Roots Run Deep

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Recommended: What is a home essay

A home is more than a place, it’s somewhere where you can center your affections and find your identity. Moving to a place from somewhere you consider home can be difficult because of the delay comfort you feel when your old identity gets tested in new surroundings. By conveying emotion with body language, having logic behind her statements, and establishing credibility, Elizabeth Alexander effectively explains her southern identity and how one identifies with a place. I can relate to Alexander in the sense of having to live somewhere long enough to be at ease enough to consider that place your home. In the video interview with Elizabeth Alexander, she starts off by talking about the time it takes to feel comfortable enough to actually write about the place as a home. She then explains the differences between the place in the Upsouth, where she was raised and the more northern places, where she has lived later in life. She identifies Washington D.C. as the Upsouth, a culture where people mingle on the streets, as opposed to more northern cities where Northerns don’t act in this manner. Her grandparents had a lot of influence on her writing. Both her grandmother and grandfather had different accents that held her fascination while they told her stories. She then explains that no matter how far away she gets from the south, she always holds on to the ties that bind her there. Elizabeth Alexander exhibits pathos in her interview through body language and facial expression in order to increase awareness of her point of view. Elizabeth starts by talking about the difference between living somewhere and considering it home. Once she starts to talk about the places she considers or has considered home before, the viewer can tell sh... ... middle of paper ... ..., throwing in the occasional y’all, to Alabama’s southern culture. Elizabeth Alexander’s southern roots run deep. While she has moved away from the south she cannot deny where she comes from and the culture she was raised in. Through use of body language, logic, and the establishment of her authority as a poet, Alexander adequately establishes her southern identity and what qualifies a place a home. Because of Alexander’s successful use of ethos and pathos I, as a viewer, could relate to having your beginnings and culture be from a different place than where you live now and the time it takes for a place to really feel like a home. Works Cited "Natasha Trethewey Interviews Elizabeth Alexander." Interview by Natasha Trethewey. Southern Spaces. Emory University Library, 10 Dec. 2009. Web. 31 Jan. 2011.

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