-

/ /
① speaker James Baldwin
-
-

ethos
-

+ counterargument Audience : teachers

"d pathos
y.easseeg.re.ci?nonmtem:easetunoean:stniirt.s.:aeenaIIsener:a!
both black am
while
eovcate encouraging
T blas logos American history .
But also
black amongst society w/o
to promote change
-
them
their voice
hang

A Talk to Teachers Tone : Frustrated

media : speech
of this speech was to achieve
purpose : the purpose ' '

- to basically
"
inform
Americans
equality for African that they are
responsibilities

James Baldwin
OF the
the teachers
to help black students
not , or most arent , using

James Baldwin (1924–1987) was one of the most influential figures in American
=
literature during the latter half of the twentieth century. His novels include Go Tell It
- -

on the Mountain (1953), Giovanni’s Room (1956), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974),
and Just Above My Head (1979). A sharp social critic of race relations and sexual
identity, Baldwin wrote numerous essays that were collected in Notes of a Native
Son (1955), The Fire Next Time (1963), and The Devil Finds Work (1976). He also
wrote poetry and plays. By the late 1940s, Baldwin had moved to Europe. He lived
in France and Turkey for most of the rest of his life, but he returned at times to the
United States to lecture and participate in the civil rights movement. He delivered
the following speech to a group of New York City schoolteachers in 1963, the height
of the movement for equality for African Americans.

Ethos
-

Baldwin
with the

And
saying we
involving
builds trust

"

himself
reader by
"
as a society
L et’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time.
Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that. We are in a
revolutionary situation, no matter how unpopular that word has become in this
of the
society
part
as

he talks about country. The society in which we live is desperately menaced, not by [Nikita]
Khrushchev,1 but from within. So any citizen of this country who figures himself
as responsible — and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts
of young people — must be prepared to “go for broke.” Or to put it another way,
you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad
pathos faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society,
like bad faith
he uses words
cruelty , most fantastic ,
,

you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resis-
to appeal to
and brutal
the teachers
situation n:/
tance. There is no point in pretending that this won’t happen.
vivid language
Since I am talking to schoolteachers and I am not a teacher myself, and in counterargument
F
sort of a

Soley because
to be
claiming
some ways am fairly easily intimidated, I beg you to let me leave that and go back
he's
Isnt even
credible but

a teacher

to what I think to be the entire purpose of education in the first place. It would
-

seem to me that when a child is born, if I’m the child’s parent, it is my obligation
and my high duty to civilize that child. Man is a social animal. He cannot exist with-
10902
The author compares
out a society. A society, in turn, depends on certain things which everyone within
to education I
parents , to man,
7. parent births
child -63
that society takes for granted. Now, the crucial paradox which confronts us here
to
Parent
civilize
IS obligated
child is that the whole process of education occurs within a social framework and is
2. Man is

Boatman cant
a social

exist w/o
animal
designed to perpetuate the aims of society. Thus, for example, the boys and girls
3
society
As one becomes conscious ,
who were born during the era of the Third Reich, when educated to the purposes
society that
.

he examines
educates him to of the Third Reich, became barbarians. The paradox of education is precisely
his education
then
Should give him
the this — that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society
to examine the
ability
society
Individually
Ideas
in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a
own
w/ his

1Premier of the Soviet Union, 1958–1964. — Eds.

197
 198 CHAPTER 5 • EDUCATION

person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to
say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is
a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with
those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really
anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is
claims that
Baldwin
a citizen
a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this,
should make
conclusions
his own
that society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as
-

that
ahu counters
Pathos
by
-

argument
society responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it — at no matter
-

that he uses pathos as a

saying instill a cer tain
want that way to
doesnt
Citizen what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change. Fear

fight
if

it by
someone

using
doesnt

vivid

Now, if what I have tried to sketch has any validity, it becomes thoroughly language
Hunt ,
risk
like

, only
change ,
'
none .

clear, at least to me, that any Negro who is born in this country and undergoes the
- -

American educational system runs the risk of becoming schizophrenic. On the

:/
togas
- -
-

he uses 10905 to one hand he is born in the shadow of the stars and stripes and he is assured it
conclusion represents a nation which has never lost a war. He pledges allegiance to that flag
come to the

B/C he's guaranteed

which guarantees “liberty and justice for all.” He is part of a country in which any-

