After reading the piece by Harriot Jacobs a few things struck me. Throughout the piece she is very careful not to specifically name the horrible offenses that she has suffered. She states at one point that the offenses are "greater than you would willingly believe" ( 505). While I am aware that this may well be the truth, I am not so sure if leaving it up to the reader to completely fill in the blanks at this point is so effective. I would be more affected by this piece if she were to give a greater appeal to emotion. If she were to go into some detail about a few of the horrible things she has had to endure and then go on to note that there were far worse but to leave that to the imagination I think it would present a greater appeal to at least my emotion. (This isn't to say that I am not aware of at least a fraction of the things that slaves did go through, or that I am not against the practice of slaver, but for this blog I am responding to the particular techniques employed in this piece). I do think the piece is effective in the voice that is used. The author is not writing in the stereotypical southern black vernacular. Instead she employs a voice that is perhaps closer to that of the white northerner that she is appealing to. In doing this she gives the sense that she, as a former? black southern slave is not so distant from her audience as they may think and thus draws her own hardships closer to her audience.
As for the clothesline project, I felt that it was significantly less effective in appealing to me. The web page stated that the organization had been started in 1990 and that this was their official web page. For an organization/movement that has been around for going on twenty years I felt that the web page was severely lacking. First it was just the single web page with links containing contact information as well as a list of people and organizations who had/are participating in the movement/organization. There was very little information about the founding of the organization and just a brief statement about the purpose. Also I was unable to find any information on this web page about any impact that the movement/organization has had on their goal of reaching out to the public about the negative treatment of women. All of this lack of information from an organization/movement that has been around for nearly as long as I have gave me the impression that they were not very organized, or that this was not something that they took very seriously. The web page seemed more like a grass roots school project more than a serious cause to action in my opinion.
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I completely agree with your observation that the website is lacking. It was hard for me to really focus on their goals and accomplishments because it was so boring and wordy. Hopefully the reason they haven't updated because they are busy educating people on domestic violence!
ReplyDeleteGlad someone was thinking the same thing I was! For such a great and powerful organization, the website looked extremely outdated. I think it would be great advertising for them to update their website to make it a little more interactive and appealing! Great observation!
ReplyDeleteYou brought up some great points. I did not even think about Harriet's vernacular, but you are completely write. Her being able to sound educated is a great advantage when trying to appeal to white northerners. I also felt specifics in her story were missing. But, since she could no even speak about what happened to her, maybe she was too fearful to be too specific in the text.
ReplyDeleteThe Clothesline project's website is pretty terrible, I agree. It just does not look professional. They need to work on their outreach abilities with all of the networking the internet offers today.
I agree too! the website needs to look alot better! They are such a powerful organization and speak out about such a serious and horrible thing that it needs to look more professional and needs to be more interactive!
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