Black Male Students Speak

Six young men joined us on Day 3 of the Summit to share their views on reading, writing, and libraries. They were William Anyu, James Lawson, Caleb Rainey, T. J. Johnson, Julius Walker, and Andrew Truesdale.  William, James, Caleb, and T.J. are members of the North Carolina Central University’s  Centennial Scholars Program,  Julius is a student at UNC-Charlotte, and Andrew is in high school.  Below are some of the insightful comments they shared with us.

Reading

“I would consider myself a reader because I’m an individual.  I love learning about the struggles that people had to go through to get where they are today, so I enjoy reading about history, specifically African American history.  Just what our forefathers fought for, for us to have the freedom we have today.”

“…reading gives you that sense of knowledge and entertainment at the same time.”

“I consider myself a reader…ideas and opinions that are well developed. That you can’t get through television.”

“Sometimes we will be able to see ourselves in books in ways we didn’t normally think we would. And it doesn’t have to be an African American character for me to be able to see myself.  It could just be an open-minded character or a smart character or a funny character, and from that, I can just think to myself, you know this author wasn’t writing about me, but I was able to learn something about myself.”

“When I was starting middle school, and I would get in trouble for reading a lot because …I’d get done doing math, or whatever…so I’d just crack a book  open.  [And the teacher would say] “What are you doing?”  Well, I’m trying to finish a chapter.  “No, it’s not the time for that.”  And, you know, when I got older… I thought back on that and always wondered, why wasn’t it the time for reading? Why wasn’t it the time for reading because I would rather myself and my children in the future to decide when they have free time, to read in the classroom than to draw on the desk in the classroom or talk to somebody else who is not done?”

“There’s a lot of free time in college where you can just sit and you’re alone whether you want to be or not.  And I find reading is one of the best things you can do during that time.”

“I know for myself, growing, up the reason why I never really liked reading is because everything I read, I was assigned.  And I never really found anything I was interested in.”

“If I have spare time, I just pick up a book.  I started off when I was younger.  I used to love the Harry Potter series.  My sister passed those books down to me.”

“My grandfather…works at the library.  He’s the caretaker, and he brings books he thinks are interesting.  And I read those.  He knows what I like to read.”

“For me, reading first…start[s] with interests…so I can then build up stamina for, you know, topics I just need to know things about and may not necessarily be interesting, but I want to read for knowledge.”

Writing

“I was never taught that reading and writing were connected.”

“It was expected that we know how to read.  It was never connected to writing… in that when we read certain books by certain authors, we never had to pay attention to how they wrote.  We just had to pay attention to what they wrote to write reports on them so the teacher would give us an A or whatever. ”

“I believe people have styles of writing. The teachers I had, were never keen on that.  It was like, you know, “You can write about anything you want, but I would advise you to write about this if you want a really good grade.”  Like, you know, “We just did the thing about Zora Neale Hurston, so if you could talk about African American females, that’d be nice,” that kind of thing.”

“I had to do my own kind of research and look for this class or  look for this workshop or look for this summer program to enhance my writing.”

“I know with the writing tests, I couldn’t stand it.  I couldn’t stand being given a prompt that was boring and then being forced to write, and write well, about the topic that was boring.  I just couldn’t do it, and I never, you know, I never did poorly, but I never did as well as I could.”

“My best writing was in my chemistry class, when we did an assignment… about moles…We had an assignment, you know, where we did, like, a parody of a mole where we used an actual, you know, mole the animal.  And I wrote a story, and it was very well-written.  It was a parody.  It was about  a mole as a spy.  It was really…I should have framed it.  It was really good…because I had the flexibility and I actually felt like I could take this and go anywhere with it, I wrote very well, as opposed to being given a prompt.”

“If you’re interested in a topic, if you’re interested in a genre…you’re going to write well if you know what you’re talking about.”

Libraries

“I used to be a library user.  When I got my first card, I went crazy. 
I used to get, like, five books and just read through the day.
But unfortunately,  I guess I kind of grew out of it.”

“Now I use [the library] for studying.  When  I have a question about a
book or a question about a topic…I’ll go to the library.  It’s not as
frequent as say, like, when I was younger and I would go several
times a week just to sit and read.”