÷÷÷÷:÷÷÷÷÷:÷ one can become president, and so forth. But on the other hand he is also assured
by his country and his countrymen that he has never contributed anything to
civilization — that his past is nothing more than a record of humiliations gladly
endured. He is assumed by the republic that he, his father, his mother, and his
ancestors were happy, shiftless, watermelon-eating darkies who loved Mr. Charlie
and Miss Ann,2 that the value he has as a black man is proven by one thing only —
his devotion to white people. If you think I am exaggerating, examine the myths
which proliferate in this country about Negroes.
Ethos All this enters the child’s consciousness much sooner than we as adults would
trust u,
he builds
the reader
like to think it does. As adults, we are easily fooled because we are so anxious to be
again

fooled. But children are very different. Children, not yet aware that it is dangerous
of
b/c instead
adults
Just saying
easily Fooled
are
which would
to look too deeply at anything, look at everything, look at each other, and draw
come
since
Off as
his audience
rude
their own conclusions. They don’t have the vocabulary to express what they see, and
are

acknowledge
Adults he
he's part
,

we, their elders, know how to intimidate them very easily and very soon. But a
0k this group

black child, looking at the world around him, though he cannot know quite what
to make of it, is aware that there is a reason why his mother works so hard, why
his father is always on edge. He is aware that there is some reason why, if he sits pathos
to readers
down in the front of the bus, his father or mother slaps him and drags him to the appeals by emotions
describing

back of the bus. He is aware that there is some terrible weight on his parents’ the horrible
things

shoulders which menaces him. And it isn’t long — in fact it begins when he is in experience
groups opresseo

school — before he discovers the shape of his oppression.

Let us say that the child is seven years old and I am his father, and I decide to 5
take him to the zoo, or to Madison Square Garden, or to the U.N. Building, or to
any of the tremendous monuments we find all over New York. We get into a bus
and we go from where I live on 131st Street and Seventh Avenue downtown through

2Figurative characters invented by African slaves to represent male and female slave masters,
respectively. — Eds.
 BALDWIN • A TALK TO TEACHERS 199

the park and we get into New York City, which is not Harlem. Now, where the boy
lives — even if it is a housing project — is in an undesirable neighborhood. If he
lives in one of those housing projects of which everyone in New York is so proud,
he has at the front door, if not closer, the pimps, the whores, the junkies — in a
word, the danger of life in the ghetto. And the child knows this, though he doesn’t
pathos
to
know why.
shares a story &
appeal
too
emotion
directly to the I still remember my first sight of New York. It was really another city when I
speaks
Hvoience at the
em of
was born — where I was born. We looked down over the Park Avenue streetcar
the P
tracks. It was Park Avenue, but I didn’t know what Park Avenue meant downtown.
The Park Avenue I grew up on, which is still standing, is dark and dirty. No one
would dream of opening a Tiffany’s on that Park Avenue, and when you go down-
town you discover that you are literally in the white world. It is rich — or at least
it looks rich. It is clean — because they collect garbage downtown. There are
doormen. People walk about as though they owned where they are — and indeed
they do. And it’s a great shock. It’s very hard to relate yourself to this. You don’t
know what it means. You know — you know instinctively — that none of this is
for you. You know this before you are told. And who is it for and who is paying
for it? And why isn’t it for you?
Later on when you become a grocery boy or messenger and you try to enter
one of those buildings a man says, “Go to the back door.” Still later, if you happen
by some odd chance to have a friend in one of those buildings, the man says,
“Where’s your package?” Now this by no means is the core of the matter. What
togas I’m trying to get at is that by this time the Negro child has had, effectively, almost
b/c theirs little they
can do -0*52 many ppl
all the doors of opportunity slammed in his face, and there are very few things he
have to accept it w/
their hearts
can do about it. He can more or less accept it with an absolutely inarticulate and
Ander in

dangerous rage inside — all the more dangerous because it is never expressed. It
is precisely those silent people whom white people see every day of their lives — I
mean your porter and your maid, who never say anything more than “Yes, Sir”
and “No, Ma’am.” They will tell you it’s raining if that is what you want to hear, pathos " "

This is saying you

and they will tell you the sun is shining if that is what you want to hear. They directly at
to
the
appeal
audience
really hate you — really hate you because in their eyes (and they’re right) you to f- her emotions
them feel
stand between them and life. I want to come back to that in a moment. It is the making bad .

