Reading the World Through Where I Come From

 

When I think about “cultural and historical locations,” I initially think about places on a map. The more I sit with the idea, however, the more I understand location as something much larger. Location is where we were raised, who raised us, what we witnessed, what our families valued, what we survived, what we were taught to believe about ourselves, and even the roles we had to take on before we were ready. Those locations travel with us. They show up when we read a book, enter a classroom, meet a stranger, become a parent, or encounter an experience that reminds us of something we have already lived.

Dr. Hughes, if I am being honest, my first location is faith. Before I can explain Atlanta, motherhood, education, grief, or my professional journey, I have to acknowledge that faith has been the thread I have used to make meaning of all of them. I do not mean that I have always understood what was happening in my life. In fact, many of my most important lessons came from seasons when I did not understand anything at all. Faith has taught me to believe that a difficult chapter is not necessarily the end of the story. That belief influences the way I read people and texts. I tend to look for what is beneath the surface: the reason behind a character’s choices, the experience that shaped a person’s response, and the possibility that someone is still becoming.

My Christian faith also affects the way I approach people who see the world differently from me. Faith gives me a framework for compassion, accountability, forgiveness, and hope, but it also requires me to examine myself. I have learned that believing strongly in something does not mean I should stop listening. In fact, some of the most meaningful growth in my life has happened when I have had to sit with questions I could not answer immediately. When I read a text, that can show up in the way I look for themes of redemption, justice, mercy, courage, and human dignity. It can also make me aware of a possible assumption: I may be tempted to look for a hopeful ending because hope is such an important part of how I understand my own life. Recognizing that tendency helps me separate what a text actually says from what I hope it will say. In that way, faith is not just something I bring to my reading; it is also something I have to reflect on while I read.

My geographic location also matters. I was born in Mississippi, but I came to Atlanta when I was only eight months old. My paternal grandmother believed I would have a better life in Atlanta than in Meridian, Mississippi, where my father, who was stationed there in the Navy, had met my mother. That decision was made before I could understand it, but it became one of the most significant decisions of my life. Atlanta became home. It became the place where I was raised, educated, challenged, and shaped. I did not choose Atlanta as a child; Atlanta was chosen for me, and I am grateful that my grandmother made that choice.

As an adult, returning to Mississippi has been humbling. Visiting Meridian has made me think about the places that existed before I had memories of them. There is something powerful about standing somewhere and realizing that your story began there even though you do not remember the beginning. I think that experience has contributed to the way I read history and literature. I understand that people are never simply “from” somewhere. A place can carry family history, opportunity, hardship, migration, sacrifice, and hope. My grandmother and grandparents are a major part of why I have had the opportunity to experience life the way I have. I thank God for them every day.

One of the most defining historical locations of my childhood is not a city at all. It is a moment I witnessed in second grade. My grandfather went into a burning house to save his mother. I watched the house burn. I watched my grandfather walk into that house, and I watched him later be wheeled out in a black body bag. I was a child, but I understood enough to know that something irreversible had happened. The grief and trauma of that moment are still within me.

My grandfather was more than a grandfather to me. He was a father figure, especially because my father was an active-duty military parent and was often away. Losing him meant losing one of the people who represented safety, love, and family to me. I recognize now that experiences like that become part of the lens through which we read the world. I may encounter a character grieving a parent, a child experiencing sudden loss, or a family facing a crisis, and I cannot read those moments as completely abstract. I know what it means for a child to carry an experience that adults may assume she is too young to understand. That does not mean my interpretation is always the only interpretation, but it does mean that my lived experience enters the room with me.

Motherhood became another cultural and historical location that changed how I see everything. I became a mother while I was still very young, and motherhood forced me to grow up alongside my children. It changed my understanding of responsibility, sacrifice, and purpose. My children have been part of nearly every major transition in my adult life. I have had to make decisions not only for myself but with an awareness that my choices would shape the lives of other people.

