Exigence defines why I choose to write because I want my voice to reflect who I am now and later in life who I was. We use culture to create substance and tie it together with connections of stories, example my culture, it can express itself as the subtleties of being Asian American born into a pre-dominant white neighborhood. These stories and their likeness of experiences and why we choose to listen/write our stories is entirely dependent on genre and audience in which we write about. One text that comes to mind is Sherman Alexie’s short story on Indian …show more content…
The connection to empathy, Leslie Jamison constructs a very unique essay genre I’ve never seen before. Her appeal to Logos, the presentation she chose to elucidate on the subject matter of empathy; she writes about her profession as a medical actor, her character Stephanie Phillips and her real life dilemma on abortion. The logical construction on why she chose to write her fictional actor first to dig deeper makes sense because starting off with abortion (especially in America) is a very touchy subject; a line divided between audiences on pro-life and pro-abortion agendas. “I used to believe that hurting would make you more alive to the hurting of others. I used to believe in feeling bad because somebody else did. Now I’m not so sure of either” (Jamison, 27). Her actor Stephanie and her own abortion are very similar. Stephanie cannot understand what triggers her seizures, but for an actor as Jamison she would empathize to Stephanie with her own reasons of abortion and her own physical pain. Jamison would imagine that if Stephanie feels hurt and so would Jamison herself empathize, moving toward the end of the essay, she wasn’t sure if what she was really feeling empathy after all, instead viewing empathy on many viewpoints. In likes of the cliché, my empathy for Sherman is similar on the surface narrative linked to culture.