




































[Expositions 5.2 (2011) 73-83]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747-5376 

 

Half the Sky: Considering the Audience-conscious Persuasive Genius of 

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn 

 

CHRISTINA M. MORUS 

 

The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey 

 

 

A Confession 

 

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky: Turning oppression into opportunity for 

women worldwide considers the entrenched causes and brutal effects of gender oppression 

throughout the developing world. Employing elegantly simple, audience-conscious strategies, the 

authors implore readers to act toward emancipating women from sexual slavery, gender-based 

violence, and maternal mortality “by unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts” (Kristof 

and WuDunn 2009, xxii). I attend to their persuasive strategies, but first, to contextualize my 

response to this text, I must make a confession . . .  

I did not expect to like this book. Perhaps this is not a conventional foundation for such an 

essay, but it is important to note my skepticism for popular accounts of intricate, globally 

entrenched problems. To appeal to popular audiences, presumably unfamiliar with the issues at 

hand, authors must relate problems in a way simple enough to hold audience attention, 

recognizable enough to invoke empathy, and exciting enough to motivate action. Through 

simplified narratives, authors selectively emphasize that which resonates with an intended 

audience, while downplaying elements that might challenge that audience’s moral universe. 

Although these watered-down accounts may raise public awareness to important global concerns, 

this attention comes at a cost. Reducing complex injustices to easily-grasped causes and 

uncomplicated solutions means sacrificing contextual and cultural nuance for explanations that 

neither challenge audiences’ naturalized assumptions about the current world-order, nor question 

the implications of their place within this status quo. As a result, well-intended aid programs 

often fail to consider the norms, needs, and realities of affected populations on their own cultural 

terms.  

I confess my pre-existing skepticism for two reasons. First, as a critical scholar with a decade 

of field xperience within post-conflict grass-roots women’s organizations, I have come to 

understand that working toward global gender justice necessitates a range of complex 

considerations. More poignantly humbling, I have witnessed the erosion of good-will resulting 

from development/aid projects that fail to appropriately consider the needs of the populations 

they seek to serve. Hence, before even opening Kristof and WuDunn’s book, my distaste for the 

standard conventions of such accounts already biased my reading. The book’s ancillary 

promotional materials – a torrent of exalted praise from journalists and “causey” celebs like 

George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Oprah Winfrey – only intensified my cynicism. Hence, 



Audience-conscious Persuasive Genius  74 

 

Kristof and WuDunn had to overcome a somewhat unfair a priori credibility deficit in this 

reader. Yet, surprisingly, their book did just that.  

Although I am wary of the ways their discourse privileges a Western “development” paradigm 

(with all of the elements of American-capitalist mythos that this implies), in consciously 

appealing to their intended audience while maintaining focus on multifaceted elements of their 

subject, Kristof and WuDunn demonstrate rhetorically astute political agency. While, to some 

extent, the text exhibits the selective attention concerns mentioned above, the authors’ treatment 

is largely nuanced, yet intelligible and inspirational to popular audiences. Kristof and WuDunn’s 

intricate strategic packaging deserves attention. A critical consideration of their persuasive 

strategies and rhetorical choices can offer insight into the worldview of their intended audience, 

and may reflect something deeper about American public thought. Moreover, in positing the 

deliberate nature of their choices, I speculate Kristof and WuDunn’s cognizance of the ways 

their own cultural assumptions influence their interpretations of the problems addressed. The 

extent to which their choices are part of a conscious audience-centered strategy ultimately 

suggests the degree to which they are skilled (even genius) political agents of social change. To 

this end, though a thorough rhetorical analysis is beyond the scope of this essay, I illuminate the 

authors’ persuasive strategies, and consider their more striking rhetorical choices. 

 

A Skillfully Persuasive Consideration of Audience 

 

To motivate readers to act toward alleviating global gender oppression’s most egregious 

brutalities, Kristof and WuDunn make use of classic elements of persuasion. Exhibiting the three 

Aristotelian proofs - ethos, pathos, and logos – their argument structure adheres to Monroe’s 

Motivated Sequence (Attention–Need–Satisfaction–Visualization–Action). Deriving initial 

credibility from their status as Pulitzer Prize-winning international journalists (ethos), Kristof 

and WuDunn grab audience attention with the story of a Cambodian girl’s cruel sexual 

enslavement. They then demonstrate this story’s emblematic relationship to the book’s broader 

subject, elaborating gender oppression’s brutal consequences for those women most affected. 

