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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ:
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Melanie Morata, lecturer in the Department of English and Language Arts at Morgan State University. Dr. Morata, Melanie, wonderful to have you on the show today.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Nice to see you too, this is great.
PJ:
And today we're talking about your book, African American Adolescent Female Heroes, the 21st century young adult neo slave narrative. And I will ask you to kind of like walk us through all those terms, but first, why this book?
Melanie A. Marotta:
Why this book? No one's ever done it before. No, as I say that somebody's gonna say, oh I did this, right? That's always the way it works. I did it! No one has ever done this area before. So my PhD is in African American women's lit and... Oh, I can hear somebody's fire alarm going off.
PJ:
No worries.
Melanie A. Marotta:
apartment okay good um is in African American women's lit from Morgan State and my dissertation chair is or was uh Dr Ruth T. Sheffey um who's one of the foremost authorities on Zora Noherson in the world
PJ:
Mm.
Melanie A. Marotta:
um so ultimately she you know she she's the person to ask and uh I see her a few times a year she has an endowed lectureship and this year's talk was about promoting was about promoting black women. And so I wrote my dissertation based on my interest in African American women's lit and the impact of environment. And it inevitably fell in. It's one of those things when you're an academic that... once in a while you'll fall into something. And YA was not, young adult literature was not my area, right? It was, I always did adult literature. I did children's literature and some YA at the University of Guelph where my undergrad's from. And it's just one of those funny things that you end up responding to a call for papers and kinda fall into this area. But you're always expanding your area of interest, right? I certainly hope so.
PJ:
Right.
Melanie A. Marotta:
That I certainly hope so, right? If not, you get stale, and you can't teach students the way that they should be taught. And you always want to make sure that you're updating. In October, so this weekend, because it's Labor Day, I'll ultimately be working on finishing my conference presentation for Pamela at the end of October, which is the Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association. And that will be, that presentation will be on two new books that came out last year and is a chapter, part of a chapter in my upcoming book that's due for the wonderful University Press Mississippian in February. So the fact is you should always be, and it's on Black War, you should always be updating what it is that you're doing. So I responded to, as inevitably happens, I responded to in 2014 at Call for Papers about YA, and I thought, oh, I can branch out and think about, rather than adult literature, what about adolescence, and what is it that could be of interest? and it took me yeah so it came out this year I started in 2014 yeah this is this is the book right I mean I did two books in between
PJ:
Hey, at least you finished it, right? It's not... yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
yes I finished and now I'm working on and I say that about the next one and I'm finishing now that's new in February um yeah um it it's it was I responded to this call for papers and I thought Hey, this will be and I do African American Women's Lit and the Neo-Slave Narrative and have always found it to be an integral area. I mean, everybody knows who Octavia Butler is, right? And Octavia Butler is, you know, and Her Kindred is the book. And I remember reading it in grad school. I had this wonderful professor, Dr. Carter, She put kindred on the reading list and it was like, you know light bulbs go off and oh my goodness This is the book right and this is what that everybody should read and then of course, you know FX just I still haven't watched it Cuz I don't know right, you know, they did that they did that I know and you always want to it's the same thing toy Morrison of course wrote the neo-slave narrative with beloved and there's a movie and I Don't know It's like, do you, do you, I, you know, I love adaptations, but do you really wanna, you know, sully the, the love that you have for this, for this book with, eh, right? Right?
PJ:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Here it is and do you really want to do that? So I you know I put a I put a pin in the series and really didn't want to really didn't want to touch it just yet but um I studied the neo-slave narrative in the slave narrative and of course, you know Henry Lewis Gates Jr Who is who's the guy right? And of course, he's on he's on PBS for his series, but he's the guy that does the analysis of these not just American history, right? But, and again, I'm a Canadian American, so, but worldwide, worldwide history, right?
PJ:
Right.
