“My Summer Vacation”: English Writes Back

Welcome back, people of Hope, and welcome class of 2023! It has been a summer of big changes in the English Department. We’ve said a fond goodbye to retiring professors Beth Trembley and Dianne Portfleet, we’ve regretfully seen Prof. Kendra Parker and office manager Raquel Niles go off to new jobs with our good wishes, and we’ve said “see you in a while” to faculty on leave and on sabbatical. We’ve also been joined by four additions to the faculty ranks: Susanne Davis, Lisa McGunigal, Emily Tucker, and Michael Brooks. Please say hello if you see them!

Here are a few little updates on our hard work and play this summer as we waited for the students of Hope to come back again.

Rhoda Burton drove up to Canada to take care of a Mennonite auntie who had a hip replacement. One evening Rhoda got Aunt Helena, aged 94, talking. She said dreamily that when the four littlest were sleeping head to toe like sardines in a shared bed, their dad had awakened them. “Come girls! I have a surprise!” In the barnyard he had spread a blanket. And there they all saw for the first time the aurora borealis.  

This dad had once cut a single strawberry into seventeen pieces so they could each have a taste. Which was better, the aurora borealis, or the strawberry?  “A dad who wakes you up at 2:00 a.m. to give you a memory—that’s forever.”

Marla Lunderberg had some big adventures. “Pop culture might let you recognize the temple in this photo as a setting from Tomb Raider. My own response to the immensity of Ta Prohm Temple in Angkor, Cambodia, and to the even greater power of the trees growing through the walls, is to be humbled at the small part I play in the passage of time on this earth. This past May, I visited Japan and South Korea with three colleagues as we sought to increase Hope’s global connections; afterwards, my husband joined me to explore some of the wonders of Vietnam and Cambodia.”

Stephen Hemenway ventured forth to direct and teach 82 students for May and June terms in the Hope College Vienna Summer School–his 44th year in this role. Cultural highlights included the world premiere of Peter Pan ballet in Vienna, the Laterna Magica production of The Little Prince in Prague, and a stunning performance of opera Tales of Hoffmann in Bratislava. Climbing the Austrian Alps, dinner-boat rides in three countries, and a musical performance by 16 Hope students were most memorable. Visits to Mauthausen concentration camp, the European Union office, the Gymnasium Kundmangasse, the Habsburg tombs, and Mozart’s house made classes come alive. 

“Doc” jousts with Lian Robinson in the Alps (video by Mia Van Erp)
Dr. Verduin with York Minster behind her

Kathleen Verduin writes in: “What a summer. Spent ten days at Dartmouth, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Historical Society doing more research on the American interest in Dante, and finished my essay on Dante and James Russell Lowell. And then a two-week jaunt to England!”

Susanne Davis, one of our visiting professors, shared: “This summer I wrote half of the second draft of my novel in progress, Stray Dog Watch Over Us, taught an online graduate creative writing class for Southern New Hampshire University, and started a Youtube channel: “How to Create a Writer’s Life.” Also, this summer, the Connecticut Press Club gave first place to my essay ‘The Power of Education’ originally published in The Fredericksburg Review.”

Pablo Peschiera is here with an important pupdate: “The best parts of summer were spent with either my mother (who—with my beloved stepfather, John—moved last year to live near me), my daughter Violet, or my dog, Stanley. Violet stayed with me all summer and worked in an ice cream truck (I got no free ice cream out the deal) before she left for Amsterdam to study sociology. Here is a short video Violet and I filmed of Stanley being cute.”

We received a joint update from Jesus Montaño and Regan Postma-Montaño:

The bests from a strangely epicurean summer.

Best food was Thai by Day (Day is the name of the owner; they also are open at night). Best sweets belong to the cookies from Midnight Cookie Co. that we had for Regan’s birthday party. As their name suggests, they open late and stay up late.

Favorite beer: Even More Jesus by Evil Twin Brewing; Tropic Haze by Silver City, a close second. Favorite scene: outside of Port Angeles, WA, overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca—Victoria, BC in the background. We saw a whale on the ferry trip back. 

The best sandwich of the summer season was the one Jesus had after his emotional paper at the Children’s Literature Association conference. Several people cried in the audience; he did not blame them: children separated from their parents is heinous, whether the ones happening now or the ones that happened once upon a time.

Bill Moreau writes: “This past May I taught a Senior Seminar class on Hope’s campus.  It ended on Friday, May 31.  At 8:30 AM on Saturday, June 1, I left campus with Professor Tony Donk of the Education Department to teach a June Term in Liverpool, England.  On one of our weekends, we ventured to Edinburgh, Scotland.  This is our group photo atop Arthur’s Seat, a (thankfully inactive) volcano just outside of the city.  It was breezy and our location allowed a beautiful view of both Edinburgh and our group of fantastic students (two of whom are English Secondary Education majors).”

