Black Women/Black Literature

This essay was done on the basis of JoAnne Kilgour Dowdy interviewing Christina McVay, an instructor who teaches English in the Pan-African Department. When reading this, you would probaly never guess that Christina McVay is white. She discusses her non-conventional ways when it comes to her career, classroom, and her life. For instance, she got a position in the department when she was having a beer in a bar. There she met Wiley Smith who then was a coordinator for Communications Skills and Arts Division. They talked, and he thought she be great to teach in the department. Less than a week later, she was! In her classroom, she felt it necessary for her students to become comfortable with the black language, but first felt that they needed to be comfortable with her. In doing so, she came up with many exercises, one being the slang dictionary. This was where the students took a plain dictionary and filled it with only slang words, but they had to give the definition and the part of speech. This helped them and challenged the theory that Black English is bad and has no place in the classroom. It also gave respect to what she calls Consensus English. In the end, she talks of wanting to look up an old college friend and wondering if she is still that empowered and involved woman that she knew her to be.

I was very surprised when I read the essasy. Besides the fact that Christina McVay is white, but that she seemed so fascinated with black culture and the fact that she seemed so unnerved by the way that society has treated and defined black language. I loved the slang dictionary and felt that was a great way to incorporate Consensus English with Black English and how it applies to the students. Christina McVay is a great teacher and has an uncanny way of creating a bridge for her students to learn. I think that she felt that there is no way the students could possibly learn anything from her class if they could not find themselves in the writing---the literature. She respected their culture and helped them to embrace not only the black language but a bit of their own culture as well.