Writing and Social Change

Jennifer Tabasco 11-2
English III
Mr. Fiorini
February 23, 2009

Writing and Social Change

Does writing have the power to enact social change? After reading June Jordan’s poem “The Bombing of Baghdad” along with King, Gandhi, and Thoreau’s writings that we read in class this week, I believe that writing really does have the power to enact social change. When I finished reading June Jordan’s piece of writing, I felt as if I had been taken out of my seat and into the country of Iraq. When I was reading June’s description of all of the bombings, each of the phrases in her poem really stuck with me. These weren’t sentences with coordinate conjunctions and commas; these phrases were words that flowed smoothly together as I read them aloud to myself.
Now, back to the question that I mentioned before: Does writing have the power to enact social change? I believe that writing really does have the power to enact social change for a variety of reasons. First off, any statement that an author or writer writes has to have some complete thought placed into it. There has to be a specific purpose made when writing any piece of writing or even reading literature. What other reason would somebody else have for writing a sentence that has no specific thought placed into it? For this reason, this is why certain speeches were so effective in social progress throughout our American history. For example, Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream Speech” was probably one of the most powerful sermons ever spoken by an African American man. Each sentence, each word, and each punctuation mark all combined together to create a piece of writing that still has impact on Americans lives today. Secondly, writing doesn’t necessarily have to be written in paragraph form to be bold enough to change society. For example, look at Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman?” poem. That poem speaks so strongly with so few words that if any additional words would have been made to that poem, I think that that poem would have lost all of its true meaning that Sojourner Truth was trying to express.
My final idea as to why I believe that writing can enact social change is that writing is an expression of creativity and an expression of one’s mind. When writers write about their certain topics, they sometimes express their opinions through their writings in order for people to see their perspectives on that certain topic. For example, June Jordan’s “The Bombing of Baghdad” poem expressed her opinion against the first war in Iraq. She felt as if the whole world was going to end, and that her soul wouldn’t be able to bear with the grief from all of the soldiers who were killed in combat. I think any expression of one’s opinion through writing can definitely enact social change because there may be a lot of people out there who might agree with that writer’s perspective, and they might want others to see the world differently just from their perspective. When I read any piece of writing in class or for my own personal enjoyment, I try to have an open mind about what I’m reading, and then I try to examine the author’s point that he/she may be trying to make. This is an important reading technique for me to use because I don’t want to make any judgments just by reading a couple of paragraphs; I want to read the whole text simultaneously so I can fully examine the author’s perspective all together.
In conclusion, I stand by my reasons in that I do believe that writing does have the power to enact social change. According to dictionary.com, writing is “a literary or musical style, form, quality, technique, etc.” All of these writing components are the building blocks in order for people to have an effective piece of writing. Writing should be an expression of who the author is, and it should have the ability to act as a door that allows the reader to explore inside the author’s mind. If we all look back a couple years later at all of the writing pieces that we have done over the years, we would all want to change some of the statements that were made in our writings. Writing can change the world because of how important it is to our societies, and we, the authors and readers, can change the world too just by changing our writings to make them more effective to societies today.