Black Women/Black Literature

In the interview between Joanna Kilgour Dowdy and Christina McVay, Kilgour Dowdy had questions to ask Ms. McVay and she was very ready to answer them without holding anything back. The day that Ms. Christina McVay went to visit her brother at his work place she did not expect to end up with a career change. I quote Ms. McVay when she said "I just stumbled into this department! That's been the story of life, you know? John Lennon said in one of his songs, Beautiful Boy, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."(pg.88) As a professor at Ohio State University, some of the classes she teaches are Oral and Written Discourse, The Legacy of Slavery in Literature and Pan-African Women's Literature. Teaching her students to love English and also to understand that the way that blacks also speak is acceptable and is part of their heritage and they should be very proud. Black literacy especially female's opened her mind and broaden her perspectives in life. Writers such as Toni Morrison, and Hurston helped her gain substance and teach her students the English language and their language make them unique in every perspective if put together Also in teaching her students she realizes she learns as much from her students as they learn from her. Being a white person and teaching Pan-African has taught her a lot. Her students have expanded her knowledge on blackness. 

To Ms. McVay "literature is not just an academic thing. It really is not. It's a life thing. The Black literature that I have read and most particularly the Black women writers, like Morrison, Hurston and both Margaret and Alice Walker, have made me a different person from who I was 20 years ago." Managing to realize that her love Pan-African literature has played a big factor on how she views life. Black literature is what she loves to teach even though she is a white women.

Reading this article was really interesting and enjoyable because the way she spoke was so similar to my twelve grade teacher I couldn't help comparing them. Just like Ms. McVay my teacher went by her own rules and taught in her own way. My teacher had a love for Black literature and it never occurred to me that another person of her background would feel the same way. I always enjoyed being in her class and she never made it seem as if the way we her students spoke English was no different from hers. She made the atmosphere as comfortable as Ms. McVay those with her students. I know that learning black literature especially female black literature should be a big part of life.