What I hoped to learn from this class is the importance of equality within an academic setting. To me, taking a course like “African-American Literature” seemed like an answer to dealing with a lack of representative classes one can take at Geneseo. Geneseo’s Learning Outcome for Baccalaureate Education (GLOBE) promises its students will develop broad and specialized knowledge, intellectual and practical skills, and integrative and applied learning appreciation. What stood out to me was the learning outcomes of each of these skill sets, more specifically, the learning outcomes for intellectual and practical skills. The seventh out of eight learning outcomes is ‘diversity and pluralism’; it reads, “to work effectively in a pluralistic society, recognizing and respecting diverse identities, beliefs, backgrounds, and life choices; to practice effective communication and collaboration across diverse communities and organizations; to critically reflect on the reasoning and impact of one’s personal beliefs and actions.” While it is great to see our college dedicated to incorporate these goals for students to take away after leaving Geneseo, I will admit that I’m still reluctant towards how much information and cultural understanding students take away from elective classes like this one. Continue reading “A Seat at the Table is Necessary”
Use Your Voice…It Matters
This semester, I truly feel as though I have grown as a student and an overall member of society. Professor McCoy’s class is more than what the course description says. We read the incredible works of African-American Literature and by using these works McCoy teaches us how to be better and humane citizens, urging us to use our voice, be activists and stand up for what we think is right. By having us write blog posts, McCoy has given us the opportunity to have a voice, spread awareness, call out issues in society, and demonstrate our thought processes and respond to each other’s deeper questions. This class has lit a spark inside me and set me on a new path, a path where my voice and language is the most powerful tool I have.
Trusting the Process
“Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.” –Victor LaValle, Big Machine.
Reflecting on where I was in February, I see that I started this semester with a lot of doubt. In my first blog post, I wrote about my lack of confidence and my goal to improve my skills as an English major through repetition and practice. In class, Dr. McCoy encouraged us to ask questions and admit when we didn’t know something. Through this, I learned that while self-doubt can be inhibiting, it can also provoke amazing conversations which will ultimately challenge you to produce stronger arguments. I was always a perfectionist and I refused to admit that I did not have all of the correct answers, which caused great hesitation when I wasn’t sure of my argument. In my last blog post, “What’s in a name?” I was significantly more confident in my claims and admitted my lack of knowledge on the Bible. I confessed to my readers that I did not know the significance of Solomon’s name. Then I received a very helpful comment by Sarah Holsberg filling in the gaps in my argument. This experience (and this class) has taught me that by simultaneously trusting and doubting myself, others, and institutions, I will gain the most out of my experiences. Continue reading “Trusting the Process”
Recognition in Accomplishment
“The Americans are a brave, industrious, and acute people; but they have hitherto given no indications of genius, and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their morality or character….Where are their Foxes, their Burkes, their Sheridans, their Windhams, their Horners, their Wilberforces?—where their Arkwrights, their Watts, their Davys?—their Robertsons, Blairs, Smiths, Stewarts, Paleys and Malthuses?—their Porsons, Parts, Burneys, or Blomfields?—their Scotts, Campbells, Byrons, Moores, or Crabbes?—their Siddonses, Kembles, Keans, or ONeils—their Wilkies, Laurences, Chantrys?—or their parallels to the hundred other names that have spread themselves over the world from our little island in the course of’ the last thirty years, and blest or delighted mankind by their works, inventions, or examples?”–Sydney Smith, “Who Reads an American Book?” 1820
Growing Pains
Canadian poet, Dionne Brand, delicately states, “My job is to notice… and to notice that you can notice.” When I first read the syllabus at the beginning of the semester, I glanced over this quote without giving it too much thought. Now, at the end of the semester, I think that this quote perfectly sums up my experiences as a second semester junior at SUNY Geneseo. I have come to the realization that the concept of noticing has come up many times both in my academic career and personal life, often creating an overlap. I have noticed things throughout this course both about the literature read and my growth as a student, all while my peers were noticing things about themselves. It was not always easy to grasp the teachings of this course and the messages through the literature, but for that, I am so grateful as the challenge of this course has implemented my growth immensely. Continue reading “Growing Pains”
We Do Language
Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our human difference— the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of our life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
At the beginning of the semester, I selected the above epigraph by Toni Morrison to ground myself in the course texts for African-American Literature. I was drawn to this epigraph because it seemed to connect many of the earliest sources we encountered, including Call and Response, Big Machine, The Songs are Free, and “The danger of a single story.” Considering these sources in my first blog post, “Occupation of Space,” I indicated that my goal for the semester was to understand the use of space with relation to the course texts in order to better understand how language is a measure of life. I quickly found that if I were to focus exclusively on this goal, I would be missing the depth and breadth of African-American literature. That’s not to say that space was absent or less relevant in certain texts, but rather that observing space could not satisfy my need to examine the many facets of the literature. However, I was able to hold onto my selected course epigraph throughout the semester, and with the accumulation of texts I have developed a greater understanding of and appreciation for Morrison’s words. Continue reading “We Do Language”
Final Reflective Essay
“Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men”- Victor Lavalle.
I remember when I first scanned over the syllabus the week of classes beginning in January, I saw that we were required to write ten blog posts and I was a tad intimated. I had always thought about writing a blog but had always found the actual act of doing so, time consuming and sometimes frustrating. I doubted that I would be able to find connections and topics that I could post about (without sounding totally incompetent), but thanks to Dr. McCoy and her constant encouragement to “unpack” I found that there was so much I wanted to discuss, and I found the blog to be a place where I could be “heard” as I do not like to speak out in class.
