Beatriz Barrios Bidigaray

Carrilee Bryan

English 0802

09/18/2023

Rhetorical Analysis of "Altered State: Personal History" from Andrea Lee

Andrea Lee, a middle-class, African-American author from the suburbs of

Philadelphia, recounts her memories of her childhood in Pennsylvania in her

Personal History, showing how she perfected the art of being a foreigner since she

was a young child - and even in her own country since she never identified with the

community in which she grew up. With this essay, her purpose is to describe a feeling

that it’s not only hers but from many other minorities who do not feel included in the

public space they inhabit.

In the text, the author describes the heavy feeling she carried since her family

was one of the first African-American families to settle in Pennsylvania: "When I was

very young, that name, First African, to me carried shameful savage echoes. It's not

in any history books" (Lee, pg 2). Even though she did not come from a high social

class, Lee most of the time ended up being the only black child in a middle-class

community that was majority white, especially in the 1960s, the period in which

Andrea lived her childhood - "This is a basic belief, a motive, that sends me away

from home and across the Atlantic to a place where, for a long time, I try to shrug off

my piece of America" (Lee, pg 2). This lack of representation in the community

caused the author to experience numerous situations of racism while growing up,

mainly from white children attending her Catholic school. "There is always a distant

murmur telling us that this fat life is not our birthright; always the possibility of running

into the bad Catholic kids who throw bottles and shout "nigger" from passing cars;

always the chance that a traveling salesman may assume that one's mother, opening
the door of the big suburban house in her June Cleaver apron, is not June Cleaver

but Hattie McDaniel--the maid" (Lee, pg 2).

With her narrative Lee seeks to reach both minorities - who will identify,

whether with the racial problems experienced by the author or with her experiences

as an immigrant - as well as those who do not experience such problems, but who,

upon seeing the story, will develop empathy, learning new ways to include such

minorities in public spaces. I include myself in the target audience, being part of

those who identified with the text, feeling represented in the author's reports as a

foreigner, seeing myself especially when she says "I'm good at being foreign" (Lee,

pg 2). When it comes to creating a sentimental appeal, Lee does this masterfully,

explaining her feelings and capturing the reader's sympathy. However, the way the

text was written may confuse many, as it is not a chronological narrative. The story

needs close attention to be fully understood, otherwise you may end up getting lost

amidst the countless accounts of different moments in Andrea's life. To further explain

her disagreements with Pennsylvania, Lee also mentions one of her friends, a social

worker. "My friend downshifts, pushes up her swimsuit strap, and launches into a

series of tales of herself at twenty-one, a fresh-faced college graduate with a mane of

Goldilocks hair, venturing into the drug- and incest-ridden desolation of the country

towns of southeastern Pennsylvania" (Lee, pg 3). With this, she shows a darker side

of the state, going beyond the personal situations she experienced.

When starting her talk about Pennsylvania, the author brings up a current

phrase that stuck with me: "Writing about my state brings with it a rush of energy that

feels almost like love. I'm not sure I love it, but it's mine" (Lee, pg 1). Here we can

see that, despite the adversities experienced in her community, Andrea does not

deny the attachment she has to the place where she was born. Lee always saw

Pennsylvania’s potential, as she says in the sentence "Pennsylvania is green--not

because of its forests or its ecological virtue but because that's the color with which

my synesthetic mind defines that particular state. (…) His green suggests both

utopian ambition and the kind of nostalgia for a nonexistent perfect past that Gatsby

feels, gazing at Daisy's green light. It is the green of hope" (Lee, pg 1). However, her

life her goal was to get out of there, as shown in the speech "In fact, from childhood

on my idea is that Pennsylvania is a nursery place, to be outgrown and left behind as

quickly as possible" (Lee, pg 1), and in the second page, when she refers to the rest

of the world as "the great world, the world worth conquering" she makes it clear that

she has no desire to return. In my opinion, even though the focus of the text is, most

of the time, the adversities between Lee and her home state, she maintains hopes for

the improvement of the place - "the rest of the state, still green, but worn and

disposable as an old bathmat" (Lee, pg 2) - with one of her objectives being to

instruct other residents to bring back the "utopian ambition" she originally saw in

Pennsylvania. "I recognize it at once, when in a history text I first read William Penn's

dreamy yet transpicuous instructions for the layout of Philadelphia: Let every house

be placed in the middle of its plot, so that there may be ground on each side for

gardens or orchards or fields, that it may be a green country town which will never be

burnt, and always be wholesome" (Lee, pg 1)