On Speaking and Writing Well (Revised Literary Essay with new title)

As I sit in my graduate courses at City College understanding how adults come to learn, it is not lost on me that I can see most of the concepts and theories being applied to me as I absorb this information. In an earlier class we read a study where children who were just beginning to learn language were not being corrected by their parents or caregivers. I thought it was indicative of society since I did not have any knowledge of how other children were raised and the role language played in their development. We, my four siblings and I, were always corrected in our grammar at home. In hindsight, I find it ironic how my brothers and sisters and I were given a strong foundation in how to speak correctly from parents who never finished high school. For example, we could not use “ain’t” because it wasn’t in the dictionary and therefore not a word. Double negatives were a definite no-no and “we be” or “I be” never fell from our mouths.
My mother came to New York, going into the 7th grade of school, from Princeton, North Carolina. Her birthday, which is in April, greeted her with harsh northern weather, and itchy sweaters. Her new school greeted her with students and teachers who kept asking her to repeat herself. “You talk funny” is a comment she would hear daily until eventually my mother spoke very little. She felt stupid amongst her peers. School was hard for my mother when she came to New York. Everything was too fast and she was conditioned to the slower pace of the south. I don’t believe my mother ever caught up with the demands of her new school and after becoming pregnant with me her school career ended. Today, I can still detect a southern dialect in my mother’s pronunciation of certain words. Perhaps her reason for making sure we used Standard English was so that we would not be thought of as stupid, that when her children opened their mouths to speak the right words would find their way to the listener.
As I write this last sentence, I am reminded of my struggles with my son, Jordan, because when he was a toddler his pediatrician suggested speech therapy sessions for him. My son is not an only child but having a sister who is 5 ½ years older makes it seems as if he is sometimes. He’d play quietly by himself and motion or point when he wanted something. After a few sessions with Maureen, she said “Jordan has his own language but he won’t verbalize it unless he can say it correctly.” It is then I began to notice how intent my son was in listening to our conversations; I could almost see him trying to say the words in his head. Today, he is an IEP student, in his last year of middle school, hopefully, struggling with having thoughtful responses ready to share with his class much like his mother. I did not notice myself in my son until the writing of this narrative. I, too, struggle with having well thought out responses when called upon. I did not trust my memory to recall what I thought I read. I also did not want to be wrong, much like Jordan. But unlike my son, I love to read.
As an avid reader of 1980’s trash novels of Jackie Collins, Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steele, I developed a vivid imagination and began writing stories about my friend and reading them during classroom down town. Danielle Steele books became too formulaic because it seemed as if the same thing was happening in every book but with different characters in a different location. I was bored. However, I was a huge fan of Collins and Sheldon because their stories read like the movies. There was action, mystery and drama in Sheldon’s “If Tomorrow Comes.” Collins book “Hollywood Wives” was known for its scandalous and conniving characters who did anything to get what they wanted. In an interview I read of Jackie Collins she said each of her characters have traits of the famous people she knew, including her sister Joan. I tried to mirror that one aspect in my writing by creating characters using the names of people I knew, my classmates. Stories were great. They gave me audience and the attention I needed to show how clever I was with words. I liked to play with then, rhyme them, twist and break them to see what else they could do. They could make you laugh or cry, make you gasp with horror or incite you to riot. I realized writing was the most honest I could be with myself without ever having to say a word. With writing I tried to prove to myself that I had a voice, even if my tongue gets tied up by the nerves that infiltrate my stomach anytime my name is called on to participate. I imagine this is how my son feels.
Although I was the go to girl for story ideas, love letters to current, ex-boyfriends or girlfriends, I had not yet transferred this gift academically. My papers were a little too sing-songy and my ideas not clear or solid, so by the time I was in 12th grade English class, the novelty had worn off and I was just the cheesy girl who liked poetry.
