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The Use Of Figurative Language In Henry Louis Gates In The Kitchen

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“In The Kitchen” by Henry Louis Gates, Jnr, has used many features of writing to construct, or more so to tell the story of the assimilation of black African Americans due to an increasing societal pressure, into an American lifestyle, a white lifestyle, and the erasure of black culture and identity, by carefully using many features of writing. Things like figurative language, idiom and register, and the tone of the writer himself, all contribute to the powerful, compelling story of, In The Kitchen. First and foremost, this is clearly a narrative. A retelling of Gate’s childhood, this makes the identity constructed within the story even more emotional and important, because it is the identity of Gates himself, a black American trying to fit …show more content…

Upon reading the text, hair has two things it could represent, the actual physical hair, or metaphorically speaking, the oppression African Americans faced during this time, Gates writes “Everybody I knew as a child wanted to have good hair…”(44), this tells us how important it was to have straight hair to be able to fit in more, as Gates also compares having kinky hair as having a “bad grade”(44), it’s also mentioned how many black companies were based upon hair products, anything to ‘tame’ their hair, this shows us how important hair really was, to the point where every black-owned business was hair-related. Hair was a symbol for their oppression, all the things African Americans had to endure just to be able to fit into a different society, they changed who they were, hair represents many things from their oppression and to the pressure to be equal with white Americans. Gates also uses imagery to help show us what the story represents and what identities were shown. Usually when you think about someone with the hair texture described or hairstyles, kinky or jheri-curled, not many people come up other than the identities of those who were black, Gates uses specific words and language to construct the identity of African Americans words like ‘kinky’, specific slurs, and the slang that was used, which was what the story was about, their struggle with equality and the oppression they faced. Taking everything into account it’s hard to mistake this story for anything else other than that of the struggles of African Americans in the 60’s because of this clear and concise imagery coupled with a great use of figurative

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