When I tell people about my degree in English Literature, I’m often met with confusion.
It shows itself in different ways: the more subtle knitting of eyebrows or an incredulous look. But it often shows itself verbally, for it seems that people have an immense capacity for curiosity that includes, “Do you want to be a teacher?”
I think I wouldn’t mind being a teacher, actually, if it came down to it. I have so much respect for the teachers that helped to shape me into the person, reader, and learner that I am today, from the math teachers who helped me during lunch breaks to the English teachers that encouraged me to dig deeper into our reading materials, but it does not escape me how loaded the question of teaching is.
It’s inextricably connected to the fact that 1.) it is in the humanities and 2.) that I am a woman. Teaching has largely been a field dominated by women, and the fact that it has to do with nurturing an aspect of children is also an aspect that tells me how people view Literature, and by extension, the humanities itself.
It’s not like I don’t have experience with teaching. My first job ever was as a writing tutor at Los Angeles City College, my community college at the time. I continued tutoring high-school students after I graduated from university because I found the act of helping them express themselves fulfilling. But I think that it’s quite telling that everyone thinks that I’ll be a teacher (but never a professor) when I tell them about my forever love. They become even more confused when I tell them about how I’m more interested in publishing literature than teaching it. They don’t quite understand the work that happens in the background before a piece of writing is shared with an audience. They don’t understand why I would rather help a writer than write myself.
I don’t really have to explain myself, but I have an intense and pathological need to do so, so I point them to the back of any book.
People often skip the acknowledgements at the end of books, but I always like to read them. The book feels incomplete if I don’t. While the author wrote the book, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the book would not exist in its current form without people who help behind the scenes, such as agents, editors, sensitivity readers, even just people from the author’s personal lives who supported them throughout their writing journey.
Writing is not the isolating journey people imagine it to be; I think these acknowledgements are proof of that. And while it would be wonderful to somehow gather the courage and commitment to write something substantial myself, I’ve also always wanted to be so helpful, so supportive, so necessary that someone felt they had to thank me in such a lasting way.
I believe that Sundress does that very important task of supporting people that the publishing industry often overlooks in favor of good business. What drew me to this press was not just that it supported marginalized communities, but that it actively does its part to uplift and platform those voices. For publishing to truly be diverse and for people like future students reading assigned materials and walking away with a new perspective on literature, it is essential to continue this task.
So, I wouldn’t mind being a teacher. But I think my path lies elsewhere.
Alexandra Bautista (she/her) is an intern at Sundress Publications who hails from sunny California. Armed with an expensive piece of cardstock (her UCLA English degree) and way too much anxiety for one human body to hold, she approaches her lifelong love of reading with a perspective that is both analytical and emotional. Due to her background in tutoring high-school-aged and college-level students in writing, she believes that inside of everyone is a writer waiting to share their inner voice. Hopefully someday that will include her… whenever she gets over her writer’s block, that is. Which, likely, very possibly, maybe, might be never.