Melanie A. Marotta:
That as we talk about Florida, that ultimately there's this erasure of this body of American history, and again, if you will, worldwide history, that just can't happen. That we, I mean, Yesterday, this week is the anniversary of the march, right? And ultimately yesterday was the anniversary of Emmett Till. And of course if you've gone down to the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, right? One must go to see the Emmett Till exhibit. and see what is, and see the atrocities that have been documented by this wonderful museum. We have to remember, right? Like I said, kind of falling into YA, I was always doing the slave narrative and neo-slave narrative and did for my dissertation. And of course, you always continue on what you're working on with your dissertation. for your students and for your research and ultimately for your teaching. But going into YA, I thought, why isn't anybody doing this with this? Right? And what is going on? Why is nobody looking at young adult literature as neo-slave narratives? Is this because it tends to be an adult area? You know, again with Octavia Butler, Gail Jones, with of course Tony Morrison. Is this ultimately something that adults deal with only and why? Why is that the case? And especially now with so many texts coming out for children as a reminder, right? That this is something we need to learn about in school and make sure that ultimately a history cannot be forgotten. So I looked around and thought, okay, nobody's doing this. Why is nobody doing this? So I started poking around and I found, and science fiction is one of my areas, and specfic, right? Super fun, right? How is that not fun? And I know I haven't, and in horror now too, I haven't seen the new Dracula movie, and I would love to, all right, it looks amazing. And I keep telling my students, can I teach vampires too? I'm like, somebody has to go and see this movie and tell me how it is, because, especially because this weekend was like $4 movie day, I was like, somebody went, right? But no, everybody went to see Blue Beetle, right? Superheroes, always superheroes. And it was, I looked around and I was doing my research and I found a blog from a mom and I've since never been able to find that blog again, but she was out of Georgia and she said, nobody writes books for my kids. And why is that, right? She The blogger was an African American woman who said, nobody's writing books for my kids. My kids are not represented in text. Why is this the case? Like what's going on? So I started poking around more, because again, we're dealing, you know, 13, 17 age range. And there are those who say like, YA is just slap a label on it so we can ultimately market it, right? And go, you know, yeah, and go the big buck route, right? But it is a real genre, right? Because ultimately adolescents need to see themselves in text. So I started poking around and thought, where is the YA spec fic featuring African American young women? Why is this not the case? And it took me a really long time to, and actually until about 2019, it was few and far between. Major publishers weren't doing it. So I thought, nope, can't have that, right? Don't want to do Harry Potter again.
PJ:
Hahaha!
Melanie A. Marotta:
Nobody needs to see any more Harry Potter theory. let's do but and that's the other thing like why do we do the same old same old right and so I wrote the book it took me you know conference presentations took a chapter out at one point you know cuz hey finished it during the pandemic because that's when you write a book right yeah don't like this chapter but added it added a new one The last chapter actually was my newest and freshest and wanted to make sure that, because again these books take time, right? And as a result, you know, I didn't want to be doing all books from this time range. I wanted to go as recent as humanly possible. And that's the same thing with the book I'm writing now. Everything is really recent because I want to say... 2019 kind of kicked it off, right? Like 2023, I teach women and gender studies too, right? So 2023 really, I mean, Pride Month happened and there was like a boom of YA queer texts. And I was like, wow, you know, publishers are catching on and putting out these books. And the same thing happened with YA Spec Bic. All of a sudden you got really some, excellent, excellent works and I really wanted to highlight these are the books that are out there, right? And in some of this, I mean I was the first person that published about these books, so bringing attention, making sure authors get credit where credit
PJ:
Yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
is due. But hopefully other teachers will integrate those texts in their teaching as well. So that's how I fell into it. Long, long explanation!
PJ:
No, but I mean, ultimately it was for that mom in Georgia, right? Like that,
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yep.
PJ:
uh, right. Um, and it's about why, like, and you're like, I'm going to find them and I'm going to make sure they get spread. Um,
Melanie A. Marotta:
Thank
PJ:
but something
Melanie A. Marotta:
you.
PJ:
you mentioned multiple times, and I wanted to, before we move into your book, cause I do want to talk about that, uh,
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yes.
PJ:
you talked about, um, why it's important not to stagnate or become stale, um, for pedagogical reasons. Why, and we actually, I just had someone on talk about pedagogy in the new college classroom, all that sort of thing.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Nice.
