Journal Entry #2

Prospective readers play a huge role in how things are written. After all, things are written to be read by an audience. That intended audience has an influence on everything from writing style to subject matter to specific word choice. The following are three examples of how different audiences can impact the process and product of a written work.

Ijeoma Oluo’s book, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, demonstrates intelligent, educated writing while balancing itself with a conversational, non-academic tone. This text explores parts of the history of white male supremacy in the United States, from colonization of the west to football, and how this affected and continues to affect our systems and societal attitude around gender roles and race. It would be integral to make the writing accessible to readers with an interest in this subject, which one can imagine as being educated, feminist, American, and/or interested in history. Her audience is also most likely intended to be adults or those nearly at adulthood, which allows her greater freedom in utilizing dark subject matter and mature language. In that regard, audience holds a sway over the writing approach, from the things Oluo chooses to focus on to how she does so. To attract and maintain her intended audience, Oluo mixes intelligent, well-researched information with observational, personal, and feminist thinking, something that drives away the audience she doesn’t want and endears the audience she does. Something that shapes the work as much as audience is who one does not want as the audience, so this book being written with an assumption of certain shared ideals allows for Oluo to expand into more complex perspectives on the history and its ripple effects through the country.

However, a text like that of Barbara Sutton’s “Reclaiming the Body: Abortion Rights Activism in Argentina” has a different, if related, goal. This piece is intended for fellow academics, most likely with a related interest in feminism and reproductive rights as indicated by its publication by Feminist Formations. The text is about the activism performed in Argentina to protest for abortion rights. There is also a particular focus on the role of the body, both in terms of the body as a subject of violence and discrimination, and the body as a tool in political, activist, and movement claims and protest (Sutton 28). The style in which this is written demonstrates an assumption of not just academic, but feminist education on the part of the reader, which is apparent through the formality and the word choices that Sutton employs. If Sutton was writing for a wider audience, she would have needed to provide more background and history on both reproductive rights and Argentina specifically, but that is largely not present aside from a brief section on the opening page. This gives her space to focus on what the activists have been doing and where their work has led them. This demonstrates the way that audience can influence the content of a text, regarding what is included and what is left out. By limiting the audience to academics, Sutton actually frees herself to go more in-depth on the details of the activism and connect it to broader feminist thought regarding the body.

In contrast to both prior texts, Katie O’Reilly’s play, “The 9 Fridas,” has a uniquely broad audience in that the text is intended to be spoken and heard in a theatric context. The play is about Frida Kahlo, a famous Mexican painter whose work explores themes of disability, gender, sexuality, and more. The story follows various iterations of Kahlo and the people reacting to her work and her conduct, judging and praising in turn. The format of a play has an impact on the way things are written, in that rather than presenting agreements and perspectives in a theoretical manner, we hear them as individual characters with viewpoints that each need different approaches to be addressed. It is in this way that the play is written to appeal to a wider audience, as many people watching might feel a kinship with at least one perspective or another – and, therefore, may have their minds changed, or ideas developed into deeper complexity. Writing for spectators meant that O’Reilly had to approach her writing in a way that was accessible to a potentially very broad plethora of ideas about feminism, disability, or even Kahlo specifically. Yet, the audience may not know who Kahlo is at all, and it works to provide insight to the audience whether they do or not. Kahlo’s work and life had a lot to do with feminism in that she often broke stereotypical gender roles in both presentation and how she painted herself, and this is represented throughout the play as a balance of pain and strength, of grief and joy, especially in terms of her disabilities. The writing style invokes the conversational and the poetic, further emphasizing that duality of simultaneous personhood.

When writing, it is always important to remember who you are writing for and why. This changes the voice of the writing, the content, and even the route of publication to ensure you reach the correct audience. These feminist texts all demonstrate proficiency at directing their work toward specific audiences, which allows them to differentiate themselves from one another in their distinctive writing styles. Each accomplishes something unique and worthwhile and suits the content of the piece.

Works Cited

Oluo, Ijeoma. Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. New York: Seal Press, 2021.

O’Reilly, Katie. “The 9 Fridas.” Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors: Selected Plays by Katie O’Reilly. Oberon Books, 2016.

Sutton, Barbara. “Reclaiming the Body: Abortion Rights Activism in Argentina.” Feminist Formations, 2021.