A Personal Essay by a Personal Essay

The shortest, yet possibly most intriguing of the essays in The Best American Essays is A Personal Essay by a Personal Essay. Written by Christy Vannoy, this essay takes place during the duration of a clinic led by “the Article’s Director and Editor for a national women’s magazine,” but it never reveals where or for what magazine specifically.

The only real evidence that Vannoy is credible is that this essay is from McSweeney’s, a well-known American publishing house. However, credibility is not of much issue because this is a creative work with no information needed. In fact, it is all a narrative from the point of view of a personal essay. During the story, this essay is in this writer’s clinic in which personal essays are read and critiqued. Throughout the story, the personal essay is sizing up the other essays and contemplating what makes a good personal essay.

Vannoy’s purpose in writing this was to highlight the fact that struggle makes good writing. Vannoy targets the aspiring writer to get her point across that difficulty or rough times in one’s life can make great stories.

Vannoy is able to prove her point through humor. The internal monologue of the essay about other essays is both funny and relatable. The essay thinks: “Every essay who’s been through chemo or tried lesbianism ends up bald. Bald isn’t the story. Alopecia was heading in the right direction, loving herself, but she was getting there all wrong” (Vannoy 210). Although this humor may be cold and cutting, Vannoy is able to portray the faults in certain essays and how the essays could be better.

Besides using humor to prove that struggle trumps bland personal essays that lack hardship, Vannoy uses the point of view as a unique rhetorical device. Although this essay is short, the use of an inanimate object personified throughout the whole essay is intriguing. Without this device, this essay about essays would be exactly what it’s telling the reader not to be when writing: dull. Therefore, the point of view proves a point within a point: spice up your writing.

(source: http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/PgoRc8Q_baC/Afrikaaner+Community+Suffers+Economic+Hardship)

Generation Why?

        Generation Why? by Zadie Smith is an analysis on the fundamental ideas behind Facebook and social networking as we see it today. The essay begins by informing the reader of the beginning of Facebook and of Mark Zuckerberg’s story. Then, the essay goes on to examine why people need Facebook, and it explains the website’s effect on social norms.
         Zadie Smith claims to be part of Zuckerberg’s generation, making her view credible because she is not just any third party critic. Smith also is a tenured professor of writing at New York University, and she has published many novels.

       This essay is clearly written by Smith shortly after the Facebook fad came to be to bring to attention the falsehood and faults in having a virtual identity through Facebook. Obviously targeting the “new generation,” this essay aims to expose that Facebook is a juvenile way for people to socialize. Smith makes this apparent when she points out Zuckerberg’s own inept social skills.

        Smith utilizes real facts and quotes as rhetorical devices to help prove her point. Real things written on Zuckerberg’s own profile, such as his interests in “minimalism, revolutions, and ‘eliminating desire’” are used in her writing to highlight his faults as a social person (Smith 191). Through these facts, Smith is able to prove that Facebook, and the idea of Facebook stemmed from a lack of social understanding in the first place. Also, Smith uses quotes from high esteemed programmers, like Zuckerberg, but who oppose Facebook. For example, Smith quotes Jaron Lanier, who says “…the belief that computers can presently represent human thought or human relationships. These are things computers cannot currently do” (Smith 193).

       The exploitation of Zuckerberg and Facebook’s intrinsic social loop holes does allow Smith to prove her point because it makes the reader realize that a site like Facebook does a horrible job of feigning real socialization. Through her use of facts about Zuckerberg, and her quoting of other high established people in the computer world bring into the light that Facebook is not all it’s cracked up to be.

(source: http://calibermag.org/articles/the-many-faces-of-facebook/facebook-mark-zuckerberg/)

Magical Dinners

Magical Dinners, by Chang-Rae Lee is a personal narrative about his family’s first Thanksgiving dinner. The narrative focuses mostly on the food that is eaten and cooked by Lee’s mother, especially when he was a young kid. Through highlighting his mother’s cooking, Lee flashes back from Thanksgiving dinner to multiple meals that his mother cooked, and to her gradual progression to making Americanized meals.

Lee’s purpose is to connect to other immigrants by showing how through these meals, his family clings to their culture. He uses his own childhood to illustrate how an immigrant family could feel when trying to adapt to life in America. The audience can be anyone; however, this essay was probably meant to strike a chord with immigrant people, who have had similar experiences with culture.