PJ:
But I'd love to hear from you, why is it important to, if I'm understanding you correctly, why is it important to continually grow personally in your studies if you're going to teach your students well?
Melanie A. Marotta:
You can't teach the same thing over and over again, right? So long, long ago, it used to be, you could be a university professor and you could focus your entire career on one writer. And you did this one writer and this is what you did. And your entire career is based on this and you were the person, right? Well, over time due to job, right? But not just hiring and education. I always seem to be talking about this, we're facing terrible cuts, especially in the humanities. And you know, people are really pushing that, you know, the humanities aren't important anymore. It's like, they are. It's the study of people. And ultimately we're making sure that when you go out into the workforce that you can You have cat skills critical and analytical thinking skills. We're making sure that you can ultimately argue for your Ultimately argue for yourself right going out and Making sure that your voice is heard at work So as an instructor, that just didn't fly anymore. You can't just do one writer. So you have to spread this out and have to do even more and become, ultimately in a way you should be an expert in as many areas as humanly possible. I'm doing, like I said, for October, black horror. Horror was not my area, right? It just, you know, it was it. I'm writing on Tiffany, and I love Tiffany Jackson so much, Tiffany Jackson's The Weight of Blood. I'm writing on that for October. I wrote for last year's Pamela presentation about Tiffany Jackson's White Smoke, which is, which is an African-American YA Gothic novel, and it's amazing, and I got to hear it at the Library of Congress Book Festival. last year and had my picture taken and got my autograph and everything. Wonderful! I mean, horror was not my area in science fiction, and Western, you know, justified city primeval will be on tonight and I'll totally be watching that because I have an essay coming out in the journal college literature about Elmer Leonard's work, right? But you can't just do, okay, well, I'm gonna do three things. I'm always gonna do three things and it's only gonna be three things. And this is what I'm gonna do for my entire career because it's no good for, it isn't any good for your students. And for yourself, you're going to do the same old same old always, right? No, you in order to grow as a person as an educator. We're always reading. We're always learning We go to conferences in person so that we can you know, we can not only listen to other presenters present on their area of expertise, but also so we can, you know, go to the meet and greet and talk to people later and get to talk about their work and learn all about so that ultimately we can integrate those areas into our teaching too. During the pandemic, again, like, this is the time to do stuff! I took a course that I've been teaching and I thought, you know, I think I'm going to put a theme on this course so that I'm teaching vampires. And so I have, yeah, and there you
PJ:
Why
Melanie A. Marotta:
go.
PJ:
not? Yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Well, I thought, right? Everybody, you know, other professors read themes for their course and I thought, hey, so I can do, I do Gothic literature. I've been doing Gothic literature for a while. I have an essay coming out next year in the Rutledge Handbook for Transgender Literature about transgender Gothic literature. I have an essay that, after I finish this one, I'll finish the other one for for an encyclopedia about transgender white literature, contemporary American. But again, you always stay in your in your wheelhouse, but don't, right? You know, you always
PJ:
Yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
stay here, but you have to go over here because not only what if these students are in your class, but also am I only supposed to do? you know, late 20th century American literature for the rest of my life? No, right? Because that was my dissertation. No. You have to, as a person, but also as an educator, you always have to continue to adapt. So, you know, for the new round of first year students, I looked at how I designed the course and I thought, this last book, I don't know if it worked, I thought it was okay. It was a really good vampire neo-slave narrative, but they didn't really seem to like it as much, so I swapped it out and I'll be putting in African American queer vampire, right? Because that's fun, right? And again, right? Not only why not, but... You have to make sure your students are represented. So I try to hit as many areas as I can. I start with Paul Dory and go all the way up to something that came out, what, three years ago. That way, ensure, you know, again, not just representation, but that we're always current and we're always up on, we're always up on current theories. But again, as a teacher and a person, you must, right?
PJ:
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's just it's good to always hear like the different perspectives on that. But you've mentioned this even now, you're talking about, you've talked about slave narratives and neo-slave narratives. Do you mind articulating what those two are and the difference between them?