Another traveler was Curtis Gruenler: “I attended the annual meeting of the Colloquium on Violence and in Innsbruck, Austria, where I presented with Prof. Dennis Feaster from the Social Work program on ‘Positive and Negative Mimesis in Communities of Care for Children with Intellectual Disabilities.’ The conference included a trip to Stams, site of a thirteenth-century Cistercian monastery. I also got to attend the first soccer game ever played in the University of Notre Dame’s stadium, a friendly between Liverpool and Dortmund, with my son Sam, who is starting his sophomore year there.”

William Pannapacker shared: “I taught ‘Banned Books’ in May, June, and July, continued directing the Mellon Grand Challenges Initiative (now exploring a two-year extension), and developed a new proposal on community-based partnerships. ‘Whitman at 200’ appeared in the North American Review, and my Twitter satire project now has nearly 74,000 followers (‘I do not have a lawn, but get off it nonetheless’). I took my three daughters to a 20-year reunion in Philadelphia and spent as much time with my family as possible. Also, I joined Grace Episcopal Church, became more active at CrossFit, and kept the top off the Jeep all summer. 

Gregory Rappleye “spent the early summer finishing up my (5th) full-length poetry manuscript, Ventrilo, which is in circulation among the presses. A number of the individual poems have already done well on the contest circuit, so I am hopeful. Toward the end of July, I delivered a poetry reading in St. Paul, Minnesota, and then spent some extended writing time at Macalester College, where I worked on the continuing re-write of Ugarte, my (1st) novel. Before flying back to Michigan, I put the first three revised chapters into envelopes and email attachments and sent them off.”

For Mike Owens, this was the “Summer of T-Shirts.” “Between early June and mid-August, our family of four collected eighteen, none of which we purchased in a conventional retail transaction (and none of which were stolen). In the spirit of ‘Been there; done that; got the t-shirt,’ we have an assortment of travel, race, summer camp, college recruiting, and non-profit foundation tops, each of which has its own story.”

  • Sunset on Willoughby Gap, Vermont

And Natalie Dykstra, still away on an NEH Fellowship, sent this update: “I’ve had some adventures this summer, including a return trip to Paris with a faculty/student research team at the American Library – read that story here.  The highlight has to be the long weekend my husband and I stayed on Roque Island, off the coast of Maine, owned by the descendants of the woman I’m writing a book about – Isabella Stewart Gardner.  The island is a working farm with sheep, hayfields, and milk cows, and a wildlife and forestry research site.  To wake up to this view with its sea breezes in the mornings was a little slice of biography-writing heaven.”

Roque Island, owned by the Gardner family

10 Literary Vacations to Tide You Over Till Summer

Ah, the last few weeks of the Spring semester. There’s so much left to learn and do, and yet we find our minds, on occasion, straying to thoughts of vacation. So, in no particular order, here are 10 of our favorite literary vacations. They will sweep you away… and have you back home just a few hours later!

  • Stay at a pensione in Florence and go sight-seeing with fellow travelers alongside Lucy Honeychurch in Forster’s A Room with a View.
  • Travel with Jake Barnes in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises from Paris to Pamplona for the running of the bulls (and some fishing on the side).
  • Sneak along with poets on a secret romantic journey to Yorkshire in A.S. Byatt’s gorgeously-written tour-de-force, Possession.
  • Tour Europe while learning about art with Amy March in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (or its sequel, if you’re in the U.K.).
  • Follow the madcap adventures of Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog) as they row down the Thames in Jerome K. Jerome’s comedy classic.
  • Join Thea Kronberg for an idyllic southwestern retreat in Willa Cather’s Song of the Lark.
  • Visit Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, and sleep in the sparest of spare room beds along with Anne and Diana in Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.
  • Cut a rug in Italy with fresh-faced American gal Daisy Miller in Henry James’ novella of the same name.
  • Follow a group of hippies as they set up a memorable getaway commune in Lauren Groff’s powerful novel Arcadia.
  • Tour the Peak District of England with Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Do you have any favorites to suggest?

“Why Study English and Business?” An Alumni Feature by Matthew Harkema ’19

As my four years at Hope College are coming to an inevitable end, the reason why I committed myself to an English and Business double major is becoming significantly more relevant to my vocational choices.

In the past I’ve had many agitating conversations, trying to explain my reasons for choosing two opened-ended majors, even though this leaves my fate  dependent how I decide to use the overlapping skills I have attained from each discipline. These last four years, I’ve gotten used to clarifying that this unlikely pair does in fact work hand-in-hand to family, friends, and Hope faculty. This choice is now coming to fruition. With just a few weeks until graduation, I find myself reminiscing about my journey to find my niche.

