Beginnings
Dewitt, Hilton

HILTON: As far as a literary moment that I recall, most people probably did the prompts of when did you first learn to read, who taught you to read, what your memories of that person are, even the act of learning how to read. But for me I would say that my first literary moment as far as I can remember that impacted my life was in tenth grade when we read "Julius Caesar" the Shakespeare novel or play, excuse me. It was weird because during reading time when we would read various novels or short stories, to me it was sleeping time. So when we cam across this particular play, I found myself interested in it to the point that I would tell friends that were seated beside to not talk to me. Like I was really trying to pay attention to this play. And it got so bad that even when the teacher moved on from this play to another literary work, I found myself not focused on what she's talking about but I'm reading the play that we just read over and over and over again; I was like fascinated by it. It kind of followed me to college because it let me know that you have to broaden yourself to new thing so I got to college and I read the narrative of Frederick Douglas and that like - I can honestly say that brought me to tears and not so because he was a slave and he had beatings but it was more so that the love that he had for his brothers, his fellow slaves, and to me that was just like moving because I kind of paralleled that to today's society and I wonder where that went; in translation, how that got lost. So that's my literary story.