who used language as a refuge”. Refuge to “exercise some measure of control over their lives and events that shaped them” (50). This was an important point that Marshall included in this essay because in their world it seemed they had no control in what was going on in their lives. They were poor, they suffered what Marshall called “triple invisibility, being black, female and foreigners” (50) which put them at the lower level of the social hierarchy in America’s society. They were made to seem as if their only purpose in life was to be used as cheap labor which benefitted those who hired them more than it benefitted them. But unbeknownst to them, they were the major contributors to Marshall’s success as the writer she became today. “They taught me my first lesson in the narrative art. They trained my ears. They set a standard of excellence. This is why the best of my work must be attributed to them; it stands as testimony to the rich legacy of language and culture they so freely passed on to me” (54). Marshall ties this last section of her essay back to the male student whom was her student when she was a teacher at Columbia University. At first, what he said came off as just another male who did not see women for their value outside of a kitchen. However, when Marshall reminisced back to her own childhood she discovered that “ the kitchen” was more than just “a woman’s place” as some parts of society still believes it is today. It was the environment where those who helped her shape her identity as a writer taught her the greatest lessons she could learn in writing .
The way Marshall incorporates the mixture of English and her native tongue in her essay serves as an example of how the beauty of language can still be prevalent in someone’s speech even if it is considered abnormal in one’s society. For example, “they [her mother and other housewives] had taken standard English taught them in the primary schools of Barbados and transformed it into an idiom, an instrument that more adequately described them” (50). Marshall is saying that one method of communication in which her mother and the housewives used to navigate themselves in a world that was foreign to them was by mixing what they learned in school with what they acquired in reality. “...and since language was the only vehicle readily available to them the made of it an art form that-in keeping with the African tradition in which art and life are one--was an integral part of their lives” (49). It is essential for people who come from foreign countries, in this case Africans, to find their rhythm, their voice, and other ways of communicating with the discourses they belong to so they can keep the beauty of their native language alive simultaneously with the new languages they are introduced in.