The roles I have carried are another important part of my location. I have been a daughter, granddaughter, mother, student, real estate professional, entrepreneur, substitute teacher, certified teacher, and now a graduate student. None of these roles exists in isolation. They overlap. Sometimes they have competed for my time and energy, and sometimes one role has prepared me for another. Motherhood taught me responsibility in a way that no textbook could have. Real estate taught me to listen closely to people and pay attention to the details that matter to them. Substitute teaching taught me flexibility and patience. Becoming a classroom teacher taught me that leadership can look like consistency, relationship-building, and showing up even when you do not feel completely prepared. Being a graduate student now puts me back in the role of learner. That role matters because it reminds me that I am still developing. I do not want to become the kind of teacher who believes having a degree means I have arrived. I want to remain curious enough to keep learning from my students, my colleagues, my professors, and the texts I teach.

My son was born in 2023 while I was navigating my undergraduate journey at the University of Georgia. I still attended class. I still showed up. I still tried to be a student even while carrying the responsibilities and realities of motherhood. What I remember most about that period is not simply the work itself, but the feeling of being watched. There were stares. There were loud judgments and quiet judgments. There were moments when I felt that people had already decided what my story meant before they knew me.

That experience was especially heavy because I had once been the first person in my immediate family to attend college. I carried that pride with me. Then, in some ways, I began to feel like the black sheep. The identity of “first-generation college student” can sound celebratory when written on paper, but living it can be complicated. You can be proud of breaking a barrier while simultaneously feeling isolated from the people who do not understand what the barrier required you to do.

All I knew to do was go back to where I started and attempt to start over. Looking back, I realize that “starting over” has been a recurring theme in my life. I have started over academically. I have started over professionally. I have started over financially and personally. I have stepped away, returned, changed direction, and tried again. At the time, some of those moments felt like failures. Now I see them as evidence that a person can have more than one beginning.

That perspective affects how I read characters who make choices that others might quickly label as poor decisions. I find myself asking, What happened before this moment? What did this person know? What did they not know? What options did they believe they had? Who was influencing them? What were they carrying that the reader cannot immediately see? Those questions do not excuse harmful choices, but they help me resist reducing a person to one decision. My own life has taught me that context matters.

Another location I have to consider is the world of media, texts, stories, and popular culture. As an ELA teacher, I spend a great deal of time thinking about what stories are placed in front of students and what those stories teach them, both intentionally and unintentionally. I have learned that stories do more than entertain us. They give us language for experiences, introduce us to people we may never meet, and sometimes reinforce assumptions we did not realize we had. The books I have encountered as a student and now as a teacher have helped me see that there is rarely only one way to understand a character or a conflict. A story can make me question what I thought I knew about a person, a community, or even myself. That is especially important to me because I want my students to understand that reading is not simply finding the “right answer.” It is also noticing whose perspective is centered, whose voice is missing, what assumptions the author may be asking us to examine, and how our own experiences affect what we notice. The stories I read now often make me think about my students and the stories they are already carrying. I want literature to be a place where they can recognize themselves without being limited to only what they already know.

Education is another location that has profoundly shaped me. I was a college student, a mother, a state employee, a real estate professional, an entrepreneur, a substitute teacher, and eventually a certified ELA teacher. I spent nine years working as a substitute teacher, including two years as a long-term substitute, before becoming a certified middle grades ELA teacher. I passed the GACE Middle Grades ELA assessment on my first attempt and eventually returned to graduate study because I realized that teaching was not simply another job for me. It was connected to a deeper calling.

My journey through education has also changed the way I understand students. When I stand in front of my middle school ELA students, I know I am not simply teaching reading and writing skills. I am teaching young people who arrive carrying their own locations. Some are carrying family expectations. Some are carrying loss. Some are carrying insecurity. Some are carrying experiences they do not yet have the language to explain. Some have already learned assumptions about themselves based on what other people have told them they can or cannot become.