My first steps on campus were in my father’s shoes. I sought to become an Engineer, but that dream was short-lived, as I found myself drowning in a life that wasn’t meant to be. One semester later, I switched my major to Business for practical reasons — because it would open up a wide range of opportunities for me in the future; because I would learn critical thinking, financial, and analytical skills; and, let’s face it, because I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do yet. Sophomore year came around and life seemed to be moving along smoothly, but it still felt as if I was wandering through college without a passion for the material I was learning.

I had yet to find an end goal for life after Hope College, and I found it difficult to maneuver through rigorous school work without one. That is, until I found a new sense of inspiration by adding an English major into the mix. Despite my doubtful conscience telling me that a degree in English might be impractical in today’s competitive job market, I made the life-altering choice to double major because of my love for writing and the broader understanding I gained from reading.

Becoming an English major veered me toward the path I believe I was meant be on. I have always felt myself to be a open-minded person, engaged in the intellectual side of the world. An English major allowed me to pursue my creative passions while simultaneously preparing me with skills that are transferable to other disciplines, like Business.

Even though the past few years were confusing and intensely stressful at times, as I tried to make sense of how I should employ the majors I chose, I have gradually found my answer to the question that’s been haunting me since I first arrived for orientation. I constructed a plan for the future that would tie in my passions for reading and writing into my occupation in a business setting.

Though it may be obvious to some, and unclear to others outside of the Liberal Arts bubble, many of the skills learned in Business classes overlap with those of English. This remarkable realization indicated to me that I was onto something and gave me a sense of drive for the work I was doing. I put the pieces of the two areas I excelled in together to find the bigger picture. I decided to use the writing, communication, and critical thinking skills from my English and Business majors to hopefully find my calling in Public Relations.

My English degree has allowed me to view the world through a critical lens and has enabled me to capture observations through researching and writing narratives of my own. My Liberal Arts education came full circle when I realized that my Business degree showed me how organizations and societies operate through the behavior and synergy of decision makers in the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. With this understanding, alongside the ability to understand and connect with people that I owe to my English degree, I feel empowered to be a positive ambassador for the brand I choose to represent.

I have faith in my potential, formed through a well-rounded Hope College education. In a future Public Relations position, I would have the chance to gain support and understanding for clients, as well as the opportunity to influence people’s behavior and opinions through blogs, conventional media, and social media. I will employ my narrative writing strategies through various forms of communication to manage and maintain reputations, building a relationship with the target audience through credibility. My post-graduation aspiration is to shape public perceptions of the organization I work for by increasing awareness of its goals and ambitions.

Although I am unsure of what the future holds for me, I find the work of a Public Relations position at a socially responsible company appealing. I hope to use my English and Business degrees to work toward resolving some of the moral and ethical issues that arise in realms of business. In these situations, my goal would be to encapsulate the truthful narratives of sticky situations with concise writing, complex problem-solving skills, and the insights I feel equipped to gain into the inner workings of society and the minds within it.

Hope College Academy of American Poets Prize 2019

We’re delighted to share this year’s recognized poets and poems below. Congratulations to these talented student artists!

About the Prize

The Hope College Academy of American Poets (AAP) Prize award is funded by the AAP’s University and College Poetry Prize program. The academy began the program in 1955 at 10 schools, and now sponsors nearly 200 annual prizes for poetry at colleges and universities nationwide. Poets honored through the program have included Mark Doty, Louise Gluck, Joy Harjo, Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, Sylvia Plath, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, and Charles Wright. The winning poet receives $100. 

About this Year’s Judge

Poet Todd Kaneko is the author of The Dead Wrestler Elegies (2014). His poems and prose have appeared in Bellingham Review, Los Angeles Review, Barrelhouse, PANK, the Collagist, and many other places. A recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop, he is currently co-editor of Waxwing and teaches at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

Winner

 
Kellyanne Fitzgerald’s “Road Trip”

Todd Kaneko writes:

There is a lovely surrealism to this poem, and also a kind of unpredictable sensibility, as the poem takes us from the speaker’s silence to that moment where they sit on their own tongue and listen to the words they are saying. I appreciate the elegant strangeness to this poem as it moves from the ribcage children to that request: “Kiss me,” the speaker says, which is the poem’s center in this dream about the tongue, about longing, and a disarming combination of desire and fear. And that moment at the end when the poem delivers the parenthetical about love, it follows a quietly violent description of a kiss that is as startling as it is quick. This poem is a journey through the body, and it keeps the reader off-balance so expertly to deliver that understated turn at the end. It’s a marvelously strange trip.

Road Trip

I dreamed that I was small, and my veins
were the size of highways, and we were puttering

around inside, throwing pebbles and listening
to the echo as they hit some vital organ.

What are we doing here, you asked,
and I had no answer. We climbed my tongue

with ropes, and sat at the top, listening
to the words cascading across my teeth.

Red lights stretch the dusk of my heart
like taffy. I am afraid I am a liar

and that the children in my ribcage
just want to be adopted. “Kiss me,”

I suggest, and your pupils shine black,
fingers slipping to grab the sides of my face.

