Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D, author of My Stroke of Insight, is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist (brain scientist) who has become a health celebrity through her eight year recovery from a stroke.
In the first quarter of the book I read she has introduced her childhood, and what motivated her to become a brain scientist when she was younger. She ends this mini autobiography with the day of her stroke, and proceeds the next chapters explaining what exactly goes on in the brain and what went wrong with her brain for it to rupture on the morning of December 10, 1996.
The book was written in 2009, which was five years after she had made her full recovery from the stroke. The context of this is that she printed the book after she recovered, sorted her thoughts, and wrote them down in order to help other victims of this brain malfunction make full recoveries also. In her journey she found her inner peace and with this realization she wrote the book for others to find themselves as well as help and inform people of how to properly care for a stroke victim through the eyes of a recovered patient.
There are two specific audiences Taylor appeals to through this book, one of which is people in general that she wants to inspire to live life full of hope and inner peace. Secondly, she wrote the book for friends and families of stroke victims to help them understand what is going on in the brain of their loved one, and what they can do to help them get better.
Rhetorical elements used in this section of the book:
- Pathos
- Logos (her facts about the brain, statistics)
- Quoted passages
- Vocabulary
- Cause and effect (illness description)
- Persona (developed who she was through her autobiography)
- Anecdotes
The author did fulfill her purpose because the book became a New York Times best seller and has sold millions of copies all over the world, globally informing the public about her story and how to help victims of strokes.
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