Episode 275: The Literary Life of Angelina Stanford

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast: Episode 275 – The Literary Life of Angelina Stanford

Host: Angelina Stanford
Guest: Thomas Banks
Release Date: May 6, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 275 of The Literary Life Podcast, host Angelina Stanford engages in an in-depth conversation with fellow educator and husband, Thomas Banks. The episode delves into Angelina's rich literary journey, from her early love for books to her transformative experiences in academia and her eventual creation of the House of Humane Letters. The discussion is candid, humorous, and deeply insightful, offering listeners a comprehensive look into what shapes a lifelong love for literature.

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Early Love for Reading and Family Influence

Angelina begins by addressing an unexpected Internet speculation about her age, which led to amusing conversations about her youthful appearance and voice.

• Angelina Stanford [02:18]: "People found it impossible to believe that I am 53 years old... I might have a side gig of selling, you know, anti-aging products."

Reflecting on her childhood, Angelina shares how growing up in a family of readers profoundly influenced her literary inclinations.

• Angelina Stanford [18:07]: "I definitely came from a family of readers. We always had books in the house."

Her father's job at a book depository allowed her early access to a variety of books, fostering a personal library from a young age.

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Formative Reading Experiences

Angelina recounts her first significant literary encounters, particularly with The Arabian Nights and Greek mythology, which ignited her lifelong passion for storytelling and mythological studies.

• Angelina Stanford [23:10]: "The stories of Scheherazade... Everything about that was completely enchanting to me."

She also discusses her teenage years immersed in mystery novels like Nancy Drew and Beverly Cleary, which blended her love for detective stories and relatable characters.

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High School Struggles and Disconnect with Literary Education

Transitioning to her high school experience, Angelina candidly shares her struggles with the educational system's approach to teaching literature, which relied heavily on worksheets and rigid literary analysis.

• Angelina Stanford [34:19]: "Once I got into high school, we had formal literary analysis. It just gutted it for me, absolutely destroyed."

Despite being a straight-A student and active in school activities, the disconnect between her personal love for books and the school's regimented teaching methods led her to nearly abandon reading altogether.

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College Discovery and Reconciliation with Literature

In college, Angelina's relationship with literature began to mend thanks to inspiring professors like Dr. Marianne Wilson. She discovered a more profound and meaningful way to engage with texts, aligning with her personal interpretations rather than conforming to prescribed themes.

• Angelina Stanford [35:17]: "Dr. Wilson completely changed the course of my life. She made the books come alive."

This period marked her exploration into Victorian literature and the beginnings of her literary theories, such as the influence of archetypal structures in storytelling.

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Departing from Academia and Embracing Motherhood

Despite academic success, Angelina felt increasingly disillusioned with the direction of literary studies, particularly the dominance of postmodern theory and the lack of genuine love for literature among her peers.

• Angelina Stanford [47:15]: "My graduate experience was incredibly disillusioning... They didn't read, they just wanted to publish."

Choosing to leave academia, she embraced motherhood and homeschooling, finding fulfillment in crafting an educational environment that aligned with her literary values.

• Angelina Stanford [83:39]: "Through motherhood, I found my professional vocation. It was through motherhood and homeschooling that I have found my professional vocation."

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Establishing House of Humane Letters

In 2011, Angelina transitioned to online teaching, which led to the establishment of House of Humane Letters. This platform allowed her to reconnect with her literary passions while educating others in a manner consistent with her philosophies.

• Angelina Stanford [113:54]: "House of Humane Letters exploded. I pinch myself that I actually got it."

Collaborating with experts like Dr. Ann Phillips, Jen Rogers, and Dr. Baxter, Angelina created a vibrant community dedicated to the art of reading and the intellectual traditions of literature.

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Current Literary Philosophy and Practices

Today, Angelina continues to nurture her literary life through both professional endeavors and personal reading. She emphasizes the importance of reading for joy and intellectual fulfillment rather than solely for academic or professional purposes.

• Angelina Stanford [122:52]: "My literary life now is very, very joyful and a little bit complicated... I have to make sure all this reading I do doesn't feel like work."

She engages in projects like rereading classic novels and exploring scholarly articles, balancing her professional responsibilities with personal growth and rest.

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Conclusion and Reflections

Angelina concludes the episode by reflecting on her journey, expressing gratitude for the doors that opened despite various closed paths. Her story underscores the profound impact of passion, resilience, and divine guidance in shaping one's literary life.

• Angelina Stanford [130:03]: "Keep crafting your literary life, because stories will save the world."

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Notable Quotes

1. Angelina Stanford [04:35]: "I'm proud to be 53 years old. I feel like I've earned my silver wings here."
2. Angelina Stanford [17:56]: "This is not my story. I was a regular teenager who had a bad literary experience in high school."
3. Angelina Stanford [35:17]: "Dr. Wilson completely changed the course of my life. She made the books come alive."
4. Angelina Stanford [47:15]: "It just gutted it for me, absolutely destroyed."
5. Angelina Stanford [122:52]: "I have to make sure all this reading I do doesn't feel like work."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 275 offers a heartfelt and comprehensive exploration of Angelina Stanford's literary journey, highlighting the challenges and triumphs that shaped her dedication to literature. Her experiences serve as a testament to the transformative power of books and the importance of nurturing a genuine love for reading beyond institutional constraints.

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Stay Connected:

• Website: HouseOfHumaneLetters.com
• Patreon: patreon.com/theliterarylife
• Join the Conversation: Facebook Group | Patreon Forum
• Subscribe, Rate, and Review: Available on all major podcast platforms.

Sister Podcasts:

• The Well Read Poem with poet Thomas Banks
• The New Mason Jar

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Poem Read by Thomas Banks:

Valediction Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mild away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say no.
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear floods, nor sigh tempests move.
T'were profanation of our joys to tell the laity
Our love moving of the earth brings harms and fears
Men reckon what it did and meant but trepidation of the sphere years,
Though greater far is innocent, dull sublunary
Lover's love, whose soul is sense, cannot admit absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we, by a love so much refined
That ourselves know not what it is.
Inter assured of the mind, care less eyes, lips, and hands to me.
Miss our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet a breach,
But an expansion, like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two, so as stiff twin compasses are two.
Thy soul, the fixed foot makes no show to move
But doth if the other do and though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it, and grows erect as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must like the other foot obliquely run.
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

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Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and I am with the person that I am always with, now and forever, my husband, colleague, lawfully wedded husband, colleague. Yeah, very much the food taster. Thank you for saving my life. Like on a daily basis, you know.

[Thomas Banks]

You'Ve arrived in life when you have a food taster.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. He is the mysterious Mr. Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

Indeed. Indeed.

[Angelina Stanford]

If you're wondering why I had to make a point, the fact that we're married there confuses, it confuses people. There's like Internet speculation and it's amusing to me. You don't have to Google who is Angelina Stanford? He's here. This is him.

[Thomas Banks]

Surprise. The number of people on the Internet that think that I'm like some kind of cradle robber or something like that. Maybe it's my voice, maybe my voice comes off as having that kind of, that kind of aarp, you know, credibility.

[Angelina Stanford]

Saying I have a, I have a youthful voice. A youthful voice, Yeah. I think our listeners will find this amusing. I found myself the, the object, the subject and the object of a, of an Internet scandal recently. And I'm not sure exactly what to think about that. So people, new people to podcast, listened to an episode in which I said, quite honestly, by the way, that I am 53 years old. And people found that impossible to believe. And then I was one of them.

[Thomas Banks]

I may have started.

[Angelina Stanford]

Thank you, dear.

[Thomas Banks]

Sorry.

[Angelina Stanford]

Thank you, dude. This is why I keep you around. It was really funny. I guess they googled pictures of me. And those of you who know me in real life know that I happen to look a great deal younger than I am. It's DNA. My dad looks younger than he is. My grandfather looked young. It's just, it's just, just DNA. Although I could maybe have a side gig of selling, you know, anti aging products and, and tell you that this, you know, this Jar of eternal youth. The holy Grail. Here, this is buy now. And you can also look younger.

[Thomas Banks]

Sell it out of the back of a covered wagon.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. Snake oil not included. But. But yes. And so it was brought to my attention that there was a. I don't even know the word for it, an Internet. An Internet kuskara. About, we'll call it a customer about my, about my age and I was being called out, I guess it's an Internet fraud. There's no way. She's 53. She's lying. There's no way. She's been teaching for 32 years. She's lying. There's no way. She has three grown kids and I'm just over here with my, you know, almost 29 year old son going, no, it's true. I, I'm not actually your mother. I've just been perpetuating an Internet fraud. And the funny thing is though, the people who were my students 32 years ago, the very first class that I ever taught, which you'll hear about in just a moment, some of them listen to this podcast and we now teach their children. So it's news to them that I'm, I'm actually. What did they speculate I was 32, something like that. I guess I should take it as a compliment. But I kept, I kept thinking to myself, why would I lie about being a middle aged woman? Like people typically lie in the other direction.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it's. I know. I was thinking about, oh man, who was it? Who was it in the 80s? It was an 80s band that always lied about their age. I think it was, I think Van Halen.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, was it?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And they wanted to pretend to be younger.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it was like, I think it was probably David Lee Roth's idea. And I know this because I read a book about Van halen. I read 80s rock and 70s. Yeah, biographies.

