History: Its "Story"

This blog will serve as the Reflective Statement for English 697: Writing in New Media, a graduate course taught by Dr. Shannon Carter at Texas A & M University - Commerce in Spring 2011.

Thoughts on Writing

When I first decided to take this course, I initially thought that I would use it as a way to organize the novel that I'm working on. I'm writing a novel that is loosely based on my mother's childhood that is centered around a series of letters that were written from her adopted mother to her foster mother. These letters tell the story of how my mother and her sisters came to live with both of these women. Because it is a complicated story, I thought that I would use this course as a way of using multimodal texts and sources to create the story.

I decided to use this as the focus of the course based on the two-year old syllabus that Dr. Carter sent to me last December. As an over-eager and highly neurotic student, I have a tendency to contact my professors as soon as I enroll in their course. So, kindly, Dr. Carter sent me the old syllabus - which inspired me to the point where I practically had my entire course outlined until....the first day of class. Unfortunately, she had created a "new" syllabus that would send me in an entirely different direction.

I quickly realized that based on the new structure of the course, I would no longer be able to carry out my Master Plan. So, I adjusted my plan and did what normal people do when they sign up for graduate courses....I bought the books, started reading, and got down to business.

Where the course led me next, was away from my mother's childhood and directly to the story of my father's boxing career.

For my first DMP project, I interviewed my father and digitized all of his old photographs and newspaper articles from his old boxing days. What I discovered, was that there was so much about my father that I had never known. Doing this work gave me access to him in a way that allowed me to see him in an entirely new light and discover how he became the man that he is.

Below is a piece that I cut from the final project.

This video depicts my father  recounting the events that occurred when his team attended a major boxing tournament in Ft Worth. His boxing coach, Reecy Davis (who happened to be African American) was told by the officials at the arena that he would not be allowed to coach Charles in his corner and that he would have to sit in the uppermost corner of the arena. Segregated from everyone else.

I deliberately left this part out of the video because I felt like it didn't fit in with the story that I was trying to tell. Also, I wanted it to be a positive piece about Reecy Davis and O. A. Ray so, I chose not to include it. However, what I realized when I watched this was the emotional impact this incident had on my father (not to mention Reecy). To him, Reecy was like a brother. He had so much admiration and respect for the amazing athlete that Reecy was and it really broke his heart that he was the victim of discrimination at one of the biggest tournaments the boys fought in.

Also, I think that it never hurts for us to remember that the days of Jim Crow are barely sixty years in our past.