After illustrating a web of causes, they illuminate the benefits of a range of solutions, and 

conclude with an expedient call to action that provides immediate ways to get involved. 

Throughout the text, they use empirical data and rational appeals (logos), as well as an array of 

personal narratives from affected women and inspired “outsiders” working on their behalf 

(pathos), to employ all the available means of persuasion, as Aristotle advocates. Yet, even as 

classic persuasive strategies provide Kristof and WuDunn’s foundation, this alone does not 

explain the effectiveness of their appeals.  

Audiences are not blank slates, nor do rhetors formulate arguments in a vacuum. Individuals 

enter into a given rhetorical situation with established values, beliefs, and assumptions – some of 

which they are aware of, while others are uninterrogated. Bringing an audience to a point of 

communion, and ultimately inspiring action, requires a rhetor to mindfully mold assertions and 

evidence to the worldview of the target audience – choosing from all possibilities those elements 



75   Morus 

 

most likely to move that audience. While meticulous arguments diligently supported by 

unimpeachable data may be most persuasive to an elite/expert audience, broader popular appeals 

must be carefully swathed in apparent and uninterrogated assumptions common to the largest 

potential audience base. As rhetorician and literary theorist Kenneth Burke suggests, persuasion 

relies upon (and is even synonymous with) identification – a sense of shared substance 

(“consubstantiality”) between rhetor and audience. Burke notes, “you persuade a man only 

insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, 

identifying your ways with his” (Burke 1969, 55). Hence, to move an audience to action, appeals 

should be rooted in experiences, beliefs and values that the audience recognizes as consistent 

with their own. An audience should both see itself reflected in the rhetor, and its interests 

reflected in the argument. This implies not so much a top-down model of persuasion, but instead 

more of a collaborative relationship between rhetor and audience. Keeping this in mind helps 

illuminate Kristof and WuDunn’s strategic efficacy in employing Aristotle’s three proofs, 

beginning with ethos. 

Ethos speaks to the persuasive force that comes from the extent to which an audience deems a 

speaker to be credible, trustworthy, and to have the audience’s best interest in mind. Given that 

Kristof and WuDunn are Pulitzer Prize-winning international journalists, they bring an initial air 

of trustworthiness to this rhetorical situation. Boosting their credibility, they are recognized 

contributors to mainstream public discourse, and they are American. That is to say, their status 

as, at once, impressive public figures with left-centrist views (clearly within the hegemonic 

confines of acceptable discourse), and constitutive members of “The American People” (one of 

“us”), innately enhances their ethos. To establish their credibility to speak to this particular 

subject, Kristof and WuDunn bring their extensive fieldwork to bear upon many of the book’s 

supporting testimonies. Yet, the authors do not stop there. In a particularly astute move, as they 

elaborate the abject harm that global gender oppression writes on the bodies of women and girls, 

Kristof and WuDunn indicate that neither the problems they address nor the solutions they 

advocate are the domain of one pole of American political ideology. 

Perhaps anticipating critiques both from the political left and right, the authors judiciously 

note the contributions and shortcomings of development/aid programs rooted in each side’s 

ideologies. They further elaborate the (often unforeseen) ways that American political discourse, 

and its ensuing domestic and international policies, impact international development. Moreover, 

the authors admonish, early and often, the pedantic bickering and polemic politics that obfuscate 

common goals and obstruct the emergence of effective comprehensive programs. In explaining 

how the polarizing agendas of political elites impede efforts to alleviate (and even exacerbate) 

the suffering of so many of the world’s women, the authors at once assuage the guilt of 

individual Americans and create a common base of operation for a politically diverse audience. 

In this way, the authors speak to a larger potential audience, demonstrate good-will toward that 

audience, and create a broad field of consubstantiality from which they advance their arguments. 

From there, another persuasive method that Kristof and WuDunn employ relies upon rational 

appeals reinforced with empirical data. 



