A Love Letter to the Single Author Course

And Why More Black Writers Should Get the Single Author Course Treatment

Essay Collections I Love—very little to do with the subject of this post, but I had to have a feature image.

As I continue my study of Hanif Abdurraqib’s body of work with his poetry collection A Fortune for Your Disaster, I have been reminded of the great love of my collegiate life: the single author course.

I was fortunate to have taken several of them. I enrolled in courses on Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nabakov—courses in the Slavic Languages Department, taught in translation. I went through a two semester sequence of an English course devoted to Shakespeare. I even took one on Kafka, which I liked much less than all of the others because I was unable to impress my professor with my writing. (I did eventually manage to write a ten page final paper on “The Burrow” that satisfied her, but that is beside the point.)

Single author classes were fascinating. To follow an author across the trajectory of their life, see how their styles and ideals changed over time, watch them venture into different forms and genres, was captivating. It was like the most immersive psychology class you could imagine. Under the guidance of the right professor and with appropriate supplementary materials—not just secondary sources, but writing by others that perhaps the author in question may have been inspired by or inspired with their own work—important cultural moments could be rendered in sharp relief. Literary disputes made as lively as any reality TV beef. Portraits of artistic communities shone. So much could be gleaned from taking an intentional walk through just one person’s corpus.

And, of course, I did not take any single authored courses centered around a Black person.

Let’s also be clear: yes, fewer of those courses existed, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. I likely was not in the right spaces to encounter a semester long seminar on Toni Morrison or James Baldwin or Langston Hughes.

And…I don’t believe they, and those Black writers of that echelon, should be the only Black writers whose work we study closely.

There is value in learning to follow a writer’s work. I have done it with several contemporary authors: I have read all but one book from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ catalogue, everything from Eve L. Ewing’s, and as you know, I’m very close to finishing Abdurraqib’s published books. I am most drawn to Black writers who write across genre because I will never tire of the way we so easily switch from essay to poetry to comics, like being able to hit threes with your left or right hand. It’s the cool aesthetic—never let them see you sweat, you got the juice no matter what form you pick up that morning.

I also think it marks the way we yearn to be heard, and maybe if we try it this way, turn the question that way, someone, somewhere will hear the warning, the cry, the endless love this time. A commitment to truth is a burden when it feels like no one will look it in the eye, no one but you. In a world that would render us invisible, it is all we can do but write ourselves present and accounted for.

We were here. We were true.

We have so many writers who deserve this treatment. I would be sat in a Renée Watson class that centers on Black girlhood and reaches back to Alice Walker and Nikki Giovanni; holds Jacqueline Woodson and Ibi Zoboi close; and stretches forward to writers like Leslie Youngblood, Lakita Wilson, Janae Marks and Leah Johnson. We need a class that centers Beverly Jenkins—talk about a master of your genre. How I desire a Kiese Laymon class on The South, Blackness, and boyhood.

I want these classes now, while the writers who have committed themselves to the work of truthtelling are still here to see we want to show our appreciation with study, alongside more on our legacy writers. This is but one way of many to lay flowers at their feet.

If you are already doing that work: thank you. I appreciate all that you do.

I only aspire for this work to be prevalent, such that college students will stumble across a Zora Neale Hurston class as easily as they would a Hemingway course.

I only want more.

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I have created a short list of writers across forms and genres who I would love to see single author courses created around their work:

• Kalynn Bayron

• Evette Dionne

• Zetta Elliott

• Carole Boston Weatherford

• Tananarive Due

• Jason Reynolds

• Amber McBride

• Roxane Gay

• Mariame Kaba

• Ibi Zoboi

• Terry McMillan

• N. K. Jemisin

Who would you love to see get the single author course treatment? Let me know in the comments.