Linda Rader Overman - proud of her former student & teacher Enrique Solis who published a brilliant essay-"Delving Into a New World: A Sell Out or Success Story? "

Delving Into a New World: A Sell Out or Success Story?

By Enrique Solis

In high school, I failed eight classes, took summer school every year, and barely graduated with a 2.1 GPA. And those are just my academic shortcomings. Don’t forget the curfew tickets, truancy tickets, arrests, gang activity, and the two occasions I succeeded in evading police helicopters. The miscreant, the delinquent, statistic, society’s worst nightmare—Me. Strangely, it took hindsight to see this person. At the time I thought of myself as the experiencer—one enthralled and beckoned by nature, the universe, music, humanity, and danger. I was the boy who shot out street lights to see the stars. I knocked on friends’ windows at 3 a.m. to wander, talk, and trespass into deserted buildings and on school roofs before watching the sunrise. I climbed into my window at 6 a.m. to start my school day at 7:30 a.m.

What could high school offer this experiencer? Ideally a lot. But almost everything about my particular high school was cumbersome and lifeless. Good grades were the end all, be all. I saw no value in this system—I had already learned that getting an “A” had less to do with actually learning than passively completing busywork. My priorities consisted of testing my limitations—mentally and physically—and engaging with the world on multiple levels. It seemed that almost every class I attended strove to anchor me down to a rigid world where success was going through the motions and learning to do what you’re told. I was bored. And quite frankly, I was frightened at the idea of becoming anything like the vapid, stiff teachers who kicked me out of class for sagging my pants, disagreeing with them, or questioning their authority in any other way. My school supplanted learning with character-shaping.

Until one day I entered a real classroom (real in the sense that learning took place daily). It was AP English: Rhetoric and Composition, and I failed it. This class blew my mind. I was thrust into the academic world: We grappled with the theoretical, historical, and philosophical; instead of vocabulary words, we had rhetorical terms; and we wrote essays constantly. The level of engagement with the texts and with my classmates was on another level. I participated daily and marveled at the knowledge of my teacher and the authors we read. Yet at the same time I was altogether unprepared to pass a class like this—I lacked the structure, discipline, and overall care for school, especially grades to really do what was necessary. I wish this could have been my turning point, but it’s not easy to suddenly stop being the person you’ve always been.

Eventually, I got through high school, just barely, but completed nonetheless. Needless to say, I was apprehensive about entering the “real world,” which my mom defined as a full-time job or full time school—“not half this, part that. Commit to something”. Eventually, I would commit fully as a college student. The semester after high school I earned straight A’s. I felt like it was a mistake. Even my family was in shock. Academic counselors at my high school never even talked to me about college—I needed to focus on making up fails—so five A’s when I got there was way beyond everyone’s expectations, including my own. But I was there and doing well, which was when I decided to pursue a new major. I wanted to become a high school teacher and bring life, purpose, and learning into the classrooms that lacked so much of it. So everything was on track as I entered my first 200-level course in my new major, English.

The class was Major American writers from the late nineteenth century onward. At my community college the vast majority of students were minorities—Black and Hispanic—but as I entered this class there was a sudden demographic transformation. Even the professor noticed: “There are no black students in here, are there?” I raised my hand and answered “No”, and there were about twelve movie posters all over the walls so I pointed out, “and there is only 1 on the walls.” I pointed to a half-illuminated half-silhouetted image of Denzel Washington from Remember the Titans. Everyone looked around to check my findings and seemed to think it an odd observation. But after being there only five minutes, it was blatantly obvious to me—I had entered a different world, a secret community amongst my own consisting of readers, writers, and thinkers few of which were Black or Latino. The students began small talk about a show called Dexter, other English classes, and previous courses with this same instructor. My apprehension grew. These were not high school failures, nor were they any of those students who drop as soon as they get their financial aid. These students were readers. While I was breaking into buildings, they were reading The Great Gatsby; while I slept atop school roofs, they were delving into 1984. Based partly on the literary references they made, and partly on the way they spoke in general, I quickly saw the literacy gap between them and me. I began regretting all those classes I ditched, books I never read, and papers I never wrote. I had read only 3 novels total before college. This was going to be my trial: could I really excel or even just survive in a field I had utterly failed in previously?

