Image credit: The Poetry Foundation
This article caught my attention (and held it rapt) quite some time ago, but I just now have had a moment to sit down and reflect on it in written form. I'm an English and psychology major (some days one more than the other) and have come to questioning what these two courses of study really entail. Particularly with the English major, there is one important question that continues to test my commitment to it: is being an English major a colonization of myself? I found it hard to form a response. My words get all caught up.
As a South Asian woman whose country was colonized by the British and who spurns canonical literature, I use English (the "master's tools" for anyone with Audre Lorde on the brain) in a wholly different way than they would be by a white author. Yet I still have grown up in a culture that prizes certain works, makes reference to them, and uses English as the medium through which all "proper" and "high" literature is considered. Anything else is lost in translation or sub-par. Minority authors are just that - part of a specific subset that is not as revered or canonical as the classics. So am I also prizing certain literature over others? Am I making English a prioritized language and disrespecting my ethnic heritage, my mother tongue (for which a war was fought to preserve, no less)? I have been consistently frustrated by this question, going back and forth over whether its even relevant and whether anyone has the same concerns I do.
Jaswinder Bolina's "Writing Like a White Guy" article articulates an answer to this question in a truly remarkable and sensible way.
