A journey from St.Louis to Istanbul, and back
By: Kavahn Mansouri
-Editor in Chief-
On the second floor of Communications North, in one of the several offices of the many English professors of STLCC-Meramec, is Meramec Professor Angela Hamilton’s desk. Above her desk hangs a print of Le Moulin de la Galette by Auguste Renoir. To the side are four bookshelves crammed with literature.
Having recently returned from living in Istanbul for three years, Hamilton, who taught at Faith University through a professor exchange program, returned to the United States and resumed her position at Meramec.
In Istanbul, Hamilton lived in an attic apartment with two rooms. The roof was slanted and the room was ‘500 square feet.’ Hamilton said the view from the apartment made the space worth the squeeze.
“To be able to wake up to that every morning and watch the sunrise, watch the ferries all lit up on the Bosphorus taking commuters to their jobs before it even hit 6 a.m. in the morning, and knowing I had a full day to work on my projects and to write and to read what I wanted was extraordinary to me,” Hamilton said. “I know that it is such a rare gift to have that and to have that for an extended amount of time.”
Hamilton grew up in south city St. Louis. She described herself as a tomboy at an early age, often getting into ‘scraps’ and spending time with her older brothers, but still having an early love for school.
“I guess I was a tomboy, I had three older brothers. We hung out, rode bikes, had a lot of punch ups, that sort of thing,” Hamilton said. “We climbed around river Des Peres a lot. I loved school; I cried when I had to miss it.”
Hamilton is an alumnus of Meramec and later transferred to the University of St. Louis Missouri, where she was an English major and also earned her master’s degree. Her current office is the office where her Composition I teacher worked while Hamilton attended Meramec.
“[Coming back to Meramec] certainly was a sentimental process. I sort of felt like I was coming back to some really fond memories and everything looked the same,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton said it was difficult to come back to the states after being away for so long.
“It’s been hard, frankly,” Hamilton said. “When you leave the country, you leave everything. You leave your house, your car and your pets. There’s a certain amount of resentment or neglect that greets you when you get home. I feel sometimes like an outsider.”
While coming back to the country was difficult, getting back to teaching after a one year sabbatical was made easier by students offering reassurance through their involvement and enjoyment of the class, Hamilton said.
“I feel a little rusty in my teaching,” Hamilton said. “The one thing that makes me feel better is when students say they really enjoy my class. That makes me think ‘well I do have something going here.’”
In Istanbul, Hamilton spent a lot of time looking for different readings for her Honors World Literature students, she said.
“I was focusing on choosing texts for the World Literature class that would focus on Middle Eastern literature,” Hamilton said. “I was trying to look into authors for Israel, other Turkish authors, Syrian and Egyptian authors. I tried to come up with a sampling for my students that so far they are really enjoying.”
Hamilton also spent time working with Soliya, a project that uses web chat rooms to connect Middle Eastern students with Western students to communicate on post 9/11 issues. The project is partially funded by the Missouri Humanities Council. Meramec is the only community college in the United States to participate in the program
“It’s a cause for reflection, reflection on your own life. It’s not your decision but when you leave your country you put your country on your back,” Hamilton said. “You carry that around with you. You’re an American wherever you go and you have to take some responsibility for that.”
Traveling and living abroad served as a muse for Hamilton’s writing.
“It does make me think about my own identity, how I approach things, what sort of stories I want to write and what I want to communicate to people,” Hamilton said. “We all know that feeling of getting off of a bus in a neighborhood you’ve never been to before or getting off of a flight in a city you’ve never been to, you know that feeling of ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’ It sharpens your senses and can only benefit your writing.”
