Campus Visit

On the day of your interview a full itinerary is prepared. Jokingly, you wonder if you should have

requested potty breaks. Never has your day been this structured. About six or seven hours of back-to-back

meetings. During lunch you meet the only Black faculty member in English who is leaving. You don’t

think anything of it except that the coincidence is more than ironic. You try to make small talk. You want

to gauge if there is any coded language from the “sista”  that says Get Out. Do not succumb to this Sunken

Place. Instead, you get an unexpected quiz during lunch from the Black faculty member. “How will you

as a Black man teach these privileged kids how to read Black literature as universal?” Before I can

respond, she cuts me off—they will laugh at the dialect; they will laugh at you; they will ask you to read

in dialect; they will make you their—