Melanie A. Marotta:
So it depends on where you are as well. So slave narratives either tend to come from British enslavement or tend to come from American enslavement. The difference in between the two and the most famous, of course, Mary Prince and Equiano connected to British enslavement. Slave narratives that tend to come from British enslavement tend to be from formerly enslaved persons. Right? Remember, we, and for everybody listening, we don't say slave anymore. You don't say, you don't use that terminology anymore, right? Because a slave ultimately is, is a noun. Being an enslaved person is, is different, right? This is more talking about, you know, using it as, here's me as an English instructor, As an adjective right rather than this is the whole person Which is what a slave was what that means right instead as an enslaved person you're reminding everyone that These were people this was the condition This is was enforced upon them and in Britain's case They were stolen from their homes and forced into enslavement The difference with American enslavement, it tends to be, I'm in Baltimore, right? Frederick Douglass, okay. Yeah, Frederick Douglass is everywhere. One direction you get Edgar Allan Poe, the other direction you get, you get Fells Point and you get Frederick Douglass, right? And of course the museum and the Smithsonian, the Sam Museum, and the Portrait Gallery have just placed his, daguerreotype and in his portrait. I've seen the portrait, hadn't seen daguerreotype before, back on exhibit, right? Like again, here is Frederick Douglass, but it's a really young Frederick Douglass and not the stern, right? And again, the photo, you know, the image was taken for a reason, right? But ultimately, this is a reminder and I put his, Frederick Douglass is a young man when I teach Frederick Douglass. into my teaching to remind students like this is how young he was. But again, with American enslavement, it was, these are people who were born into enslavement and this is all they knew. Right? Because you do get, you do get persons who say, well, why didn't they just leave? Really? And go where? Right? And, you know, and with what? And... These are you know, if you if you read Frederick Douglass's narrative He was born in Maryland There he was. This is you know, here's this plantation that he spent, you know, his formative years on He Ultimately Was taught and taught himself mostly learned how to read and write and as a result it assisted him and Escaping because it had to be it was an escape. He had to leave or Inevitably death right like this is not hey He could just walk away one day and you know, everything is just peachy, right? And again you get people who just like oh, yeah, you know, they should have just you how right? Like it wasn't going to happen people died and Ultimately these texts should be taught in schools and we're seeing so much where either people are a, banning them, or b, putting these warnings on these texts, right? Or c, doing what some universities are and saying, well if you find this triggering, you don't have to read this, you can read something else. Really? No, everybody should be reading Frederick Douglass' text or everybody should be reading you know, Mary Prince's text, ultimately ensuring that we all know and remember that these people existed and here's what happened that they're only writing these texts or somebody was writing these texts for them because they couldn't read and they couldn't write that these texts to get people ultimately to support the abolitionist movement, right? Again, I always point to Henry Louis Gates, always go to his works, right? Because he's the guy and he's written extensively. But so what happened was eventually 20th century writers thought, okay, well, I mean, ultimately we can't forget, but how can we take this this experience, this historical moment, this atrocity that happened on American soil, and how can we place this in a modern contemporary text? And of course you get Margaret Walker's Jubilee, you get Octavia Butler's Kindred, you get Toni Morrison's Beloved, Gail Jones, again, one of my favorite writers, wrote my dissertation on her too, writing about her now. Her birdcatcher is amazing, but how can you take this experience and write about it from a contemporary perspective and write about it for a contemporary audience? Will you create the neo-slave narrative?
PJ:
Hm.
Melanie A. Marotta:
And ultimately, what this work does is you are... Bless you. You are...
PJ:
It's
Melanie A. Marotta:
I
PJ:
always
Melanie A. Marotta:
know it's...
PJ:
two. I literally just sit there waiting for the second one. Sorry.
Melanie A. Marotta:
That's okay! It's pollen season and
PJ:
Yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
with your weather I'm sure you're just not getting away with it.
PJ:
No, not at all.
Melanie A. Marotta:
No! It's the same thing here and with the humidity it's the same thing here.
