As I was reading some people's essays and thinking about my own this thought came to my head: if personal essays are an argument that "consists of ones experience" then wouldn't some of the rhetorical essays we read last week also be considered personal essays? Martin Luther King Jr. talks about himself explaining racism to his children. Also the problems the authors are talking about are issues that they, themselves struggle with and personally experience everyday.
I was just wondering what they rest of the class was thinking so I thought I would post my question for everyone to comment on and hopefully I'll be able to understand this better.
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Excellent point, Amanda. I think the term "personal essay" has room for many of the essays we read in the first unit. As I asked on someone else's blog, doesn't Thoreau write about his personal experience more than Woolf writes about hers? Yet many of you seem to report that the essays by Hurston and Woolf feel more personal. Why?
ReplyDeleteI think the main reason Hurston's essay feels personal is because it revolves around a story about her life. There aren’t a lot of outside examples. It is all something she has experienced herself and is now explaining to the reader.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, Woolf's did not seem as personal to me, but I think one reason it may seem like it is personal is because when she wrote it, it was for a small audience. She is also talking about women not being able to write or being considered inferior to men in this line of work. This is dear to her because she is a female writer. I also think what sets her apart from Lincon, Swift, King, and Thoreau is that her topic is narrower. Although she is fighting for equality of women, more specifically she is writing for equality of women artists. The previous essays were a national issue with a lot of people interested in what these people had to say. Woolf's essay applies to a much smaller group of people and there was less of an audience interested.