Rhetorical Response #3

The narrative "Home Girl" was a very interesting profile of Badu. I have never heard of Erykah Badu before reading this article from Texas Monthly, but the details of Erykah in the opening paragraph got my attention and made me want to read more. Hall makes Badu seem "real" by telling us what she was like in different settings. The story opened up with us being able to view Badu from her home setting with her four assistants, and dealing with her children. She seemed pretty normal besides the fact that she had four assistants. We then see her in the studio, dancing, and after that we see her actively involved in her community. Seeing Erykah Badu in all these different settings helped me really grasp an idea of who Badu really was. I felt like throughout the story I almost knew her because of all that the author mentioned her doing. Even though Erykah Badu is famous, the author focuses on her personally. He mentions the great accomplishments that she achieved, but he does not only talk about her achievements that make her famous.

 

 I personally was more interested in Badu because of how the author did not make her seem like such a celebrity. He used details to make her seem like a normal ordinary person, who I could relate to. The author uses really good details while describing her at the dance studio, and I could really grasp a good idea  of how Erykah acted in the dance studio. 

 

The author uses a great deal of details to help the reader picture , “A box of art supplies sat on a cluttered table next to a couple of palettes of dried orange and purple paint; on the wall were paintings of and by mom and her other child, nine-year-old son Seven. A piano and guitar sat next to the fireplace, and a hundred stalactites of colored candle wax descended from the mantel” This quote from the passage creates a visual of what it is like at Badu's home. Besides knowing that Badu is a celebrity, dancer, singer, and mom, we can have an image of her personal lifestyle based on this description from the author.

 

Another thing that stood out to me was the author's focus on Badu. He did not just say how famous she was, he focused on all of the elements about her. This sentence really stood out to me, "Next to the covers was a cabinet that held some twenty trophies, including her four Grammys". Hall mentioned her getting four Grammys, but he did not go on and on about her winning these awards. He mentioned them like they were just an ordinary thing, but this attitude about the Grammys is similar to Badu's attitude about being famous. She is truly a 'home girl'. You could tell this by her just wanting to be able to 'go to the store and buy milk'. This shows that everything that Badu is about is not just about what she has accomplished, and the author makes sure to focus on her, not what she has done and how famous she is. 

 

 Overall, I like how this was not just an ordinary biography. Hall uses an interview to help us see the behind the scenes of Erykah Badu. He focuses on Badu and keeps the reader (me) interested by using important details of Erykah's life to develop a narrative about who she is. Interviewing Badu lets the readers explore a more personal level of Badu's life. This is more interesting because it is not just facts that the author could research, its primary information from Erykah herself, which makes it that much more entertaining and personal. Not only does the author interview Badu in one setting, but he views her at all different aspects of her life. I thought this kept me more interested because I was able to see everything that Erykah Badu is about.