“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
My second class on Wednesday–Special Topics in Affrilachian lit–was moved from the Chem-Phys building, which smelled of body odor when we met there last week (ew), to the twelfth-floor English Department of Patterson Office Tower in the photo above, where we met last night. I walked out after class, and my heart was flooded with warmth. I have so many great memories of classes with writers Gurney Norman and Nikky Finney in this building. This current lit class is incredibly special to me because the professors, Crystal Wilkinson and Frank X Walker, are artists, and they speak and behave like artists, traits I miss so much in my working life. If you’re unfamiliar with their writing or the term Affrilachia, the latter coined by Frank, it mean an African American from Appalachia. Thanks to the media, when we think of Appalachia, we often think of it as a singularly white place, when in fact, it is pretty diverse. There are many reasons for that. Crystal and Frank are doing their part to change perceptions of the region, both as all-white and backward, among the many other stereotypes we carry. I’ve enjoyed their work many years before this class, so it is a real treat to hear them speak and guide and challenge Appalachian and “affrilachian” perceptions through literature, visual art, and music. If you want to learn about Crystal and Frank’s work, I highly recommend Crystal’s Birds of Opulence and Frank’s Black Box (although you could pick anything they’ve done and enjoy it). Being in their company talking about home, the mountains, and what it means to be Appalachian is precisely the inspiration I’ve been looking for to start my thesis writing. I feel incredibly fortunate to have landed in the class. P.S. The photo below, crappy as it is, is for Crystal Heis. We talked about Memorial Colliseum’s updates today, and I was pleased to see how beautiful the blue lights in the glass blocks are at night. I’ll take better photos when they’ve cleared all the construction junk.
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