most sinister of the facts, I think, which we now face.

ethos
There is something else the Negro child can do, too. Every street boy — and I was
credibility b/c he
street boy
therefore
was
a street boy, so I know — looking at the society which has produced him, looking
a
experienced
it
at the standards of that society which are not honored by anybody, looking at
your churches and the government and the politicians, understands that this struc-
ture is operated for someone else’s benefit — not for his. And there’s no reason in pathos
-

Baldwin wants the

it for him. If he is really cunning, really ruthless, really strong — and many of us tr unstep -

Audience
the black
stand

are — he becomes a kind of criminal. He becomes a kind of criminal because boys

frustration

that’s the only way he can live. Harlem and every ghetto in this city — every ghetto
in this country — is full of people who live outside the law. They wouldn’t dream
 200 CHAPTER 5 • EDUCATION

of calling a policeman. They wouldn’t, for a moment, listen to any of those pro-
fessions of which we are so proud on the Fourth of July. They have turned away
from this country forever and totally. They live by their wits and really long to see
the day when the entire structure comes down.
pathos
-
The point of all this is that black men were brought here as a source of cheap
Uses vivid language
appeal
to
labor. They were indispensable to the economy. In order to justify the fact that
to
emotions men were treated as though they were animals, the white republic had to brainwash
10904
itself into believing that they were, indeed, animals and deserved to be treated like
Metaphor that
were animals
they
animals. Therefore it is almost impossible for any Negro child to discover any-
thing about his actual history. The reason is that this “animal,” once he suspects his
own worth, once he starts believing that he is a man, has begun to attack the entire
power structure. This is why America has spent such a long time keeping the
Negro in his place. What I am trying to suggest to you is that it was not an acci-
dent, it was not an act of God, it was not done by well-meaning people muddling
into something which they didn’t understand. It was a deliberate policy hammered
into place in order to make money from black flesh. And now, in 1963, because
we have never faced this fact, we are in intolerable trouble.
10901
evidence The Reconstruction, as I read the evidence, was a bargain between the North 10
and South to this effect: “We’ve liberated them from the land — and delivered
them to the bosses.” When we left Mississippi to come North we did not come to
freedom. We came to the bottom of the labor market, and we are still there. Even
the Depression of the 1930s failed to make a dent in Negroes’ relationship to
white workers in the labor unions. Even today, so brainwashed is this republic that
people seriously ask in what they suppose to be good faith, “What does the Negro
want?” I’ve heard a great many asinine questions in my life, but that is perhaps the
most asinine and perhaps the most insulting. But the point here is that people
who ask that question, thinking that they ask it in good faith, are really the victims
of this conspiracy to make Negroes believe they are less than human.
In order for me to live, I decided very early that some mistake had been made
ethos
-

talk
somewhere. I was not a “nigger” even though you called me one. But if I was a
to
credible
on behalf
0K “nigger” in your eyes, there was something about you — there was something you
people
black
because
he
needed. I had to realize when I was very young that I was none of those things I
himself has
experienced it
was told I was. I was not, for example, happy. I never touched a watermelon for all
kinds of reasons that had been invented by white people, and I knew enough
about life by this time to understand that whatever you invent, whatever you
project, is you! So where we are now is that a whole country of people believe I’m
a “nigger,” and I don’t, and the battle’s on! Because if I am not what I’ve been told
I am, then it means that you’re not what you thought you were either! And that is
the crisis.
It is not really a “Negro revolution” that is upsetting the country. What is
upsetting the country is a sense of its own identity. If, for example, one managed
to change the curriculum in all the schools so that Negroes learned more about
themselves and their real contributions to this culture, you would be liberating
not only Negroes, you’d be liberating white people who know nothing about their
 BALDWIN • A TALK TO TEACHERS 201

logos
-

he makes own history. And the reason is that if you are compelled to lie about one aspect of
a logical
stance that if they
educate anybody’s history, you must lie about it all. If you have to lie about my real role
about black
that
history accurately
will
It benefit here, if you have to pretend that I hoed all that cotton just because I loved you,
bead
white ppl aswell
they are part
then you have done something to yourself. You are mad.
of the

society
Now let’s go back a minute. I talked earlier about those silent people — the
ethos porter and the maid — who, as I said, don’t look up at the sky if you ask them if it
he
-

