Extra Credit

From this article, I learned that culture and the situations that come about in one’s life can have an influence on the space perceptions of an individual. In the article, Hooks mentions how she was allowed to design the house of her dreams in a high school art class, with the design only involving “desire” and nothing else. Hook mentions that the assignment was meant to veer from the realities of life and the differences that separated her and her classmates from one another, in order to focus on a common goal of dreams and being connected to one another. I thought this article was interesting because Hooks mentioned that the dream house she had constructed had no direct connection to the way of life in her community. She states that “poor southern black folks were often land rich” and were concerned with the use of space because of the land that they owned. Like southern black folks who created spaces that would respond to the needs of their everyday lives, Hooks was no different. When she constructed her dream house back in high school, she created spaces to “enhance the pleasure of reading” because she was such an avid reader. The high school project she was assigned gave her a way to fulfill her desires and not her needs.

Race, gender, sexuality, and class can play a huge role in everyday writing because they are different for each individual. Having these differences helps to set people apart from others when it comes to writing, but the writing could also be viewed or meant differently for each person because of their differences.