Julius Lester: story-teller and teacher
‘All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray’
“Come on, you all know the words!”
‘I’ve been for a walk, on a winter’s day’
Julius Lester leads a packed auditorium in the Mamas and the Papas song “California Dreaming,” but only for a few more lines. He is, after all, teaching a history class.
So Lester is a professor, and a singer, and not just for his students: his biography in “Who’s Who” includes professional musician and singer among his occupations. He is a photographer and the lay religious leader of Beth El Synagogue in St. Johnsbury, Vt. He has also been a civil rights activist, editor, and radio show host (1968-1975). However, Lester is best known as a writer.
Books fill the several bookcases in Lester’s office and a few volumes spill onto his desk. Tacked to a crowded bulletin board above his desk, an old note in crayon and block-letters, from one of his children, hangs. Lester wears a tweed jacket and corduroys. His closely cropped, slightly grayed hair has crept up above his forehead, making his face nearly perfectly oval. He has a strong, clear, deep voice and a full, easy laugh, the latter of which he employed when asked for the short version of the story that describes his life.
“I think the short version of my story would be that I am somebody who has pretty much spent my life seeking my relationship to God and trying to live what I perceive that relationship to be.”
This seeking and living helped produce Lester’s many different vocations, united as they are under a common theme.
“I think that they could all fall under the rubric of teaching.”
The History, Judaic studies, and English courses Lester instructs at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst are plainly teaching, but his definition of the word ‘teaching’ would help understand how it applies to other things.
“Teaching,” Lester said, pausing between phrases as he came up with a definition on the spot, “means going through the process of figuring out how to communicate to somebody else.”
“We’re all put in positions where we are asked to teach.” If you provide detailed directions to a new student, Lester said, you are teaching. “You raise children; you are a teacher.” Lester has honed his description: “Teaching is the art of communicating.”
Writing books is one way he communicates, and hence teaches. “Literature enables me to see things that I might not see otherwise; it gives me words for feelings and experience that I may not have; it makes me more conscious and aware of things that I might not be aware or conscious.”
Lester’s own literature, especially when it deals with slavery and the period following emancipation, greatly increases one’s consciousness of things one could not have experienced. In “Long Journey Home,” a white man describes an incident in which he asked a former slave if he were happy as a slave and the former slave replied ‘would you have been?’: “I looked at him [the former slave Ben], hoping to see the old servile smile crease his lips. Instead, I met his hard, unflinching eyes. And knowing that Ben would have liked nothing better than to have seen me dead all those years, I left,” Lester wrote.
“I think of literature as a mirror which a writer holds up so that we can see ourselves better; I go to literature to learn about myself. I see literature as a bridge from the soul of one person to another.”
Lester’s works, especially autobiographical ones such as “Lovesong: becoming a Jew,” do help readers see themselves and him. As Lester posted on an Internet discussion site: “I have shown them – or sought to show them – my heart in what I have written. I would like the reader to meet me at that level.” Showing readers his heart means focusing on how one follows what one loves.
“My primary focus is the journey of the human soul. That’s my focus when I write, that’s my focus when I teach: that people come to care about their souls and to live from their souls. To follow what you love is to follow your soul.” This means, Lester said, to do what you are passionate about.
“A lot of people are unhappy because they spend their lives making money and that’s not very satisfying after a while,” Lester said. “Our society is not structured in a way that enables or encourages people to do what they love. Our society is structured to encourage people to work for a corporation and help somebody else make money, and they pay you something in the meantime so you can survive.” In his own life, Lester set out to follow what he loved.
“I just assumed that if I satisfied my soul I’ll always have enough money to pay the rent. And I have.”
In his classes, Lester communicates by example his belief that a person should follow one’s soul.
“I think that anybody who takes a class with me knows that I love what I’m doing, I love to teach. I think it’s obvious where my passion is,” said Lester, and continued with obvious passion: “I love where I teach, I love what I teach, I love whom I teach, I love the process of figuring out how to teach.” Students in his course “Social Change and the 1960s,” which covers 1954 through 1968, Lester’s concept of the span of the civil rights movement, agree.
