Lessons from Lit Class

Fun fact: I studied Literature in both undergrad and graduate school. 

Translation: I read... a lot! 

Over the course of my studies, I dissected a poem by Walt Whitman multiple times. It’s called “I Hear America Singing,” and it’s an ode to the harmonious rhythm of life in his country. It’s good (I mean, he was Walt Whitman), but, as I learned over time, it’s not the whole picture.

And that’s because the world Whitman wrote about is not everyone’s America.

One of the best classes I ever took was a study of African-American literature. Tommy Bryant, my small Christian college’s only Black professor at the time, taught this class twice a week to a room full of eight white girls. We’d read and talk about the structure, and form, and theme, and all the other classic stuff that comes with literature. 

And then, he’d unpack the real stuff for us. 

He’d lay out what it was to be these writers—to be detailing the African-American experience in their art. He’d tell us why they wrote. Why their voices were then and still are important today. He was an amazing teacher who spoke with authority and experience on his subject. It has only just occurred to me recently (thanks to a conversation with my friend Christy, one of the eight white girls in that class) how challenging at times that must’ve been for him. There Prof. Bryant was, being so honest about the Black experience—his experience—to a bunch of 20-year-old white girls at a Bible college in the middle of the Bible Belt. 

In his class, I read another poem called “I, Too” by Langston Hughes. It was written as a response to Walt Whitman’s work—a short but powerful statement to remind from Hughes to remind his readers that the America Whitman wrote about wasn’t the same America he lived in as a Black man. 

It wasn’t the same for him. 

For his family. 

For his people. 

For his race.

I’ve been thinking about this poem a lot lately. I’ve been thinking about how I had only an idea as a kid growing up that my world wasn’t the same as other peoples. I grasped it better as I grew up. I knew it in college when I read this poem, yes, but only in a distant and surface way. 

But now? I know it. Because how could I not?

In so many ways, I live in a different world than so many other people. My world is not always their world. My freedoms are not always their freedom. My rights are not always their rights. And for the most part, I move through the world blissfully unaware of this reality that other people are living in all the time. 

My Black friends? They are not afforded that same luxury. 

I’ve had a lot of conversations this summer with some of those friends about what their America looks and feels like. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts, read a lot of books, watched a lot of documentaries, and even enrolled in an online group to help try to me understand what it means to live in their world. Just this week alone, I’ve listened to somebody I love speak in real honesty about the fear she has to even go to the grocery store in her neighborhood as a Black woman right now. In her America, the fear of hate crime is so real it influences when and how she even buy her weekly groceries. 

I don’t know about you, but that’s not my America. It’s not the one I want for myself, my friends, or the future.  

And because of that, it’s my responsibility—our responsibility—to make sure I’m listening, speaking up, opening my eyes, putting my money where my mouth is, exercising my vote, offering my support to my friends in whatever way I can. I really truly believe we can break down the barriers that exists between these two Americas. I believe it as a Christian—that God wants unity for His people. 

I also believe it’s my responsibility to not just sit in the knowledge that there are different worlds. To not cry, and lament, and forget. But instead, to do better at making it better for all of God’s people. 

Because I, too want a better world for all of us.

And I, too have a responsibility to see it get here.