Roxane Gay: Effective ways of being heard, 2022

Audience

Purpose

Voice and Tone

Conversational yet authoritative tone. Accessible, engaging, encouraging, and empowering

Structure

Her speech is organised logically and progressively. It shifts from the personal to broader societal issues.

The structure is linked to how many people will begin to think and process: they will see their personal stories and then shit to look for other people who they can relate to and share stories and advice.

"A lot of times people ask me about voice"

Presents her ethos and reasoning for writing and presenting this piece.

She subtly highlights her own credentials and authority without having to do so explicitly

'as if they can go on some sort of search, and find voice waiting for them'

' as if' - dismisses the misconception that it is something external that must be "found." Gay challenges the conventional notion that one's voice is something elusive or difficult to grasp.

'find a voice waiting for them'

This use of personifying 'voice' in terms of a romantic sense of destiny, and the use of defamiliarising it as something we might tend to take for granted, is intriguing. The listener is invited to question how the approach to 'voice' begins in the first place; their a priori assumptions are being tested.

'we tend to already have our voices'

she empowers her audience, emphasising that finding one's voice is about acknowledging its existence and learning how to use it confidently. This rhetorical shift reframes the idea of self-expression, making it not an abstract search but a process of self-empowerment.

' knowing that we have every right to do so'

Gay validates the audience's questions and exploration into the process of self realisation of how to 'use our voices' and encourages it.

'I started writing when i was four years old.'

- Shift to past tense to explain her backstory and early experiences of writing

- She's been writing for a long time and has seen her way of writing evolve, that builds her credibilty to the audience

'I would draw little villages on napkins'

'little villages' - her voice started in a small way for just herself and people close to her in her village but has now grown and can be expressed nationwide on the PBS news.

'napkins' - your voice doesn't have to be big and in your face, it's okay and still valid to have a smaller and more common voice to some. Gay's voice started small and expressed in an insignificant way but it later grew.

'four years old'

She has learnt, from experience, that finding and expressing your voice doesn't need to be this overly intellegicial and romaticised thing, but instead is perfectly still accessible for a young child.

'I would write stories about the people living in those villages'

Started sharing her voice through fiction at a young age but now as shes grown up she retells the more important true life stories that have personal meaning to her. - presents that idea that the 'voice' can grow and evolve and how it is expressed doesn't have to be in one single way.

"I think and write quite a lot about trauma"

The shift back into present tense connects the use of 'voice' across Gay's life experience; the fact that she has developed and grown in her use of 'voice' shows that it is an organic and ongoing feature of humans' creative capacity.

'very little language for trauma'

Irony - there are so many words in the English language but we struggle to even collect a few when talking about trauma.

'you have suffered and you're healed, but things are maybe also not okay.'

Gay talks with a level of vunrablity and validates the continued grief that stays with us beyond the 'normal' grieving period.

Repetition of 'us' and 'we'

Direct address to the audience to include them and make the speech feel more personal. Connects the audience to her and makes the topic of trauma not feel so isolating and that it is instead a shared experience.

'required a level of vulnerability I found extremely uncomfortable'

Sharing her concerns and worries about opening up. Uses this to connect to the audience who find trust in her for being brave and standing up to present her stories despite being uncomfortable. Encourges others to do the same and spread their stories and often it will help more that are also uncomfortable.

'not only in this country, but all around the world'

Parenthetical clause to shift perspective to global. Gay expands her target audience to the wider world; seeing as YouTube (via PBS) is the platform on which she is speaking, she acknowledges the mode in which she is speaking.

"everybody lives in a body that is complicated and that they struggle with at one time or another."

[...]"the deaths of 800,000 people"

Logos