[Angelina Stanford]

He's well rounded.

[Thomas Banks]

And yeah, they had this idea that it would, you know, it would be good for, it would be good for publicity if we told the, you know, the. All interviewers that we are like five years younger than we really are and anyway. Yeah, yeah, so congratulations, you know, the, the David Lee Roth of, you know, literary podcasting.

[Angelina Stanford]

See, but then I was ready to just like blow it off as a, as a weird one off, kind of bizarre. Well, the Internet's full of weird people. And then you pointed out to me, and then other people pointed out me after you did that. If you Google my name, the Google search suggestions is Angelina Stanford age.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And that really freaked me out that people are googling to find out how old I am.

[Thomas Banks]

Previous boyfriend?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. Things like kindergarten crush, like, the whole nine yards. You'll hear all about that today, because today we're going to talk about the literary life of Angelina Stanford. And I will swear on oath I will put in the show notes a copy of my birth certificate so everybody can know that I actually am the age that I say. It's so funny because when we first started the podcast, I actually didn't say my age on the air. I mean, like, why. Why would I Didn't seem relevant. But then there was so. I did see so much speculation online about how old I was because people would see pictures and I guess I have a youthful voice. But then this has been. Sounded like I learned things, so maybe I was actually older. There was so much speculation on how old I was that I thought I was like, oh, forget this. I'm just going to start saying it on the air. I mean, I'm not ashamed. I'm proud to be 53 years old. I feel like have earned. I've earned it. I. I get my. My silver wings here.

[Thomas Banks]

Got the, you know, the discount tickets from the movie theater to prove it.

[Angelina Stanford]

I cannot wait till I get those. I'm. I'm too young for those now, but I. I will get them eventually.

[Thomas Banks]

You don't get those when you're 50?

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't think so.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, wow. What a ripoff.

[Angelina Stanford]

I know.

[Thomas Banks]

Anyway, it's another way in which the system's letting us down.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, yes, yes. The system has let us down. Today we are going to be talking about literary life Evangelina Stanford and I, I know you guys have been waiting for this a long time, and I'm going to be interviewed here by Mr. Banks. And I'm a little nervous. Like, am I walking into some kind of gotcha interview?

[Thomas Banks]

Pretty much, no. If we're going to go full Jerry Springer here. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

You're going to open the door. Yeah. The high school teacher I'm about to roast in this. In this episode is just going to walk in and be like, I have your ninth grade literature paper, and I will just. You. I will go full diva. And I was like, this interview is over, and I'll get up and start out, and that's going to be that. So if you don't get the full literary life of Angelina Stanford, you can blame it on this man right here. The man who starts Internet rumors about me and tries to lure me into a Gotcha interview. It is what you do.

[Thomas Banks]

I'M descended to that level.

[Angelina Stanford]

You have.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, you know, you're the David Lee Roth. I'm the Jerry Springer now of literary podcasting. One has to make a living somehow. And since he's dead, you know, someone needs to fill those shoes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wow. I hope that most of our audience is like, don't even know who Jerry Springer is. See, we're aging. I know. This is aging yourself. See, we really. I am really middle aged. Anyway, okay, so before we talk madness. It's madness. Mr. Banks, before we get into that, let me just quickly tell you about our exciting summer at the House of Humane Letter. So we just finished the seventh annual Literary Life Conference. I cannot believe it's seven already. And I honestly think this was our best one yet. It was, the theme was living Language, why words matter. And my goodness, every speaker just brought it. Like, really. Everybody was telling me it was my. It was the best speech I've ever given in these 32 years that I've been alive.

[Thomas Banks]

Yours was top here. Mine was. Okay. No, I really enjoyed yours. I actually made a point of listening to all of the other ones this year, or at least all the ones that I had time to listen to.

[Angelina Stanford]

You were so pumped up by Dr. Drought's talk. I loved.

[Thomas Banks]

I immediately had to start rewriting mine because I was like, oh, wow. I was just, I thought we were playing, you know, I thought this was going to be underhand pitching here. But no.

[Angelina Stanford]

If you missed that conference, it's not too late to get it. Everything I'm about to say is available at our website, HouseOfHumaneLetters.com but I thought I'd go ahead and tell you guys about the exciting stuff we've got going on this summer. We, we have just a heck of a, like, just an embarrassment of riches, honestly. So this week right now we've got Dr. Ann Phillips and Jen Rogers co teaching a mini class called oh, I already. Oh, the Great Divide. The Great Divide. It's looking at Aristotle and Plato through the lens of the inklings and helping us to understand what is the difference in their thought and the way in which the inklings kind of harmonize that and that. That's. This is going to be a really, really amazing class. So definitely check that one out. And then we have a WEBINAR Coming up June 3rd, we have another music webinar. So you remember that Karita Thompson gave us a fantastic webinar in the fall on how to read a symphony. She is continuing in that series. This will be on June 3rd. And this will Definitely be something for the whole family. This, this webinar is called Nature, Myth and the Musical Imagination. And she is actually going to be talking about one of your favorite pieces of music.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yes, do tell. Oh, oh, I know you were talking about. Yes. Smetana Bedrique. Smetana di Muldo.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. Okay. And so she. That's one of our favorite pieces. And I don't want to give spoilers, but she is going to be bringing everything to this. The, the folk, the folk tales and nature. And I'm really excited.

[Thomas Banks]

19Th century Czech romanticism.

[Angelina Stanford]

So, like, again, if you're somebody who's like, I don't understand how I'm supposed to listen to music, what am I supposed to be hearing here? She, she is very skilled in that. She teaches music in colleges and her webinar in the fall was just fantastic. I better speed it up here. We have a. I have a lot of exciting things to tell you about and. Yeah, you'll. Okay, get with it, Angelina. I told him I'm just going to do an overview. I'm not going to talk about each class. And look, I started talking about each class. This is just an overview of our summer thing. So we've got Dr. Phillips and Jen Rogers on Aristotle and Plato. Right now, June 3rd, Karita Thompson is going to be giving us Nature, Myth and the Musical Imagination. The last two weeks of June. It's going to be Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So six, six classes in the last two weeks of June is the long awaited Harry Potter class by me. So we did, we did books one and two last summer. And I'm sorry, we did book one on the podcast, books two and three in my class. And so this summer I'm doing books four and book five. So that's Harry Potter, gateway to the literary tradition. And we'll be looking at the Goblet of Fire and the Order of the Phoenix, which. It's going to be really good. You, Mr. Banks, at the beginning of July. So June 30th to July 8th, you're going to be doing a mini class called Victorian lives, five 19th century figures and Their World. I'm really looking forward to that. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

I wanted to show off different facets of Victorian life experience, history.

[Angelina Stanford]

And it's not just literature.

[Thomas Banks]

It's going to be literature purposely chose people who had different professions, different callings and. Yeah, different. I want it to be a mini dimensioned thing.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's going to be really good. It's going to be, again, all of these things you can find on our Website for the full description. Dr. Baxter's coming back with another summer class. This one's called how to Read a poem like C.S. lewis and Fall in Love with Poetry. And this is going to be a four session class in July where he's going to be teaching lyric poetry by looking at C.S. lewis, C.S. lewis's favorite lyric poems. That's going to be the lens through it and I think that's going to be pretty cool. Class.

[Thomas Banks]

That's my kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, that's. I think that's my kind of thing. At the beginning of August, we've got a mini class that was much, much requested by everyone when Addison Hornster gave her amazing Lewis Carroll webinar, which you absolutely have to go get. Everybody wanted a class and so we're going to have a week long mini class called A Dream Both Strange and True, following the golden thread of the Alice Books. So that's going to be amazing. I'm really looking forward to that. Her sister, Ella Hornstra, again on the, on the heels of her fantastic webinar on how to read nature, which that's called the Living Page. And seriously, of all the things I'm saying, that's the one you need to stop everything and go get that. That's, that's like a life changing, paradigm shifting, you know, completely altered universe kind of experience. You want to get that. Well, there was so much interest in that webinar and people demanding more, more, more that we are going to be bringing you a mini class in September for that one too called Grammar of the Natural World, Deciphering the Discarded Image of Nature. So that's going to be fantastic. And then in August, Heather Goodman is going to give a webinar on Coleridge. And end September I will be doing the follow up. They're kind of sister webinars on Edgar Allan Poe, who's the American Coleridge. So we will be taking a look at that and looking at those guys. So that gives you an overview of what we've got going on from now through September. I know, start washing cars, baking cupcakes, selling cookies, cups and lemonade. Those lemonade stands barking, cut some grass. You know, like I just stopped by.