The process began. The first book assigned was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I had heard of this book but had no idea what it entailed, when it was written, where it was written, who had written it, or really anything about it other than it was American. The instructor asked difficult questions and coaxed intelligent answers from many of the students. When it came time to write our papers, we had to choose two opposing scholars on the subject we would discuss. I chose two scholars with differing perspectives on race and whether or not Huck Finn should be banned in certain schools. One scholar, Justin Kaplan, praised the book for its groundbreaking depiction of a black slave, Jim, as a character round with humanity. He emphasizes Huck Finn’s relevance for young students today. Julius Lester takes a cutting and opposite approach. He states that the depiction of Jim is still fraught with stereotypical elements that can be damaging to young black readers who must try to identify with a slave. The instructor had no problem writing Lester off as a loon that didn’t understand the book. For most of my schooling, minorities had ironically been the majority so racial discussions were usually very sensitive, possibly even suppressed. It was odd hearing my instructor say that “anyone who wants to ban Huck Finn is clearly illiterate and incompetent.” I saw his position as radical and dismissive of social contexts other than our own so I decided to take it up in my paper. I followed all of this scholarly work and felt confident in my understanding of the material. I chose to use Lester’s argument to show how the depiction of Jim could cause racial identity issues with modern black readers, especially because the story is told through the eyes of a young narrator (Huck) who struggles with the racism of his culture—I argued that Huck Finn was valued and more relevant to white audiences who struggle with racism at the expense of discomfort or uneasiness felt by black readers. I knew I had picked a controversial position, so I tried to back up my arguments as best I could. I found the task harder than I had imagined and I did not create the essay I originally envisioned. Nonetheless, I turned it in and waited anxiously for his response.

On that essay, I received a zero. Devastated, shocked, and totally embarrassed, I immediately stuffed it into my backpack—hiding my results as everyone critiqued each other’s. I tried hard on that essay, thought I covered the material thoroughly, and even had fun with it. I was ready to quit. The instructor didn’t agree with my position at all and demanded I rewrite it completely. For some reason, it hit me hard: my heart shot adrenaline though my system every few seconds, I stared at a fixed point of my desk, then the wall as tears almost surged forth in front of Denzel’s poster. I honestly did not expect his reaction to be so violent. My paper addressed the discomfort felt by some young Black students when the word “nigger” is read out loud in class, especially by white students. He wrote on my paper, “It is of course, ok for blacks to call each other ‘nigga’ though. It’s called being hypocritical.” Somewhere along the academic process, the argument got brought down to this. I was shocked by his hatred of my paper. It was not truly a zero paper so he must have hated it so much he couldn’t even grade it. I had obviously not been privy to certain rules of that literacy community. In his class, certain arguments are just plain off-limits. I climbed up the academic ladder, skipped a step, slipped, and came tumbling down.

So I rewrote the essay with turbulent emotions: a blend of embarrassment, anger, and determination. I took the opposite stance of my previous essay as proof that I understood the other argument but didn’t agree with it. That rewrite process called upon every faculty I had as a writer (and is quite possibly when I became a writer). I brainstormed for like three days in order to gather the absolute strongest points, labored to find the perfect words, and then edited with a fury. It was exciting and almost easy because I thought of it as just refuting every claim in my previous essay. By presenting his strong perspective on the matter, my instructor, in a way, showed his hand. I knew exactly what the right answer was so to speak. It was then I realized that literature classes are not strictly about making a sound argument, they are about gathering all the information possible from the texts, then reading the instructor to figure out what they want gathered from it. When I turned that rewritten paper in, it was with smug confidence because I knew it was the best paper I could produce, yet I couldn’t suppress the deep fear that my best was simply not enough and I just did not belong in that classroom.

The day the rewrite papers were returned was about as believable as the ending of an episode of Full House. Everyone got their papers but me. Instead the instructor had the nerve to read it to the class in its entirety! He said it was “A well-written, intelligent, even inspiring essay defending Twain and Huck,” then he walked over and put it in my hands. I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I had sold my soul to the devil. Never before had I been more ambivalent: I was incredibly proud of myself for actually pulling it off, yet deeply perturbed by the fact that I was basically being praised for fully embracing ideas that I didn’t even necessarily agree with.