(if this is not love I don’t know what is.)

 

Honorable Mention

Julia Kirby’s “A Billy Goat Rests on Dolomites”

Todd Kaneko writes:

This short poem shows such admirable restraint as it roots itself in an observational moment before allowing its strangeness, anchored by the simple image of the goat, to seep into the ground and the flowers. It all seems so tranquil and normal, and yet I can’t help but wonder where the wine comes from in the first stanza, and how it changes to blood in the second, a reverse transubstantiation of sorts, a disturbing miracle with no one around to witness but that goat who doesn’t seem to care. This poem takes its power from its simplicity, its concision, and its ability to surprise.

A Billy Goat Rests on Dolomites

A goat perches
atop a range of Dolomites.
Drinking from a puddle,
his beard drips with Italian wine.

Crimson sinks
into the mossy earth
below his hooves, turning clovers
into blood-soaked poppies.

The reflections
of Lago di Carezza
mirror in his eyes – brilliant
emerald and turquoise.

His head hangs low,
eyes glassy and content.

Six Student Snapshots: A Day with Writers Chen Chen & Hilary Plum

On March 7th, the poet Chen Chen and the writer Hilary Plum visited Hope College as part of the Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series. They visited classrooms, dined with students, answered questions, and read from their latest books. Chen Chen read from his acclaimed first book of poems When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, and Hilary Plum read from her new, celebrated first memoir Watchfires.

It was a cold day, even for an early March in Holland, Michigan. The spirits of the students were very much warmed, though, by the visits of Chen and Plum. Alongside many others, Kellyanne Fitzgerald, Ceilidh Holmes, Sarah Kalthof, Leah Asen, Sarah Simmons, and Allison Lindquist had meaningful meetings with the two visitors. Let their reflections below lead you through the day…

Kellyanne Fitzgerald ’19
Chen Chen Classroom Visit

Chen Chen visited our Advanced Poetry class, and led us in a series of generative ekphrastic activities. First, he asked each member of the class to contribute one verb. Then he pulled up a picture of an abstract painting by Paul Klee of what looked like several jumbled dominoes walking together. We spent about ten minutes working on potential titles for the picture. “Write one long title, and one short title. You can have fun with it, or be more serious,” he said with a smile. Good titles can be very difficult to generate, even for an accomplished poet like Chen Chen.

Later, Chen projected a painting by René Magritte and a second by Paul Klee. Chen closed the class with a prompt: use the verbs we’d written down at the beginning of class to make a poem about our own invented backstory for one of the paintings. I enjoyed having a class period just producing work in response to prompts, and Chen Chen’s presence was creative, upbeat, and friendly.

Ceilidh Holmes ’19
Hilary Plum Classroom Visit

Hilary Plum visited our Advanced Nonfiction class, and we were all very excited. We’d hoped to absorb as much from her talent and experience as possible. Students posed a variety of questions, and Plum shared her insight. Our conversation topics included the purpose and use of an argument in writing, specifics about Plum’s memoir, Watchfires, the process of its creation, and details about getting the book published. We talked about the events and themes in her memoir, like the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. Hilary Plum’s visit to the class was very insightful. We left feeling filled with new ideas.

Sarah Kalthof ’20
Lunch with Chen Chen

A few other students and I had the delight of sitting down with poet Chen Chen for fish ‘n’ chips and conversation. He shared with us his undergraduate experience at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts. We bonded over the small community feel and the fondness for the humanities there and at Hope. Just like in his poetry, Chen was fascinated with the little details. He wondered with us over the Gaelic phrase on the wall of the restaurant, talked of a double-decker grocery store not far from his home, and recommended a Chinese film, Happy Together, which he loves. Chen was positively wonderful company.

Leah Asen ’19
Chen Chen & Hilary Plum Q & A

In an engaged question-and-answer session, Chen Chen and Hilary Plum shared ideas with us about the writing experience. One of the most interesting similarities was the challenge they both faced in their writing: opening up while remaining authentic, yet trying to write against expected norms. Chen said “it is easier to know what I don’t want from my writing than what I do,” and Plum agreed. Both said they have ways to “trick” themselves into writing. Chen tries to lower the stakes by addressing his poems to people and acting as though he is writing to friends. Plum tricked herself by writing her memoir, Watchfires, in the third person, even though it was all about her own experiences. Chen and Plum encouraged us to work against modern expectations. Hope College is so lucky to have hosted such incredible writers.

Sarah Simmons ’19
Dinner with Chen Chen and Hilary Plum

Our dinner at New Holland was served with a side of lovely conversation with Chen Chen and Hilary Plum. We chatted about the menu, bonded over our love of cheese, and made jokes about the chili Chen Chen ordered—The Spicy Poet Chili. Hilary Plum had just bought a house over one hundred years old, and was looking forward to moving in. She had just moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and enjoyed the Midwest.