Audience-conscious Persuasive Genius  76 

 

From early in the text, as they elaborate the problem of sexual enslavement, its root causes, 

and the many factors that keep human trafficking a thriving global industry, Kristof and 

WuDunn offer a host of empirical evidence gleaned from NGOs, international aid organizations, 

the UN, and occasionally from scholarly studies. Yet, in a somewhat revealing move, the authors 

do not explicitly cite these studies. In fact, the actual source is often referenced only vaguely – 

“an obscure but meticulous study” or “social psychologists argue,” for example (Kristof and 

WuDunn 2009, xiv, 100). While a “Notes” appendix citing the referenced studies follows the 

final chapter, within the text itself there is no indication of where these citations are located. As a 

scholar, this strategy frustrated me. I wanted to be able consider the source and year of a study, 

its methodology, its funders, etc., as I was reading about it – in its context. And yet, for a “lay” 

audience, this was an excellent choice. The mere allusion to empirical data carries an air of 

scientific authority, lending gravitas without the mental clutter of citation details. Had the 

authors left out this kind of data, audiences may have been less apt buy-into their arguments. At 

the same time, as bell hooks (hooks 1981) suggests, the use of research-oriented footnotes can 

intimidate a lay audience who may perceive such a book as being too academic – “not for 

common folks.” Hence, the choice to include such data without explicit source citations affords 

audience-appropriate legitimacy to their claims. Even so, without the narratives in which Kristof 

and WuDunn embed this data, their claims would be meaningless, even to their target audience. 

Narratives provide an interpretive frame through which an audience can make sense of facts and 

data. Within Kristof and WuDunn’s narrative frames lie their most strategic emotional appeals. 

Though Aristotle privileges appeals to logos, no act of persuasion is complete without pathos. 

Burke’s ideas also find traction here, as, in its potential to foster consubstantiality by stirring 

audience sympathies and imagination, narrative is the most effective vehicle for pathos. 

Emotions are far more malleable than reason or credibility. Invoke your audience’s emotions – 

get them to care about something by getting them to care about someone. Kristof and WuDunn 

masterfully employ this principle by highlighting intensely personal stories. Some of these 

introduce the audience to women who have “risen above” unimaginable hardship, while others 

feature women irretrievably enveloped by their circumstances. There are also stories about 

Westerners – mostly American – who have taken it upon themselves to foster change. 

Throughout the text, narrative is an explicit medium for identification. Hence, I give most 

attention to Kristof and WuDunn’s rhetorical appeals to pathos. 

Kristof and WuDunn’s explicit incorporation of individual stories to interpret “faceless” facts 

and data indicates their cognizance of the power an individualist focus in persuading Americans 

to act. In fact, the authors claim that “social psychologists” (though they do not say who, when, 

or in what context) have found that we are far more likely to be moved on behalf of an individual 

in peril than on behalf of an imperiled group – even if there is overwhelming evidence of 

atrocities against that group, and even if an individual is far away and unfamiliar (Kristof and 

WuDunn 2009, 100). We are even more moved to empathy by the plight of an individual that is 

somehow “like us.” Hence, in each narrative, Kristof and WuDunn create opportunities for 

consubstantiality between the narrative subject and the reader – “a typical bubbly teenager” who 



77   Morus 

 

flirts and gossips, a “middle-class woman” who wears blue jeans, or a mother’s devotion to her 

child. At the same time, each narrative subject embodies characteristics and values that are 

revered within American culture. While perhaps suggestive of some aspects of the authors’ 

worldview, these choices certainly provide a revealing glimpse into the worldview of their 

audience.  

Burke suggests that “every way of seeing is also a way of not seeing” (Burke 1945, 70). In his 

discussion of “terministic screens” he elaborates on this, stating that ‘‘any given terminology is a 

reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality, and to 

this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality’’ (Burke 1966, 45). In essence, the way 

a story is told – its narrative arc, the heroes, victims and villains, even its descriptive adjectives – 

suggest both that narrative’s reflective and productive potential. These choices act as interpretive 

screens that filter facts to shape audience perceptions. At the same time, the most successful 

narratives – overtly fictional or otherwise – resonate with an audience because they reflect 

commonly held values, assumptions, and cultural truths. As a highly individualistic culture that 

reveres determination, perseverance against great odds, self-reliance and the pursuit of progress, 

narratives reflecting these qualities resonate particularly strongly with American audiences. 

Similarly, audiences feel less connected to characters with unfamiliar customs, and culturally 

unrecognizable values. Attention to a narrative’s terministic screens can hint at both a target 

audience’s pre-existing assumptions and a rhetor’s persuasive motives. 

