Barry’s “Stop and Think”

I wanted to study English for the reasons many people probably do–I loved using writing as a tool of communication and expression.  I like how many authors create literature as a testament of the human condition, and the tools and techniques they use to express these trials and sufferings and triumphs intrigued me.  I want to creatively and accurately manipulate words as a form of expression.  I feel like I’m improving with each course I take, as they’re all pretty diverse and help me see different points of view and different styles and techniques I can use when I write.  This is probably my favorite thing about my courses; every one is different and does not necessarily stick to the canon as we used to know it.  In high school, the canon was the bulk of our curricula. I liked to think of it as WASP literature–Dickens, Faulkner, Shakespeare, and Chaucer to name a few.  Many of them I found a bit dry and lacking in true knowledge of human emotions.  When I got to college, the literature I was reading was like a full one-eighty from high school.  I studied writers who would have been at one time or another marginalized, like Ntozake Shange, Adrienne Rich, and Leslie Marmon Silko.  I loved their work so much that I wished I had known about them earlier, and I hope that high schools start to assimilate these authors into their syllabi.  What the “canon” literature taught me was that there was only one point of view that was accepted years ago (and actually, not even that many years ago), and that was the white man’s. There was almost like a formula to these works; the stereotypical hero goes on a quest for honor and glory, and is willing to sacrifice himself and others for that cause.  Not until college did I find a diverse depiction of humanity in literature.