PJ:
Oh, yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
But with the neo-slave narrative the difference is that not only are you writing about it from a modern contemporary perspective and for a contemporary audience, but also you can take this structure and offer characters agency that they wouldn't have had before power over their lives, right? Making sure that characters have a voice and that's really what the young adult perspective does, right? Not only brings and I focus on American. We'll leave British for now. I did work on one writer who teaches in North Carolina, partly, but ultimately, and he is British, but my works were American. For, sorry?
PJ:
Forgive me one second. So I, part of it was me sneezing, but I just want to make sure. So as you were talking about the slave versus neo-slave, part of it, the distinction is that in the neo-slave narratives, they were able to create more agency and more voice for their characters. That's part of the distinction,
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yes.
PJ:
especially, and obviously you have more of a historical setting
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yes.
PJ:
and you have a more of a speculative setting. Is that kind of some of the distinctions?
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yes.
PJ:
Okay.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
PJ:
I'm sure you explained it really well. I just, I was sneezing and I was like, shoot, I think that was it.
Melanie A. Marotta:
For sure.
PJ:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Melanie A. Marotta:
That's all right. And with the slave narrative too, Robert Steptoe wrote this excellent book where he laid out different types of, different structures of slave narratives, but ultimately they were written for people in the abolitionist movement, right? And hopefully attempting to urge people to vote right to enact law to make sure that that's enslavement on American soil That enslavement was abolished, right? So you're getting particularly with Frederick Douglass So they used his was the most popular slave narrative of all time his sold 30,000 copies And every text that came after that point was really modeled on Here's this trajectory so when You get neo-slave narratives, you'll see that similar trajectory ultimately, you know the escape And going north it is the end and that's where it ends off. These are first-person narrations Telling the reader here's what happened and really urging them to enact change. You have a voice, you need to do this, right? Neo-slave narrative tended to really come out later 20th century around, and again, we talked about civil rights movement today with the anniversary, around that time period. And again, it's not only just a reminder of American history, but offering, African American writers offering their characters voices they may not have had before. And no longer the work ends with the, if you will, the escaping going north. A lot of the time that part happens in the beginning. So you get to see what you didn't see before, which here's the life afterwards. Right? I mean, Frederick Douglass is the guy. I mean, he's one of my most favorite writers of all time. He's the guy, right? And you got to learn, you know, yeah, you got to learn a lot about, especially with, you know, his career as an abolitionist, right? Ultimately, you know, his connection with the University of Rochester, right? They have their institute there, because, you know, he went to Rochester, New York. The fact is, you got to see a lot of his life afterwards. right after the first book and he wrote extensively after that point but a lot of formerly enslaved people you didn't, right? It was one book and then it ended here and then you didn't really learn what happened, right? So this is a chance for writers to say, this is not the end, right? That enslaved people, this is not the end. Here's the life afterwards, here's what happened, here's how enslavement remains impactful, right? And right now, systemic racism and critical race theory ultimately is getting, you know, there are those who wanna take that little pink dollar store eraser and erase everything and rewrite everything, right? And you can't, you can't, we can't forget. And so these writers are ensuring, and I mean, and again, it's a specfic, you know, text, right? There are those people who still say like Octavia Butler's neo-slave narrative is not the serious one because there was science fiction and it traveled through time. So therefore it's not, you know, literature, right? It's like really? Because of science fiction? No, right? You just get to do more. and you get to do different things, right? You get to travel through time. You get to do different things. And this is a way for her character Dana to look back on her past and see how ultimately she came to be and to remember the ancestors, right?
PJ:
Even as you're talking here about like slave narratives always ended with the escape to the north and neo-slave is about people continuing on after that. Some of that goes back to this distinction you're making between slave and enslaved person, right? Because it's like, your story ends when you stop being a slave because that's how you were defined. When you
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yeah.
PJ:
talk about enslaved person, it's like... Oh, now I've gotten out of the enslavement. I'm still a person. I still have a story. It keeps going, right? And that's,
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yeah.
PJ:
is that part of the connection there? Am
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yeah,
PJ:
I tracking with you?