again
creolblhty
himself his
family
,
,

is raining, but look into your face. My ancestors and I were very well trained. We
,

ancestors
his

experienced
understood very early that this was not a Christian nation. It didn’t matter what
it

you said or how often you went to church. My father and my mother and my
grandfather and my grandmother knew that Christians didn’t act this way. It was
as simple as that. And if that was so there was no point in dealing with white
people in terms of their own moral professions, for they were not going to honor
them. What one did was to turn away, smiling all the time, and tell white people
what they wanted to hear. But people always accuse you of reckless talk when you
say this.
All this means that there are in this country tremendous reservoirs of bitter-
ness which have never been able to find an outlet, but may find an outlet soon. It
means that well-meaning white liberals place themselves in great danger when
they try to deal with Negroes as though they were missionaries. It means, in brief,
that a great price is demanded to liberate all those silent people so that they can
breathe for the first time and tell you what they think of you. And a price is
demanded to liberate all those white children — some of them near forty — who
have never grown up, and who never will grow up, because they have no sense of
their identity.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one’s heroic ances- 15
tors. It’s astounding to me, for example, that so many people really appear to
sor ta biased Only
believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free.
This is

because he
were
knows
brought here
That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe
#
Africans

by force while Europeans because they couldn’t stay there any longer and had to go someplace else to make
#
here ht
It the
but
way
labeling
he 010 as it. That’s all. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts. Those who
- #
"
they couldnt stay there
"

were making it in England, for example, did not get on the Mayflower. That’s how
inaccurate
seems
the country was settled. Not by Gary Cooper. Yet we have a whole race of people,
a whole republic, who believe the myths to the point where even today they select
political representatives, as far as I can tell, by how closely they resemble Gary
Cooper. Now this is dangerously infantile, and it shows in every level of national
life. When I was living in Europe, for example, one of the worst revelations to me
was the way Americans walked around Europe buying this and buying that and
what
insulting everybody — not even out of malice, just because they didn’t know any
this counters
he had
said
brain
better. Well, that is the way they have always treated me. They weren’t cruel, they
#

by
earlier
washing them
into just didn’t know you were alive. They didn’t know you had any feelings.
-
were
thinking
they
to justify
What I am trying to suggest here is that in the doing of all this for 100 years
Animals
their treatment
truing by
but
or more, it is the American white man who has long since lost his grip on reality.
hee's just
how

saying they Just

didnt In some peculiar way, having created this myth about Negroes, and the myth
know
 202 CHAPTER 5 • EDUCATION

about his own history, he created myths about the world so that, for example, he
was astounded that some people could prefer [Fidel] Castro, astounded that there
are people in the world who don’t go into hiding when they hear the word “Com-
munism,” astounded that Communism is one of the realities of the twentieth
century which we will not overcome by pretending that it does not exist. The
political level in this country now, on the part of people who should know better,
LOIS
uses the bible
is abysmal.
as

evidence
since White
especially
people
The Bible says somewhere that where there is no vision the people perish. I don’t
's
that
has
were racist
slaves
think
Whelan
anyone can doubt that in this country today we are menaced — intolerably
.

Christian menaced — by a lack of vision.

It is inconceivable that a sovereign people should continue, as we do so

:L
abjectly, to say, “I can’t do anything about it. It’s the government.” The govern-
÷÷÷÷÷÷ ment is the creation of the people. It is responsible to the people. And the people
are responsible for it. No American has the right to allow the present government
to say, when Negro children are being bombed and hosed and shot and beaten
all over the Deep South, that there is nothing we can do about it. There must
have been a day in this country’s life when the bombing of the children in Sunday
School would have created a public uproar and endangered the life of a Governor
[George] Wallace. It happened here and there was no public uproar.
I began by saying that one of the paradoxes of education was that precisely at
the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war Pathos
with your society. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of your-
-

to the
directly speaks

reader b/c It 'd

self as an educated person. And on the basis of the evidence — the moral and encourage
taking

political evidence — one is compelled to say that this is a backward society. Now Initiative .

if I were a teacher in this school, or any Negro school, and I was dealing with
-

