Try your hand at this Paper 1. Then contact us for a session.
Write an analysis on the following text. Comment on the significance of context (if appropriate), audience, purpose and formal and stylistic features.
From the essay "What is poverty?"
Jo Goodwin Parker
1971
You ask me what is poverty? Listen to me. Here I am, dirty, smelly, and with no "proper" underwear on and with the stench of my rotting teeth near you. I will tell you. Listen to me. Listen without pity. I cannot use your pity. Listen with understanding. Put yourself in my dirty, worn out, ill-fitting shoes, and hear me.
Poverty is getting up every morning from a dirt- and illness-stained mattress. The sheets have long since been used for diapers. Poverty is living in a smell that never leaves. This is a smell of urine, sour milk and spoiling food sometimes joined with the strong smell of long-cooked onions. [...] It is the smell of the mattresses where years of "accidents" have happened. It is the smell of milk which has gone sour because the refrigerator long has not worked, and it costs money to get it fixed. It is the smell of rotting garbage. I could bury it, but where is the shovel? Shovels cost money. [...]
Poverty is dirt. You can say in your clean clothes coming from your clean house, "Anybody can be clean." Let me explain about housekeeping with no money. For breakfast I give my children grits [1] with no oleo [2] or cornbread without eggs and oleo. This does not use up many dishes. What dishes there are, I wash in cold water with no soap. Even the cheapest soap has to be saved for the baby's diapers. Look at my hands, so cracked and red. Once I saved for two months to buy a jar of Vaseline for my hands and the baby's diaper rash. When I had saved enough, I went to buy it and the price had gone up two cents. The baby and I suffered on. [...]
Poverty is staying up all night on cold nights to watch the fire knowing one spark on the newspapers covering the walls means your sleeping child dies in flames. In summer, poverty is watching gnats and flies devour your baby's tears when he cries. The screens are torn and you pay so little rent you know they will never be fixed. Poverty means insects in your food, in your nose, in your eyes, and crawling over you when you sleep. Poverty is hoping it never rains because diapers won't dry when it rains and soon you are using newspapers. Poverty is seeing your children forever with runny noses. Paper handkerchiefs cost money and all your rags you need for other things. Even more costly are antihistamines. Poverty is cooking without food and cleaning without soap.
Poverty is asking for help. Have you ever had to ask for help, knowing your children will suffer unless you get it? Think about asking for a loan from a relative, if this is the only way you can imagine asking for help. I will tell you how it feels. You find out where the office is that you are supposed to visit. You circle that block four of five times. Thinking of your children, you go in. Everyone is very busy. Finally, someone comes out and you tell her that you need help. That never is the person that you need to see. You go see another person, and after spilling the whole shame of your poverty all over the desk between you, you find that this isn't the right office after all - you must repeat the whole process, and it never is any easier at the next place. [...]
I have to come out of my despair to tell you this. Remember I did not come from another place or another time. Others like me are all around you. Look at us with an angry heart, anger that will help you help me.
Guiding questions
- Comment on the use and effect of stylistic devices, such as sensory details and the first and second person
- How do you understand the purpose and provocative nature of this essay?
[1] Grits: coarsely ground corn commonly served in the American south
[2] Oleo: a vegetable oil spread used as an alternative to butter
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