Book Test 1: Covering

1) Provide 2 examples where you feel your author clearly used research methods to gather info about the topic being written about. Please provide quotes from the novel for each example and THOROUGHLY explain why you chose that quote and why you feel the novelist was also a researcher.

“Covering” by Kenji Yoshino combined an autoethnographic approach with more conventional research.  Yoshino wove the story of his struggle with his own identity in with the social context of civil rights movements in the United States, including not only gay rights but also gender and racial rights as well.  To do this effectively, the author used multiple research methods, especially focusing on the description of historical events both in a broad cultural context (ex. the Stonewall riot) as well as historical examples from his own life (such as his coming out).

Yoshino’s coming out story included in the novel was certainly a form of research.  “Even the story that I have told, more complete than any accounting i have ever given, is full of evasions and simplifications.” (Yoshino, p. 71).  This quote shows Yoshino as a researcher because his life’s work is in many ways his own identity.  His education, his career, his interpersonal relationships,his world view, so much of his character is shaped by the struggles that he has had coming to terms with his own identity as a Japanese American gay man.  The text is overwhelmingly written about how he has constructed and come to terms with his identity, and so in a sense the telling of his coming out story is the culmination of his life’s research.

Yoshino is not simply an autoethnographer, but also a researcher in a more traditional sense as well.  Speaking on the history of gay rights and acceptance in America, Yoshino tells his readers that, “Our history of gay assimilation is now complete- we have moved from conversion, to passing, toward covering.” (Yoshino, p. 106).  This sentence is near the end of his section on gay covering, after he has fully explored and supported using both personal and societal examples his theory on what covering is and how it functions in society.  This sentence in particular shows that Yoshino is a researcher because it summarizes the connections that he has just made using not only personal examples, but also cultural examples and famous court cases that reinforce the level of acceptance that covering has in contemporary American society.  While we no longer tell gays that they are psychotic and force them to undergo shock treatment, and may even welcome them with open arms, there is still a great deal of pressure for them to make themselves indistinguishable from heterosexuals.  Yoshino draws this concept together throughout his book very effectively, allowing readers with different identities to appreciate what covering must feel like using his research examples.

2) Provide 2 examples of rhetorical devices (as discussed in class and in the video you watched for homework) as used by the author. Please provide quotes from the novel for each example and THOROUGHLY explain why you chose that quote and why you feel the novelist used such rhetoric.

Kenji Yoshino is a skilled writer who uses his mastery of the English language to present his topic in such a way that readers cannot help but empathize with his side of the argument.  Naturally, this means that he uses effective rhetoric frequently throughout his book.  It was not always iommediately obvious to me in my first read where and when he was employing it because he was able to work it in to his writing very smoothly, but going back through the text i was able to identify several examples of how he uses rhetorical devices to persuade the reader.

As this book is essentially an autoethnography supported with broader cultural research, appeals to emotion and appeals to logic are quite common throughout the text.  One appeal to logic that he makes is at the start of his section on gay appearance covering.

To think about gay appearance-based covering is to realize homosexuality may not be so invisible after all: people often assume gay men will be ‘feminine’ and lesbians will be ‘masculine.’  In the ninteenth century, this link was sometimes attributed to ‘inversion’- the condition of being a woman trapped inside a man’s body, or vice versa. (Yoshino, p.79).

This section goes on to explain how gays who act and look straight contrary to stereotypes meet a higher level of acceptance than gays who do not.  I chose the above quote because it appeals to logic in that the author is examining a way of thinking including its origins and implications.

Just as prevalent in the reading as appeals to logic are appeals to a reader’s emotions, particularly in the sections that are related to Yoshino’s struggle with his own identity and coming out.  In discussing gay culture and covering, Yoshino shares an anecdote about his trip to Fire Island.  While there, he experiences for the first time an openly gay culture that, rather than covering, proudly flaunts its sexuality.  he revels in this enviornment until his sobering ride home, which he describes in the following:

At some point on the train ride, I look up and realize the moment has passed- the moment when straight culture has reasserted itself.  Men who were lolling in each other’s arms were separate, fingers that were interlaced are now disengaged, tattooed bodies have disappeared into their cloths, faces have tightened.  It is a moment as imperceptable as the change of a season, or the moment one falls out of love.  (Yoshino, p. 85).

This quote tugs at the heart strings of a reader.  There is no argument in this section, no appeal to logic or reason, simply the sharing of a deeply felt sadness at a loss of freedom and liberation.  The author does not beg, does not petition his audience to action, he simply lays bare the issue as he sees it in an emotionally compelling way that I certainly felt the impact of when I first read it.  I can feel his sense of loss and sadness as the cover is pulled over him and his fellow passengers as though it were my own.  To me, that is the strongest indication of effective use of rhetorical device.

3) How does the author hook in the reader at the beginning of the novel? Please provide 2 quotes from the novel and THOROUGHLY explain why you chose those quotes and why you feel the novelist did what he/she did.

The first thing that Yoshino does to engage his audience is to make his issue their issue.  He does this in a very direct way at the beginning of his preface, writing on page 1 that, “Everyone covers.  To cover is to tone down a disfavored identity to fit into the mainstream.  In our increasingly diverse society, all of us are outside the mainstream in some way.”  By doing this, Yoshino makes it clear that he views the issue of covering as everyone’s issue, and then provides his reasoning for why his audience should think of it in the same way.  Yoshino did this to make it clear to potential readers that this book dealt with an issue that effects them on a personal level, regardless of who they are.  He calls out to them on a personal level, engaging the idea that they in some way hide a part of themselves from the world, and that this book would adress that.

Yoshino continues to pull the readers in to the beginning of his novel by expressing his own exasperation and appealing to the reader to take up his feelings on the matter.

In a supposedly enlightened age, the persistance of the covering demand presents a puzzle.  Today, race, nantional origin, sex, religion and disability are all protected by federal civil rights law.  An increasing number of states and localities include sexual orientation in civil rights laws as well.  Albeit with varying degrees of conviction, Americans have come to a consensus that people should not be penalized for being different along these dimensions.  That consensus, however, does not protect individuals against demands that they mute those differences.  We need an explination for why the civil rights revolution has stalled on covering. (Yoshino, p.2)

I selected this quote because this is where Yoshino hooked me as a reader.  The topic as a whole seemed interesting, but reading this made it clear for me that the author viewed covering as a real threat to human rights for a broad range of peoples that was pressing and that was not dealt with in civil rights legislation.  He made the topic important on a personal level, and made it a pressing matter.  I felt after reading this as though failing to read and synthesize his information would put me at serious risk of not understanding a concept that was critical for me to be a good activist and an informed man.  Yoshino used this language to cement the idea in my mind as a reader that he had information that was of dire importance on many levels, and that I must continue reading if I wanted to understand what was going on.