In_The_Kitchen

In The Kitchen Ethnicity at it’s Finest Henry Louis Gates Jr. was born in 1950. He grew up in a small town in the state of West Virginia. He gained degrees from Yale and Cambridge and is currently chair of The Department of Afro-American Studies at Harvard. His Scholary works include Loose Cannons: Notes on the Culture Wars. His books include Colored People, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man and Wonders of the African World. In his essay In the Kitchen, he uses his detailed personal family experiences to help the reader gain insight into the cultural beliefs and understandings of how Afro-Americans perceive themselves and their fellow Afro-Americans. His writing style allows the reader to feel welcome and at ease while his verbiage is kept at an easy level of understanding. Gates begins the essay speaking of the kitchen in his house. He mentions the gas stove and the role it played in everyday duties from cooking to the functions of doing hair. This introduction to hair brings about the debut of the second kitchen. The definition of the second kitchen, as Gates explains, “but the word has another meaning, and the kitchen that I’m speaking of is the very kinky bit of hair at the back of hair, kitchen, good, gates, paragraph, page, afro-americans, reader, straight, matter, bad, mother, time, kinky, importance, goal, detailed, common, being, afro-american, cardoza, whenever, wearing, very, thought, straighten, stocking, speaking, seen, second, said, role, process