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Wanda Why Aren T You Dead Analysis

516 Words3 Pages

Did you take out the trash and wash the dishes? Why don’t you become a doctor? Why do you have to go to school for so long? You study too much. Get a social life. It has been statistically proven that humans lose their patience with others when their partner, family, or friends’ choose to excessively nag or ask rhetorical questions in order to share their insight or wisdom on an individual’s life. Eyes rolling, excessive sighs, and lip smacking may result as a direct consequence in response to these pests. Wanda Coleman, a renowned Black woman poet who was born in the 1940s and grew up during the civil rights movement, expresses these ideas in “Wanda Why Aren’t You Dead” by listing out the various questions that she was asked throughout her …show more content…

It is uncommon for poets to use their own experiences as a persona, but the lack of question marks in her poem suggests that the speaker in the poem may be herself as she is replaying the questions and comments that were once said to her. This shows that there is no dialogue taking place, and it gives the reader a quick rhythm when reading the poem, just like a person’s thoughts when racing. “wanda when are you gonna wear your hair down”. “wanda why ain’t you rich.” Words such as “gonna” and “ain’t” suggest that whoever asked her these questions are uneducated, and were not supportive of her attendance of college. This memory came from person who probably did not seek out an education like she did. Wanda was a student at University of California Los Angeles, but she did not graduate or attain a degree. This might be a result of the verbal abuse she experienced such as “wanda that’s a whore’s name.” Coleman uses the word “whore” to highlight the absence of acceptance and support from those who surround her and to reiterate the theme of berating black women. As the discouraging diction of her poem plays as a motif throughout her poem, repetition is

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Throughout stanzas 1 and 2 the speaker uses “you” and “your” to show she is reading the poetry book and the author’s work is appealing to her. In the third stanza after she has opened the book and read she uses words such as “breaking” and “shattering and old silence” followed by the use of “I” and no more “you”. This diction shows us how the poetry book has opened up the speaker to the idea of becoming a poet and writing their own poetry despite men usually being poets and not women. The change from “you” to “I” shows that the speaker is going to become a poet and write poetry as well stating “my own” when talking about her writing poems as she read. When the speaker is reading the book she uses words such as “question” and “thinking” to show confusion on what to do with this new idea of becoming a poet in her and whether or not she should steal the book.

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Throughout this novel, All Quiet on the Western Front the author, Erich Maria Remarque reveals his belief that war is ugly, brutal, shameful, and completely unnecessary. This novel takes you through the life of the German army fighting against France, England and America during the World War I. The main characters quickly come to the realization that war is not honorable and that the people they’re fighting aren’t really their enemies. The style this novel is written in is pedantic, it focuses a lot of detail and thoughts. This novel is a well-documented, detailed and carefully written book.

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742 Words | 3 Pages

The speaker surfaces to reality in the last stanza when he speaks of how he spends his days now. The student who “knocks on the door with a term paper fifteen years late or a question about Yeats or double-spacing,” is not a procrastinating student, but a student who comes by to visit his former teacher. However, the student who “will appear in a window pane,” is really just watching him. Although this poem seemed to be just for humor, the reader could tell how delusional the speaker is when he shares that he is caught “lecturing the wall paper, quizzing the chandelier, and reprimanding the air,” (Collins 535). The teacher is still living in his teaching ways and has imagined a fantasy town with true descriptions of former

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2111 Words | 9 Pages

Although a poet rooted in the folk tradition of the African American South, Finney’s work relies upon the spiritual and aesthetic influence of West African tradition, the womanist wisdom of her maternal grandmother, Beulah Lenorah Davenport, and her family’s political commitment to equality and social justice (Beaulieu 333). She mingles the personal with the public in order to share the experience with her readers and therefore truly express their feelings. “I think that my putting myself in my poetry is me saying to my readers and my listeners “I’m willing to stand here and be as vulnerable as perhaps I am making others and situations vulnerable in my work. I have to be willing to do that” (Finney, “Interview with: Nikky Finney.”).

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1809 Words | 8 Pages

The different key features also plays an important role for example the tone that is being formed by the lyrical voice that can be seen as a nephew or niece. This specific poem is also seen as an exposition of what Judith Butler will call a ‘gender trouble’ and it consist of an ABBA rhyming pattern that makes the reading of the poem better to understand. The poem emphasizes feminist, gender and queer theories that explains the life of the past and modern women and how they are made to see the world they are supposed to live in. The main theories that will be discussed in this poem will be described while analyzing the poem and this will make the poem and the theories clear to the reader. Different principals of the Feminist Theory.

