A Small reflection on the People Who Have Made Me the Writer I am
Back in 2017 my overly confident, perhaps stupid or perhaps egotistic self, decided I could take a 300-level writing class just after finishing English 101. Which is usually not an allowed or recommended jump for regular freshmen, but I was one of the many students who find themselves in the limbo of transferring with enough credits to be done with generic classes but not enough credits to really amount to anything in college progression terms. So, because I was allowed, I thought I was ready.
The class was intensive, taught by Carl Herzig who I deeply disliked at the time but have grown to respect and admire. He told me one day, at a meeting in his office “I can tell English isn’t your first language” and I assure you he went into thoughtful and detailed explanations about sentence structures, my use adverbs, and other very important things that I didn’t listen to because I was upset that he had called me out on my broken English.
Thinking back on it, I think what I truly felt was shame. Months previous to this I had gone on date with a guy who said he loved the way I pronounced his name, he loved my accent and how sometimes I forgot how to say words in English. But he was cheating, on a long-term relationship with a woman who had just given birth to his first-born child. I found out via several lengthy poorly-google-translated-into-Spanish text messages that told me I was good for nothing. She said I wasn’t even good enough to find a sugar daddy to give me a green card. He was taken (boy, if she could see me now). So, I spent the next semester working really hard to not be “immigrant trash.” I got a scholarship for being an outstanding international student, and I was proud of that. I was proud when people said I had no accent or when they were surprised to find out I wasn’t American. I am not American.
Carl said it out in the open, as a way of stating an obvious fact, “English is not your first language” so I felt shame. Shamed disguised as anger, and fear too. Fear that I wasn’t good enough and could never be good enough due to the uncontrollable fact of where I had been born (Guatemala). What I didn’t know then, but have experienced now, is that Carl would spend the next three years making sure I knew there is immeasurable value in my not-Americanness. That there is a story only I can tell, and how within that story there is art and beauty and poetry that derives from the way in which I mix my Spanish with my English, with run-on sentences that just roll out of the tongue.
Carl Herzig taught Expository Writing, ENGL 316 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at 12 pm, Ambrose Hall, room 221, and there is where I met Jaren, who one day pointed out we had the same backpack. Aside from exchanging comments on each other's pieces when we were asked to read them out loud, Jaren and I didn’t really talk. On the spring of 2018 we didn’t take any classes together. On the fall however we took “Creative Nonfiction Writing.”
We bonded over tater tots, though I am not sure Jaren knows this. They wrote a short story at the end of which they asked the question “what if I never had tater tots again?” It's their story to tell, so all I will say is that I keep a bag of tater tots on my freezer for the days when I really want to give up. I am not ready to eat tater tots for the last time, so I keep going. Jaren somehow understood, through their own life experiences, the things I had gone through. That relationship that makes you change because you are desperate to belong, that weird sense of self you develop as a result of being raised Christian, and the heaviness that comes with having a brain not quite made for this world. Jaren opened up like a cracked egg, unable to ever be closed again, spilling out everywhere with questions and feelings I had been too afraid to explore. They encouraged me to explore them.
In our creative non-fiction class, I was safe because Emily Kingery made sure her classroom was one where we could talk about those things. Write about anything, as long as the writing was creative and nonfiction. Periods, birth control, abuse, snow, the oxford comma; everything was fair game. We did not hold back, and I think Drew learned more about female anatomy on that class than what he would have ever learned on a sex ed class. Dr Kingery edited my writing, she encouraged me, she too helped me discover the magic of my heritage. In all the classes she taught me, she always made sure to make room for me. A space where I could have a voice as a sexual assault survivor, a voice as woman, as an immigrant, as a twenty-something year old trying to figure out life. She continues to encourage me today.
If there was someone to credit for my writing it would be them. They saw possibility where I (and lots others) only saw delusional dreams. As I kept thinking about the kind of essay I wanted to write as my comeback to this blog (after a year of abandonment), I kept reflecting on the why I wanted to come back. That reflection led to this. This being a small essay to say I haven’t forgotten about you. I am thankful, and I am coming back to writing more often even though I still don’t know what being a writer means to me. I am not giving up just yet, though it was good to take a break. Hopefully I will be back soon, until then, don’t be a stranger.
If you would like to support my delusional dreams, give this post a like, leave a comment or check out my shop! Until next time, don’t forget to do something that makes you happy.