 

Part 3: Looking Through Terministic Screens 

 

Kristof and WuDunn’s recurring narrative choices indicate certain embedded assumptions. Their 

terministic screens inherently privilege Western superiority, unquestioningly glorify competitive 

capitalism, and continue the American myth of progress as a supreme force for global good. 

Perhaps this also explains the authors’ repeated frustrating emphasis upon an individual’s 

“primitive” life of “squalor,” and the “shack” or “hovel” in which she lives. In stressing an 

individual’s determination to persevere against all odds – to overcome adversity in the pursuit of 

progress – the authors invoke audience identification. Yet, these descriptive adjectives also 

indicate the audience’s (and perhaps the authors’) assumption of the cultural superiority of the 

“civilized” West. Kristof and WuDunn do not challenge this assumption, abstaining from a 

corresponding consideration of the mechanisms by which the unjust distribution of global wealth 

was accomplished and maintained, thereby forgoing the opportunity to invite their audience to 

consider that it is precisely that wealth – and the subsequent lack of competition for life-

sustaining resources – that affords Western cultures such “civilization.” I daresay we do not have 

to look far to see the thin line separating our Western “civilization” from Lord of the Flies.  

Moreover, in what may be a hint to their own views as much to their strategic persuasive 

choices, Kristof and WuDunn stress that the West, specifically Americans, are not to blame for 

the proliferation of gendered brutalities like human trafficking. And yet, they stress that these 

problems cannot be overcome without our contributions. I am conflicted as to how to interpret 



Audience-conscious Persuasive Genius  78 

 

these assertions. In some ways it is a keen choice. It trades discussions of Western complicity 

and culpability for appeals to the professed American dedication to the value of each individual 

human life, essentially assuming both Western moral superiority and, by extension, an obligation 

to live up to these ostensible American values by acting to save “less civilized” peoples from 

themselves. At the same time, it seems crucial to their cause to consider the ways that naturalized 

normative Western (and particularly American) excess contributes to global economic inequities. 

This omission borders particularly dangerous territory when, in speaking of curbing birthrates in 

the developing world, the authors cite “some evidence” (Kristof and WuDunn 2009, 135) 

suggesting the male biological imperative to hyper-reproduce. Though compellingly argued, this 

may also imply that the “less civilized them” are closer to their animal selves then the “more 

civilized us.”  

Still, these (limited and limiting) narratives, and the American myths to which they nod, 

remain effective rhetorical choices. By imbuing these narratives with allusions to American 

values, beliefs, and assumptions, even at the expense of complex views of the cultural “other” on 

their own terms, audiences can identify with the characters without having to interrogate Western 

cultural complicity in global injustice at large, or vis-à-vis their own standpoint. Further, in 

repeatedly highlighting elements of individual narratives that reflect consubstantiality between 

the reader and the body in peril, the authors create a climate for reader empathy and action, even 

if it is rooted in a disingenuous field of consubstantiality. These strategies are not only evident in 

the narratives of effected women, but are also crucial to the narratives of those individuals who 

have taken action on behalf of affected women.  

Take the story of twelve-year-old Zach from Georgia (Kristof and WuDunn 2009, 54). Upon 

learning about modern human trafficking, Zach began a campaign to raise awareness and collect 

donations on behalf of affected women. Zach is a “social entrepreneur” (a term that itself 

resonates with American capitalist values) who used good ol’ american determination to make a 

difference – and by extension, so can you! Zach’s story is entrenched in the recurring theme of 

the ultimate universal correctness of American capitalist values. It also demonstrates another 

narrative strategy tailored to the book’s intended audience – associating the struggle to end 

global gender oppression with the American struggle for racial equality. This connection implies 

a transhistoric imperative to act toward ending the brutalities of gender oppression by creating a 

seamless teleological narrative that extends from the early abolitionist movement to the US Civil 

Rights Movement. The authors link this modern struggle to a past that, while contentious in its 

day, is now sanitized in popular discourse to appear as the inevitable result of Western 

civilization’s eternal march toward progress. Zach, as his story suggests, was moved to action 

precisely because he connected modern human trafficking with the trans-Atlantic slave trade. 

The chapter where we find Zach’s story, aptly called “The New Abolitionists,” is neither the first 

nor last time this connection appears. Parallels between American progress toward racial equality 

and the imperative to act against gender oppression resurface repeatedly. Early on, to 

demonstrate why the reader should care about something that, while certainly regrettable, is 

happening far away to someone else, and in any event seems beyond our control, the authors 



79   Morus 

 

highlight the activism of early British abolitionists. The authors then link the imperative to act 

toward progress with American self-reliant perseverance, suggesting that this book “is not a 

drama of victimization, but of empowerment” (Kristof and WuDunn 2009, xxii).  