Lee’s most common rhetorical device that he uses in his writing is his imagery. He describes all aspect of the settings and food in his story with vivid adjectives and vocabulary. Lee also does an exceptional job with conveying the emotions of a character. When he describes his mother’s disappointment if someone does not like her food, Lee includes the fact that first, “you can watch her face ice over. Shatter… but soon enough she’s simply miserable, her pretty eyes gone lightless and faraway,” (Lee 133). Not only does Lee tell of her emotions in a descriptive way, but he includes the gradual progression of different emotion as well.

Essentially, Lee’s narrative achieves its purpose without even trying. Immigrants are likely to connect to any story of other immigrants’ hardship because that is what most of them have in common. Many families from other countries have probably clung to an aspect of culture like food, so through merely telling the story, Lee can connect to many people.

Lee is the most credible author for this topic because it is his personal narrative. It’s all from his point of view, so one would assume he would not lie about his experiences. Also, he graduated from Yale and is a professor at Princeton so one would think he should be pretty trustworthy.

(source: http://www.cwsglobal.org/newsroom/news-releases/cws-supports-bipartisan.html)

What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?

What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones? is an insight into the current state of affairs in the city of Detroit. It starts off with the death of Aiyana, an innocent girl shot on May 16, 2011 by the police in their efforts to catch murderer Chauncey Owens. The police broke in and shot without reason. They then attempted covering up the truth. Thus begins Charlie LeDuff’s essay in which he highlights the murders and corruption that take place on a daily basis Detroit. He describes the city’s constant crimes, failing police system, ineffective education system, and the poverty in which most people live in.

Written for Mother Jones magazine, LeDuff proves his credibility through providing facts about the city that he clearly spent time to scrounge around for. Many of LeDuff’s stories and facts are pulled through interviews with police or people who live and work in Detroit. Through illustrating the hopeless state Detroit is in, LeDuff’s purpose is to bring attention to the fact that Detroit and its people need help. Due to the fact that this essay was published in Mother Jones, a political and economic magazine, LeDuff’s target audience is most likely any educated middle class or high class citizen outside of Detroit.

Pathos is the most common rhetorical device that LeDuff utilizes. He does so through quotes of family of those murdered, and other citizens of Detroit. For example, LeDuff includes a quote from Aiyana’s father; he says, “I can accept the shooting was a mistake…but I can’t accept it because they lied about it,” (LeDuff 121). Also, LeDuff goes to great lengths to describe the impact these murders have on the family and the community. He describes Aiyana’s funeral through many details: “Aiyana’s pink-robed body was carried away by a horse-drawn carriage…the same carriage that…had taken the body of Rosa Parks to Woodlawn Cemetary” (LeDuff 122).

His use of pathos is well placed, and achieves its desired effect; thus, LeDuff does achieve his purpose of alerting the people who read this essay of the tragedy that is now the story of Detroit. However, it is doubtful that readers will take more action than just shaking their head and going on about their day.

(source: http://collider.com/detroit-1-8-7-review-abc-michael-imperioli/)

What Broke My Father's Heart

The essay What Broke My Father’s Heart, by Katy Butler, explored her experiences with today’s medical system due to her father’s illness. Butler includes how her father’s dementia came to be, and describes his slow degeneration into his vegetated state. She describes her family’s relationship to the medical system as a result of his illness. The essay includes how Butler and her mother were not well informed in their choice to insert a pacemaker into her father. Butler highlights their regrets in making an uninformed medical decision; and, in the end she includes what her mother did differently when her health began to decline.

What Broke My Father’s Heart is written for any adult who wishes to be informed about Katy Butler’s story. However, her purpose in telling her story also includes informing people of the flaws in the American healthcare system. Although the essay is told through a personal standpoint, Butler includes many facts from medical studies; therefore, making her essay a much more credible source rather than a mere personal account. 

The facts that were incorporated into Butler’s writing are rhetorical devices that played a significant part in achieving her purpose. Through logos, she is able to convey to the reader that doctors can’t always have a patient’s best interest at heart because, “20 to 30 percent of Medicare’s $510 billion budget goes for unnecessary tests and treatment,” (Butler 16). Butler brings to attention that, “only 5 percent of the positive [pacemaker] recommendations were supported by research,” (Butler 19). And, with this information, the reader begins to doubt the system.

Appealing to the reader with pathos, Butler highlights the pain her mother went through during the duration of her father’s last years of life. She describes the struggles mother endured to take care of her father constantly, and for her to see the love of her life slowly fading away. Butler even includes quotes from her mother’s diary to prompt the reader to sympathize. The use of logos and pathos helps Katy Butler to highlight the flaws in the American healthcare system using her personal experiences.

(source: http://www.joinerandjoiner.com/medicare/)