I sat next to Chen Chen, and later in the meal we touched on deeper subjects. I asked Chen about his view on religion. I found his poem “I’m Not a Religious Person But” particularly interesting. Chen’s parents had taken interest in God through intellect, and he continues to find those ideas interesting, but he explained how the poem set the tone for the rest of his book with its hints at connection with a higher creative power. He recommended Jennifer S. Cheng’s Moon to me after I explained my interest in exploring the divine through my current poetry in progress. It was both a tasty and enlightening mealtime.

Allison Lindquist ’19
Chen Chen & Hilary Plum Reading

The reading showcased a collision of two brilliant minds. Most striking for me was the difference between these two writers. Chen’s subtle sass and self-aware delivery contrasted drastically with Plum’s serious and intimate tone.  On the surface, these writers didn’t seem like they would get along, let alone connect. But it was clear once they both finished the reading that their mutual respect created an instantaneous bond in both craft and topic.

I was impressed that both Chen and Plum refused to romanticize difficult topics. Each focused on their honest, confusing, weird, and strikingly specific experiences of chronic illness, family difficulties, and sexual orientation.  I am honored to have experienced the intimate headspaces that each artist so carefully and openly invited us into.

Fall into English

We’re so proud of our Fall 2019 lineup of courses! Students, ready to dive into literature? To plunge into creative writing? Trust our English faculty to lead the way. Here are some highlights to look for when registering:

Shakespeare’s Plays – ENGL 373-02
MWF 12:00-12:50 with Dr. Lunderberg

Many of Shakespeare’s plays explore what it means to be treated as an outsider. Studying these plays can guide us in questioning the justice of societies where women are treated as possessions, Jewish merchants are ridiculed, and military commanders are questioned because of the color of their skin. In this course, we will work our way together through several plays, reading and watching and studying and arguing about the meaning we find in them. We will examine both the historical and literary contexts of the plays, studying the plays as literature and as performance pieces, and assessing insights into the plays from various critical approaches.

Note: Students are welcome to take multiple seminars with the same number (e.g. 373) if the title is different.

Introduction to Literary Theory – ENGL 480
TR 9:30-10:50 with Dr. Gruenler

Literary theory equips you to think better about how to read and why, and maybe to enjoy it more too. Tour major schools of thought from Plato to the twenty-first century, such as formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalytic criticism, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial criticism, ecocriticism, and disability theory. Meet theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, René Girard, Adrienne Rich, Judith Butler, Edward Said, Chinua Achebe, and Wendell Berry. Connect literature to other disciplines such as philosophy, theology, and the social sciences. You’ll have a chance to write and talk critically about whatever texts you like—stories, poems, films, TV, games, etc.

Intermediate Creative Nonfiction Writing – ENGL 358-01
TR 1:30-2:50 with Dr. Burton

Make art from experience.

Memoir is the literary craft of understanding where we’ve been.

Prerequisite: Multi-Genre Creative Writing 253.

Crime and 19th C. Fiction – ENGL 373-01
MFW 1:00-1:50 with Dr. Salah

Have you ever sympathized with a clever criminal? Rooted for a vigilante seeking justice outside the law? This course will take you back to where our cultural fascination with true crime, detective stories, and forensic investigation began: the nineteenth century. Slink down the foggy streets of London with Charles Dickens and his suspense-writing friends. Meet charming thieves and peek into the tormented minds of killers. Learn how Poe’s great detective, Dupin, was surpassed by Conan Doyle’s masterful catcher of criminals, Sherlock Holmes. And get ready to discuss along the way: why do we humans like this stuff so much?

Advanced Fiction Writing – ENGL 454
TR 3:00-4:20 with Dr. Childress

Have you written a short story or a novel? Do you want to? How could you work towards writing both—at the same time? In Advanced Fiction Writing, we’ll focus on linked stories, also called story cycles, and how they work as a kind of Super Novel. We’ll read Pulitzer- and other award-winners like Love Medicine and Olive Kitteridge. We’ll be writing—slowly, steadily—and workshopping roughly 40 pages of your linked shorts. Be ready to read and write—a lot of both! Be ready to kick it with linked-story lovers and fall in love with the story cycle.

Children’s and Young Adult Literature – ENGL 375
MWF 2:00-2:50 with Dr. Postma-Montaño

Welcome to a discussion on the importance and popularity of children’s and young adult literature. The recent flowering of kid lit has meant for a tremendous growth in the genre, with many texts moving into film, as the recent Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse phenomenon testifies. At the same time the importance of the field to literary studies, to literacy, and to teaching has never been greater. Scholars and educators are looking at classics like The Cat in the Hat with new eyes, asking questions like: is this picture book racist? Together, we will consider this and other critical questions. We will think about race, ethnicity, language, gender, and disability in children’s lit and what is at stake for readers, parents, and educators. This course is perfect for anyone interested in reading kid lit, teaching, and scholarship.