Some would call me a sellout, and the few people I told did call me a sellout. I saw it as proving I wasn’t “illiterate” or “incompetent” just because I chose a difficult position to defend. I had been a social rebel, deviant, and dissenter all my life—I didn’t have to prove that to anyone. If anything, rewriting that paper

helped me prove to myself that I could get over my rebellious tendencies and pride in order to successfully enter this new world. I think most people would say that reading and writing about literature is an enriching experience; however, in order to enter this particular literary community, I had to first give up a huge part of myself. Now, as I grow and come to fruition as a writer, I feel encouraged to find a way to rediscover and utilize those passionate parts of myself that I previously worked so hard to suppress.  

• Published in 
• Irene L. Clark and Emmanuel Sabaiz-Birdsill. College Arguments: Understanding the Genres, 2nd edition. Kendall Hunt, 2015.
• Enrique Solis holds an MA in Rhetoric/Composition from CSUN
• Winner of the Oliver Evans Prize
• Enrique Solis is an English Language Development Teacher / Reading Volume Coach at Alliance Valera Middle School in California

Interview with Linda Rader Overman by Tyler R. Tichelaar at AUTHORS DEN

Thirty-nine-year-old Laura is not having an easy time in her life. Her mother is suffering from dementia and her once happy marriage is on the rocks. Then, she is devastated to learn her childhood best friend, Katharine, has been found dead in a trash bin following a picnic with fellow hospitalized psychiatric patients. After attending the funeral, Laura begins to explore a collection of diaries and letters from Katharine's life. Deciding to read their correspondence to each other, Laura takes refuge in a hotel room where she will not be disturbed. "Letters Between Us" by author Linda Rader Overman will leave readers contemplative and appreciative of their own friendships. The story is realistic and moving without being sentimental. The use of letters and diaries brings the characters' voices to life so readers feel as if they are listening to real people revealing their experiences. Overman says of her novel, "Reading should help us to transcend our peripatetic lives and in the process guide us to learn something more about our world and ourselves. I trust reading ‘Letters Between Us' will do the same for the reader."

I had forgotten about this interview regarding the publication of my epistolary novel LETTERS BETWEEN US (PVP 2008) and have not seen it in years but am glad it is still available online!

 

https://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=31977&id=42835

Linda Rader Overman is so proud of her former student Natalie Grill who was a winner of the Oliver W. Evans Writing Prize in Fall 2023--Well done!!

A Comparative Analysis of Spiegelman’s Maus II and Oster’s The Stable Boy of Auschwitz

It has been nearly eighty years since that decisive day when Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi concentration camp complexes, was liberated under Allied banners. And yet, it is unthinkable that humankind will ever be completely free from the tragedy and atrocity of the Holocaust—nor should we be. Engendered by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany and radicalized by the onset of the Second World War, the Holocaust was an anti-Semitic campaign that saw the systematic extermination of some six million European Jews. When educating ourselves on the grievous realities of a historical event such as this, no accounts are more invaluable than those of survivors, many of whom have been brave enough to render their personal experiences into published works. Through analyzing the differences in format, narrational perspective, and focal themes between Art Spiegelman and Henry Oster’s respective novels Maus II and The Stable Boy of Auschwitz, we can better appreciate how both works distinctly contribute to Second World War and Holocaust literature, and also serve to expand and challenge public perception of these catastrophic events.

Both Maus II and The Stable Boy of Auschwitz are classified as memoirs, but these two narratives vary importantly in terms of format. The sequel volume to his avant-garde Maus I, Maus II is a postmodern graphic novel not only written by Art Spiegelman, but illustrated by him as well. What makes the graphic style of this story so crucial to its effectiveness is Spiegelman’s decision to depict human beings as rather crudely anthropomorphized animals. With Jews represented as mice, Germans as cats, and the Polish as pigs, Spiegelman provides a visual commentary on power-imbalance, racial prejudice, and loss of humanity. Over the years, Spiegelman’s artistic approach to dealing with such sensitive matters has generated as much controversy as it has critical acclaim, but none can argue its evocativeness. Jagged-edged, darkly shaded images of Art sitting atop a fly swarmed mound of naked, emaciated rodent corpses (Spiegelman 41.3) as seen in Chapter Two: “Auschwitz (Time Flies)” are the sort that make readers necessarily discomfited and that stay with them long after the page has been turned. In comparison, The Stable Boy of Auschwitz is a more traditionally autobiographical novel. With the assistance of Dexter Ford, Oster takes us readers on a harrowing journey—his harrowing journey