[Thomas Banks]

A lemonade stand on the way over, actually. She did, Yeah, I was. I'm glad that those still exist. They haven't been regulated out of existence.

[Angelina Stanford]

Absolutely, absolutely. All right, we've got all of that out of the way. And now I look across the table at my very intimidating interviewer and I'm not sure what he's going to Ask me. And if you. One false move, Mr. We have to do, I'm out of here. That's right. That's. That. Your first question. What's my commonplace quote?

[Thomas Banks]

That indeed, yes. Fire away.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm not standing for this. This interview is over. See, I just really want to be able to say that at some point. Like, how dare you. Shall I go first?

[Thomas Banks]

Please do.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. So I really fretted about what was the perfect commonplace quote to say for what encapsulates you. I kept finding there's too many. There's too many. So I just had to say, I'm just going to pick one. It's going to be all right. This is a quote from Madeleine Lingle, who you'll hear about today, is a very special author to me. And I. I did not write in the commonplace book where I got it from. So it's either going to be from Walking on Water or a Circle of Quiet. It's either. It's probably Walking on Water, but it could be Circle of Quiet. Both of those are well worth reading. I really think we should do Walking on Water on the podcast sometimes. Anyway, here's a quote from her. St. John said, and the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended. If not, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not understand it and cannot extinguish it. I need the double meaning here of the word comprehend. This is the great cry of affirmation that is heard over and over again in our imaginative literature. In all art, it is a light to lighten our darkness to guide us. And we do not need to know in the realm of provable fact exactly where it is going to take us.

[Thomas Banks]

That's a very fine thought.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's a very me thought. Yeah, I think I might be Madeline Lingle.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. My Commonplace is from a novel I've been reading this week, which is really, really fine. And I can't believe it took me so long to start it, but it's.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, Peter Hitchens recommended it. So this is the literary Peter Hitchens.

[Thomas Banks]

This is from Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy, which consists of the Great Fortune, the Spoiled City, and Friends and Heroes. I've been reading the first of the three books, the Great Fortun, and the Principal character, who's this kind of. Kind of salty, tart, distrustful English woman by the name of Harriet Pringle. Very interesting character. At one point, she observes, the problem with prejudice is there's usually a reason for it.

[Angelina Stanford]

That is such a Thomas Bates quote.

[Thomas Banks]

It's the Kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. The kind of thought that resonates with me. Anyway. It's. It's. She's one of those off. One of those authors that I. I'm really glad to have discovered, however late. I wish I had found her years before. But anyway, I'm in love.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, you really are in love. You cannot put this book down.

[Thomas Banks]

Olivia Manning, definitely for the win now.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, we'll. We'll add her to your list of dead authors you crush on. Because I have my list of dead authors I crush on. It's okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. We have an understanding.

[Angelina Stanford]

We haven't exactly. We have an understanding. See? See how enlightened we are?

[Thomas Banks]

All right, so the literary life of Ms. Stanford.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is it.

[Thomas Banks]

Standard question. We have begun this with growing up. Did you come from a bookish household?

[Angelina Stanford]

I definitely came from a family of readers. So I am the oldest of four children, and I was born to broke college parents, but we had books in our house, we had an apartment, and we. My parents had no one to. Look, I like. You know, when you're a kid, you don't really. I mean, I didn't feel deprived or anything like that, but looking back, I'm like, okay, yeah, they were definitely broke college students. But my dad had a student job. So this was at lsu, and he was at LSU Law School. And so Baton Rouge is the capital, and there was a giant warehouse there, a book depository, and that was his student job. And so he worked at the warehouse where the books for the whole, like, whole public school system of Louisiana was, and he could bring home, like, Denton Scratch books, you know, and let me tell you, those books look like they had nothing wrong to them. So I don't know if my dad was, like, stealing things or what, but he would come home with all kinds of cool things that he was told he could take. And so even at a very tiny age, I had my own little library of my. Of my own favorite books. And I can. I can tell you what some of those books are in just a minute. But, yeah, I grew up and there was. There was always books. And my. My family were families of readers. I always saw my parents reading. I have very distinct memories of. So my mom came from a family of readers, and I have distinct memories in my childhood of when she would. We would visit her family on the weekends or something, and she would have a giant paper bag full of books, and her siblings would have a giant paper bag full of books, and they would swap.

[Thomas Banks]

Kind of a swap meet.

[Angelina Stanford]

They would swap and like, so I just grew up thinking this was the most normal thing in the world. I remember. I remember very clearly getting my library card. Like, that was such a. Right.

[Thomas Banks]

Seriously, another thing. Kids today, like, you don't know.

[Angelina Stanford]

I did it for my kids, but I don't know if it's a thing now, but, oh, it was such a rite of passage. You could get your own. It made me feel so grown up. I remember I had a little wallet, and I could slide it in. Like, I was like, this was. This was a major, major threshold moment in my life. You could get a library card when you could write your name in cursive.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. That was the rule.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right? And so, like, so, you know, for years, until they went digital, I had the same library car with my second grade handwriting on it. I know, right? That was huge. I remember doing summer reading programs like. Like, just. I don't ever remember a time that I did not think that reading was just a normal human endeavor. And I never remember a time that I was not completely enamored with books, like, physically books. The. The. I'm still like that. If I go to your house, I'm. If you have books, I'm gonna go stand in front of them and look at them. I like. If you're in my classes, I'm trying to read. What books are behind you in zoom? I. I'm just. It's. It's just that, you know, it's the Pied Piper. It's calling me. I hear it. I'm so enchanted by it. So, like, I'll tell you this about my. My love. My physical love of books, and just. Just. That is my favorite type of decoration. You know, my. My daughter once. My youngest daughter once said to me, like, mom, your aesthetic is bookshop, old bookshop aesthetic. And I was like, good. Sounds like I nailed it then, because that's exactly what I'm going for. But when I was a kid, so this would be. By the time my younger siblings came around, I would play library with them.

[Thomas Banks]

That's adorable.

[Angelina Stanford]

And I. I made them each library cards. I made them each library cards.

[Thomas Banks]

And did you tell them to be quiet now?

[Angelina Stanford]

That. I did not. Oh, I didn't do that.

[Thomas Banks]

You weren't that kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

I wasn't, but I would. I would. So they would come and they would check out books. And this is way, way before the days of, like, digital library stuff. And so the library that I had as a kid, they had the kind of, like, punch cards. So, like, each library book had, like, a little card in it that said what it was. And then it would, it would, they would punch it and it would punch your, your library number onto it. You know, that's how they, that's how they kept track of it. So I had little fake cards like that in all the books in our house. And then I would, I would, you know, chunk, I would do this sound everything and then they'd bring it back and I would restack the books. Like I just remember playing that for hours and hours. Like it was just so much fun to me stacking and restacking books and checking out books and just touching books, holding books. I just, I loved everything about them and, and old books in particular had had a special place in my heart. I don't know, I don't. I guess it just seemed more, more real. I mean, that's just another thing about me. I've always been drawn to old things and I thought old things were better than new things. And that's always been true of me. But the. Do you want me to stop? And you now you're going to ask me was there a favorite book as a child? Because I just go straight into that about the book that like my first book that I owned and fell in love with.

[Thomas Banks]

You anticipate me? Yes. I wanted to ask if was there a particular first book you fell in love with?

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. So in that set of books that my dad brought home when I was three because we moved, we moved out of. We moved from Batner. He graduated when I was three and a half and we moved to another town when I was four. So I know that this was when I was three that I got these books and I had, I still have some of them. I went back to look for this one in my parents house and I can't find it. But he had brought home a whole hardback set of the Boxcar Children which I loved those as a kid because we'll talk about how I love detective stories.

[Thomas Banks]

Remind me who wrote the Boxcar Children?

[Angelina Stanford]

Now that I do not remember. They're in the. They're in the other room. I have to run out and get our audience.

[Thomas Banks]

I remember those around our house.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't remember. They're. They're literally in the other room. But it was a white book that he gave me and it was a, a children's. So again these were school books. So this would have been like an elementary adaptation, but it was of the Arabian Nights. A Thousand and One Nights. That's what it was called, 1001 Nights. And I was obsessed with that book. I was obsessed with it. It's really funny to me to. At this age to think about my life and the direction I've gone and to see how much that Arabian Nights book completely enchanted me. So I actually don't have a ton of memories of being read, too. I'm sure that I was, but I don't have a ton of memories about that. I don't like being read to because, I mean, now I know I have an auditory processing disorder. As a kid, I would have just said I don't like it, but I just remember my parents always read. So I. In fact, later on, I am. I'm circling back to the Arabian Nights. But I rem. You know, my whole life, you would hear the thing about, oh, you have to read to kids for them to be a reader. And I would always say, but that's not true. People don't read to me. I don't like being read to. And I'm a reader. So I. I don't. I don't buy this argument. And I don't know. Sometime in the early 2000s, a book had come out. I think it was Freakonomics had come out. And it looked at the data and said that actually reading to your children was not the best indicator of whether or not your kids would grow up to be readers. It was whether or not there was books in the home.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

And that I totally believe, because there were books in our home. I would.