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1100 Words | 5 Pages

The Combahee River Collective repeatedly uses “us,” “we,” and “sisters” in “Why Did They Die.” These terms emphasize what the reader and the members of The Combahee River Collective have in common. By emphasizing their shared identity with the reader, members of The Combahee River Collective call their audience to action by appealing to the reader’s sense of community and kinship. In contrast, the members of The Movement for Black Lives separate themselves from their audience and make extensive use of anaphora. In “A Vision for Black Lives,” the members of The Movement for Black Lives use the phrase “we demand” to frame their requests from the audience on eight separate occasions.

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914 Words | 4 Pages

“As a woman, I’m constantly reassuring myself that it’s important for my children to see a woman doing something she is passionate about, going away and coming home, speaking publicly about the things she believes in. Our culture (our civilization!) still seems to celebrate that in men more than it does in women” (“Tracy K. Smith Talks to Gregory Pardlo | Literary Hub"). In this poem, the poet suggests that the girl is unhappy because of loss of her parent, she has no rights to question and put her views on social and political matter, and she is

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Racism in America has and always will be an ongoing issue among people. Since Americans take up nearly 17% of the population, it makes us the so called “biggest racial group.” In the book Pudd 'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain, it states just that; how racism is such a major problem in society today, and how harsh it actually is on people. Mark Twain shows that racism is unjust by: creating an unlikely protagonist, showing empathy throughout the book, using nature versus nurture and the author himself coming out with his opinions and thoughts on racism and other horrible things at that time.

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Another portion of the text that is worth analyzing is whether or not the poet is a real person or a generalization about all or most poets. All of the lines in the poem use general text and never label a specific person. What’s interesting about the text is that without the title it would be nearly impossible to distinguish whether or not the person the poem is about is a poet or not. The way the text allows the reader to find a figurative meaning to the poem is by being vague enough and

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1028 Words | 5 Pages

The poem was written in a time where black people and women were dehumanized where those in power abused the power to gain more and those without power were continuously affected by it. Reading the poem and had an impact on me with the dictation of lexis, however all of these feelings were heightened when I listened to the oral performance. The poem starts of in the present tense “Even tonight and I need to take a walk” (Jordan 1) which gives a setting to the scene, in the opening few lines Jordan uses the repetition of “I” and “my” which made the poem for me more personal, the use of repetition in the opening part of the poem produced a deeper connection to the poem, repetition of the words placed emphasis and clarity of the words which came after “my body posture my gender identity my age…” (Jordan

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1215 Words | 5 Pages

She starts off the poem with the speaker looking at a “photograph” (Trethewey l. 1) of herself when she was four years old. The reader is instantly taken into a personal memory of the narrator and

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1005 Words | 5 Pages

I didn’t really question myself about who the real identity of ‘her’ was until I re-read the poem three times. The second line is a continuation from the first line; “just twirlin’ her baton” (2). After reading these two lines, I thought to myself, the speaker is referring to a woman,

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486 Words | 2 Pages

I think that this was her main goal with this poem as well. It is stating about how when they finally do get equal rights, will they jump at the opportunity, or shy away in fear of change? I think that it is really interesting how she could relate this to her own life along with ours, even though it would be many years into the future. Personification is a main literary device used in this poem. She often refers to the sun as a person.

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870 Words | 4 Pages

Jazmyne Nelson Dr. Rose English 101 December 11, 2017 Literary Analysis Langston Hughes’ short story entitled “Thank You Ma’am”, analyzes the interaction between Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones and Roger. It presents the readers, the idea of goodness, the theme of trust, forgiveness, and kindness. Hughes is able to convert a language that is easier to understand by characterizing the context of story, advancing important themes, and using dialogue among the characters. Trust is one of themes that stood out while analyzing the short story. Though Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones has been victimized Roger worries that she won’t trust him, so he moves.

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762 Words | 4 Pages

This is shown in the opening line when she says, “If you grow up the type of women...” Throughout this poem, Kay explores the themes of empowerment and identity, through the use of repetition and connotation. Through the frequent use of repetition, Kay puts emphasis on how women are defined in relation to males. Additionally, she also uses connotation to remind women they are more than what they are perceived to be in relation to others and they have the power to define themselves. Therefore the main idea of the poem is to perhaps remind women of their worth and inspire them to define themselves on their own terms, and not through the eyes of men or in comparison/relation to their relationship with others.

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