Melanie A. Marotta:
oh absolutely. Oh for sure right and again it you know the slave narrative Frederick Douglass is so impactful because he reminds his readership that he is he is a person right that's why his is really the go-to I mean if you're if you're a teacher and you're and you're I'm gonna say I'm gonna take a little aside and say this And this would be the second book I put together with a colleague Susan Flynn. We did a critical pedagogical text about ensuring that DEI was in classrooms like in other words, if you're not entirely sure don't worry about it Don't be nervous about it. Just just do it, right? Because that's what happens sometimes too teachers don't want to branch out Because they're nervous they're going to make a mistake And then, you know, the court of public opinion is going to, oh, right, here's what happened. And you're going to, you know, right? And that's inevitably what's going to happen. So people are, people get afraid that what if I make a mistake and it doesn't, and it doesn't work? And the fact is you gotta, you gotta do it, right? You gotta do the leap and you gotta do it. And, and Frederick Douglass is a good, is a good starting point because besides his work has it all, right? Ultimately, his text embodies rhetoric and the argument, but even before he can argue that enslavement has to be abolished, he has to argue and prove to his readership that he's a person, right? Because to many people at the time, he wasn't considered to be a person. He was considered to be property. So with the New Oslo narratives, it's personal, right? You get to see that ultimately these characters are people. They have agency, they have emotions, they're people, right? And I keep saying that for a reason,
PJ:
Right.
Melanie A. Marotta:
and that ultimately, and this is something that we should read. So it's got science fiction, right? That just makes it more fun. Right?
PJ:
I mean, I'm a science fiction fan, so you're preaching to the choir here. Like, I read
Melanie A. Marotta:
Oh
PJ:
way too much speculative
Melanie A. Marotta:
good!
PJ:
fiction, so...
Melanie A. Marotta:
Right? So, so Justine Ireland's texts have zombies in it, right? You know what I mean? Like, you know, hey! Right? That just adds to the fun of the thing. Right? And of course zombies are all representative too. I teach a little zombie now and again. You know, a
PJ:
little
Melanie A. Marotta:
little
PJ:
dabbling.
Melanie A. Marotta:
bit. A little bit. Right? Guys, just put that in too!
PJ:
I wanted to go, you mentioned this earlier, it's not a, it is a very intentional choice and very important one that these slave and neo-slave narratives are told in the first person. Because in third person you could keep that property distinction, but first person is, that's a stylistic, that shows like you're like, oh my gosh, this is like you're living, I'm living inside this person's head. And that makes people uncomfortable, right?
Melanie A. Marotta:
Oh wait.
PJ:
And I have to ask you this, I apologize, what is DEI?
Melanie A. Marotta:
diversity, equity, and inclusivity.
PJ:
Ah, okay, got it.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Different countries have different short forms, like Europe does EDI, it's the same thing. Ultimately, all it means is just a fancy term, which means make sure your students are shown in your courses, right?
PJ:
Yeah,
Melanie A. Marotta:
Make
PJ:
yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
sure that, yeah, that there's representation there, that everybody has a chance to... see themselves in books, in literature, in television, that there's representation, that people are there.
PJ:
Well, and that the students get to meet people who are different than themselves, because that's a big part of education.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Oh
PJ:
Right? Like,
Melanie A. Marotta:
yeah. Oh, exactly.
PJ:
yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Right? And that's the thing, right? That's the whole purpose of going to university. You go to university, you branch out, you meet new people in your classroom, right? But you also meet them in the text that you're reading. I'm designing a Canadian literature course now. And I mean, hey, I could do the same old, same old stuff, right? Or... Okay, I could put Sylvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic in the course. I mean, she is the you know, the number one gothic novelist You know right now like she's amazing and She writes she's Canadian and Latinx and here's her perspective and here's her text, right? Indigenous horror is booming right now and because it's awesome Right? And of course, yeah, of course, right, we're going to going to make sure that as I'm designing this course, this is going to be indigenous representation. And I mean, and again, from the education perspective, I have a background in indigenous literature. I did it in undergrad at the University of Guelph, right? I did it American literature wise when I did my masters. And as we, you know, today after we finish speaking, I'm going to go back to my course that I'm taking from the University of Alberta on Indigenous Canada so that, again, I'm all up to date and make sure that I can include the Indigenous experience in the course that I'm designing because you have to, right? And again, just like you said, you have to introduce students to... experiences that may not be their own in order to ultimately in order to be a well-rounded person you have to learn about everybody's experience and know right so that you can go out and work and ultimately be well respectful and inclusive and make sure that when in doubt in the world that we're in today you know kindness does actually matter right but representation matters always
PJ:
Yeah, and it's I mean part of the reason I brought that up one, of course, it's important that students be able to see themselves
Melanie A. Marotta:
Okay.
