Introductory Letter for Spring 2011

January 25, 2011


Dear Students:

I hope this year is off to a bang, as in pots and pans and sparkle and excitement! This semester is going to whiz by I have that much prepared for you (smile). You will not be bored. English 5/211? What is this course all about and why bother?

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 Woolworth's. 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 San Francisco 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 entre 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 eight, as of January 22.

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 just returned from West Africa, last week, and have had a stomach ache for most of it. I hope at this reading I am feeling better. I am still waking up at 12 midnight. The time difference is eight hours. I visited Senegal and Mali. I attended the World Festival of Black Art and Culture in Dakar and the Festival in the Desert in Timbuktu. It was an annual trek I have been making since 2009. Last year I went to Haiti twice as well.

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, 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