In this paragraph
some
Negro children, who were in my care only a few hours of every day and would
he says

biased Stuff then return to their homes and to the streets, children who have an apprehension
Just

heIsnt
because
A fecher an
of their future which with every hour grows grimmer and darker, I would try to
his
purely
locus
come
teach them — I would try to make them know — that those streets, those houses,
frustrations
From
.
his
those dangers, those agonies by which they are surrounded, are criminal. I would
This frustration
is valid
and
About
try to make each child know that these things are the result of a criminal con-
he

is right
support spiracy to destroy him. I would teach him that if he intends to get to be a man, he
of
pathos
the lack to the
he appeals
For black children
must at once decide that he is stronger than this conspiracy and that he must authors
emotion
Inspirations
but its the fact through
just
hes not a teacher never make his peace with it. And that one of his weapons for refusing to make horosl language

his peace with it and for destroying it depends on what he decides he is worth. I that way
the teacher
their
Umer stands
would teach him that there are currently very few standards in this country which responsibly as a

are worth a man’s respect. That it is up to him to begin to change these standards teacher

for the sake of the life and the health of the country. I would suggest to him that
the popular culture — as represented, for example, on television and in comic books
and in movies — is based on fantasies created by very ill people, and he must be
aware that these are fantasies that have nothing to do with reality. I would teach
him that the press he reads is not as free as it says it is — and that he can do some-
thing about that, too. I would try to make him know that just as American history
 BALDWIN • A TALK TO TEACHERS 203

is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything
anyone has ever said about it, so is the world larger, more daring, more beautiful
and more terrible, but principally larger — and that it belongs to him. I would teach
him that he doesn’t have to be bound by the expediencies of any given adminis-
tration, any given policy, any given morality; that he has the right and the neces-
sity to examine everything. I would try to show him that one has not learned
anything about Castro when one says, “He is a Communist.” This is a way of his
learning something about Castro, something about Cuba, something, in time, about
the world. I would suggest to him that he is living, at the moment, in an enormous
province. America is not the world and if America is going to become a nation,
she must find a way — and this child must help her to find a way to use the tre-
mendous potential and tremendous energy which this child represents. If this
country does not find a way to use that energy, it will be destroyed by that energy.

Exploring the Text

1. What relationship does James Baldwin establish with his audience in the opening
two paragraphs? How does he establish his ethos?
2. What is the “crucial paradox which confronts us here” (para. 2)?
3. Identify four appeals to pathos in paragraphs 3–5.
4. What is the effect of Baldwin’s emphasizing his personal experience when he
begins paragraph 6 with “I still remember my first sight of New York”?
5. Analyze Baldwin’s use of pronouns in paragraphs 8 and 9. What is his purpose in
alternating between first, second, and third person?
6. How would you describe Baldwin’s perspective on history? What is the effect of
using historical events to support his argument?
7. Why, in paragraph 11, does Baldwin use the term nigger? What effect would have
been lost — or gained — had he used a less provocative term?
8. What does Baldwin mean when he writes, “What passes for identity in America is
a series of myths about one’s heroic ancestors” (para. 15)?
9. What is the effect of the short two-sentence paragraph 17?
10. Identify examples of parallelism and repetition in the final, long paragraph. Dis-
cuss how Baldwin uses these strategies to achieve his purpose.
11. Where in this speech does Baldwin appeal to logos?
12. How would you describe Baldwin’s overall tone? Cite specific passages to support
your description.
 ALEXIE • SUPERMAN AND ME 215

10. How would you describe Mori’s attitude toward Japan in this essay? Is she sym-
pathetic? Harsh? Ambivalent? Cite specific passages to support your response.
11. How does your own experience in school compare with Mori’s as she describes it
in paragraphs 15–19? -
Speaker Sherman Alexie :
students

/ ftp.ensesea eniotnytnathesomeonsntngn.nu
who love reading ,
red
ethos Audience : people

ramos
:
read

Superman and Me
logos
?
entertains
-

tone -

"

essay
#

:
Meola
to share his story
purpose
-
.

Sherman Alexie
Sherman J. Alexie Jr. (b. 1966), a member of the Spokane and the Coeur d’Alene
tribes, grew up on the Spokane Reservation in Washington state. A graduate of
Washington State University, he has published more than twenty books, most notably
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), The Absolutely True Diary of
a Part-Time Indian (2007), and War Dances (2009), which won the PEN/Faulkner
Award for best American fiction. One of the stories in the Lone Ranger collection
was the basis for the movie Smoke Signals (1999), for which Alexie wrote the screen-
play. An activist for Native American rights and culture, Alexie wrote the following
essay describing the impact of reading on his life. It was originally published in the
Los Angeles Times in 1998 for a series called “The Joy of Reading and Writing.”