Modern English Grammar – ENGL 360-01
TR 12:00-1:20 with Dr. Burton


Want to know the difference between lay and lie? Between who and whom?

Modern English Grammar.

Sixteen weeks of diagramming.

Grammar competence forever.

Angela Dominguez and Diverse Children’s Literature: A Faculty Feature by Dr. Regan Postma-Montaño

This past week, English Department faculty members Susanna Childress, Jesus Montaño, and I, along with student Sarah Herrera, met children’s book author and illustrator Angela Dominguez for lunch at a downtown Holland restaurant. Perhaps you know Angela from her bilingual Pura Belpré Honor Books María Had a Little Llama and Marta! Big & Small, or her fabulous middle-grade chapter book Stella Díaz Has Something to Say. We all were thrilled that Angela was willing to meet with us for a brief visit between her many readings at local schools and the Herrick District Library.

During our lively conversation, the literature professor in me had to ask Angela about her intended audience: “Whom do you think about when you create your books?” Angela shared with us her desire to engage young Latinx kids who may not often find themselves mirrored in books typically housed in classrooms or libraries.

Her words made me think of the power of diverse books for young Latinx readers. I have always been interested in how certain readers become experts (or “cultural insiders,” as some kid-lit scholars put it) when they read or listen to stories from their culture. In other words, they know more than the other kids during story time. Their cultural knowledge and language abilities (in this case, reading Spanish) give them the upper hand.

In this way, diverse books that “translanguage”—scholar talk for using a mix of words in multiple languages—invert the common host/guest power dynamic, where (here in the United States) Spanish speakers are often the guest and English speakers are the host. Inverting this dynamic plays a significant role in affirming children’s identities, given the ways linguistic and cultural identities are interwoven.

Along with thinking about Latinx readers, Angela shared that she also thinks about majority kids when she creates her books. She hopes that they will see kids in her stories who are different from them, with different skin tones and languages, not as other, but as potential friends. There are pleasures, as we know when we travel, in being the guest.

In a goodbye chat with Angela following our lunch, Sarah mentioned that she first came across Angela’s books in her mom’s preschool classroom. From this experience, Sarah had seen first-hand the significance of these books to Latinx children, the ways that kids find affirmation in books with characters that look and speak like them. Further, she found in Angela an inspiration for herself as a writer. Sarah told me: “Meeting with Angela Dominguez gave me a new sense of inspiration. Listening to her talk about her work was extremely humbling. In my time at Hope, I had never had the opportunity to meet with an author who uses her writing to validate identity, especially for young children.”

If you are interested in diverse children’s and young adult literature (including Angela’s!) and live in the Holland area, check out Diversity Rocks the Book!, a city-wide program addressing the lack of access to diverse books this month. And if you are a Hope student, I invite you to continue this conversation in my fall 2019 course ENGL 375: Children’s and Young Adult Literature!

One Class Can Change Everything: Alumni Interview with Angie Hines ’18

Today we’re excited to interview recent grad Angelique Hines, class of ’18, who’s here to tell us a bit about her new life in Memphis! What have you been doing since leaving Hope, Angie?

I actually spent my last semester of college doing an off-campus program as a means to get used to the workplace, starting as an Education Intern in Illinois Senator Dick Durbin’s office in Washington, DC. I was required to attend hearings and briefings, finishing by creating notes on what the meeting entailed. I was also often entrusted with obtaining signatures, answering phones, addressing concerns of constituents, and giving tours of the U.S. Capitol.

Before and during my time as an intern, I was preparing to transition into my new position as a corp member of Teach For America. I’m currently working as a 4th grade Literacy teacher at Believe Memphis Academy. As a teacher, my job requires me to be able to understand curriculum, accurately plan a lesson, identify possible misconceptions and ways to address them, and then finally, teach of course.

This experience has been like a roller coaster. From teaching myself how to create a budget to spending hours internalizing lesson plans and grading papers, I have been stretched in more ways than I can count!

How did your Hope English education shape you?

Being at Hope, period, shaped me in more ways than I can name now as an alumni. For instance, being an English major at Hope developed my intellect. The amount of reading, discussion, and writing that each of my English courses required shaped my mindset in such a positive way.

Being a reading teacher, there’s a large cognitive load that goes into planning any of my lessons. I am able to see through the lines of stories to ensure that any misconceptions get addressed ahead of time, along with finding additional information for the kids who may be ahead of their peers. I can correct my students’ work grammatically along with looking for the correct answer. Lastly, I can hold discussions that are engaging with my students.

As I type this, I ponder upon professors like Dr. Dykstra, Dr. Parker, and Dr. Hemenway, who always made the content rigorous. That is also something I am incorporating into my own classroom; rigor places the thinking on the student, so that they can create their own learning experience. Overall, being an English major made me the teacher that my students deserve.

