Telling Stories to Anybody Who Will Listen An Interview with Robert Colón

Main Article Content

Lida Colón

Abstract

As a field, we discuss composition histories from inside the academy, both metaphorically and materially; the subject of the conversation is most often college students and we most often have these conversations at conferences or at our institutions. Driven by my own writing experiences, I have been thinking lately about the relationship between love—for self and others—and composition practice, and given the many parallels between the oppressions and resistance strategies employed by Black people in our nation’s early years and those of the current moment, I think about the evidence of the radicaly liberatory function writing served for enslaved Africans that can be found in in Black American’s current practices. Robert Colón, the center of the present work, is unmistakably a writer. This interview serves to provide some insight into contemporary Black composition practices offers new perspective on my position in the field of composition.

Article Details

Section
Articles

References

Baker-Bell, April. Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy. Routledge, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315147383

Burgess, Amy, and Roz Ivanič. “Writing and Being Written: Issues of Identity Across Timescales.” Written Communication, vol. 27, no. 2, 2010 pp. 228-255. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088310363447

CCCC Language Policy Committee. “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” Conference on College Composition and Communication, 1974. Accessed 2019.

Condon, William, and Carol Rutz. “A Taxonomy of Writing Across the Curriculum Programs: Evolving to Serve Broader Agendas.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 64, no. 2, 2012, pp. 357-382.

Gilyard, Keith. Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence. Wayne State University Press, 1991. Kynard, Carmen. Black Feminist Pedagogies.com. http://www.blackfeministpedagogies.com. Accessed May 2020.

Li, Ying, and Liming Deng. “Writer Identity Construction Revisited: Stance, Voice, Self, and Identity in Academic Written Discourse.” Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 42, no. 3, 2019, pp. 327-344. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/CJAL-2019-0020

Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America. Wayne State University Press, 1986.

Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences. “Writing Across the Curriculum.” Syracuse University, https://thecollege.syr.edu/writing-studies-rhetoric-and-composition/writing-across-curriculum/. Accessed Jan. 2020.

Young, Vershawn Ashanti. Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity. Wayne State University Press, 2007.