I learned to read with a Superman comic book. Simple enough, I suppose. I

:(
cannot recall which particular Superman comic book I read, nor can I
remember which villain he fought in that issue. I cannot remember the plot, nor
the means by which I obtained the comic book. What I can remember is this: I was
÷÷÷÷÷÷:: 3 years old, a Spokane Indian boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian
Reservation in eastern Washington state. We were poor by most standards, but
life 111 restyle
one of my parents usually managed to find some minimum-wage job or another,
which made us middle-class by reservation standards. I had a brother and three
sisters. We lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear and govern-
ment surplus food.
My father, who is one of the few Indians who went to Catholic school on pur-
pose, was an avid reader of westerns, spy thrillers, murder mysteries, gangster epics,
basketball player biographies and anything else he could find. He bought his books
by the pound at Dutch’s Pawn Shop, Goodwill, Salvation Army and Value Village.
When he had extra money, he bought new novels at supermarkets, convenience
stores and hospital gift shops. Our house was filled with books. They were stacked in
crazy piles in the bathroom, bedrooms and living room. In a fit of unemployment-
inspired creative energy, my father built a set of bookshelves and soon filled them
with a random assortment of books about the Kennedy assassination, Watergate,
104-05
loved books
b/c the Vietnam War and the entire 23-book series of the Apache westerns. My father
father
he loved
who loves
his
books loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love
books as well.
 216 CHAPTER 5 • EDUCATION

I can remember picking up my father’s books before I could read. The words
themselves were mostly foreign, but I still remember the exact moment when I
first understood, with a sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph. I didn’t have
the vocabulary to say “paragraph,” but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that
held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose.
They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence. This knowledge
delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reserva-
tion was a small paragraph within the United States. My family’s house was a para-
graph, distinct from the other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the north, the Fords
to our south and the Tribal School to the west. Inside our house, each family mem-
ber existed as a separate paragraph but still had genetics and common experi-
ences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of
seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, the deceased sister, my younger
twin sisters and our adopted little brother.
At the same time I was seeing the world in paragraphs, I also picked up that
Superman comic book. Each panel, complete with picture, dialogue and narra-
tive, was a three-dimensional paragraph. In one panel, Superman breaks through
a door. His suit is red, blue and yellow. The brown door shatters into many pieces.
I look at the narrative above the picture. I cannot read the words, but I assume it
tells me that “Superman is breaking down the door.” Aloud, I pretend to read the
words and say, “Superman is breaking down the door.” Words, dialogue, also float
out of Superman’s mouth. Because he is breaking down the door, I assume he says,
“I am breaking down the door.” Once again, I pretend to read the words and say
aloud, “I am breaking down the door.” In this way, I learned to read.
This might be an interesting story all by itself. A little Indian boy teaches 5
himself to read at an early age and advances quickly. He reads Grapes of Wrath in
tugs
kindergarten when other children are struggling through Dick and Jane. If he’d because he was 1h01am →

been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been People dont
his intelligence
Gckhothlegeo
called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an
oddity. He grows into a man who often speaks of his childhood in the third-person,
as if it will somehow dull the pain and make him sound more modest about his
talents.

pathos
-
A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians
describes
the way
he

the way
and non-Indians alike. I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They wanted
he
type O
was stereo
in class
-

me to stay quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers, for volun-
emotion
appeals to
teers, for help. We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid. Most
lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but subverted them on the
outside. They struggled with basic reading in school but could remember how
to sing a few dozen powwow songs. They were monosyllabic in front of their
non-Indian teachers but could tell complicated stories and jokes at the dinner
table. They submissively ducked their heads when confronted by a non-Indian
adult but would slug it out with the Indian bully who was 10 years older. As
 ALEXIE • SUPERMAN AND ME 217

Indian children, we were expected to fail in the non-Indian world. Those who
failed were ceremonially accepted by other Indians and appropriately pitied by
non-Indians.
I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky. I read books late into
the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open. I read books at recess, then