I went to high school in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen area where most of the students were black and Latino. They hailed from various parts of the city I’ve never heard of as I did not travel too far from my Long Island City home. My grades weren’t great but the one class I knew I could hold my own when I applied myself was English. My twelfth grade teacher, Mrs. Spilotro, was a stickler for the little things. I would constantly receive my papers back with comments about one thing or another. One that stuck out the most was how my cursive lower case “k” wasn’t a textbook cursive “k.” She made me do a homework assignment over ensuring I wrote the letter to her satisfaction. My efforts in my assignments were lacking. I felt she was nitpicking at everything I did because I didn’t voluntarily participate in class. Our relationship continued like this for most of the year.
However this would change after one particular assignment. Mrs. Spilotro had been reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the class as we followed along in our books. Our books never left the classroom as they were shared with the other 12 grade English classes she taught. This did not give us the opportunity to explore the book on our own, to re-read what was read to us. I’m sure we had class discussions about it but I could recall none in my memory. What I do remember is after we had completed the book, we were asked to write a paper “using 12th grade English” to support or oppose our view of why or why shouldn’t The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn be taught in schools.
I supported the fact that the book should be taught in schools. I remember writing how Mark Twain did not use the word “nigger” to be derogatory but it was indicative of the time period, of how people referred to African-Americans in those days. I thought for Twain not to include it would do the story an injustice. Young boys referred to black men by calling him nigger on a daily basis. It didn’t matter the age of the speaker or receiver. Jim was expected to respond no matter who called him by that word. This paper was difficult to write because I knew my mother never liked the word having heard it hurled at her and her siblings as cars passed their front yard in Princeton. Knowing this upset my mother made me angry with the people who used it. I never liked how the word rang in my ears either but I couldn’t let my aversion for the word distract the fact that this book was being banned because of its language…language that was indicative of our history, that told the story of who we are and where we came from and how much we have grown.
When she handed all the graded papers back to the students, everyone received their copy except me. I thought to myself, here we go again. What’s wrong this time? As it turned out, nothing, it seemed as Mrs. Splilotro said to the class, “This essay was what I expected in your papers.” She read my paper entitled “Why Huckleberry Finn Should be Taught in Schools” to the class as I sat with mouth agape. As she’s reading students are looking around to see who this paper could belong to because the expected “A” students received theirs back. No one expected that it was mine.
When Mrs. Spilotro handed the paper to me I heard the collective gasp of my classmates. She went on to point out how I made use of the words “derogatory” and “consistently” and provided examples from the text and the time period to support my argument of why I believed this book should still be taught in schools. That was the first time Mrs. Spilotro gave me the slightest of smiles that I read to say “Well done.” It had a profound effect on me because I finally felt that she was proud of my work. Even now, the nitpicking of the lowercase “k” seemed a little like forcing me to comply with the norms of proper handwriting but perhaps my lack of effort in my assignments did not warrant a different kind of response. How could she respond to what wasn’t there? How could I expect more when I was giving less? Once I gave her work that I had put some effort behind, I was accepted, part of a club where she would be proud to display my work.
I learned that I could write academically as well as produce little stories to amuse my friends. I learned that I had many voices including a narrative one, an authoritative one and an introspective one when I felt strongly about a subject. This introspection is what I used to form my essay. Although I initially wanted to say that the book should be banned I had to think about what that meant to me as an avid reader. Was I really advocating for a book to be banned that was littered with a word that hurt my mother’s feelings? This point I realized was not valid enough argument to sustain throughout my paper. In the end I learned the difference between making up characters and situations and discussing and probing the characters and plots made up by authors and in doing so, I was able to develop some ideas that were my own despite what I felt internally.
Mrs. Spilotro did not recognize my linguistic competence until she read my essay. I did not recognize that I was flexing my linguistic abilities by writing stories that were playful and fun, speaking in a familiar and conversational tone with my classmates and then submitting an essay that caused me to think about why I was for or against an issue. This is when I first discovered that using academic language offered a different kind of praise than the creative writing language. For me it was the best of both worlds because I had friends who couldn’t wait for the next story and I had a teacher who knew I had what it took to produce a good academic essay.