Sometimes, being an English major at UC Berkeley feels like a strange small act of rebellion. It’s a study I’m in constant doubt over. One that allows me to question social norms while also living in constant fear of my future.
Especially in Berkeley, it seems to be a polarizing force to my own geographic identity, harshly cauled by tech domination and the battle for financial lubricant. I honestly can’t blame anyone for their hesitancy concerning the major.
UC Berkeley’s English major has not been everything I wanted it to be. It is heralded as one of the best programs in the country, a rite of passage that the likes of Joan Didion delighted herself in, and one of my biggest regrets of my collegiate career. It is not that I do not love reading and writing any less, but it is that I am constantly reminded of the fragility of the curriculum.
In my opinion, the English canon writhes within the neverending cycle of being outdated and unvital to any change or at least incentivizing abstract thought. Is “Heart of Darkness” really the hill that professors want to die on? Is it that self-aware of its portrayal of colonialism? Or is it really just politely ignoring racism while we retrofit insight onto a text that’s survived mostly through inertia? And do I have to sit through another discussion in which my male classmates tear apart Moll Flanders’ moral ambiguity without acknowledging the patriarchal suffering that inspired her wickedness? Don’t get me started on male English majors, a species slowly becoming extinct. Yes, please tell the class again why “Candide”is the best book ever written.
We are then left with classes that even English majors barely want to take. Yet despite the previous complaints, I think that I have learned a lot and I do not think I would necessarily change anything if I could go back in time. I am still eternally lucky for my learning process to still revolve around the consumption and analysis of art, especially in a learning atmosphere that is dependent on its removal. In a world of hypergrowth of artificial intelligence and hyperdivision of attention spans, there needs to be people dedicating their time to art. Afterall, people do not quote python code in their wedding vows and equations during eulogies. There needs to be people that dedicate their time to all the terrible books out there.
But not all of them are terrible, sometimes I just need a class to revive my interest in learning. A class and subject matter that takes me back in time is English 37, “Chicana/o Literature and Culture” taught by Professor John Alba Cutler. Specific books such as “Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories”by Sandra Cisneros along with “Dominicana” by Angie Cruz, transcend my collegiate career and remind me of why, for better or for worse, I am an English major.
I took this class when I was in the middle of a learning drought, a certain motivational vivaciousness sapped dry. It was also a class that I enrolled in haphazardly and unnecessarily, leaving me without a single English requirement to my name. That being said, it has been more valuable than the majority of my mandatory classes that add up to what will be my degree. Specifically, “Woman Hollering Creek” has become my favorite story and has forever changed the way that I write.
One sentence of Cisneros’ particularly sits at the kernel of my life. One that crosses my mind when learning about academic writing, reviewing my teacher’s preferred essay structure, as an editor tears apart my article and stitches it back together and when writing birthday cards to people I love. Within titular the story “Woman Hollering Creek,” she describes a fearless woman, Felice, with the line, “Then Felice began laughing again, but it wasn’t Felice laughing. It was gurgling out of her own throat, a long ribbon of laughter, like water.” And maybe there is a good reason why people do not speak like this and that essays would be poorly graded for this manner of writing, but I think everything would be better for it.
When I finished “Dominicana,” I was flying home on a Southwest flight. I was so overwhelmed by the story, a story so different from mine. I didn’t know I was crying until I saw a couple droplets stain my book. There was an old lady sitting next to me who inquired if I was okay. It turned out that she was an English major at UC Berkeley about 50 years prior and that we were flying to the same home town.
What it means to be an English major has definitely changed and it is easy to forget the value in it. That it is more than regurgitating words, but it is the study of people that created them. To quote “Woman Hollering Creek”: “How words can hold their own magic. How a word can charm, and how a word can kill. This I’ve understood.”