:/
during lunch and in the few minutes left after I had finished my classroom assign-
Pathos
-

In my Opinion the
ments. I read books in the car when my family traveled to powwows or basketball
whole paragraph
games. In shopping malls, I ran to the bookstores and read bits and pieces of as

:÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ many books as I could. I read the books my father brought home from the pawn-
shops and secondhand. I read the books I borrowed from the library. I read the
backs of cereal boxes. I read the newspaper. I read the bulletins posted on the walls
of the school, the clinic, the tribal offices, the post office. I read junk mail. I read
auto-repair manuals. I read magazines. I read anything that had words and para-
graphs. I read with equal parts joy and desperation. I loved those books, but I also
knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life.
Despite all the books I read, I am still surprised I became a writer. I was going
to be a pediatrician. These days, I write novels, short stories, and poems. I visit
schools and teach creative writing to Indian kids. In all my years in the reserva-
tion school system, I was never taught how to write poetry, short stories or novels.
I was certainly never taught that Indians wrote poetry, short stories and novels.
Writing was something beyond Indians. I cannot recall a single time that a guest
teacher visited the reservation. There must have been visiting teachers. Who were
they? Where are they now? Do they exist? I visit the schools as often as possible.
The Indian kids crowd the classroom. Many are writing their own poems, short
stories and novels. They have read my books. They have read many other books.
They look at me with bright eyes and arrogant wonder. They are trying to save
their lives. Then there are the sullen and already defeated Indian kids who sit in
the back rows and ignore me with theatrical precision. The pages of their note-
books are empty. They carry neither pencil nor pen. They stare out the window.
They refuse and resist. “Books,” I say to them. “Books,” I say. I throw my weight
by repeating himself against their locked doors. The door holds. I am smart. I am arrogant. I am lucky.
emphasise this
he
way that
he sees I am trying to save our lives.
himself

Exploring the Text

1. What figure of speech is the following: “We lived on a combination of irregular
paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food” (para. 1)? What is its effect?
2. In what ways does the description of Sherman Alexie’s father play against stereo-
types of Native Americans?
3. What is the effect of Alexie’s analogy of a paragraph to a fence (para. 3)?
4. What does Alexie mean when he describes “an Indian boy” who “grows into a man
who often speaks of his childhood in the third-person” (para. 5)?
218 CHAPTER 5 • EDUCATION

5. In paragraph 7, Alexie deliberately uses a number of short, simple sentences.

What effect do you think he trying to achieve?
6. This eight-paragraph essay is divided into two distinct sections. Why? How would
you describe its arrangement? How does it suit Alexie’s overall purpose?
7. Discuss Alexie’s use of parallel structure and repetition in the last two paragraphs.
Pay particular attention to the final sentence in each.
8. Who is the audience for this essay? Cite specific passages to support your response.
9. What is your first memory of books and reading? Do you associate it with a spe-
cific person or setting? How has your early experience affected your attitude toward
books and reading?
10. Alexie writes that he read to save his life, and many others have written that books
opened up worlds and possibilities that gave them a new life. Do you believe that
reading and books can still have that power? Explain.
11. Will you read books — plain old two-dimensional print texts with pictures — to
your children? During these times of Kindles and e-books and iPads and other
electronic means of presenting what traditionally existed on paper, do you think
that books per se will be important to the next generation? Explain the reasons
for your view.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris
One of America’s premier humorists, David Sedaris (b. 1956) is a playwright, essay-
ist, and frequent contributor to National Public Radio. Five of his essay collections
have been best sellers, including Naked (1997), Holidays on Ice (1997), Me Talk
Pretty One Day (2000), Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004), and When
You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008). His most recent book is Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk:
A Modest Bestiary (2010), a collection of humorous short stories. Sedaris has been
nominated for three Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word and Best Comedy Album.
Much of his satiric humor is autobiographical and self-effacing as he points out the
foolishness and foibles of the human condition.

A t the age of forty-one, I am returning to school and have to think of

myself as what my French textbook calls “a true debutant.” After paying
my tuition, I was issued a student ID, which allows me a discounted entry fee at
movie theaters, puppet shows, and Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that
advertises with billboards picturing a cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and
eating what appears to be a ham sandwich.
I’ve moved to Paris with the hopes of learning the language. My school is an
easy ten-minute walk from my apartment, and on the first day of class I arrived