PJ:
but like I mean I mentioned beforehand I Grew up through high school an hour and a half north of Green Bay, Wisconsin And so if you had designed the course based on students seeing themselves It would have just been all white because that's like literally goes a town of 600. Okay, like that's there was
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yeah
PJ:
like But I was grateful that I was able to read, you know, I mean especially in a town of 600 you're like wow, this is, it can be really different, you know, like
Melanie A. Marotta:
Oh! Hehehehe
PJ:
when
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yeah!
PJ:
Walmart is your main source of entertainment, it's really
Melanie A. Marotta:
Oh!
PJ:
good to have your horizons broadened, right? Like that's,
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yeah.
PJ:
and so anyways, that's near and dear, like, and those reasons are obviously contradictory. They work together, they're complimentary, right? So actually, and I did want to mention this because I actually had a friend who just went to Germany and I think sometimes, you know, you're talking about people are trying to erase things. And it's a
Melanie A. Marotta:
Okay.
PJ:
lot easier to see the foibles and other people, like other people's problems and why they should do what they're
Melanie A. Marotta:
No.
PJ:
doing. But he talked about walking, and I believe they were like slightly raised up, they might not have been, but every place that there were Jews who had been taken away in the Holocaust, as they walked
Melanie A. Marotta:
Hello.
PJ:
through Berlin, there was a brick with like the, what they did, what was there, and their names. And, you talk to like German people, they're incredibly self-conscious about
Melanie A. Marotta:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
that. Or maybe historically conscious would be better, not self-conscious. That has psychological overtones I'm not looking for. They're historically conscious about that, and like that needs to not be repeated, right? And so when you look at that, you're like, well, yeah, you know? And so when we look at that, we're like, that's obvious. But here it's like become this like, well, I mean, we don't want to trigger people. You know what I mean? And it's like, well, that'd be better than doing it again. I'm just saying like. Anyways,
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yes.
PJ:
so I don't know if that parallel works, but I find it helpful to look at other cultures where it's easier
Melanie A. Marotta:
going.
PJ:
to see other people mess up.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Oh, I know in Germany, which I've never been, unfortunately, the fact is that they refuse to let anybody forget, and that's the way it should be, right? They got rid of all the monuments of, you know, right? Those have gone away, but they're making sure, and yeah, that ultimately anti-Semitism, which is a huge problem right now, and that this just can't happen in Germany, right? That the fact remains that people are remembered and people are remembered for a reason, because we just can't let this continue. And that ultimately... Yeah, and in Germany especially, you get punished by law. But with all the talk in the US, I went to Broadway, I went to Broadway in the spring, and theater, the big, I wanna say the big issue and most of the plays were about that, were about antisemitism.
PJ:
Hmm.
Melanie A. Marotta:
I saw, you know, Tom Stoppard's Leopold Stat, which came over from the UK, which, which documents, which documents the Holocaust, right? And it's important for, for public perspective that the humanities continues to, to remember and to, and to represent important issues to us. Like I said, I talked about indigenous literature, indigenous literature is important. Indigenous horror is hot, but it's more than that. Right? It's the fact that we have to remember, like I said, I'm from Canada, you have to remember the residential schools. And I bring up issues to my students here and they're like, what's a residential school? Right? And it's like, this was a horrible thing that lasted well into the 90s in Canada where indigenous people, indigenous children were taken from their homes. and they were forced into these schools, taken away from their families, and they weren't allowed their culture, they weren't allowed their language, clothing, see families, and they were forced into this situation. They were forced into this atrocity which the Pope has, last summer, came to Canada and called it genocide. with in indigenous writers, indigenous writers works right now, that they're making sure, again, from horror perspective, right, utilize the genre to reflect reality, to bring it to a wider audience.