“I would say I’m not a library user…the library is dull to me.  You know,
white walls and red carpet.  It makes you sleepy, so I won’t work there.
I try to avoid places that make me sleepy.”

“When I first got my library card, I used to go to the library everyday. I actually kind of moved away from it a little bit as I’ve grown up…I use the library now mainly for the computers.  I stay at the computers now when I go to the library.”

“When I was younger, the only times I actually went to the library was to rent movies.  I wasn’t a big reader when I was little.”

“The one thing I really appreciate about NCCU libraries is we have really secluded, quiet places…I’ll just take all my stuff and just go sit in the little corner by myself, throw on my headphones, and be there for hours just doing work.”

“Most people shy away form libraries because of how quiet it is…it’s kind of boring. It makes you sleepy.”

“As a child, you go to the library, and everybody wants to go to the library, for the most part, because it seems like a fun atmosphere when you’re young.  It’s colorful…the shelves are smaller, it’s not as intimidating.  I don’t know where the interest goes away, but you would like it to stay there.”

Librarians

“I wasn’t a bad student, but I would always get disciplined in the library.  The librarians…I guess they didn’t like me because I just talk too much.”

“I got disciplined , like he said, for talking.  Also, moving around a lot. I couldn’t sit still, always going somewhere and looking at something or touching something.”

“[My high school] librarian was a nice lady…so you felt like you could talk to her.”

Ideal Library

“If I could have my own library… I wouldn’t want it to be quiet.  I just find it difficult staying silent in the library.  I like to be able to talk…if I’m reading a book and I find something interesting, I want to be able to tell my friend about it and don’t want to be shushed the whole time and get in trouble and things like that.”

“Have happy, happy librarians, not the grumpy ones.  I’d want everybody to be happy there.”

“My perfect library, first of all, I need food there.”

I like technology, so like, we’d have touch screen pads everywhere, iPads everywhere, Wi-Fi accessible.

“And somebody needs to say at this point…tutors because especially, like, African American males have an issue…when they don’t know something, they don’t really reach out to get the help that they need.  And when you have people there that want to help you out, you have people there that are excited about helping you out, that excites you, that encourages you to do better and work harder.”

“It would be somewhere where people would be excited to come.”

“Some reason to stay there.”

“I would add a stress release area.  The library at NC State, when you go downstairs there’s like a little interactive area where they have iPads with games on them and they have TV with video games…I know it seems like a distraction, but when people study, when I study, after a couple of hours I need to take a break just to build up my stamina.”

“I would like to have a mix of students and you know, people who know the library because you want to feel comfortable askinga someone a question, and I know I feel comfortable asking a fellow student or someone I’ve seen on campus everyday a question.”

“Make the library somewhere where somebody wants to come to, because when you’re in high school, that’s the last place you want to go.  When you’re in high school and think about libraries, you automatically associate it with work.”

“Bring different people in.”

“More user friendly.”

“Make the kids excited about it, because the last thing a sixteen-or seventeen-year-old wants to do is go to the library to read a book.”

“Technology…iPads, Nooks, Kindle readers.”

“Brighter..have some light in there..because you don’t want to walk in somewhere and just feel tired.”

“I’d want space.  I would like a group area because you’re coming in with your friends too. When you have group projects, you want an area where you can work.  I mean bring this table over here and not have people wondering, ‘Why are they moving that table and chairs?’

“A librarian who is well-informed.”

“The library needs to make everyone feel welcome.”

“It would have lots of books on every subject.”

“You could just go to a computer and just type in your likes…I like this, I like this, I like this, and they’d give you a category of books you might be interested in.”

“Do a more and better job of exposing children to different topics, exposing adults to different topics, just so you canpeak their interest.”

“A place where you can talk.  Just where the library doesn’t seem like such an uptight place to be.”