Because of my own history, I am especially aware of the danger of assuming that I know the whole story. A student who is disengaged may be dealing with something I cannot see. A student who is talkative may be trying to find belonging. A student who seems resistant may have learned to protect herself. At the same time, my experiences can create assumptions of their own. I have to remind myself that empathy does not mean assuming I know what another person is experiencing simply because something looks familiar. That is one of the places where reflection becomes important.

This is also where my identity as a Black woman and educator enters the way I read the world. I understand that representation matters, but I also understand that representation alone is not enough. When Black and Brown students encounter texts, they deserve opportunities to see themselves, but they also deserve opportunities to encounter people and experiences different from their own. Reading can become a way of expanding our locations rather than simply confirming them.

My professional journey in real estate has contributed another perspective. For years, I have worked with people making decisions about homes, money, neighborhoods, and the futures they imagine for themselves. Real estate taught me to pay attention to place in a literal way. Where people live is connected to opportunity, family, history, economics, identity, and dreams. It also taught me that people attach stories to spaces. A house is not always just a house. It can represent stability, a fresh start, an inheritance, a hard-earned accomplishment, or a chance to give children something different.

When I look at my own journey now, I see a winding road rather than a straight line. The image of the road in my journey collage feels appropriate because there have been stops, detours, unexpected turns, and moments when I had no idea what was coming next. I began college at eighteen with big dreams. I became a mother. I left college. I worked for the State of Georgia. I earned my real estate license. I returned to school. I became a substitute teacher. I built a real estate business. I returned to UGA and earned my bachelor’s degree. I faced the pandemic and the grief and uncertainty that came with that season. I returned to the classroom, studied for certification, passed the GACE, and became a teacher. Now I am continuing my graduate education because I believe I still have more to learn and more to give.

Even the painful parts of my journey have shaped how I engage with stories. When I think about my grandfather, my children, my education, my career changes, and the moments when I felt judged or misunderstood, I realize that I have developed a strong sensitivity to stories about resilience, identity, belonging, and becoming. Those themes find me easily. But I also know that my sensitivity can become a lens that needs to be examined. I can be drawn toward a character because I recognize something in her, while overlooking another character because I do not immediately understand him. Knowing this about myself makes me want to slow down.

That, to me, is one of the purposes of locating ourselves as readers. We cannot remove our histories from the room. We can, however, become more conscious of the ways they enter the room. I bring Atlanta with me. I bring Mississippi with me. I bring my grandmother and grandfather with me. I bring motherhood, grief, faith, education, professional transitions, and every version of myself that had to begin again. I bring the little girl who witnessed something terrifying in second grade. I bring the young mother who kept going to class while people watched and judged. I bring the college student who once wondered whether she belonged. I bring the substitute teacher who spent years learning in classrooms before becoming the teacher at the front of one.

Dr. Hughes, I think this is why I connect so deeply with the idea that assumptions can change over time. My assumptions about myself certainly have. There were seasons when I interpreted detours as evidence that I was behind. Now I can see that some detours were preparation. There were seasons when I thought being different meant I did not belong. Now I understand that difference can also be a source of perspective. There were seasons when I believed I had to have everything figured out before moving forward. Now I am more comfortable with the idea that I can move forward while still becoming.

Ultimately, the way I read the world is shaped by a combination of faith, family, place, loss, motherhood, education, and purpose. These locations influence the questions I ask of texts and of people. They make me curious about what is underneath a decision and cautious about judging a storyline from one page. They remind me that every person is carrying a history that may not be visible.

I do not want to read the world only through what I already know. I want to recognize my own assumptions well enough to remain open to being challenged. I want my students to have that same freedom. My story has taught me that a person can be many things at once: daughter, granddaughter, mother, student, teacher, entrepreneur, believer, and woman still becoming.

So, when I think about my cultural and historical locations, I no longer see them as separate stops along a timeline. I see them as layers of the reader, teacher, mother, and woman I am today. Every place, every person, every loss, every opportunity, every detour has given me another way to understand a story.

And perhaps that is the most important thing I am learning: I am not finished reading my own story. I am still learning how to read the stories of others, too.