Letter to Students, Summer 2010

June 22, 2010

Dear Students:

Well summer is here and with it English 5/211. I normally do not teach in the summer, it makes the fall semester too long and I feel like toast by December, but I needed the money so here I am (smile).

I love rhetoric or the art of argumentation. I think the mastery of critical thinking and argumentation is an invaluable skill which translates into every aspect of one’s life. I used to teach argument in my developmental courses. We analyzed arguments, practiced drawing Venn diagrams, and became quite adept at identifying deductive and inductive arguments and noting whether they were claims of fact, policy, or value.

Audience is key when preparing a brief and we learned how to both identify our audiences and figure out how to address them, that is, identify concepts we both agree on. Agreement is a good place to start when dealing with controversy—which is another name for argument.

We learned that there were no absolutes and to think so was alienating to one’s audience who might be that exception one excludes.

I guess this is the attorney/lawyer wannabe talking. I actually took LSAT and applied to Stanford and to New School many years ago. I even got letters back from both, but decided to go to the University of San Francisco and get my masters in writing instead, a choice I do not regret.

Funny it was in a Teaching Writing course that I learned about thesis sentences and how to structure an argument. This was back in 1995-’97. Another reason why I wanted to go to USF was sentimental. My dad used to work there when I was a child. He’d tell me stories about drunken priests—too much communion wine and how much he liked working there. I think the Jesuits liked my dad too.

I grew up in San Francisco at a time when BART was an idea whose tracks were laid when I was admitted into UC Berkeley under Affirmative Action, and MUNI was on strike. I used to walk past San Francisco City College to the Geneva Station. We lived on Holloway at Granada Avenue (a street we lived on as well).

Prior to this, my family lived in Visitation Valley –we're from New Orleans. When my father was released from Angola State Prison, he sent a bus ticket to the welfare office which kicked my mother off aide and so my young mother, baby brother and I caught the Greyhound bus to Northern California where we lived first in San Francisco's Fillmore District in a rooming house—the bathroom and kitchen were shared.

Then we moved to the projects on Brookdale. I attended John McLaren Elementary School. My mother would comb my hair while I slept, breakfast set on the table before she left. My job was to get my bad brother up—he was five, feed him and get the two of us to class each morning. After school I’d go to the lower yard and grab his hand and we’d walk home. Our deaf neighbor Kathy would watch us for Mama. I remember her dog and her bright red hair. On paydays, my mother would treat us to warm cashews from Sears or Woolsworths. She also bring home fruit candy slices and around Thanksgiving and Christmas, fruit cake which she’d soak in rum. I have really delicious memories of that time. On New Year's Eve she'd let us smell the bubbles in her champagne. They tasted like tickles.

My mother worked at the Naval Shipyard in Hunter’s Point. She was a keypunch operator. Later she was transferred to Mare Island and to Treasure Island. (Treasure Island was beautiful.) My dad was unemployed a lot and absent the rest of the time. But when he was employed he worked as counselor at Bayview Mental Health Agency and as a house painter and a custodian for the San Francisco public school system.

My mom and dad had an on again, off again relationship—more off than on, and then more on than off.

Yes, it was kind of dysfunctional, but I have had therapy around co-dependence and trust issues developed in my formative years and I think I am getting better, even if not completely well yet (smile), let’s just say, I’m functional (smile).

No seriously, I had a great childhood as childhoods go. I had art classes at the deYoung Museum. I went to symphonies, the opera and dance performances at the Opera House.

My mother took us to see Michael Jackson and James Brown. I sculpted and drew and dreamed of being an artist or an architect or a medical illustrator. What I really wanted to do was paint signs over the freeway, but my mentor told me girls couldn’t paint those kinds of signs. I didn't know the word sexist then.

I came of age during at the height and demise of the Nation of Islam and at the same time, the Black Panther Party. Black Power was swirling overhead and I think the magic dust settled within me, because those movements have shaped a world view, which for a few tweaks and tucks I still hold today.

I have always loved to write. I remember having a poem: Life is Nature, Nature is Life, published in the sixth grade journal. Writing was my entree into the gifted and talented courses in junior high where I wrote original plays which my classmates performed for the school. I attended Visitation Valley Jr. High until I transferred to Muhammad University of Islam where I graduated at fifteen and a half class valedictorian.

