Oh, the college was my own choice -- I was timid about leaving home, the college was small and only thirty-five miles from my hometown, and it had a good reputation. It was also, although very conservative, not as conservative then as it became in later years.
And I don't complain about the education I got there. The professors were there primarily because they wanted to teach, not because they wanted to get published, and teaching was what they spent their time doing. In four years, I never had a class taught by a Teaching Assistant (I didn't know there were such things until I'd graduated and gone on to a larger university for my Master's degree). The professors were all intelligent people who liked to engage the students in dialogue and the classes were small (tiny by modern standards: thirty was considered a very large class size) so everyone got a lot of individual attention.
The college did a lot towards teaching me to think. Unfortunately, from their perspective at least, the end result of my thinking was that I had no desire to be conservative, evangelical, or even Christian. I can't do anything about being white.
Your own background sounds fascinating to me. I'm sure if I heard you speak English, there would naturally be an Italian accent, but I bet I'd detect a British accent as well since I imagine you probably learned from a British native speaker, rather than an American one. If you heard me speak, I'd sound more or less like every U.S. newscaster there is, since I grew up in the north midwestern part of the country and the accent there is the one usually regarded as the "standard" U.S. broadcasting accent.
It's not only you who finds contemporary Black U.S. writers difficult to read. I have had no luck at all reading them -- and I hasten to say that the fault is with me, and not with the writers!
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-05-07 01:29 pm (UTC)And I don't complain about the education I got there. The professors were there primarily because they wanted to teach, not because they wanted to get published, and teaching was what they spent their time doing. In four years, I never had a class taught by a Teaching Assistant (I didn't know there were such things until I'd graduated and gone on to a larger university for my Master's degree). The professors were all intelligent people who liked to engage the students in dialogue and the classes were small (tiny by modern standards: thirty was considered a very large class size) so everyone got a lot of individual attention.
The college did a lot towards teaching me to think. Unfortunately, from their perspective at least, the end result of my thinking was that I had no desire to be conservative, evangelical, or even Christian. I can't do anything about being white.
Your own background sounds fascinating to me. I'm sure if I heard you speak English, there would naturally be an Italian accent, but I bet I'd detect a British accent as well since I imagine you probably learned from a British native speaker, rather than an American one. If you heard me speak, I'd sound more or less like every U.S. newscaster there is, since I grew up in the north midwestern part of the country and the accent there is the one usually regarded as the "standard" U.S. broadcasting accent.
It's not only you who finds contemporary Black U.S. writers difficult to read. I have had no luck at all reading them -- and I hasten to say that the fault is with me, and not with the writers!