Adding weight to the book’s dominant themes, some significant sub-currents undulate 

throughout, one of which manifests as a bias against intellectualism and academic thought. 

Kristof and WuDunn frequently question the usefulness and applicability of the scholarly studies 

they reference, which, as previously mentioned, they do not cite in an intellectually useful way. 

Further, the authors dismiss academic contributions to understanding global gender injustice as 

an “ivory tower” waste of time, and criticize scholarly debates about human rights issues and 

academic attention to gender-sensitive legal reforms for their limited impacts. Also exemplified 

in narrative form, this sub-current manifests in the authors’ telling of Sunitha’s story – a “middle 

class” activist from India with a graduate degree in social work. The authors describe with 

astonishment Sunitha’s “polished upper-class [. . .] English” which sounds “more like a 

university professor than an activist” (Kristof and WuDunn 2009, 57). What exactly does this 

mean? Given that English is the language of instruction in India – from primary school to the 

university – why is it shocking that an Indian would speak polished English, let alone an Indian 

woman with a graduate degree? And more to the point, why do they assume that scholars and 

activists are mutually exclusive categories? While both the dismissal of academic contributions 

and descriptions of Sunitha clearly serve the wider purpose of solidifying identification with 

popular audiences, this strategy is disquieting, particularly given the broad, multi-level education 

projects that form the backbone of their solution.  

This anti-intellectual undercurrent is further apparent in Kristof and WuDunn’s dismissive 

attitude and homogenized treatment of “feminism.” While their critique of the short-comings of 

the American “second wave” is spot-on in many regards, in failing to also account for second 

wave feminists’ contributions to Western gender consciousness and to gender equality under the 

law, their critique seems to equate to little more than pandering to the negative connotations of 

“feminism” lingering in the common American lexicon. While Western feminist consciousness 

is their main target, they also diminish global feminist contributions. Their flippant 

homogenization of feminism is made even more unsettling by the frequency with which the 

authors misappropriate the term “patriarchal societies” to refer to places where violent gender 

oppression is the normative default. What society on earth is not literally patriarchal, though 

admittedly each to a different extent and degree? This fallacious characterization of patriarchy 

further ingrains the “civilized us” versus “uncivilized them” paradigm. In fact, the two go hand-

in-hand, in some ways also reflecting similarities with their characterization of the American 

struggle for racial equality. Essentially, “we” are gender-sensitive (and racially sensitive), not 

because feminists fought for gender equity, social consciousness and legal inclusion, sometimes 

at great peril and dear cost to themselves, but because “we” are civilized, and gender equity (like 

racial equity) was the natural progression of civilization. It follows, then, that gender (and racial) 

oppression is no longer an issue for the civilized “us.” By extension, gender oppression still 

exists in places where “they” are “less civilized,” precisely because “they” are “less civilized.”  



Audience-conscious Persuasive Genius  80 

 

More urgently, with this sweeping dismissal Kristof and WuDunn miss an opportunity to 

highlight how entrenched attitudes worldwide contribute to the specific gendered violence that 

the authors seek to mitigate. This is exemplified through Zoya’s narrative – a 21 year-old 

“middle-class” Afghani woman, who, in “wearing blue-jeans [. . .] looked more like an 

American than an Afghan” (Kristof and WuDunn 2009, 68). The authors call attention to Zoya’s 

assertion that it is appropriate to beat one’s wife when she is disobedient (Kristof and WuDunn 

2009, 69). Their image of Zoya at once allows the audience to identify with her (middle-class, in 

jeans), while stressing that in “less civilized,” “patriarchal cultures,” women are often complicit 

in their own subjugation. Yet, this ignores ways that the global condition of womanhood 

manifests through the gender-disproportionate violence women continue to endure in our own 

country and throughout the Western world – where, incidentally, women are also still frequently 

complicit in their own subjugation.  