[Thomas Banks]

I would agree with that.

[Angelina Stanford]

I would agree with that, too.

[Thomas Banks]

It creates. Subliminally, I think it creates the assumption we value this, and this is a normal thing to do. This is what normal people do. Of course you have books in your home.

[Angelina Stanford]

And we were broke. I mean, like, my parents were students. We were broke, and we had books. We didn't have a ton. I mean, later when I got older, my parents were, like, building a significant library. We didn't have a ton, but I always had my. I always had. We always had books in the home, and I always had my personal books. I had. I had books that I knew were mine. Same. So by the time I learned how to read around four years old, the Arabian Nights was my constant companion, basically through my entire elementary school years. Like, I don't remember never not having that book around me and looking back on it. I laugh. I mean, what enchanted me was the story of Scheherazade. I mean, a girl who tells stories to save her life. Like, everything about that was completely enchanting to me. Just the Middle east, the mystery there, was it.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm assuming it was an illustrated copy.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was not.

[Thomas Banks]

It was not.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was not. As you know, I'm not a fan of illustrated books. That's one of my controversial opinions. So, no, there were no illustrations. It was all in my mind. I think as a kid, too, I thought that books with illustrations were for babies and I wanted books that looked like grown ups. My parents didn't read books with illustrations and I. So neither did I. Right. I wanted to real read, read real books, grown up books. So my favorites were Shaharazad, Alibaba and the 40 thieves. The. The Alibaba and the 40 thieves. Other than Shaharaza was definitely my favorite. And sometimes, you know, you hear people say, oh, oh, these tales are so dark. And I, and I think, yeah, Alibaba and the 40 thieves. You know, she convinces the thieves to hide in those olive jars and then she pours boiling water into them. And I don't even remember, like, blinking at that as a kid. Like, I just, that was just the story. It didn't, it didn't disturb me in any kind of way. And it's funny too, you know, Now I have this reputation of being, you know, the fairy tale lady, but I did not read any European fairy tales as a kid. It was, it was the Arabian Nights.

[Thomas Banks]

How old were you when you first discovered the Brothers Grimm? I know that might be hard because that's just one of those books that kind of comes into people's lives.

[Angelina Stanford]

My little brother at his seventh birthday. So I, you know, I'm seven years older than him, so I'd have been a teenager. Like, he, he got a book of fairy tales. And I remember reading those and thinking they were pretty cool. And of course, like, you just absorb those stories. So I guess they were always in the back of my mind. I don't recall this. And this is going to shock people. I don't recall actually sitting down and reading them until I took a folklore in college.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

And that was the first time.

[Thomas Banks]

That is late. Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's very, it's very late. It's very late. Yeah. So the Arabian Nights. That, that, that is a book that completely shaped me. That, that is, that's the first one. And then other than that, I, I'm not somebody who has one of the stories. Like sometimes we, we'll interview people and I'll just be blown away that they had like this perfect Charlotte Mason childhood and they read all this golden age literature and played out in nature. Like, that was not my Childhood at. At all. I watched more TV than I can begin to fathom. And that's another one of these things you hear people say, well, if kids watch tv, they won't read. And I was like, nope. Literally read during the commercials. You know, my dad would do that. He would watch tv.

[Thomas Banks]

You have intense powers of concentration, though.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, perhaps that's true.

[Thomas Banks]

Again, this is one of those maybe don't try this at home kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

Perhaps that's true. But, like, the whole family would do that. Like, we'd be watching tv and during the commercials, we'd. I was also told, you can't do your homework while watching tv. And I was like, I can and I do. I make straight A's.

[Thomas Banks]

I take my hat off to people like that. I cannot concentrate on a book and watch television. My dad can do that. Like, I remember growing up, we'd be watching our movie on the weekend, and my dad was always reading a book and kind of half watching the movie. So anyway.

[Angelina Stanford]

But it will probably disappoint some of our listeners to find out I did not have a childhood filled with the golden age of children's literature. Not by any stretch of imagination. We didn't have those kinds of books. Books and the lie. I mean, I was in a very small town after we moved from Baton Rouge. I was in a really small town, and the library was. I mean, I laughed. The library might be smaller than our personal library. And so I read the books that were there. So I did not. I don't have memories of reading any classic children's literature. I read a ton of Nancy Drew. I loved. I still love Nancy. I was Nancy Drew. Her dad was a lawyer. My dad was a lawyer. She solved mysteries. I solved mysteries. I remember adored her.

[Thomas Banks]

There was a part of my mother's childhood, and my sister also read a lot of Nancy Drew. Do you think that is a series that's. That will survive in some kind of way? Cross generationally? I mean, I guess it has kind of survived two generations. But do you. Do you meet, you know, middle school girls who read Nancy Drew anymore?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I don't know. You know, they changed the books. They updated. Yeah, they changed them.

[Thomas Banks]

That sounds like something to dread about.

[Angelina Stanford]

But they probably gutted the appeal. You know, I think. Think when Babysitters Club, you know, was popular, they kind of made it more like that.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, gosh. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

So. So I don't know. I mean, I know you and I have been to that bookstore in Savannah that has all the original first edition Nancy Drew's And I drool every time. You know, I'm like, oh, one day, one day I'll have these. But I loved Nancy Drew, so I read a ton of Nancy Drew. And you know what? I don't. I look to that as very early. You know, I loved the fairy tales and I loved mysteries, and that is still true of me.

[Thomas Banks]

And puzzles.

[Angelina Stanford]

And puzzles. And they were puzzles to solve. And I also read again, this is what my library had, but I read Beverly Cleary, a ton of Beverly Cleary. If you had asked me. Well, this is funny. Someone did ask me in elementary school who my favorite author was. And I said very proudly, Carolyn Keene. And was just absolutely devastated when I found out she didn't exist. That was rough. But I loved Beverly Cleary. I loved the Ramona books and all of those. So, yeah, my childhood was a lot of those kinds of things. And I just. We just always had books. My mom took us very faithfully to the library. Again, we didn't have a lot of money. We had books in the home, but we made ample use of the library. That was. And again, that those are very, very good childhood memories for me. Trips to the library, coming back with a big stack of books and getting to check them out yourself with your own library card. Me just felt like a grown up.

[Thomas Banks]

I wanted to ask you also. Now, this isn't a question we ask. Everyone was. But I want to hear your answer because, well, you have kind of an individualistic spirit, you know, and was there a book that, you know, it was a trendy book that everyone of your age and your generation was supposed to like that you didn't have any time for the.

[Angelina Stanford]

As an elementary school.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, elementary or middle school or whatever.

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't know.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, we had. I know you've mentioned. Are you there, God?

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yeah. See, I think.

[Thomas Banks]

Are you there, God? As me and Margaret is.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so that kind of thing. Judy Bloom. That's it. Judy Bloom just didn't do it for me. And I did try reading some of those books and I found. Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret. Unreadable. And they're all celebrating the anniversary of this book. And I'm just like.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, I made a movie of it once.

[Angelina Stanford]

Once again I'm reminded I'm not like other people. No, I. I just. I read Super Fudge like I read all those Judy Blume books. She just. I didn't. She didn't. I didn't connect with her. Yeah, but those were something I got from my school library because. Yeah, Those would make the rounds.

[Thomas Banks]

I sympathize. I mean, not that I ever tried to read that one, but I remember a lot of books that were clearly marketed. I won't say written for, but marketed at a particular age group. There was just like, I don't know, they kind of dripped with condescension almost.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. You know, the first time I read.

[Thomas Banks]

That, someone writing down to your level.

[Angelina Stanford]

That'S how Flannery O'Connor felt about children's literature. When I read that, I felt like, okay, well, were kindred spirits. Like, she read the Grimm's Brothers and loved it, but she couldn't stand anything that felt like it was marketed to kids.

[Thomas Banks]

Pure little child.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I didn't. Yeah. No, no, no.

[Thomas Banks]

You like this. This will edify you.

[Angelina Stanford]

So, no, I never got into those kinds of books. I wouldn't say that I necessarily. As a young kid, I mean, I had strong opinions about everything, so maybe I'm just not remembering correctly, but I don't remember, like, having strong negative opinions. Just more like I read it. It wasn't really for me, and I would just move on to the next one.

