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Paula Barajas
Professor Adler
STACC 1A #32475
25 February 2016
Color Prejudice
An astonishing book called Writing to Change the World by Mary
Pipher, she emphasizes that each and everyone one of us has a way to
transform the world through our writing. She goes more in depth in
change writing about how we could all change the way a person views the
world through connecting and persuading the reader to feel what we felt
through writing. In Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from Birmingham, he
purposely uses emotion and imagery to persuade the reader to know the
feeling and understanding why he wrote the letter. The extended memoir of
Singing at the Gates by Jimmy Santiago Baca, wrote in a poetic tone
making his readers nonetheless despair and anger using poetry to describe
what he went through in prison. Both King and Baca used emotional words
and visual imagery to make their readers connect and see racial prejudice
that they had both gone through first hand, and their writing styles
successfully changing a persons outlook on the world, showing strong
examples of change writing.
Bacas poetry called This Voice within Me mentions that he felt
emotional anger and complete absence of hope being locked in prison. He

illustrates this when he states, this voice within me waits in line, and after
my anger and laughter go to sleep / still drowsed in darkness and dreaming
(lines 1, 7). He is demonstrating that the voice within him is only the thing
that
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matters and feels angry because his voice wants to be heard. Bacas has a
connection to Piphers change writing they share similar ideas like finding
your voice within learning and teaching. Pipher writes, the deeper you
explore your own life, the more ways you will discover to connect
yourself..human stories (64). That writing is a big part of identifying
yourself and discovering life, shes concerned about having to tell history by
writing them down because it can be what made us the person we are today.
Baca as well uses the words drowsed in darkness and dreaming to
captivate the readers feelings of emotional despair, depress, however,
envisage being stuck in prison.
Martin Luther Kings informs the letter in a respectful way then
introducing emotional strategies in which he is persuading the reader to see
his perspectives about unjust segregation laws. King's letter was to convince
the clergyman to see his actions in a formal manner to help and create
equality in society. King uses pathos to engage the reader's but also makes
them feel sad about the situation. In the text, he is using imagery and
emotion when he says, when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and

your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter


why she can't go to the public amusement park.and see tears welling up in
her eyes when she is told that fun town is closed to colored children, and see
ominous clouds of inferiority. an unconscious bitterness toward white
people..plunged into the abyss of despair(3). King wants to make
Clergyman feel sad and shameful about colored people in what they have to
go through because of

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segregation. He brings up a little girl to show empathy since children are the
most innocent and vulnerable to people.
Baca focuses on imagery and emotion to make his readers see his pain
living within his memories. Throughout his whole life, he has always been
rejected by who he was or where he came from. Baca gives examples in the
authors note where he says every day snatching memories and writing
them down before the fire of forgetfulness and trauma relegated them to the
dark chambers of amnesia (14). He is showing us the pain he felt like being
alone in a cell and the vivid imagery of having a dark amnesia in
remembering his past memories. Baca is visioning the traumatic memories
that go through his head and then quickly writing it down before the amnesia
occurs.

Baca and King use imagery throughout their writing, trying to get the
attention from the reader to visualize and connect racial issues from what
they both went through. In kings letter about the Clergyman, he used
imagery to make him feel miserable about blacks during segregation. King
address, I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you
were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the
city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and
young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and
young boys...refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace
together (9). King is demonstrating imagery to the clergyman about the
pain and misery blacks had gone through every day in their life. He makes
the clergyman see that either policemen or any law enforcement should not
have a racial issue towards black. King
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mentions how they refuse to give them food, all they wanted to do is sing
about their awful experience in prison and how absurd getting punished
because of their actions or mistakes.
In Bacas poem Whats Happening, he focuses on vivid imagery and
emotional appeal on having to argue about segregation within a prison. Baca
introduces his poetry by saying, at this moment, fires of a riot are
everywhere. The men call into the smoke, We Want Justice! (lines 1-2). He
uses the principle of pathos when witnessing a furious riot happening

everywhere within the prison men shouting out through the cigarette smoke
wanting justice something done right. He repeatedly brings up the word We
want Justice! screaming within his cell trying to get in hold with the outside
world not only himself but everyone else too.
Both authors successfully changed the readers point of view of the
world by sharing their stories. For example, Piper indicated that A writers
job is to tell stories that connect readers to all the people on earth, to show
these people as the complicated human beings they really are (6). The two
authors Baca and King in a way did what she thought a good writer should
do by expressing themselves in making a connection to their readers.
Especially Baca, he ended up incarcerated because he used violence and
illegal substance throughout most of his poetry and makes a connection to
the readers to think deeply about applying writing strategies in any kind of
work no matter where they are. King and Baca weren't around at the same
time period they both lived in a hopeless society that rejected them because
of who they were these two authors use language to help their voice be
heard and make others think about how unfair society was threatening them.

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