In the beginning of the semester, I did not know what to expect. I had not taken an English class in such a long time that I was not even sure that I would be capable to stringing together words, let along sentences. English has always been a difficult subject for me. Since I was young and did not know any, I struggled to get my ideas on the page. All the strict formalism that had been driven into me—albeit unsuccessfully—had always put me off from trying to explore writing as a medium for expression. I always believe that you had to learn the rules in order to start breaking them. There were so many rules to get through and remember that I recall them, and I did not abide by them. It was not until I took this class that I learned that language is what we want it to be. That I don’t have to be confined to the ruled I learned in grammar school and through the works of Amy Tan and June Jordan I was able to gain a new perspective on writing.

This brings me to Phase I. Like I said, the works of Amy Tan’s and June Jordan’s, Mother Tongue and Nobody Means More to Me Than You respectively showed me a new outlook on writing. Mother Tongue showed me the struggle that many people whose language is their second language face to be taken seriously. I also quite frankly also had to catch myself being someone who might perpetuate similar thoughts and beliefs when I read it for the first time . When I read it the first time, I admit that I did not give it the attention that it merits. Because of this when I finished my first go around, I was not able to recall much of what I have read. I remember wondering if it was because I was tired that I did not really understand, or if it just did not make any sense on its own. I remember bringing this up in class. On the second go around however, with a keener look I was able to make sense of it. It was not hard. That lack of understanding was almost the whole point of the piece. No one had patience for Tan’s mother—not even me initially. The second time reading Mother Tongue was very enlightening. I found that I could relate to many things that Amy Tan had to do for her mother. I remember writing in an earlier blog post:

This text reminds me when I was little, and my mom would make me, and my brother talk to people on the phone to different people. We were so young dealing with topics that were probably well beyond our scope of understanding.

I too had to be on the phone dealing with things children don’t really have a first grasp on and because of that I grew up feeling that I lot of the well-being for myself rested on me and my brother as literal children. For showing me that, I thank Amy Tan.

Another lesson that I learn through Phase I was the fact that there exist different Englishes. Even now as I type this Microsoft Word tells me that word doesn’t exist, Englishes. Through the work of June Jordan and her compelling telling of the tragedy her student had to endure and the tough choices they had to make in order to try to get some semblance of justice, I was able to see validity and merit to the way that I speak and the way my peers speak. I loved the fact that she created a formalism to it. As an engineering student that was something that I could really get behind. I’m not saying that people should have to formalize how they speak for it to have validity, but it helps cement the sentiment that even by this western, white ruling power structure it can be shown that our Englishes are legitimate and consistent with the anthropological criterium for what it a language. And for showing me that I thank June Jordan.

For Phase II a lot of our learning was based on knowing how to analyze text through the rhetorical strategies of pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos, we learned, was the appeal to the emotional part of the reader. It is a strategy used to engross the reader in the text by tugging at their heart strings. For example, returning to Mother Tongue, we are meant to feel empathy for Tan as she must navigate the adult world with, and at many times, for her mother. This text for me evoked feelings of anger and sadness for the world that surrounds her feeling unjust. Similarly, Safwat Saleem evokes pathos in his video when he talks about being mocked and made fun of from comments online, saying that he has a funny Indian accent despite the fact that he is Pakistani. The Pathos from his piece stems from his being bullied online and being the target of racist bigotry. Why I can relate: Growing up Colombian, I too have been at the butt of many jokes which sought to reduce me to nothing more than a generalization for Hispanic people—Mexicans.

My favorite example of logos that I saw in this course I already touch on a bit earlier, was June Jordan’s Nobody Means More to Me Than You. Even though this piece exhibits all three rhetorical strategies, my favorite was its use of logos. Logos is the appeal to reason that is built on logics and reasoning, both inductive and deductive. In Nobody Means More to Me Than You, Jordan lays out the rules for Black English. Even though it is written in human tone—and by that, I mean speaking with emotion—she does lay out an objective set of rules on what black English is. Like I said before, those rules do make up what is a complete language.

Ethos was a little harder to prescribe to a text per se but by learning about the people that have written these pieces we are able to view the text with a more contextualized eye. For example, if in June Jordan is given more credibility for her knowledge of language after you know that she is a writer who had been studying English and in particularly Black English for long periods of time and eventually teaching at schools such as City College, Yale, and Stoney Brook just to name a few. We learned that we should know about an author when evaluating a source so that we can try to pick up on biases and motivations behind their work. If I were to read an article on why climate change is blown widely out of proportion, but it was written by someone that was a former employee and perhaps still a consultant for Exxon, I’m not going to regard that piece as trustworthy. Having learned about ethos would be a crucial part when it came to Phase III.

For this part of the class, we were tasked with writing a research essay on a topic of our choice. I walked away with new knowledge on how to use databases a long with how were supposed to sus out a bad source. For this topic, I picked the topic of ‘how we should take an escalator’. I did this topic because I was frustrated with the way people take escalator in City College and wanted to investigate the topic to see if there were more optimal ways that people can take escalators without slowing others down. It was a hard topic to find sources for but eventually I think I was able to find good ones. What I ended up finding out is that things are not so binary as they seem and that different strategies apply for different situations. I had learned how to take what I though was my position on a topic and evolve it into something new with newly gathered information.