[Thomas Banks]

Mm. Okay. And this isn't really a reading question exactly, but, I mean, since you teach for a living, you know, you podcast, did you ever have an inkling of, I want to do this, I want to lecture in some capacity, or something of that sort?

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I definitely didn't think I wanted to be an English teacher because as we'll talk more about this when we get to my high school years, even in the elementary reading classes, I did not enjoy that. I did not enjoy, enjoy reading the little selections in the Reader at school and then answering the question that seems to have no connection to what I did and I. And I loved. But. But I'm laughing because I know what. I know you. I know what you want me to say because I told you this story recently, and you wanted me to say it on the podcast. So when I was a little girl and I was. Everybody's thinking about, you know, what do you want to do for your future? I had such a strong sense of what I wanted to do, I wanted to talk for a living, that I knew that a star is born. So I wanted to talk for a living. And I remember asking my mom, like, what kind I want to talk. I want a job where I talk for a living. Like, what kind of job could I get for that? My mom thought about, again, this is, you know, the late 1970s.

[Thomas Banks]

My mom thought about, could be the next Barbara Walters or Something.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, she. No, no, she didn't say that. She said, oh, well, you could be a lobbyist.

[Thomas Banks]

A lobbyist?

[Angelina Stanford]

Should they talk for a living? I didn't even know what a lobbyist was. I just knew they talked for a living. And I went to school and told everybody.

[Thomas Banks]

Interesting. That's the first job.

[Angelina Stanford]

She thought, everybody, I'm going to be a lobbyist. That's going to be my job. Can you imagine, you know me, you're married to me. Like, that would have destroyed my soul. I could have.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, absolutely.

[Angelina Stanford]

I could have never.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm sure that destroys everyone's soul.

[Angelina Stanford]

So, yeah, I can laugh now at my job because I do, in fact, talk for a living. Now, the funny thing is, again, being the oldest, I would come home in the afternoons from school and I would line up my siblings and a number of stuffed animals and I had a chalkboard and I would teach my siblings and stuffed animals whatever that day's lessons were. I would teach it. So looking. I did not know I was going to be a teacher at that time. I really didn't. But looking back, I'm laughing like, how did you not know? You literally came home and taught every day. Your face right now.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I love this. I love this.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, it was my favorite thing to have a chalkboard and chalk. And I would write out the lessons for them. And I'm sure I tried to give them homework. They thought it was kind of bossy.

[Thomas Banks]

Now when it comes to your, say, high school years, I mean, some people.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, well, let's go to the junior. We can't miss the junior high, junior high, Junior high years are also there. This is where I start to see myself start to develop. So when I was 12, we switched schools. We went for. I was in a public school and then I moved to a Christian school when I was 12. And a few, a few things sort of stand out during the junior high years to me. So the first is that they had a book fair at school. Some of my students know this story. So they had a book fair at school. And I thought, actually, I can remember I still have my book fair books from when I was, like, in the first grade. That was another big thing. Getting to take money to buy my own books and keep them forever and build my library, that was a huge thing for me. So the school did that too. And so I'm 12 years old and I'm walking around the library browsing the tables. I'm not really sure what to know. It's got these $2 burning a hole in my pocket. What am I going to spend it on? And my friend points to this book on the table and she says, have you ever read that? And I said, no, I've never even heard of it. And she said, well, I really think you'd like it. And apparently that's all I needed. And I said, okay. And I bought it. And that book was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline Lingle. I teach from that same book now, the same copy of that book and saw that it cost $2.35, which blew the minds of my students. And I thought, oh my gosh, I am now that old lady. I sound like my parents going, I used the movies for a nickel. And I'm like, what? Magic World, Change Back. A double feature for 10 cents in a what? That's what I sounded like to the the students faces when I said, oh my gosh, this book cost $2. And they all were like, what? And then I thought, oh my Gosh, this was 41 years ago. Like I can't even wrap my head around that. Anyway, see more evidence that I actually am a middle aged woman. But I bought it and I read it it. And I am not exaggerating to say that there was life before I read Wrinkle in Time and life after I read A Wrinkle in Time. I had a very intense literary experience with that. And the school did not have the second in the series, it had the third, A Swiftly Tilting Planet. And I read that and loved it and just thought, Madeline Lingle is my favorite author and I want to read, read everything she ever wrote. And it's really funny because I actually just finished teaching A Wrinkle in Time and to my good book students. And it's really interesting for me to read it now because I can see how much she prepared me for say, C.S. lewis's space trilogy and other things that she's very clearly pulling from. Unfortunately, my love of Madeleine Lingle. It has a little bit of a sad story because the Christian school I was in, well, I was regularly.

[Thomas Banks]

Was not hospitable to the Gospel According to Madeline.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was not hospitable to a lot of things. It was well meaning, but it just, it was, it was the 80s by this point and it was just a very fearful, fearful time. And anyway, I know we're both recovering Christian School alumni, but I was really, really excited about those books and I guess I mentioned it to a teacher and this well meaning teacher said, oh, oh, you need to be very careful about Madeleine Lingo. She's basically a mystic. You don't. You don't want her. And so I didn't read anymore, not until, I guess about 15 years ago. I started reading A Circle of Quiet and was so profoundly moved. And I got, I mean, like, I had to process anger from that teacher telling me not to. Not to have her. And then I read Walking in Water and just reconnected with my love of her. Just, just such a profound thinker about, you know, what does it mean to be a Christian artist and how does the imagination work and how does art work. Yeah, so that was. That was profound. The second big thing that happened, and I think this was the same year, all of these things. So the second thing that happened was my school library had a three volume set, hardback, oversized. I can still picture them. And no, I have never been able to find them. And people always will message me with, is it this? Is it this? Nope, nope. I've never been able to find it. But it was a three volume set of world mythology. Volume 1 was Greek and Roman mythology, volume 2 was Norse mythology and volume 3 was myths of the Orient. And I checked those out one at a time. And that was my first experience reading Greek mythology. And I was in love. Like, I wish I could replicate now how I felt in that moment. That was one of those things that I've never had that happen again. I know you know what I'm talking about.

[Thomas Banks]

Everyone has that book that they want to read again for the first time.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. Right. And that was it.

[Thomas Banks]

Several books probably, but yeah, that was it.

[Angelina Stanford]

The myth. I just. I don't even know that I could put them into words. I just knew that I was enchanted, I was transported and I was just in love. You know, when C.S. lewis later described, you know, that feeling of Northernness which he got reading Norse Mythology, but which he believes, you know, any myths can be a portal to that. For me, it was. It was that Greek. It was that. That's one of the things that you and I have in common. It was reading the Greek and Roman myths. I felt all the joy, all the longing. I. I cannot even begin to describe to you what that book did to me. So then I checked out the second volume, Norse Mythology. Didn't like that one as much. Okay, The Norse do not enchant me. I have long. And I know Elizabeth, Elizabeth Userman is freaking out right now saying, no, the Norse have it all. I believe you. And I keep trying.

[Thomas Banks]

I have no argument there either.

[Angelina Stanford]

I keep going back, I keep trying to see what Lewis And Tolkien saw there. But, you know, they write about how all mythology is a portal to that, to that northernness, to that joy. And everybody just, you know, for whatever your personality is. For me, it was just the Greeks. I didn't feel. It was. I didn't hate the Norse myths. They just didn't resonate as strongly with me. And then I got the third volume on the midst of the Orient, and I remember thinking, speaking, they were very beautiful and very weird, but I. It didn't. It didn't stir that longing in. In me. But I believe that those myths can stir that longing in people. But that was just. That was just my experience. That wasn't. That was another one. And I never have lost my. My love of Greek myths since then. And of course, eventually, you know, I began to read the myths and see. See the gospel in them like I. Like I do now. But that was. That was a huge. And that was all the same year. So Wrinkle in time, Greek mythology. And then I will say this about my. My Christian school. I could. I could easily spend a lot of time bashing all the things they did wrong, of which there were many. But one of the things that they did right is that we did not use a Christian textbook for literature. We actually read whole books.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, that's a relief. Anyway.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, so that was actually really good. And so in class we read the Hobbit.

[Thomas Banks]

You didn't have worldview questionnaires for.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, we didn't actually. We read the Hobbit and that was another one of those, like Life before the Hobbit and Life after the Hobbit. I loved the Hobbit. I get to teach that book now as well. And I also teach Greek mythology. So there you go. My eighth grade year made quite an impression on me. And yes, Internet sleuths. I was 12 years old in the eighth grade. I graduated high school at 17. So I'm going to be one year behind in each of these stories I tell about high school. The age will be. I was younger than everybody else. Yeah. So those, those were huge. And then sometime around junior high on my own, and this was. We had a copy at home of David Copperfield and I read that and loved it. Love David Copperfield is still my favorite Dickens. It was the longest book I had ever read at that point and was very, very smitten with that. And it was either. Might have. Might have been ninth grade, some probably by high school then. But I also read the Outsiders, which I've talked about about on this podcast before. That. How much I love that book. And I. And I did. I did love that a lot.