Continuing along the lines of doubt, I went back to my first blog post which was focused around the Big Machine quote, “doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men” (Victor Lavalle). At the beginning of the semester I thought that the uncertainty and doubt I was feeling about graduate school applications and finding my first ‘adult’ job after graduation, compared to the feelings of doubt and uncertainty that Ricky first felt when he received that mysterious envelope one day while working as, “a janitor at Union Station in Utica, New York” (Lavalle, 3). As I read about Ricky holding the envelope and being weary about opening it, I could not help but compare it to my own life when I got the phone call from my mother about a letter in the mail from University at Buffalo. Although I was not there to physically hold the envelope, I was suddenly engulfed with this feeling of panic and doubt. Wanting to know so badly what the letter said, I found myself thinking back to the line, “you know that old saying about curiosity: curiosity is a bastard” (Lavalle, 6). The doubt does not stop there.
Another place that doubt is a constant in my life, is the voices of those people that learn I am studying English saying, “what are you going to do with that?” If someone had asked me that question at the beginning of the semester my answer would have been, “I want to teach.” Now here we are, a few short months (and a possible quarter life crisis) later, and my answer has completely shifted to, “I want to be an academic advisor.” I want to be the person that students can come to and feel that they are being heard; English is simply a stepping stone. Although the anxious moments over the years have been intense, I truly believe that all of those moments have led me to find the path that is the best for me. That is how I relate to Ricky in Big Machine. I seem to recall him having many moments throughout the novel where he did not know how he would make it, or if going to the Washburn Library was ever the right choice at all, but alas I cannot find the textual evidence to support this claim. Despite the doubt that Ricky faces, he manages to accomplish so much after arriving at the Washburn Library.
With encouragement from Dr.McCoy I began to look at other texts throughout the course where doubt was one of the central ideas/themes. I thought back to how Big Machine and “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler were connected and realized that there was also the shared feeling of doubt between both protagonists. Although the doubt is shown in different ways, one could say that the doubt Ricky and Gan face is centralized around one thing; the capability to follow through with a task. When Ricky arrives at the Washburn Library, he (among all the other unlikely scholars) is doubtful that he is meant to be there, “I leafed through each paper, looking for some mention of the Washburn Library… But not a damn thing stood out. I knew there must be some reason I’d been given these papers, but I didn’t understand the motive. I felt lost” (Lavalle, 49). Although it is never clearly stated throughout the novel, I would say that it is safe to assume Ricky clearly did not think he was cut out for the job. And this is where “Bloodchild” comes into play. “I had never killed one at all, had never slaughtered any animal. I had spent most of my time with T’Gatoi while my brother and sisters were learning the family business. T”Gatoi had been right. I should have been the one to go to the call box. At least I could do that” (Bloodchild, 11-12). The reader sees Gan struggle as he is told to go out and kill an animal and bring it back, he wrestles with this idea, and we see him doubt that he is capable of doing so. I too have felt incapable of completing tasks, or milestones in both my academic and personal journey. From wondering how I will do with beginning graduate school in the fall, to making sure I am being a good role model for my younger sister.
Often times people will laugh when someone says they truly related to a character in one way or another. Instead of simply laughing it off, maybe we should all start “unpacking” how we relate to that “person”, we could even learn something about ourselves along the way. Personally, I did not know that this much doubt consumed me until I read Big Machine and dived deep into Ricky’s character.
Changing the World One Idea at a Time
At the beginning of this semester, I posted a blog post “The Power of Sound” about Toni Morrison’s epigraph “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” Through this epigraph, I talked about how important it is to use the sound of our voices to portray messages. An example I used was of Fannie Lou Hamer, she was an activist who tried to register to vote and she got fired from her farming job for doing this. So, by using her sound and her language she became an activist and was able to extend her message to the world; through this, she became a role model for many people. This goes along perfectly with what we have been doing this whole semester in Dr. McCoy’s class. All of our voices matter and if we use them to spread the messages about what we believe in we can have the possibility to change someone’s world. One idea that I brought up in my past blog post is that “Just by using our sound, our voices can go a long way and we could inspire other people too.” This is still very true, when writing my blog posts, I always try to write in a way that I use my voice/ language to convey a message to whoever wants to read it, with the possibility of bringing a new idea to someone.
Just Notice
At the beginning of the semester I was first very drawn to the course epigraph, “my job is to notice… and to notice that you can notice” said by Dionne Brand. Within my first blog post of the semester, My Future Classroom Awaits, I discussed and explored this epigraph. Looking back on that first blog post I have found that my interpretation and understanding of not only this particular epigraph but also the course content has greatly shifted. Although this shift has taken place, I still find myself drawn to this epigraph even though I am understanding it through a new lens. Continue reading “Just Notice”
Moving on From the Either/Or to the Both/And
“My job is to notice… and to notice that you can notice”-Dionne Brand
Something that I’ve always found myself doing is categorizing things as I’ve always thought I was making my life simpler by doing this. However, as I began to engage with the texts assigned for this African-American literature class this semester, I started to realize how incredibly difficult and dangerous it is to put a single definition on something or someone as it causes a sense of restriction on the person or object. As I look back at the incredibly varied literature that we have engaged with this semester I have noticed that we have been presented with different perspectives to look through and it is up to us, as the readers, to notice these differences and then notice that they are all just as valid as one another because there is not just one way in which we can define anything or anybody.
In the context of my semester, this is what I believe Dionne Brand is saying when she says, “My job is to notice… and to notice that you can notice”. One must first notice their own perspective or definition of things. Then, they must also notice that their perspective or definition isn’t the definitive one, meaning that things in life are always open to interpretation and are not to be restricted to a single definition. Continue reading “Moving on From the Either/Or to the Both/And”