I was a young mother, 20, though not as young as my mother, 15. I have two daughters and an ex-husband (smile). I also have a lovely granddaughter who is now seven. This weekend we celebrated my birthday at the first concert in the free Stern Grove Festival series. Angelique Kidjo was the headliner, along with Lamine Fellah and his band. Lamine is Algerian and the Algerians are competing tomorrow in the World Cup—exciting!

The concerts and the artists were superb. A lot of my friends showed up to wish me well—even my mother and brother, nieces and nephew. My mother came up on the train from LA.

Before I went to the concert, I got up at 4:30 AM to go to the protest at the Port of Oakland against the Israeli freight ship scheduled to dock that morning. I was kind of nervous—Port of Oakland police don’t mess around. They have been known to shoot protestors. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a martyred.

Turn the other cheek is a concept I had never practiced. One does have to rehearse these things—yes?

I had to be at work the next day—what might you have thought if I hadn’t showed (smile).

The police were out, but they must have expected us, ‘cause they were cool. No guns drawn, just a gentle reminder to stay in the prescribed places. So were chanted carried signs support Turkey and Palestine. Then a brass band showed up. I think they were the same group that played at a big Oscar Grant rally in downtown Oakland last year. They were good.

We are so civilized. At times I wonder what civility accomplishes. In this case a lot. Our objective was met.

There were hundreds of us there that morning and the ILWU sent the workers home, as the picket lines posed a threat to their health. I don’t know if the ship has since docked, the delay was costly to the shippers, the message—Israel cannot kill and threaten volunteers who just want to deliver humanitarian aide to the Palestinians. The Israeli government has lifted the embargo since the worldwide outcry. It reminds me of the antiapartheid movement, which I was a part of for ten years up to Mandela’s release. I sang with an antiapartheid choir, Vukani Mawethu. I was on stage when Nelson Mandela and his wife, Winnie Mandela came to Oakland to the then, Oakland Coliseum. I remember getting up at 5 AM to watch the two of them walk hand in hand when Mandela was released from Robben Island.

The reason why I need money this summer is to fund my return trip to Haiti between semesters. I went over during Spring Break for six days and I want to go back for two weeks and take money to the organizations I visited there then: schools, after school programs, orphanages, as well as survey areas I wasn’t able to get to during my first trip and visit friends there. I started a French class last week and my car was towed that afternoon. I misread the sign—Thursday, June 17, 2010 is a day I do not want to relive ever again. Have you ever gone to the corner where you left your car and it’s gone? And the number of the pole where the “Tow-a-way” sign you missed is now lit in neon, is wrong—as in, WRONG number. I was like huh? Then when I called one operator told me I have one hour to get my car before the price went from $330 to $500 and when I called back another attendant told me three hours.

This was helpful, since I left my license at home in Oakland. I was lucky to have four dollars for BART fare. My brother met me when I got back to San Francisco with ten minutes to spare and gave me a ride to the San Francisco County Courthouse where the tow away yard it located.

I enjoy what I do, teach people to write. I am very good at what I do. All students need to do is invest the time and good results are guaranteed. Seriously, writing is magical, but the skill is not magic—anyone can learn to be a good writer.

I have had a few careers: property management for HUD subsidized properties, family daycare owner, preschool teacher, elementary school teacher, high school teacher, site director for YMCA after school program, AIDS prevention educator and volunteer recruiter, housewife (smile), mother, and now college professor. I currently serve on just one board: California Coalition for Women Prisoners. My hobbies are: writing and poetry, dancing, camping, cycling and travel.

What else? I have an Internet Radio show and an on-line journal www.wandaspicks.com, www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks I am also a contributor to the Women’s Magazine program on KPFA 94.1 FM I write for a community newspaper, the San Francisco Bay View, where I am arts editor. I have been a journalist for about 20 years now. Publications I have written for are: the Oakland Tribune (Good News), the San Francisco Chronicle (Pink section), the Examiner (Arts), the Montclarion, The Berkeley Voice, Black Issues in Higher Education, the Berkeley Daily Planet.

If students aren't too busy this summer, perhaps we can attend a play together. I highly recommend Don Reed's E-14th Street at the Marsh in Berkeley.


Peace and Blessings,

Professor Wanda Sabir

PS I noticed some dates students might want to take notice of, the last day to get a refund July 6, last day to drop without a W July 1, and the last day to withdraw from the course July 21.