—from childhood to adulthood, internment to freedom, desperate survival to hopeful normalcy. Without the visual rhetoric that Spiegelman is known for, the potency of The Stable Boy of Auschwitz resides in the absolute rawness of his account. Oster’s vulnerability and candor makes reading this novel feel more like a one-sided conversation than a story. For example, in the aftermath of a random, pulse-racing massacre of Auschwitz captives recounted in Chapter Twenty-Four: “In the Line of Fire,” Oster writes, “If the Germans had seen that we had escaped from the courtyard, we were sure that they would finish us off. I've never been more terrified in my life. I had to struggle to control my breathing when I finally got to our barracks. I found that I had soiled my pants in my terror—I was a real mess” (102). No exaggerated verbiage, no attempted eloquence, just the truth; the truth in and of itself is poignant enough. But more on Oster’s narration later. For now, it is to be acknowledged that while the formats of these two memoirs offer completely different reading experiences, they are equally successful in revealing the horrors of the Holocaust.

Spiegelman and Oster’s survival narratives are further differentiated by the fact that one is told from a secondhand perspective, and the other is told from a firsthand perspective. While Vladek Spiegelman, Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, is the apparent protagonist of Maus II, his son, Art, or Artie, is the author and true narrational voice. This complex dynamic between survivor and storyteller is an additional source of tension throughout the novel’s already tension- high events. Because no matter how brutally thorough Art’s father certainly was in communicating his experience, and no matter how faithfully Art was able to then artistically relate said experience, the younger Spiegelman can never fully comprehend what it was to live through a Nazi concentration camp. In a moment of frustration while talking to his psychiatrist in Chapter Two, this is something that Artie admits: “My book? Hah! What book?? Some part of me doesn't want to draw or think about Auschwitz. I can’t visualize it clearly and I can't begin to imagine what it felt like” (Spiegelman 46.1A). Conversely, in The Stable Boy of Auschwitz, Henry Oster tells his own story, and as such, there is a level of intimacy about this novel that is simply impossible for Spiegelman to equal. This intimacy is entirely unromantic and at times stomach-turning to read, as is especially the case in Chapter Twenty-Four. Before relating one of the worst traumas he endured at Auschwitz, Oster states, “In all the years since I was imprisoned in Auschwitz, there is one story I never talked about, one experience I never shared with anyone else” (98). He then proceeds to describe in terrible detail what it was like to be penned in with other unlucky victims when “Two machine-gun crews that had been concealed in the trucks started firing, their muzzles flashing in the darkness, spitting bullets right into the crowd of prisoners” (Oster 101). Susan Oster, second wife of Henry Oster, spoke to us about how her husband was hesitant to share this event even with her, and when he did, it was with weeping— so terrible was the trauma still. This should only cause us to appreciate Oster’s vulnerability in this novel more. He is inviting the public into the darkest, most tormented recesses of his memory, and it is frightfully powerful. Now, to be clear, the deeply personal quality of Oster’s narrative in no way suggests that Spiegelman’s is somehow less authentic. Rather, having access to the perspective of a survivor as well as that of a survivor’s child allows us multi-dimensional insight into the suffering of Nazi persecuted Jews. 

