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Bell Hooks Keeping Close to Home Essay: A Case Study of How Class and Education Influence One's Sens



Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, bell hooks Stylebell hooks ties in the three elements of argument, ethos, pathos, and logos in her essay, "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education," by telling us about the many events of her life. hooks establishes credibility, or ethos, unintentionally, through descriptions of her achievements and character. hooks appeals to the readers logic, or logos, by giving real world examples from her personal experiences. She also appeals to the readers emotions, or pathos. Pathos is the aspect of argument she uses most heavily. hooks does this by talking about family, peers, feelings, and change. hooks shows us ,in her essay, credibility, logic, and emotion using the stories of her life.bell hooks is a woman who does not concern herself with establishing credibility among her audience or critics. What is important to hooks is that she reaches the people who most need to hear what she has to say. As hooks tells us, "It is important that we know who we are speaking to, who we most long to move, motivate, and touch with our words" (90). hooks has, however, established credibility through her many achievements, such as, attending school at Stanford University, teaching at Yale, writing the book Ain't I a Woman: black women and feminism, and by starting a black women's support group. Although these are great accomplishments, no matter what your race or sex, I feel she best establishes her credibility through her character. hooks tells us that while she often may have needed money, she never had the need for new beliefs or values. She shows great strength in her ability to combine her past life with her new "privileged" life. As hooks says, "It was my responsibility to formulate a way of being ...... middle of paper ......anion] wanted to know whether or not I knew them" (91). bell hooks did not personally know these people , but they represent her family and her past. hook finds it unsettling that in her experiences, she has found no black bonds among professors and students. She feels this lack of bonds prevents many brilliant black students from thriving. hooks is disturbed by the lack of positive ties to ethnicity.I feel bell hooks has done an excellent job of showing the elements of ethos, logos, and pathos through her life experiences. She makes very strong points. hooks shows the credibility, logic, and emotion that are needed to get her points across. She relies most heavily and effectively on emotion. In, "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education", hooks clearly agues ethos, logos, and pathos with a passion to reach people that have never been reached before.




bell hooks keeping close to home essay



Hooks felt hurt because her dad was a janitor. That was why it was so hard for her to look down on the working-class. Because Stanford even accepted her into their institution, hooks felt as though she needed to act privileged. When she refused, the university and its students considered her rebellious; however, if she had not refused, she would have been ignoring and forgetting the values that she had learned from her parents.


Because it is very credible, emotionally appealing, and slightly academically based, bell hooks's essay "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education" is an essay that I consider to be very touching. While arguing in her essay that the rich class and the working-class should come to respect and understand each other, bell hooks employs three elements of argument: ethos, pathos, and logos. With her usage of ethos, hooks relates her experience as an undergraduate at Stanford. Providing an experience from a time before she went to Stanford, hooks uses pathos to inspire the audience. However, hooks uses logos by appealing to the readers' logic. These readers are the working-class and the privileged, the audience of her book: "Ain't I a Woman: black women and feminism." Relying mostly on ethos, hooks uses the three elements of argument to express her belief that students should not feel the pressure to replace their values with others' values. Because hooks feels strongly about her belief, she argues that a university should help students maintain the connection with their values, so people of different communities will feel neither inferior nor superior to others but equal.When using ethos, hooks demonstrates her knowledge of values by relating her experience at Stanford where she met many privileged whites who had values that contradicted her own. For example, many of the white students appeared to lack respect for their parents. However, hooks's parents always taught her to show them respect. hooks even says in her essay, "I was profoundly shocked and disturbed when peers would talk about their parents without respect, or would even say that they hated their parents" (88). Also, everyone looked down upon the ...... middle of paper ...... much easier when we were all in segregated communities sharing common experiences in relation to social institutions. Without this grounding, we must work to maintain ties, connection" (hooks 95). As hooks hints, maintaining ties may not be easy, but it is definitely possible. hooks establishes common ground with people who have these questions, and she gives the answer in her experience of hard work. Having worked hard on handling harsh criticism and pressure without losing ties with her background, bell hooks, in my opinion, is an example of a strong individual. So, if you need proof that the answer to these questions is yes, bell hooks is all the proof you need!Works Citedhooks, bell. "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education." The Presence of Others. 2nd ed. Andrea Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. 85-95.


