Black Women/ Black Literature

 

How has Black Literature inspired different cultures?  The interview “Black women/ Black Literature” between Christina McVay and Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, shows the power of Black Literature.  Christina McVay is a white woman from Portage County.  She studied at Kent state University in her undergraduate years, and majored in German and Russian.  She was very fond of language.  As a young girl, she grew up in a strict white community, where she had no insight on other cultures.  When she started teaching literature, she wondered why there were no black students in her class.  She ran into a black professor who worked at the same college as her, and received information on how to teach a Pan-African class.

Her teaching style made the black students comfortable with her.  She taught them that Black Literature/ Language is not improper English, but a “legitimate language.”  Not only did she teach her students to speak in the language they were comfortable in, but they also taught her something about their culture.  They learn from eachother, which is one reason why she likes her job.

            During the interview, Ms. McVay talks about her special gift with her students.  She says that she doesn’t know how she does it, but her students are really comfortable with her.  I identify with Ms. McVay because I to have the gift of making my students comfortable as well.  I don’t know what it is either, but students seem to be themselves around me, and I do the same.  It helps the class to be more active and fun.  And also being in African Diaspora and the World, which is a class about African American women in the world, is similar to Ms. McVay’s Pan-American course.  The course helps empower black women as well study the struggles that our ancestors went through.  The course allows us to talk in our “language,” although we cannot express ourselves in our paper like the way we talk, like Ms. McVay.  Black Literature is like regular English; however, it has more soul.