Kristof and WuDunn forego another golden opportunity to complicate overly-simplified “us” 

versus “them” paradigms by all-but-ignoring the treatment of women during the 1990s wars in 

the former Yugoslavia, a fully developed, relatively wealthy, highly gender-conscious society 

prior to the wars. The vicious use of war rape in Bosnia, which arguably received extensive 

attention precisely because it took place in “civilized” Europe, raised global awareness of the 

prevalence of sexual violence against women in war, and helped birth the legal precedent for 

prosecuting war rape as a crime against the violated woman. Although military codes have 

prohibited war rape since the late twelfth century, war rape has most frequently been treated as a 

shameful but unavoidable consequence (the body of woman as a victor’s spoil). On the rare 

occasions war rape was prosecuted, it was treated as a property crime against the man to whom 

the violated woman “belonged,” or a crime against the honor of her family or community. 

Kristof and WuDunn could have elaborated the Bosnian case as an example of how, even in 

“civilized societies,” the vilest face of gender inequity can come to bear on the bodies of women. 

They could have challenged the myth of inevitable progress toward gender equity in “civilized” 

societies, and elaborated the globally entrenched nature of gender oppression by demonstrating 

that even under international law, the conception of women as fully human is less than a decade 

old. Unfortunately, Kristof and WuDunn’s lack of attention to the latent potential the Bosnian 

case presents for more sophisticated understandings of the truly global nature of gender 

oppression also represents a missed opportunity to reverse the noble “us” versus the savage 

“them” paradigm that is overrepresented in this text. 

Still, even given that their rhetorical choices rely on artificial notions of Western gender 

equity, and advance unquestioned assumptions of Western cultural superiority, I cannot conclude 

that this is actually suggestive of Kristof and WuDunn’s worldview. In fact, several factors are 

more indicative of a conscious rhetorical choice to identify with a broader popular audience 

amidst the current American climate of intellectual demonization. It would be easy to dismiss 

Kristof and WuDunn as unconscious henchmen of the status quo were it not for their careful 

elaboration of these elements. Their nuanced advocacy of a multi-layered education solution, 

their attention to the importance of empowering people to engage locally resonant programs and 



81   Morus 

 

projects that respond to local needs, and their clear admonishment of a “silver bullet” solution – 

a reality-check that real change is slow, riddled with set-backs, and requires hard work and 

sustained dedication – all suggest something more complicated at work. These elements 

represent the strongest evidence that some of their more critically questionable rhetorical choices 

are, in fact, part of a larger, audience-centered strategy. I conclude this essay by treating each of 

these briefly. 

 

Conclusions? 

 

Kristof and WuDunn see education as of primary importance at every level. They do not 

advocate a homogeneous approach with “enlightened” Westerners building schools to educate 

the “less civilized.” In fact, the authors note serious drawbacks to a top-down approach to 

education, which fails to consider the most immediate needs of local populations. (Building new 

schools is useless if those they seek to empower cannot access them.)  The authors stress that to 

alleviate gender brutalities, it is essential to change the entrenched systems and cultural realities 

that continue to drive them. In this sense, Kristof and WuDunn stress that while working toward 

legal reform is relevant, it does not affect the attitudinal changes necessary to shift local realities. 

People’s life choices are limited by the options they recognize as available. Working with local 

organizations to develop locally viable educational opportunities for girls (and women) is key to 

affecting change upon oppressive realities. Kristof and WuDunn offer ample evidence to suggest 

that, for many of those most brutally oppressed, education can translate into empowerment and 

choice. But, international aid/development projects must take a comprehensive, micro-level, 

heterogeneous approach, attending to local material needs and cultural realities. As such, another 

key to increasingly effective educational opportunities is balancing the Western drive to “help” 

or “save” these women with a nuanced understanding of their cultural norms, needs, and 

constraints.  

Kristof and WuDunn also advocate greater attention to international education/awareness in 

the United States, suggesting less ethnocentric American curricula and increased study abroad-

opportunities for students. American students need to develop greater global consciousness. This 

begins with curricular reform. Further, the kind of self- and global awareness that living abroad 

affords is crucial to helping American students (who will later become the nation’s decision- 

makers) understand the global impacts of their individual consumptive and broader political 

choices. This kind of “hands-on” field experience is more effective in the long term than 

throwing money at a problem from the safety of our living rooms. The authors illustrate this 

through the story of Harper, an American girl from the mid-west volunteering in Eastern Congo. 

