April 5, 2026 - 01:02
Something that stood out to me from Samuels' poems was her use of second-person point-of-view, such as using pronouns like "you" and "your." I remember a time in highschool when I wrote a personal essay about my anxiety from the second-person and how my English teacher discouraged it because the second-person makes readers uncomfortable. She said that it confuses the reader--something about how they are not sure whether "you" refers to them (the readers) or yourself (the narrator). I think I chose to use second-person in that essay because I was talking back to myself, as if in conversation with past me. There was also something powerful about projecting the experience onto the reader. I wanted them to feel the insecurity and pretend it never happened to me. Since then, the only times I have read something in the second-person were self-insert fan-fiction and the occasional poem.
Returning to Ellen Samuels, a couple of the haikus from Hypermobilities have "you" and "your." For example:
"No one knows why you don't just break" ("Hypermobility")
"All the ways you go too far" ("Beighton Hypermobility Scale")
In these instances, the use of second-person seems self-reflective to me: Samuels talks to herself about her EDS.
However, in "Plum Tomato," from which the overtly second-person book title, Your Body Should Be Part of the World, comes from, I'm less sure about the meaning of "you" and "your." Even though this poem can also be attributed as Samuels talking to herself about her own disability experience, her use of the imperative mood makes me think she is talking to the reader.
"Your body should be mute"
"Your body should be part of the world"
When I see some sort of inspirational message written in the imperative mood on a poster, such as "Believe in Yourself," my instinct is that "yourself" means me, so when Samuels uses "your," I assume she is talking about my body. I think there are a lot of questions we can ask about Samuels' intentions for using the second-person point-of-view, as well as how it ultimately gets perceived by readers. For a reader who relates to Samuels' experiences, I wonder if using the second-person creates visability. I think about access intimacy and the relief/joy some disabled people experience when others just "get it." I imagine how affirming it could be to be told "your body should be part of the world" by someone else, instead of constantly finding ways to convince yourself that you matter in a world that treats you like you do not. There also an interesting effect in the ambiguity of "you" meaning the reader vs. "you" meaning the narrator. For example, Samuels may have used "you" to refer to herself, but by publishing her book, her words gain a new audience. What may have been her self-affirmations could have become assertions to the reader that they, too, should be part of the world.
I also wonder how for a reader who does not relate to Samuels' experiences, such as a non-disabled reader, how the second-person point-of-view may affect them. By calling out the reader, the use of second-person can create cognitive dissonance between what Samuels' words are saying about the reader and what they actually think/know about themselves. For example, when reading the line, "What you wish sometimes when the night draws deep is for someone else to be able to hear you," a reader might be startled out of the reading immersion because that is not something they wish, and this could remind the reader of their privilege: they may assume that everyone feels heard/seen/understood. Another way that second-person perspective could helpfully trigger empathy for a non-disabled reader is if they actually do relate to Samuels, just not because of disability. If they resonate with not being seen/heard/understood for a different aspect of their identity, it can create solidarity. It can help the reader realize that we all have needs and that we can get them through collective liberation.
Overall, I just find Samuels' use of the second-person interesting and gets my thinking about how rhetoric devices, such as second-person perspective, can be used in disability-justice literature. I would love to know how other people may have interpreted "you" and "your" differently in Samuels' poems, so please share. Did it stand out to you too? What effect do you think it had on you as a reader?