In Paula Gunn Allen's Essay 'Where I Came From Is Like This'

In her essay, “Where I Came from is Like This,” the author Paula Gunn Allen effectively utilizes ethos, logos, and pathos to convince her audience, women studies and ethnic scholars, of her claim that the struggles of American Indian women have had with their identities. Gunn Allen uses all three modes of persuasion to describe the struggles of American Indian women. She uses ethos to strengthen her credibility, logos to logically explain the issue, and pathos to emotionally explain the struggles of American Indian women have had with their identities. With ethos she tells us where she is from and how she got her information, which makes her more trustworthy and believable.

In her essay Gunn Allen uses Logos to describe how American Indian Women were treated compared to how European Women were treated at the time. While Indian Women were seen in many different ways based on the tribe that they were from, Gunn Allen explains how different the roles of women are in each

In all the different tribes, none of the women are seen as less than the men, however in European culture at the time, the women were seen as weak and lesser beings. Gunn Allen tackles this issue using ethos logos and pathos by appealing to the readers through logic, emotion and her personal experiences. With Ethos Gunn Allen makes herself a credible source by mentioning that she is a “half breed American Indian woman.”(83) making her story worth paying attention to rather than if it were a story by an outsider who truly has nothing to do with the American Indian women. Using Pathos Gunn Allen expressed an emotional view to the subject with the stories of hardships of Indian American Women and their differences with the Europeans. She also used logos to give a logical view in how different the women are from tribal to industrial and postindustrial