Although there are definite thematic through-lines running between Maus II and The Stable Boy of Auschwitz—most essential being survival and trauma—Spiegelman and Oster offer different and independently edifying explorations of these. Trauma is a transmittable thing, and it is this theory that is at the very heart of Maus II. In Chapter Two, Spiegelman confronts intergenerational trauma head-on, exposing through a therapy session how his psychology and identity have been negatively altered by his father’s experiences during the Holocaust. To his psychiatrist, Artie confesses that despite the wholesale success of his graphic novel, he often feels like a failure or a fraud for not having survived what his father survived at Auschwitz. Abashed, he says, “No matter what l accomplish, it doesn't seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz” (Spiegelman 44.3A). This comment then cracks open an important conversation about survivor’s guilt, which is another vital sub-theme of Maus II. Between Artie’s petulant attitude and Vladek’s overbearing expectations, father and son never did have an easy relationship. Even after Vladek has died, Artie harbors a lot of resentment toward him, which he feels guilt over, considering all that his father endured. But Artie’s psychiatrist suggests that it was Vladek’s guilt as a survivor that caused the discord between them to begin with. He submits, “Maybe your father needed to show that he was always right—that he could always survive— because he felt guilty about surviving” (Spiegelman 44.3B). What he is saying, more or less, is that Vladek’s survivor’s guilt and Artie’s non-survivor’s guilt are inseparable. In Oster’s The Stable Boy of Auschwitz, Heinz’s trauma is exhibited as more individual and more immediate.

        Throughout the novel, Oster never allows readers to relax, to get comfortable, which only evinces the constant threat that Jews were under. The worst part is that, in the end, it didn’t matter how well they performed their assigned jobs; they had no control over whether they lived or died, as is so violently exhibited in Chapter Twenty-Four. In that same chapter, Oster talks about how, existing in that kind of reality, he had to mentally remove himself from the trauma. But in doing so, he, like so many others, sacrificed a part of his humanity: “Even though we Jews were being persecuted—and often executed—as a group, in order to survive in this hellhole, you first had to look out for yourself. We were desensitized, demeaned and dehumanized. We were like robots, doing whatever we could to stay alive” (Oster 104). For these people, rewired by brutality and terror, or reduced to their most animal selves, as Spiegelman portrays, survival became the only objective. This is the most consequential theme in both Maus II and The Stable Boy of Auschwitz.

        Art Spiegelman’s Maus II and Henry Oster’s The Stable Boy of Auschwitz are comparable in that both make accessible the experiences of Holocaust survivors. That said, it would be negligence to assume that one survivor’s story is the same as another’s. Indeed, as discussed in this essay, the different formats, narrational perspectives, and themes the authors present in these two memoirs are what make them such valuable contributions to Holocaust and Second World War education. And yet, there are those who have claimed that such upsetting, honest material has no appropriate place in school curriculum. This conservative mentality has been met with much objection, and the counterargument is simple: These books, however difficult they are to read, are history, and history cannot be censored. The Holocaust must be taught and studied because it happened, and because it could happen again. But if we are to have any hope at all for a better humanity, it is imperative that we remember with active rumination the evil we are capable of.

---Natalie Grill

Linda Overman interview on KLAA Radio 830am on your dial about her podcast THE LAST THING I WISHED I SAID -have a listen

 

Exciting news to share KLAA 830AM on your radio dial Tammy Trujillo of Community Cares interviewed me about my podcast The Last Thing I Wished I Said https://thelastthingiwishedisaid.com and it’s season one. It will be airing live this 8/20/23 Sunday at 5:30 AM and 10:30 PM.

link to listen to interview anytime

 

Interview with Linda Overman on KLAA Community Cares with Tammy Trujillo 

Linda Rader Overman interviews Tiffany Bailey: parenting does not come with a rule book

Tiffany Bailey: parenting does not come with a rule book: On the eighth episode of THE LAST THING I WISHED I SAID , Linda speaks to Tiffany Bailey Baumbach, Marriage and Family Therapist, who practices attachmen…

Linda Rader Overman is so proud of her student Edwin Aguilar

My student, Edwin Aguilar, graduated from CSUN with his MA in Creative Writing.  I am so proud of his achievement and his going into the teaching profession. Well done Edwin.  I am honored that you asked me to participate in your MA hooding ceremony!

Edwin's graduate project: "Kaledoscope." 

Hooded by Linda Overman

 

 

Linda Rader Overman interviews Professor Janice Robinson misses her Mama Tish

Professor Janice Robinson misses her Mama Tish: On the seventh episode of THE LAST THING I WISHED I SAID , Linda speaks to Professor Janice Robinson, who teaches at CSUN in Africana Studies, Academic F…