English Literature Inquiries
Crude, Fulfilling Correctness: Linguistics, Humanism and Life Histories
I recall reading Richard Hugo, and one thing I recalled was him saying “If you are a private poet, then your vocabulary is limited by your obsessions…In fact, most poets write the same poems over and over. Your obsession leads you to your vocabulary, your way of writing locates even creates your inner life. The relation of you to your language gains power.” So when I was seated bone straight in my English as a Second Language (ESL) course yet again with an older wrinkly woman who would snap at me if I daydreamed while she was explaining to me how to fix my cadence and have me repeat the same words over and over again. I understood then, this was one of the reasons I became an English major.
I had an obsession, perhaps it was birthed in me when I was seven and in those courses to refine my broken Patois dialect. I was taught my h’s were too harsh to my peers and my teachers, and that the rhythmic flow of my tongue to teeth was too abrupt, too aggressive.
So the education system felt it had to be fixed. At the age of seven I had to come to terms with the molding of my tongue according to the standards of American vernacular. When my educators told me no one understood what I was saying except for my family– it left me feeling flawed as a child. As I got into community college, I see I have internalized the same techniques that rid me of my accent: rereading textbooks over and over again, being a critical reader of peers' work, and their grammar. It's always a grammar thing, like when I was the head editor of my community college’s student newspaper Apex.
It was constant, it was like a familiar tune for me:
delete delete delete, backspace, backspace–
Type type–
It went on like that, and I never truly knew why I enjoyed it so much.
Correction is a part of the English Literature major, we write, we critique, we correct.
We are always conscious of conation, cadence, vocabulary, words, words and more words.
We are always analyzing.
It was a beautiful day depending on where you look. As I sat within my classes, around 3pm, I was effectively learning the history of Marginalized people within my Historical Literature course. It was the moment I began to enjoy history, or a moment where I realized I enjoyed it. The professors would pitch ideas to us, and we would interpret it based on the book we had that week. It went like that for the whole term. Under all of our studying and inquiries, the class was filled with agonizing realities of the genocide of Indigenous Natives, the African Slave Trade, the concentration camps of America geared towards Chinese and Japanese communities, and the Jewish Holocaust. When I transferred to UMass, I was determined to continue my quest to know more about various communities and their narratives. Studying humans, cultural history. It is a collective experience of scholarship and reflective narratives, theories and analysis. I found a connection with those in history who had been corrected much like I have, their identities seemed to be a flaw. Who can understand the means of having your identity taken away from you? To be reprimanded for your very existence, culturally, bodily, anatomically? The history of these communities seemed like anomalies of corrections through colonial rule. As an English literature-based Historian, I focused on the ‘imperfections’ of these individual narratives.
So my educational career went on to be filled with historical literature of all kinds:
African American literature
British literature Empire and the Making of the Novel in England
Critical Race Theory and Literature
Education and Literature
Post Colonial Literature Studies
Creative Writing with Marginalized Poets
Overlapping with my History courses:
Gender, Sexuality and Culture
Women and Revotions
History of Islam: Intellectual studies
Women and Economy in United States: Capitalism
When I dived deeper into my Historical Literary courses, it was heavily inspired by women of various identities, nationalities and backgrounds. Their words on a paper would leap to life, as if they were hidden from history until we - as scholars - had finally found them. These women, men and other people have found a home in my consciousness, leaving me burdened by their trials and tribulations and inspiring lives. As I worked my way through UMass, I recall the time I had the opportunity to be a part of newspaper organizations: Rebirth, Daily Collegian, Amherst Wire, just to name a few. I soon learned that submitting my work, from various topics such as: student interviews, professors, and life on campus. It had become a sort of power—or pleasure. It eloped me into the voices of those around me. I looked introspectively at everything, reading aloud my interviews, recoiling at my voice as I played the recorder of a prior interview I had to transcribe. Every moment, people’s voices would fill my head, and I would collectively do the same thing I have always done: backspace, backspace, type, type, type, write- Over their bad use of words, or the ums, and uhs, of their cadence. I realized, I have become a part of this system of institutionalized power, of corrections and scholarly guidelines of academia.
Each interview brought me into the present history I didn't realize. It was like an archive of information, similar to the very history I read in my textbooks; I was effectively becoming a part of the living history of future scholars with the institutionalized corrective English we all adhere to. Literature has become a part of me, more than I thought. It is all an artifact of academia that binds us together through corrections, and compulsions of others who passed long before us. I can say that through my pondering and inquiries within vast ways of literature and writing, it brings me back to my native tongue. I feel as if I can not speak of how I feel in my native language, the words are too heavy, too quick, too different. My perfections through scholarly work have left me as a ghost of history. I cringe at the mere sound of my dialect, and smile when I hear the familiar speech of it on another. The language of English, to study, versus my willingness to speak my own mother tongue, is something intimate. English becomes a part of our body, or soul, it's so interwoven, we can't imagine life without it.
I remembered how English had been my friend at one point. A benefit that centralized itself as the American Dream. It had bound my grandmother and I together. I often wondered if I studied English because my grandmother who is from Kingston, Jamaica could not read or write. I found myself reading simple letters from her friends or family members, and writing down responses for her.
I recall encouraging her to read and write the alphabet when I was 9 because she was trying out schooling for herself.
I wondered how her Patois sounded to me when I was younger, I could hardly remember. I understand the cadence was poetic, distant, loving and sweet. Like water, flowing waves, loose tongue, she always sounded melodious, like she was singing. I recall when she said I should be a teacher, and I nodded, not taking it to heart since I was far too young to know what I wanted to be. The kitchen had sunlight pouring in, and I was at the kitchen table with her, armed with a pencil, and paper.
“This is A…you can use it with Ant, And, Apple…” I went on, annunciating every syllable in order to iron out her own accent as she repeated after me.
And she nods, reiterating, and smiling at me, “You are such a good educator. You are so smart.” She would coo to me, when we did our breaks.
I wondered if that is why I have a fascination with literature now.
Through my grandmother perhaps it represented freedom.
From an Arabic movie called The Color of Pomegranates, directed by Sergei Parajanov (1969), “Books must be wellkept and read, for books are Soul and Life. Without books, the world would have witnessed nothing but ignorance. Read aloud for people to hear, it will benefit their souls, for many are unable to read what is written.” English has been an oppressor for me, and the mirror that shines all my imperfections. Yet, it was similar to a double edge sword; simultaneously becoming a freedom song to my grandparents on the path to a better life in America. The dichotomy of English will always be my corrector, examiner and passageway to who I am. It has taught me that as I look throughout history, our hands provide our humanity. Our hands are a passport through historical pennings I find myself reading both in my freetime and in classes. But our tongues are the oldest keepsakes of our History. No matter what we speak, it is an archive of traditions, folklore, and identity that I am fortunate enough to consume as an English Literature historian.