[Thomas Banks]

Can I concentrate on David Copperfield for a minute? Was that the first Dickens you read?

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm pretty sure, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. Do you think it was? Because it was the first you read that. That's the Dickens that you fell in love with?

[Angelina Stanford]

Maybe. The second Dickens I read was A Tale of Two Cities, also one of my favorites. I mean, I just love Dickens. I don't know. I don't know what it is about David Copper. That's the one I find. I've read that one the most of any day. Dickens, I've read that one maybe three or four times. I can't remember. But I love David. I love David Copperfield. I don't know. Yeah, and I. And I. Well, it's a long time later before I tried to regret expectations, and that one just didn't do it for me. I'm just a David Copperfield girl for whatever reason.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. So that was. That was junior high.

[Thomas Banks]

All right. In high school, did you ever have a moment where you felt like, I need to take responsibility for the contents of my own mind and not just rely on whatever this or that adult, whether teacher, pastor, authority figure, whoever it is, says I should be reading, studying, etc. I don't mean like a conscious revolt against that necessarily, but just, you know, I have to. I have to, you know, be the custodian of my own intellect.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's an interesting question. I.

[Thomas Banks]

That sounded pretentious. I'm sorry.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm pretty sure I was born like that.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

And anybody who knows, I don't think they're ever.

[Thomas Banks]

I think for most people, that kind of comes after.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

You hit a certain age, you know.

[Angelina Stanford]

You'Re married to me, you know, I'm not. I'm. I'm really not like most people. No, I don't. I don't think I ever was swayed by other people's opinions. I. I think I've always been really confident in my love clubs. What happened to me in high school was perhaps a similar thing to what you're describing, but in a very different direction. So we did not, as I said, we did not use a. A Christian school textbook for literature, but they, they used the exact same ones that the public schools used. And so my high school literature experience was horrible. And it was horrible because we learned, quote, unquote, literary analysis. Those of you who are listening now, you're going to find out why I push hard, so hard against that stuff. Because it. What that did to me. Somebody who literally, I mean, I just never didn't have a book. I could not have articulated at all at that age what reading did to me. It was just like breathing. It wasn't, you know, like, to not have a book would be like to not eat.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know, it was just part of my life once. So eighth grade, we did not study it like that. Eighth grade was still basically, you know, just kind of reading and talking about it a little bit. But once I got into high school, we had formal literary analysis. So that's like, you know, the very much like kind of new criticism, you know, the worksheet, what's the theme? What's the plot? What's the character, what's the setting? A lot of reading comprehension quizzes, stuff like that. It just gutted it for me, absolutely destroyed. Like, I, I went from this is my lifeblood to I hate this. I mean, I hate it. To like, I never want to read another book. And in high school, I stopped reading. I stopped reading. And I really put the finger on them, like now. Well, don't want to get too far ahead of myself in the story, but I just, just, you know, I really struggle looking back at, like, at the literature teachers, I had thinking, you know, surely they loved literature because otherwise, otherwise they wouldn't have gone into teaching it. And maybe they just didn't know what to do. Or maybe they just thought what they do is just read out of the teacher's manual. But it was just awful. I. I was regularly told what I would write. This is hilarious to me now. I made A's. I was a straight A student. Student. And I, and I. And I liked school. So, like, it's not that kind of story. This is not my story. Is not the story of someone who failed. And like. And so now, as a, as a critic of the system, as so many people who invol are involved in Christian.

[Thomas Banks]

Education, I couldn't rise to this level. Therefore, it must have been a false standard.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was not my story. I was president of the student council. I was National Honor society. I, you know, a average in every class. I made straight A's. And I made straight A's mostly because my dad said he'd give me $50 for a. On my report card. And I was like, done but willing.

[Thomas Banks]

To accept bribes from a young age.

[Angelina Stanford]

Otherwise there was no way to make me study for algebra or science. But no shame in my game there, Mr. Banks. But I forgot. Oh, oh, I forgot. So I would fill out these worksheets And I would say what I thought the theme of the book was. And I regularly got told I was wrong. And it's so funny to me now that I've literally made a career out of reading books different than the way everybody else in the world does. But, you know, when you're 14, your teacher doesn't want to hear, no, I think the teacher's manual's got it wrong. You know, you just. You just sound like some punk kid. But I did think the teacher's manual had it wrong. And I just never felt like I could understand what they wanted me to say. I couldn't understand the point of filling out a worksheet. I'm about to get hot. I could feel it. Settle down, Angelina.

[Thomas Banks]

Deep comic breaths, steam escaping from you.

[Angelina Stanford]

But, I mean, it was such a formative experience because I ended up spending a lot of time thinking about why this wasn't the right way. And as we get further into my story, we will circle back to this. But, you know, there's a reason why I'm impassioned against that kind of stuff because made me never want to read a book again. And me, me, I mean, you listeners, you know what stories mean to me. And I was just never going to read again because they destroyed it for me. And so. So sometimes people will hear me talk and they'll say, well, okay, I agree with you. I agree with you with what you're saying about how we should teach literature. And then they'll say, but isn't there a place for this other thing? Isn't there a place for worksheets? And in my mind, I think, but you're asking me, is there a place to destroy literature? Is there a place for making kids hate it? I understand that worksheets give teachers something to do. They give something to show the administration. They give a way to give grades. They make parents feel like we accomplished something. See, there's a worksheet. Worksheet. But if your goal is for kids to love literature, that ain't the way to do it. And I feel like if it killed it with me, like it would kill it with anybody. Like, I, you know, I had. I had a fire in me about literature from the time I read Arabian Nights, and my high school teachers almost succeeded in extinguishing it. I say almost, but it was dangerously close. Dangerously close. Close. Now, when I was thinking about this interview, I thought, well, let me think. You know, was there any book in high school that mostly I didn't read the books? I got so upset, I stopped Reading the books. I mean, if I was going to read them and think about them and come up with a theme only to be told the theme was wrong, then what is the point? So I got really, really good at passing the test without taking it. I'm the person who critiques the system from the inside. I'm the A student who can tell you A's mean nothing. It's a game, right? And so I got really good at. Good at asking my best friend five minutes before we walked into class, what were these chapters about? And she'd tell me, and then I'd go in there and ace the reading comprehension quiz.

[Thomas Banks]

If you paid just, just close enough. And this isn't an attack on all teachers by any hands, but there's, there's always that teacher who you get used to hearing certain of their favorite words, certain of their favorite turns of phrase, and then you can regurgitate those and the comprehension quiz and be good writer.

[Angelina Stanford]

And so I could, I could write a really good essay on a book I hadn't read.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah, we've all done that once or twice.

[Angelina Stanford]

But I did read some. So out of the four years of high school, I, I was able to think of some that stood out for me. So I already said Tale of Two Cities. We read that. And I did actually read that one, and I really loved that one. We also read the Odyssey and we read it in a prose version, unfortunately. But the first time reading the Odyssey, the Penguin classic, Evie Rue.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, yeah, that was actually the first Penguin classic. That was the first one that was ever published.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, that was a good one. But reading the Odyssey was another one of those experiences for me. Like when I read Myths, I remember reading. That's why I read it. Okay. I wasn't gonna read it because I didn't want to have to do the worksheets and all that. But then when I opened it, I remember, I remember this so clearly, reading it and saying to myself, oh, this is just a book of mythology. And then I was really into it and I think I just even read ahead and finished it before the class did one of those. I couldn't put it down. It's. The Odyssey is still one of my favorite books to teach. And I think it's one of the more accessible, probably the most accessible success accessible. There you go. One of the most accessible of the ancient works because I think you can read it to a kid as just a rip roaring adventure.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know, Absolutely. With the myths. So I loved that. And then we read Huckleberry Finn, which I loved and I loved Huckleberry Finn and I wrote a paper on that. And it's really funny too, because later when I got to. This is either. Can't remember if this is college or grad school, but I ended up taking a Mark Twain class from one of the world's foremost experts on Mark Twain, where I learned that everything my high school teacher had said about Huckleberry Finn was completely wrong. That was, that was another nail in the coffin of the way that I was taught Mark in high school. So my, my literary life in high school was very bad. The flame came extremely close to being guttering. It was, it was just buckets of.

[Thomas Banks]

Water were being poured upon it.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was just terrible. And then being told that I'm. This is. You're supposed to love literature. And I was like, but you, you killed. They just absolutely killed it. I, I have to control myself. We have to pause the recording for me to weep now in the PTSD of this memory. But no, it, it was terrible. It was just. It was just terrible. Do you want to hear the story of how that got turned around or should I pause and let you.