“Programs…Find out what the kids are interested in, and take that and explore it.  Maybe kids like poetry, so have an open mic night one night.  Or maybe the kids like music, so bring like a band or something.  A lot of kids around here, like a lot of kids around America, sure, they have little bands.  Why don’t they come play?  Have their friends come watch, and make the library inviting, so when the kids, they think about libraries, oh yeah, that’s that place we went to last night.  You know, they had that poetry night or they had that rap session or whatever.  Make the kids excited about it, because the last thing a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old wants to do is go to the library to go read a book.”

Textual Lineages

“The first book that I actually took interest in is a book…called The Giver.  And it’s a book about a utopian society, and it just intrigued me.  And if you truly want to be passionate about something, you have to have some type of interest in it, whatever it might be.”

“I met one of my favorite teachers at the library, and she had picked up a book, and he asked me to read it.  And this was back when reading was never really that important to me, and it was The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  And at the time, like, I had heard about it, but I didn’t really know who he was.  I’d seen the movie, because I was one of those people that when I’d get assignments to go read a book, I’d go watch the movie and then do a project on it.  But he introduced me to the book, and I read it.  That was one of my first experiences where I actually enjoyed reading because reading is life.  And going back to what I said earlier about knowing where you came from so you can get where you’re going… reading is life, and the struggles that, not necessarily him, but the people in that time period had to go through, it intrigued me.  And I had never experienced anything like that.  And that was the first instance where reading was fun to me and I enjoyed reading.  And I went and picked up another book and continued reading.”

“The book is called The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.  And it was a book that was placed in the late…in the early 1900’s, and it was about an individual who, he grew up.  He was African American.  Well, he’s half white, half black, but he can pass for being white.  And throughout his whole life he thought he was white because he grew up in a pretty nice house.  His mother she was very fair skinned as they described in the text.  And so he didn’t know anything about it until an incident happened at school where the principal came in and asked the teacher for all the white males to stand up.  And then he stood up, and the teacher said, ‘No, sit down.  Stand up when the Negroes are called.’  And he ran home instantly, and he was like, ‘Mama, mama, am I a N-word, am I a N-word.’  And she was like, ‘No.’  But throughout his whole life, he had to deal with that struggle of whether he wanted to be…because he could live a pretty good life passing for a white man, whereas he chose the other route and wanted to live as a black man because he wanted to experience the different experiences because…  In society the color of your skin, even though like a lot of people say it doesn’t matter, it does.  It really does matter, and like, it was just so many different instances where, like, he flip-flopped back and forth and he could see the differences.  And it really moved me because it showed me that in my day and age, like, I’m an individual, growing up, I was told everything from ‘You’ll never make it to your eighteenth birthday.  By the time you were eighteen, you’d be shot or dead or in jail.’  And throughout life, I’ve always been one to take every negative thing that has been said about me and turn it into a positive.  I like proving people wrong.  I get a thrill out of that.  So just being in college, getting ready to graduate, getting ready to start applying to law school…the people back at home, they would have never thought this possible.”

“One of my favorite books that I could really, really relate to, that kind of gave me motivation is Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown.  I can relate to this book because there was a character named Sonny in the book, basically, he didn’t grow up on the best side of life.  He had a lot of experiences that were very devastating, and he went through a lot of things and a lot of trouble, but eventually, things started turning around.  So I could relate to that.  Growing up with my family, we didn’t have the best of things, and  like he also said, people say things about you.  They down-shoot you, they say you can’t be, what you will never be, and stuff like that.  And that motivates me to prove them wrong.  Like, I also get a kick out of proving people wrong.  You’re telling me I can’t do this, and hey, two weeks later and it’s done.  So yeah, that’s a book that I can relate to.”

“I read Kaffir Boy a few years back, and I really liked that book because it just helped me have an appreciation for, I guess, living where I do, because I do believe people are  a product of our environment.  It’s frustrating, to me, with politics because if we have the capacity and the capability and the abilities to help other people.  It’s frustrating that we don’t or we just choose not to because of whatever reason.  But reading that book, just his struggle and the things he had to go through to get where he was just helped me have an appreciation because there’s no guarantee that if I was in his same situation, that I would have done the same thing.  You know, I’ve done well, here, where I am, but, you know, the struggles he went through are different.  So I like reading books like that, just so I can have an appreciation of other peoples’ struggles.”