Women, Words, Writing :: Gender Literature Papers

Women, Words, Writing During my dawning commute, I cut myself off from the world around me and think. The last affaire I see before shutting off generally starts a process of free association that is carried on by memory. For instance, this morning a woman sat beside me, demanding The Alchemy of Race and Rights by Patricia Williams. Williams is mortal I have heard of and read. I remembered her es word And We Are not Married-a wonderful sample of womens writing. For the rest of the time I travelled by subway, I thought of pieces of writing I have read that, somehow, bear the mark of their writers gender. Now Im home, at my desk, and I am re-reading the texts I have thought of in the morning, trying to understand why and where I feel the mark of gender. Take, for example, Williamss essay as I go along, I am fascinated by its complexity, by its huge network-or should I say labyrinth?-of ideas, so huge that the reader can easily ram lost, become powerless, and abandon the strugg le. Williams argues, among other things, that the practice of certain forms of rhetoric create acts of ideology, that style is never neutral, so that types of writing and behavior are ever suffused with political content. One of her primary rhetorical tropes is the telling-and retold-anecdote, which always requires interpretation. With each bosh she relates, new possible paths appear, and one doesnt know which of them is the right one the Benetton incident, with its trio consecutive versions. Then Tawana Brawley. Maxine doubting Thomas. Mrs. Williams, her mother. Herself. Professor Bell and Geneva Crenshaw. Mr. Williams. Finally, the dream.The stories are presented at length, and commented upon each affirmation is supported-either because of the authors juridical experience or because of her exactness-by footnotes. This makes the overall grammatical construction of the essay a bit confusing. For example, the listing of opinions expressed ab break Maxine Thomas is choke offed u p by eighteen footnotes. The readers eye has to go back and forth in order to read everything, and going back and forth eighteen times can be very challenging.In addition to that, the language is sometimes difficult at times even lumbering the rhetoric of increased privatization, in response to racial issues, functions as the rationalizing divisor of public unaccountability, and, ultimately, irresponsibility (696). One has to stop reading and figure out what she means, to figure out the idea behind that gathering of legal (and olibanum certainly esoteric) terms.