[Thomas Banks]

I think, yeah, I think we should have some hope here offered. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is my high school. My expensive, expensive high school.

[Thomas Banks]

We always need like Chopin's Funeral March here in the background playing.

[Angelina Stanford]

Still to this day, that school makes such a big deal about its reading list and look what our students have read. And I was like, yeah, and you made them hate every single one of those books. So congratulations. You know, I remember thinking it was better not to have read them at all than to have read them in those, in those classes. Yeah, I have strong opinions about this, as you can see.

[Thomas Banks]

I can see.

[Angelina Stanford]

So that was, that was my high school experience. Not that I'm going to take charge of my own literary life, but very much. If that's the literary life, then I don't want it. And my dad could see that I was not reading and he really tried to fix that. By that time, I was like a senior in high school. You know, my dad was established as an attorney at that point and we had a nice library at home. And he had, as so many people did, he had joined that. Is it the Franklin's Book Club or you got that nice leather bound edition every month?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Yes, Franklin.

[Angelina Stanford]

So he was in that. So we started to have beautiful volumes at home. And I still.

[Thomas Banks]

Those were really nice.

[Angelina Stanford]

I still was very. Even though I hated what was going on in my classes, I. I was still very Drawn to a beautiful book. I liked having them in our house. And so he started doing that. At one point, he joined both the history book club and the literature one. So we were getting. We were getting a lot of volumes about that. My dad definitely. He prioritized buying books and building bookcases and having a library. He thought that was important. But at one point, and sometimes I wonder if it was just sheer desperation, he went and he put a price tag on every book in the house. Else. And if you read it, you got that money.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, okay, well, kudos to your dad.

[Angelina Stanford]

And it worked. It worked. So what happened was my sister had read one of the books, and so I have grad now I've graduated high school and I'm. I'm. I am one. I know you guys are not going to believe this, because I'm sure you just think of me as somebody who's just always loved books. No, I was a regular teenager who had a bad literary experience in high school like a lot of people had, and graduated high school thinking, I'm never going to read a book again. And that summer, my sister hands to me the Franklin volume of Pride and Prejudice, and she says, I just read this. I think you'd like it. And so I read it. And thank God for my sister, because reading again without having any worksheet to fill out or a class discussion to have or any expectations that I might be reading it the wrong way, just read it. I was back to being that little girl with my copy of Scheherazade. I was absolutely in love from the first word to the last word.

[Thomas Banks]

And it wasn't just crushing on Mr. Darcy either.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, no. I mean, I was.

[Thomas Banks]

It was a more profound.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was so profound. It was another one of those huge moments. Sure. Viva Jack is listening to this because she. She also shares my. My great love of crime.

[Thomas Banks]

For the record, how many times to date have you read Crime Prejudice?

[Angelina Stanford]

So I have actually lost count, but it is the book that I have rough estimate I will give. Okay, so the book I've read the most of any. And the writer the first time at 17, I believe that I have read it 28 times.

[Thomas Banks]

I don't think I've read any book 28 times.

[Angelina Stanford]

It is my comfort book. All through different. Different hard parts of my life, I would just revisit, revisit. And still I do that with the audiobooks. You know, that's a great way to get out of a reading slump. You know, just if I'm going through a tough time, I Talk just, you know, Pride and Prejudice, that'll. That'll get me through. I just adored that book. And so that opened me up again to the possibility that I could. I could love reading again. And I don't remember what else I read that summer, but I. I do remember grabbing some other things off the shelf. I read. Well, yeah, I read that same year I read the east of Eden. Like, I just started pulling the big volumes off the shelf in those nice leather bound editions and started reading them for fun. And I was starting. I was recapturing my love of reading, but I still thought, I will never take another English class.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And fate had. Fate had other plans.

[Thomas Banks]

What did you think you were going to study in college?

[Angelina Stanford]

I didn't know. I did not know what I wanted to do.

[Thomas Banks]

You still wanted to talk for a living?

[Angelina Stanford]

I wanted to talk for a living. Living. I genuinely did not know. So I had all these good grades and everything. I just didn't know. The funny thing is I thought for a while about majoring in a history. It's so fun. I never for a second thought I'd be an English major. Like never. That was not even the realm of possibility because I hated my English classes, but I liked my history classes. So I thought about that. But then I somehow, this is really going to make people laugh. But I somehow got it into my head that if I was going to college, it needed to have some kind of. This lasted five minutes, so don't worry everybody. But I somehow got it into my head that maybe I needed to have a practical major. And so I actually thought about marketing in majoring in marketing, which is so funny.

[Thomas Banks]

And you would have been good at it. But it would have ruined you.

[Angelina Stanford]

It would have ruined me. But I thought about it only because I was really good at writing jingles. You know, this about our audience does.

[Thomas Banks]

Not know that's a side of you that your audience.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, okay, y'all don't know that side of me.

[Thomas Banks]

But we'll put you on. We won't put you on the spot and ask you to make one up. But she sometimes makes up bits of song.

[Angelina Stanford]

So yes, you this ads off the top. That's right. This surprised you with that? I constantly do spontaneous song parodies. I do spontaneous ads and jingles.

[Thomas Banks]

Is this one of those things they don't warn you in about marriage when you're taking like the, you know, the marriage formation class or whatever that your spouse might. Sometimes when you're getting your coffee in the morning, just burst into the kitchen Singing. Singing a song that she just made up.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's true.

[Thomas Banks]

It's.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it's true.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. You get used to it, though.

[Angelina Stanford]

So that's why I thought, oh, maybe I could do. That's why later when I, when I really got into Dorothy Sayers, I was like, ah, Dorothy, I feel you. Yes. We both were like, hey, I can. You know, what, what are women supposed to use their minds for? But that was like five. For five minutes, I thought that what I genuinely thought I was going to be. And, and this might surprise people, too. And what everyone my entire life thought I was going to be was a lawyer.

[Thomas Banks]

Not surprising at all.

[Angelina Stanford]

Everyone thought I was going to be a lawyer. I mean, in my elementary school yearbooks, my teacher, the family trade, my teachers would write, you know, to the future attorney, Stanford, you know, for the defense. And it was because I could, I could argue. I would argue and argue and argue and argue and argue, as you know. And, and so I genuinely, I thought I was going to be a lawyer. I thought I was going to be a lawyer. And so. But my dad had said, don't go into pre law law. Going to. He's like, going to something else that's more general. He's like, you can just be anything to be a lawyer. But I, I really spent my college years thinking that I was going to go to law school. And it's, it's an interesting story how that did not come about, but that, that's what I thought I was going to be a lawyer. That's how I was going to talk for a living. I was.

[Thomas Banks]

You're going to litigate.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was going to litigate for the defense. I was, you know, me, I was going to go out there and protect every, you know, downtrodden underdog who the man was trying to get. You know, all that kind of stuff. So shall I tell the story of how my life took a radical.

[Thomas Banks]

How does Angelina Stanford become an English major after hating all of her high school English classes?

[Angelina Stanford]

