In Rukeyser’s Book of the Dead, the author addresses a real disaster that happened in the Hawk’s Nest incident. Which she uses her skill of writing or in this case poetry, to bring some sense of justice into this incident. She aims for social justice not through just story telling but also incorporating other voices in the incident to show the emotional triumphs that victims faced because of harsh and unsafe working conditions.

The author does an excellent job of using real accounts to allow the workers in this incident to speak for themselves. This makes the pain and truth more personal and powerful. This form of writing through her poetry brings voice to the victims and turns their real life experiences into a reminder of social justice by giving them a sense of relief making sure that their story is heard and also taken seriously rather than being just another headline on a news article.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.