Certainly, elements of Harper’s narrative pander to the materialistic sensibilities of Kristof and 

WuDunn’s target audience. We are told that Harper misses shopping at the mall and having a 

fast internet connection. She bemoans Eastern Congo’s paltry dating scene and extols being 

exalted as “queen” to the locals. Yet, the consubstantiality these narrative elements create is 

important. Like Zach, Harper is a “typical” American teen whose individual efforts have affected 



Audience-conscious Persuasive Genius  82 

 

change in individual lives, and through this, her own life has been transformed. The underlying 

message: If she can do it, so can you!  In fact, Kristof and WuDunn suggest that without the 

individual participation of “normal” Americans, the necessary changes will never be realized, as 

existing aid organizations suffer themselves from a host of entrenched problems impeding their 

effectiveness. 

This is another point where Kristof and WuDunn are exceptionally strong. While not 

denigrating the efforts and intentions of aid organizations, they offer several important critiques 

of dominant development/aid models. One issue is that aid organizations often do not conduct 

rigorous research on the effectiveness of their own programs for fear that calling their practices 

into question may jeopardize funding (Kristof and WuDunn 2009, 17). Another concern is that 

an old-fashioned paternalistic paradigm underscores many international aid projects, a “we know 

what is best for you” model for which Kristof and WuDunn offer excellent examples. A third 

concern is that many of the most financially secure aid organizations (as well as cause-driven 

celebrities) prefer high-profile projects in urban areas where they will receive maximum 

exposure. In fact, the most intense need is far away from urban centers, and high-visibility often 

comes at the expense of smaller projects that can empower a greater number of people, often 

among the most impoverished and needy. A significant portion of aid money is misspent, even 

wasted, on flashy projects, while more pressing, less expensive, but less glamorous needs go 

unmet. Further, Kristof and WuDunn stress that big funders ignore some of the most critical 

problems because their complicated solutions are neither cheap nor sexy. For example, the 

infinitely pressing need to attend to maternal health is a project which is neither cost-effective 

nor at the top of anyone’s agenda (Kristof and WuDunn 2009, 121). Yet, the simplest maternal 

health standards that we take for granted are not even an option for many of the world’s women.  

As they conclude, Kristof and WuDunn offer a sobering reality-check, asking audiences to 

bear in mind that there is no “silver bullet” solution to gender oppression. Change is slow, and 

even with assistance, individuals sometimes fail. After predicating the bulk of their appeal on 

narratives that invoke a sense of individual obligation to each individual human life, Kristof and 

WuDunn offer a quiet reminder. The issues they seek to mitigate are not really about the success 

or failure of one person, nor do they hinge on the inevitable march toward progress, one person 

at a time. Instead, real change is more a process than an event, a societal dance of sorts – two 

steps forward, one step back – requiring complex, multi-pronged approaches and heterogeneous 

projects over a sustained period of time. Further, just as the societies in need are made up of 

collections of individuals, so too are the audiences to which our authors appeal. As such, Kristof 

and WuDunn conclude with a simple call to action that offers four ways that every individual can 

take part in the solution in the next ten minutes, providing the audience with the kind of hope 

characteristic of conclusions to classic American stories. 

In all, while I am clearly not Half the Sky’s target audience, Kristof and WuDunn’s skillful 

audience-centered approach to this complicated problem is praiseworthy. Their employment of 

classic persuasive strategies and adroit rhetorical choices reflect a keen consideration of 

audience. The extent to which their choices are fully conscious is a matter of speculation, and a 



83   Morus 

 

thorough analysis to this end is outside the scope of this essay. Instead, I have posited the extent 

to which Kristof and WuDunn are astute persuasive agents – consciously crafting 

consubstantiality with their intended audience versus the extent to which their rhetorical choices 

reveal something about their own uninterrogated assumptions. I do not presume to have these 

answers – though I would suggest that the extent to which their choices are conscious indicates 

where these authors (and others like them) fall on the continuum between persuasive strategists 

and all-out political geniuses. 

 

  

Works Cited 

 

Aristotle. 1991. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Public Discourse. Trans., G.A. Kennedy. New York: 

Oxford University Press. 

 

Burke, Kenneth. 1945. A grammar of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

 

---. 1966. Language as Symbolic action: Essays on life, literature and method. Berkeley: University 

of California Press. 

 

---. 1969. A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.  

 

hooks, bell. 1981. Ain’t I a woman : Black women and feminism. Boston, MA: South End Press. 

 

Kristof, Nicholas D. and Sheryl WuDunn. 2009. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity 

for Women Worldwide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 