“The ’60s is my favorite time period in history,” said junior psychology major Elizabeth Kupiec. “I love this class. It’s a different view of the ’60s. All I knew was ‘flower power’ and ‘Hell no we won’t go,’ not about civil rights.”
“He presents the material well because he was there; it is his own experiences,” senior history major Sean Murphy said.
“I like the class,” said sophomore Gillian Friel. “He has an unorthodox lecture style. He’s funny, he tells jokes, he tells a lot about himself. And he sings at us all the time.” She quickly added: “Which is good.”
[Written for Chris Yurko’s 1999 Fall Journalism 300 class.]
[Below are fragments that were cut out from or reworked in the final article;
except for the direct quotes they are unlikely to be coherent.]
“I come back to what I think is probably the theme of my life which is that people relate to each other with a sense of care and compassion etc, etc, etc.”
The course,. To introduce a year he sings a few lines from its popular songs.
His work includes a book of poems, novels, children’s books, and nonfiction.
Distinguished Teacher’s Award and the Chancellor’s Medal.
Strickland declined giving an update on his feelings at this time.
Lester evolved as a person and a writer, but he has always made teaching – giving someone knowledge, raising understanding of oneself – the core. Writing the primary method of instruction.
Lester admitted to currently working on a book, but he doesn’t talk about current projects. He stayed as broad as possible: “I’m always working on a book.”
“Revolution to me meant a change in how people related to each other. I was never that concerned about political change as I was about spiritual and psychological change. Which I still am, I haven’t changed in terms of that, I don’t use the word revolution anymore, but the concept I have not changed at all. Revolution always meant that people should relate to each other with some care, some concern and some respect. That to me is the heart — a society exists to facilitate how people relate to each other and get along with each other.” >>if a political revolution came along and didn’t change how people relate to each other
“I’m doing what I think I’ve always done which is to teach, to communicate. So I’ve been doing that for over 30 years.”
I came to Judaism because a lot of the things I was looking for in a religion I found in Judaism . . . being Jewish really brings me a lot of joy.
most of everything I have written I write with the attitude “this is how it is.”
certainly “Look out whitey” and “rn” are more political
There are things I right now where I try to be very clear about this is how I think it should be.
“When people talk about blackness they are generally talking about there political view of what blackness is. What is not sufficiently recognized and acknowledged is that there is a wide variety of experiences within the black experience. But people talk about the black experience as if its supposed to be one thing. And so if you aren’t black in the way that I say blackness is then you aren’t black. And that’s ridiculous.”
“I probably didn’t respond to it at the time because I was bored. I don’t have to prove how black I am to anybody; my work speaks for itself.”
“My reading is very eclectic and there are certainly writers I like a lot but I just don’t have favorite writers.”
“I have never had favorite authors; I do have favorite people: Aldous Huxley, the English writer, Thomas Merton, Carl Jung, Martin Buber.”
“Books are not important to me what’s important to me is people whom I feel have lived full lives, creative lives, and religious lives. These are people who have been models to me and people whom I would like to be like.
Aldous Huxley was a satirical novelist – derided when mystical epitaph “What a good man.” More than being remembered as a writer I would like to be remembered—if it were true- as just being a decent human being.
W.E.B. Dubois – ideas changed as he gained more knowledge – grew
“There was a period in the late ‘60s when I wrote about violence and I have changed my views about that.”
“The older I get the more complex things become, and that’s good.” “Being comfortable with not having answers- that have been some changes.”
“I was born in St. Louis parents moved to Kansas two Nashville from 14 to 22
“I consider the years in the south the most influential, the most important in terms of my growing up because they gave me a real sense of place and roots in the southern black experience. I grew up in southern black culture and I think that’s been very influential in terms of my writing, certainly my folktales.”
.