What advice would you give to current English majors or students considering an English major?

I would tell them: “Take one class. Engage with the material and in the class to your fullest extent. It will change everything.” I think that everyone should take one English class above 113. That is where, for me, English became this magical and wondrous thing. I flourished to my highest capacity because I began to understand and discuss a text in a way that I had never done before.

If you could teach any college English class, what would be the title?

“Migrating North, and the Troubles Ahead.”

In Dr. Parker’s “Black Women Writers” course, we read a book titled The Warmth of Other Suns. That course and book pushed me to move down South. It also opened my eyes to certain things about the Midwest and Northeast that I had never thought about before. In my course, we would dive into the section “The Kinder Mistress,“ in which the reader learns about the things happening in the North that were not being highlighted in the news because the South was more popular in the media. We would dissect this section through discussion and writing. I think a course like this, at Hope, would be DOPE.

Favorite book read recently or in college?

My favorite book recently read has to be a tie between Sister Souljah’s No Disrespect or Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give.

Hey, you’re the second alum in a row to recommend The Hate U Give. Readers, take note! And thanks so much to our own Angie Hines for taking the time during a very busy year for this interview.

She Bites Back: A Faculty Feature from Dr. Kendra R. Parker

In today’s post[1], Dr. Kendra R. Parker explains the inspiration for her new book, She Bites Back. She offers us a snippet of her book and of her upcoming colloquium presentation on Thursday, February 28 at 3:30 PM in the Fried-Hemenway Auditorium.

Image by Mandela Wise

I began working on this project in 2011 while a graduate student at Howard University.  The idea came from a seminar paper, “Vampirism and Political History in Octavia E. Butler’s Fiction,” and over time it transformed into my dissertation, “Biting Back, Biting Black: Black Female Vampires in Literature and Film” (2014).

In 2016, I began to consider seriously revising the dissertation into a book; I’d been at Hope for three years and encountered a number of Black women students who were navigating misogynoir and the burden of representation. At eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, they should have been exploring their lives through the liberal arts curriculum; instead, they were grappling with being called “oreo,” “ghetto,” “threatening,” and “angry” by their peers, and being silenced, ridiculed, and mocked by their instructors.

They were stereotyped as predators for daring to exist and claim space in a predominantly white institution. They were experiencing what Dr. Koritha Mitchell calls “know-your-place aggression.” I observed them; I listened to them; I created courses for them. I wanted them to hold fast to what they knew deep down—that they were complex beings. But at Hope, they were socialized into thinking that they were flat, one-dimensional.

Such one-dimensionality is not ahistorical. As public intellectuals like Patricia Hill Collins, Angela Davis, Melissa Harris-Perry, bell hooks, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and others have recognized, the flat constructions of Black American women as Mammy, Jezebel, Black Lady, Strong Black Woman, or Angry Black Woman render Black women both hypervisible (always seen) and hyper-invisible (never seen).

But what, you must be asking yourself, does any of this have to do with vampires?

In the mythology of the vampire, the vampire is more than blood-sucker; it is a socially constructed body that becomes a scapegoat for sexist, racist, and homophobic value systems. There are many ways the vampire becomes a scapegoat, but I will give you one: the vampire had the potential to be a political threat—a threat that needs eradicating.

If you replace “the vampire” with “Black women,” this statement remains true. Let’s take the 1898 political cartoon, “The Vampire that Hovers Over North Carolina,”[2] pictured below, as our example.

In this image, a Black male vampire with “Negro Rule” on his wings hovers over white men and women, grabbing at them with his claws. The vampire is stomping on a ballot box. This fear of “Negro Domination,” as Ida B. Wells-Barnett describes it in her 1895 work A Red Record, is just one way Black bodies were coded—and in this case explicitly represented—as vampiric.

With the ratification of the fifteenth amendment in 1870, which granted Black men the right to vote, the fear of “Negro Domination” or “negro rule” was rampant, so much so that lynching—a systemic tool of terror used to maintain white supremacy—was the norm. These fears, as the cartoon illustrates, became transposed into the political discourse of resistance, hate, and eventual obliteration.

