Academic Writing Excerpts
Written: April 2024
Full Word Count: 3700
Mercerism:
The Kipple-ization of the Human Race
Phillip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (DADES) portrays a world reducing itself to debris. The author creates a neologism which describes this phenomenon: kipple. Old mail, food wrappers, used matches—any and all useless items discarded by humans—devolve into kipple, a proactive force which reproduces itself until it has consumed the empty spaces. Kipple-ization is such an immense force that it has the ability to drive out the non-kipple, inching the world toward a reality where trash heaps tower as emblems of deterioration. Despite the destructive power of kipple, a larger force is at work, which, instead of impacting unwanted objects, effectively devolves society into rubbish. This force is Mercerism, the world’s cult-like religion which claims an emotional fusion for its followers and an elevated togetherness, exclusive to humans through the use of a technologically advanced empathy box.
A dissection of the religion reveals the deterioration of humans and society. The underpinnings of Mercerism include elements such as hierarchy, or competitive structures which promote the use of people as tools. It incorporates the diffusion of emotion, creating a breach between humans and their empathy, and it compels an estrangement of people from their identities. While kipple is often viewed as the main force of deterioration in the novel, Mercerism is much more dangerous. It is the catalyst for the kipple-zation of human beings, expelling from individuals the qualities that make them empathetic. An analysis of the human/android hierarchy, the fragmentation of emotion, and alienation of identity will provide support for the conclusion that Mercerism is not the measure of empathy, and by extension the measure of humanness in Dick’s world, but is instead the main force of deterioration.
Written: May 2023
Full Word Count: 3700
Rhetorical Weaponry:
How the United States Government Aided the Anti-Japanese Hysteria of 1942
On December 7, 1941, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed “Presidential Proclamation No. 2525, declaring ‘all natives, citizens or subjects of the Empire of Japan’ living in the U.S. and not naturalized to be ‘liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies’” (Timeline). The declaration that Japanese people living in the United States were to be considered enemy aliens marks the beginning of the government’s rhetorical involvement in the country’s anti-Japanese hysteria, which continued until June 30, 1946 with the official disbanding of the United States War Relocation Authority (Timeline).
For an in-depth rhetorical analysis of the government’s actions, it is useful to utilize the foundational principles of rhetoric as laid out by Aristotle. He states that the validation of any effective rhetorical campaign requires the use of enthymeme, which he argues is “the substance of rhetorical persuasion” (Aristotle 1). Enthymeme is a tool that conveys the probable outcome of a situation. In the case of Pearl Harbor, FDR created the government’s statement of enthymeme through two executive orders. The first of these orders was 8972, dated December 12, 1941 which states, “There exists a serious and Immediate potential danger of sabotage” (Executive Order 8972). This was followed by a second order, 9066, dated February 19, 1942 which begins by stating, “The successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities” (Executive Order 9066). These two orders established the enthymeme as offered to the American public by the leader of the country: that the perceived probable outcome of an unchecked Japanese-American community was sabotage, espionage, and a threat to the national defense.
Written: April 2025
Full Word Count: 4000
A Silence Broken:
Fiction that Speaks Trauma
The last 25 years have seen a greater influx of fictional works written by the descendents of Japanese incarcerees, which tackle the traumatic stories of their parents and grandparents, and what it means to be Japanese American within the white hegemony of the United States.
The role that these new fiction works play is vital to the healing of the Japanese American community. The ability to speak about a shared trauma within the safety of fiction, and to have in return, a listener to validate the experience, is essential to the survival of the victims. Trauma psychiatrist Dori Laub asserts, “The survivors did not only need to survive so that they could tell their story; they also needed to tell their story in order to survive…One has to know one’s buried truth in order to be able to live one’s life” (78). Without the ability to speak and be heard, trauma is continually re-experienced, but in cases where the trauma is too heavy for the victims to speak, the use of fiction, especially that which was written by a subsequent generation, can provide a way for the trauma to be expressed and the community to be healed. Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine is evidence that in cases where trauma cannot or will not be spoken by the victims, fiction is the vehicle which creates a safe space for understanding, provides a validating listener, and allows a community to break their silence, and by doing so, establishes a new cultural memory to preserve the event.
Book Review Excerpt
Written March 2025
Full Word Count: 1700
Educated by Tara Westover
As a fellow female writer, who also happens to be ex-Mormon like Tara Westover, I applaud the way her book engages in an essential conversation surrounding women in cultures where obedience to male authority is prioritized over education, independence, and autonomy. Though the narrative surrounding women in the Mormon church may not currently be as patriarchal as it was during Westover’s childhood, there is still precedent for, and a facilitation of, oppressive behaviors toward women. In my own time in the Mormon church, I often saw the female voice, including my own, overridden by male authority.
Westover shines a light on the often unspoken issues that crop up in a patriarchal organization, and I can feel the relatability of her life. I may not have experienced a father who demanded that I touch the temple in order to be healed from Lucifer’s influence as Westover did, but I have had men who told me I was supposed to marry them because the “spirit” dictated it as such. I may not have had a brother who repeatedly shoved my head in a toilet, or who twisted my arm to the point of almost-breaking, but I did have teenage boys who pushed my boundaries for physical interactions simply because they believed they had the right. I did not have a father who called me a whore, but I did have daughters who were told by male church leadership that they should never say no to a boy.
Though Westover doesn’t wish her memoir to be read as a commentary on Mormonism, her life provides a microcosm, albeit an extreme sample, of the dangers that exist for women who are barred from education. Common to the era in which Westover was a member of the Mormon church, women were encouraged to make their education secondary to that of men (their future husbands). Any education that was sought after for personal enlightenment or for the purpose of a career, was frowned upon. Educated reveals extreme horrors that come from Tara’s lack of knowledge, but a more moderate reality does exist where Mormon women are placed at a disadvantage to the men in their lives.
Tara’s education, both in academia and in her navigation of the world, gives her the tools to fully understand the ways that she has been marginalized and materially harmed by her parents and abusive brother. Knowledge and education give her a voice and save her from abuse, gaslighting, and a lifetime of silence.