PJ:
Yeah, absolutely. That was such a good point. I had something I was gonna say about something earlier, but I wanted to sit with that for a second. That's really... Mm. Yeah, that I mean, and it's amazing how recent that is. You know what I mean? Even as we as we look at this, as we talk about this. Oh, now I remember what I was going to say. Now I feel bad because it was a joke. So I guess that definitely. It was I was going to mention I was I was like, I apologize for the for the Harry Potter reference, but I did really enjoy that you gave Hitler the Voldemort treatment that's. You know who? Yes! I think, but the,
Melanie A. Marotta:
Yeah. I tend to do that. I tend to yeah, CNN's on the background the Florida governor is there. I kind of do that with him too. You know that guy
PJ:
Ha ha!
Melanie A. Marotta:
you know that guy who keeps,
PJ:
Yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
that's why I talk about him in class. You know that guy keeps banning stuff for him,
PJ:
You're right.
Melanie A. Marotta:
right?
PJ:
Yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Who is trying to decimate AP courses, cause you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Ass, right? Like
PJ:
Hahaha
Melanie A. Marotta:
ultimately, yeah, I tend to use the, yeah, the Voldemort you know who treatment, cause I just can't, just can't,
PJ:
That's...
Melanie A. Marotta:
you know,
PJ:
I
Melanie A. Marotta:
with.
PJ:
don't even want to say it. Yeah, that's
Melanie A. Marotta:
So well,
PJ:
funny.
Melanie A. Marotta:
if Stephen Colbert does the same thing, right? If you ever, when
PJ:
Thank
Melanie A. Marotta:
we
PJ:
you.
Melanie A. Marotta:
get television back again, every time Stephen Colbert talks about the former president, he does the same thing, right? Calls him something other than and never uses his name. It's like, yeah, exactly. Harry Potter thing, which, and that's a whole loaded other
PJ:
Oh
Melanie A. Marotta:
issue.
PJ:
no, I... I
Melanie A. Marotta:
Don't,
PJ:
know!
Melanie A. Marotta:
you don't want to go into other stuff. I know, I know everything is just,
PJ:
Oh yeah.
Melanie A. Marotta:
everything loaded. Yeah. And just.
PJ:
Everything's so exciting. Yeah. No, um, yeah, actually, and I, uh, I want to be respectful of your time. And, um, you know, we didn't get talk, I think we, we got to talk about the concepts around your book. We didn't get to really delve into it. I'm okay with that. I've really enjoyed our discussion. Um, for our audience, what is one takeaway you would have for this week? Like not Not that, like, obviously, I'm not asking you to summarize everything we just talked about, because that was a lot and it was great, but what is something you'd have them to think further on or something to do this week, after listening to this episode?
Melanie A. Marotta:
interesting. All right, what could you do? Read one of the authors honestly read one of the authors that I wrote about because some like Justina Ireland is really well known right I heard her talk Charm City Speculative Fiction Society had her come to one of their meetings pre-pandemic, and I got to listen to her read from her book, and it was amazing, right? It's always great when you get to hear the author, but she's more, I'm going to say, well-known than others. Read one of the books, right? Yeah, yeah, that's my takeaway. Read, support your author. I mean, whether you get it from, support your library, you know, please support your library because again, that's the other thing that people are trying to take away and it's like we love our libraries, right? It is our refuge. It's a wonderful place. But ultimately read one of the books and especially if this is not a genre that you will usually pick up, right? Like everybody has their favorite thing, right? I love mysteries, I really do. Only Murders in the Building is on tonight. I'm all over that. But especially if this is a genre that you're not used to or you don't tend to pick up, go for it. Try it out, read. and honor the writers who have created these texts and honor more specifically the people in American history that should be honored.
PJ:
What a great way to end us. I think that's a great, you know, that call to expand our boundaries, to expand our empathy and our memory, I think is a great way to end the day. Thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it.
Melanie A. Marotta:
Thank you, I had a great time, this is wonderful.
PJ:
How'd you feel that went?
Melanie A. Marotta:
Good?