Kibin. (2023). An analysis of education in adrienne rich's "what does a woman need to know" and "keeping close to home" by bell hooks. -examples/an-analysis-of-education-in-adrienne-richs-what-does-a-woman-need-to-know-and-keeping-close-to-home-by-bell-hooks-NbDUubQh


"An Analysis of Education in Adrienne Rich's "What Does a Woman Need to Know" and "Keeping Close to Home" by Bell Hooks." Kibin, 2023, www.kibin.com/essay-examples/an-analysis-of-education-in-adrienne-richs-what-does-a-woman-need-to-know-and-keeping-close-to-home-by-bell-hooks-NbDUubQh


1. "An Analysis of Education in Adrienne Rich's "What Does a Woman Need to Know" and "Keeping Close to Home" by Bell Hooks." Kibin, 2023. -examples/an-analysis-of-education-in-adrienne-richs-what-does-a-woman-need-to-know-and-keeping-close-to-home-by-bell-hooks-NbDUubQh.


"An Analysis of Education in Adrienne Rich's "What Does a Woman Need to Know" and "Keeping Close to Home" by Bell Hooks." Kibin, 2023. -examples/an-analysis-of-education-in-adrienne-richs-what-does-a-woman-need-to-know-and-keeping-close-to-home-by-bell-hooks-NbDUubQh.


In childhood, bell hooks was taught that "talking back" meant speaking as an equal to an authority figure and daring to disagree and/or have an opinion. In this collection of personal and theoretical essays, hooks reflects on her signature issues of racism and feminism, politics and pedagogy. Among her discoveries is that moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side, a gesture of defiance that heals, making new life and new growth possible.


In 2014, hooks donated her own funds to establish the bell hooks Institute at Berea where she continues to host seminars and panels. Visits to the bell hooks Institute can be arranged via appointment.


Along with her teaching, hooks has continued to write and publish at a rate that is astonishing even for an academic. She published Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center while still lecturing at Santa Cruz in 1984 and followed it in 1989 with Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. She then produced three books in three years: Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics in 1990; Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life, which she wrote with Cornel West, in 1991; and Black Looks: Race and Representation in 1992. Her essays frequently appear in a publications that range from the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion to Essence. In 1992 she also submitted volumes of poetry and fiction to publishers.


SIDELIGHTS: bell hooks (cited in lowercase), has written prolifically about many social issues. Her work takes an approach that is at once analytical yet also impassioned and personal. She explores the ways that African-American culture, womanhood, feminism, the civil rights movement, and critical theory both clash and complement each other, in the world at large and in her personal life. She has challenged the feminist movement with being largely racist, and has frequently voiced her concern over the negative images of blacks perpetuated in the popular media. She has also written children's books and poetry, memoirs, and books dealing with the need for love and increased self-esteem among the members of the African-American community. "At her best she exhibits a command of various voices that range from subtle overlays of the personal and historical to a refreshing public forthright-ness that stings," wrote P. Gabrielle Foreman in the Women's Review of Books. "Inevitably, a reader will cheer through one essay and scowl through another."


Born Gloria Jean Watkins, she grew up in rural Kentucky, in a small, segregated community with five sisters and one brother. Her father worked as a custodian for the U.S. Postal Service, and her mother worked as a domestic. hooks said that growing up in a family of strong women was extremely important to her, and she took her great-grandmother's name as a way of paying homage to the legacy of her female ancestors. She recalled in Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, "I was a young girl buying bubble gum at the corner store when I first really heard the name bell hooks. I had just talked back to a grown person. Even now I can recall the surprised look, the mocking tones that informed me I must be kin to bell hooks, a sharp-tongued woman, a woman who spoke her mind, a woman who was not afraid to talk back. I claimed this legacy of defiance, of will, of courage, affirming my link to female ancestors who were bold and daring in their speech." 2ff7e9595c


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