Although this photo depicts a Black male vampire, Black women were, too, imagined and treated as predators when they involved themselves with Black Americans’ advancement efforts. One such example is the burning of Wells-Barnett’s property in 1892, after she denounced lynching and its supposed justifications. The 1918 lynching of Mary Turner, a Black American woman who protested the lynching of her husband, is another example. Walter White, NAACP President, described in detail Mary’s murder:

At the time she was lynched, Mary Turner was in her eighth month of pregnancy [ . . . ] Her ankles were tied together and she was hung to the tree, head downward. Gasoline and oil from the automobiles were thrown on her clothes and while she writhed in agony and a mob howled in glee, a match was applied and her clothes burned from her person. When this had been done and while she was yet alive, a knife, evidently one such as is used in splitting hogs, was taken and the woman’s abdomen was cut open, the unborn babe falling from her womb to the ground . . . and then its head was crushed by a member of the mob with his heel. Hundreds of bullets were then fired into the body of the woman…[3]

White’s description of Mary’s desecrated body, and his emphasis on the use of a hog knife to gut Mary, is intended to highlight the ways the white elites devalued her. As per the description, the white mob did not consider Mary human; they viewed and treated her like an animal simply because she dared to bring her husband’s killers to justice. This group of men did not appreciate Mary’s questioning. Their use of the hog knife to gut her was to make a point. In murdering Mary, these white elites reemphasized their importance as social, political, and economic leaders. Through Mary’s death, they demonstrated that they were not comfortable with a Black woman challenging their system.

Mary Turner functioned as a political threat by questioning, challenging, and pushing back against white supremacy. As a result, she was stopped by whatever sinister means necessary. Ultimately, “The Vampire That Hovers Over North Carolina” demonstrates the danger of codifying Blackness (and, implicitly, Black femaleness) as something to be feared and eradicated.

Though my students were not physically harmed while at Hope (at least not to my knowledge), they did experience ostracism and marginalization any time they dared challenge systems that benefitted whiteness. One student, a few weeks before she was to graduate in May 2018, was called “subhuman” by a member of the Hope Academy of Senior Professionals (HASP). This student was, simply by existing, considered a threat.

I began writing this project as a requirement to finish my doctoral degree, but I wanted to finish this project for my Black women students. It was my way to affirm their Blackness, their humanity, in the face of the misogynoir they collectively experienced on Hope’s campus.

Intrigued? Want to learn more? Come to Dr. Parker’s presentation, “She Bites Back: Black Female Vampires in Life and Lit,” on Thursday at 3:30 in Fried-Hemenway Auditorium, located in the Martha Miller Center. She Bites Back was published in 2018, and is available for sale and at libraries.

 

[1] A portion of this post appears in She Bites Back and has been adapted with the permission of the publisher.

[2] “The Vampire that Hovers Over North Carolina,” News and Observer, Raleigh, NC, September 27, 1898. The 1898 Collection. The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Accessed April 25, 2018, https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/items/show/2215.

[3] Walter F. White. “The Work of a Mob.” The Crisis, 16, no. 5 (September 1918): 222. https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/civil-rights/crisis/0900-crisis-v16n05-w095.pdf

“Loving English in Honduras”: An Alumni Interview with Laura Van Oss ’15

Today’s post takes us all the way to Honduras, to hear from 2015 grad Laura Van Oss, who studied English for Education here at Hope. Laura, what are you doing now, and how did you wind up doing it?

My graduating year, Nancy Cook in the Education department connected me with International School Tegucigalpa, a private Christian school serving mostly local students from preschool through 12th grade in the capital city of Honduras. I planned to teach abroad for two years, but I’m now in year four and absolutely love it.

I teach a literature-based English class to bilingual and English-language-learning 7th graders. I live with a great group of North American teachers, and I get to travel and have summers free to visit Michigan. Last year, I completed a master’s degree in Bilingual Education with a cohort of International School teachers, and I’m still enjoying literacy research and implementing new language-learning techniques in my classroom.    

Wow, you’ve been pretty busy! How did your Hope English education shape you?

When I first came to Hope, I was going to be a high school Spanish teacher. I wasn’t thinking about English at all until my freshman advisor told me I had to pick a minor for secondary education. I am so grateful for the role my English education has played in my career. I couldn’t possibly think of a better way to engage my passions than teaching English to Spanish speakers by convincing them to fall in love with Hatchet.

I’m especially grateful for my experience working at the Writing Center and for David James’ expository writing course. He gave me a hard time about my idealistic passion for teaching, but it turns out his techniques transfer very effectively to teaching writing skills to 7th graders.

What advice would you give to current English majors or students considering an English major?

One of my favorite things anyone has ever said to me came from a former student, talking about how much she loved reading. She said, “It’s because of you, Miss. And Wonder. And Paper Towns.”

Teaching comes in many different forms, whether in higher ed or other job sectors, and might be worth considering even if you are not studying Education. If you can find a way to share your passion for books with others, you will be fulfilled not matter what.

You’re an English teacher already, but if you could teach any college-level English class, what would be the title?

“Storytelling Forms in Sitcoms.” We don’t consider TV often enough as a medium worthy of study, but I’m fascinated by how character development and humor functions in sitcom writing, and how those techniques have changed based on how we consume media.

Favorite book read recently or in college?

I mostly read Young Adult novels these days, and I am always happy to convince everyone they can be well worth reading. No question, right now everyone should read The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.

Well, you heard it, Hope College. Get reading! Thank you, Laura.