So, okay, so I took ap. Like I said, I was an honor student, and I took AP English in high school and read a bunch of books I didn't like and did worksheets where I was told I didn't have the theme. Right now I do those same books on the podcast and laugh heartily at being told I don't know how to read those books. It's, you know, the funny thing is, I'll just digress for a second. My brother, who has a very similar mind to mine, but with math, has the Same stories. So here I am being told, you know, you don't know what the theme is. And like, my entire career is that I know what the theme is. My brother, who has a PhD in abstract mathematics and his dissertation in abstract math was so sophisticated that his own Committee of PhDs couldn't follow his math and they had to bring in other people. Like it was a whole thing. He didn't think they were going to prove the dissertation because it was so far above their heads. Well, at that same high school, he flunked Algebra 1. And he flunked Algebra 1, not because he got the wrong answers. He got the wrong answer. Answers he couldn't explain to the teacher, like the way the teacher manual did it. He couldn't write the steps. He just could see it. So, you know, it's the same sort of thing sometimes. Sometimes you get the bad grade and it's because you actually knew better than the teacher. But that's. That's a different story. All right, so I took AP English. And as part of that, we took the AP English exam. And so you. This is mail. It was handwritten. You had to get them. This is like the ancient Stone Ages, right? This is 1989. And so, yeah, they got mailed to you at some point in the summer. But I had done. I was in the honors program and going into the university, and we had got. Because of the honors program, we had early. Early registration. So I had filled out, you know, whatever, and I didn't know what I wanted to be. But the head of the honors program was my advisor, and she said, well, you know, our university actually doesn't require you to declare a major until you're a junior. So just take a couple of years of whatever looks interesting to you, knock out your gen eds, that kind of thing. It'll apply to anything. And so she just kind of told me, here's like, a basic freshman class. And so she signed me up for, like, English 101, because no matter what I. I was going to major in, I was going to have to have that credit. So I signed up for it, and I was dreading it. Just absolutely dreading, like, I can't believe I have to take another stupid English class. Those of you listening, there's hope for your children if you hear them saying, I never want to take another stupid English class. So over the summer, I got my test results in the mail, and I made a perfect score on it. And I knew that having a. And I think. I don't remember how I knew this. I Don't remember if my advisor told me this, or maybe it had another piece of paper or whatever. But anyway, some kind of way I knew that the perfect score I had meant that I would test out of all the English classes, basically four credits, I think four credits of English, not 12 credits because they're three credit classes. My bad. So four classes, three credits each. 12. 12 credits. So basically all freshman sophomore Englishes. So no matter what I majored in then, I never had to take another English class. And I was so relieved and I was so excited. I was like, that's it. I'm done. Okay. I never have to take another English class. But the first, the first week of school starts and it's add drop week, right? Where you can make any changes to your schedule. And it's really funny when I think back on this because during my own college career, they moved away from doing this by paper and doing it to by phone. And then later phone went to computer. So nowadays this story that I'm about to tell, it couldn't have happened because I would have just gone on a computer and I would have dropped those English classes and then that would have been that. Okay? But that's not how it was back then, back in 1989, in August of 1989 and an auspicious day, what I had to do was fill out a physical piece of paper, stand in line in the English department, and physically hand that piece of paper to another human being who would then sign it and then stick it in a big box. And that's how you drop to class. Okay? And so I'm in line and there's a bunch of student volunteers running the thing. And while I'm in line, it's lunchtime. So the student volunteers go to lunch and some actual professors sit there to take over for the volunteers. Okay, again, just. People are going to cry when they hear this story because I want to cry, like just how, how gracious God was to me here and directing me and directing my future. So it's my turn. And there's this little woman there, Dr. Marianne Wilson. And she's not only a professor, she is the chair of the freshman English department. And so I give my paper and I say, you know, I'd like to drop this English class. And she says, oh, why are you dropping the class? And I say, oh, because I scored a perfect exam, a perfect score on the AP English exam. And so I've tested out of everything. And she just looks, she looks up at me. It's like, now I'm a person. Right. She looks up at me and she says, oh, oh, you scored a. You scored a perfect score on the AP English exam. I said, yeah. And she says, well, you're just the kind of student that I'm looking for in my upper level honors English class available by invitation only, and I'd like to invite you to this class. So I'm standing there going, I do not want to take this woman's class. I do not want to ever have to take an English class again in my life. But I'm such a people pleaser. And this woman is looking at me, and I can't bear to disappoint her. And so before I know it, I open my mouth and I hear myself say, yes, I'd love to take that class. And she says, great. And she signs me up. In my head, I'm thinking, you idiot, you were out. You were free and clear. You never had to take another English class. And you just. You just let this woman that you don't even know talk to you and, like, you're a moron. So she's like, great. She signs me right there. She just puts my name on the list. She's like, this is what time class.

[Thomas Banks]

My scalp for the day.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yep. She's like, even if. Even if you know it doesn't show up on your schedule that they print out, you just come to class. And I'm not. I'll get it all worked out. And I say, okay. And then I'm just like, I'm. I'm an idiot. I cannot believe I did that. So it was an honors American literature survey class and an advanced honors class. It was real small, and it really was by invitation only. Most of the classes I ended up taking were by invitation only. So anyway, the semester starts, and I'm still thinking, you're an idiot. Right. And so I. And I show up. Up. How do I. It's really funny that it was American lit, because, you know, that is my least favorite everything.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. That's one of the reasons we fell in love. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Is that we, neither one of us.

[Thomas Banks]

Like, yeah, American Lit.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's take it a leave. Right. Dr. Maryanne Wilson completely changed the direction of my life. She is a fabulous teacher, and we read books together, and she talked about them in a way that was just the complete opposite of everything I had experienced in high school. She made the books come alive, and she made me excited about what I was reading. And it was the first time that I could reconcile those special moments I had with a book, with what went on in the classroom, in my mind, you know, those had been two separate things. There's, you know, I'm reading Jane Austen at home and loving it, and then I'm doing horrible worksheets at school, which I hate. And those are not two. Two the same thing. But what she was doing was nothing like that. And I loved it. And I wrote papers for her, and she loved them, and she thought that I was a standout student. And I still didn't know what I wanted to be. I still didn't know what I wanted to major in. But, you know, my honors adviser just kept saying, we'll just take whatever looks interesting. You know, just. Just get some. Just get some credits and figure out what you want to do. Which was fantastic advice. I feel like nowadays, they. They wouldn't advise you on that. Just to take your time and take a bunch of classes and see what you like. And I thought, well, I like her. I'm just. I'm just gonna take whatever she teaches, which is advice, actually, that I give to my students. Don't. Don't focus so much on finding the perfect apartment. And I don't even bother. Have I ever made some mistakes reading course descriptions and thinking, that sounds interesting. I'll take that. No, no, no, no, no. Just take whatever the good professors are teaching, because whatever they teach is going to be good. And so I just started taking everything she taught and loving it. That's how I ended up In a Flannery O'Connor class, actually, was. Because she. She taught it. I just took everything that she taught, and she really liked me, and she started. Started mentoring me, and I started taking other people's English classes, and I. And it's really funny to think about this, and. And this is like one of these dirty little secrets of academia is the people in the department know who the not good teachers are.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And because I was an honor student and the director of the honors program was my personal advisor, she did not let me. Like, I remember one time I had. Again, this is back in the day you had. I. You would fill out what classes you wanted on a piece of paper, and you bring it to your meeting with your advisor, and she'd look at it. You know, mostly it was just a, you know, check. You know, you're fine. But she would look at it, and I remember she'd say, oh, no, no, no. You're an honor student. You don't want to take. You don't want to take him. You actually want to learn something. Angelina, you don't want this guy. And so she, she would steer me toward the goins. So I had some fantastic professors and I believe. So it's my junior year now and I need to declare a major. And I'm taking all of Dr. Wilson's classes. And I figure I'm about to declare something to help me go to law school. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, well, I can, I can be an English major and still go to law school. And I talked to my dad about he had been an English minor. He actually said he thought that was a really good idea because he would teach you how to write. And this was a good thing. And so I was pretty sure I was going to go ahead and declare as an English major, but I was still going to go to law school. School. And so I think I was taking that semester a junior or C, it might have been even a senior level class on women in fiction. And Dr. Wilson was teaching was a fantastic class. We read, we read Jane Eyre. We read all kind of great stuff. And I had also taken a poly class that was this internship where you go to the courthouse. Because remember, I'm going to be a lawyer, right? So that semester I'm spending a lot of time at the courthouse. I'm watching things, you know, meeting the lawyers. I'm doing the thing for the course. And I have this moment. My life is so much like this. These moments where the divine just sort of tears through and says, angelina, no, no, this is not for you. I'm sitting in the courthouse and I'm watching this and I think to myself, I can't stand these people. There is absolutely no way I'm spending.

[Thomas Banks]

You had an epiphany.

[Angelina Stanford]

I had such an epiphany. I was like, I cannot, I cannot spend my life with these people. And I already had kind of a low opinion of lawyers. My dad had a low opinion of lawyers. And, and you know, he totally understood what I, what I meant when I was like, I can't be with these people. So it kind of all happened at the same time that, that I got extremely disenchanted with the legal system. And I mean, I have so much zeal. Like I was going to go in there and fight for the little guy and I was going to stand on the side of justice, you know, And I think spending time at the courthouse and seeing people plea bargain and all this other kind, I was like, there is no. Is there justice here? Like, it was that kind of long, dark night of the soul. Like, I don't know that there's justice in America anymore. Is there justice in this world? And, and I thought, I can't do this. And so I made the decision not to go to law school, which of course left me with the what am I doing? Do, what do I do if I'm not going to be a lawyer? And I thought, well, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I sure do like these English classes. And I've already decided to be an English major.

[Thomas Banks]

Who needs money after all?

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. Well, you know me, I never think like that. I'm completely idealistically driven. So I, I remember I was reading Kate Chopin's the Awakening. I mean, I remembered the moment it was for that class. I was reading Kate Chopin's the Awakening. I got a pin in my hand. I'm sitting in my bedroom in my apartment and I'm reading, I'm taking notes and I'm having a ball, just a ball. And I'm putting my thoughts together for this paper I'm going to write. And I say to myself, I'm good at this. I'm really good at this. I should just do this. I'm just going to do this. I'm going to go to grad school. I'll graduate with this English degree, I'll go to grad school in English and then I'll figure out what I'm going to do. But what, I'm just going to keep doing this because I love it. And that's how it started. Now, over time, it turned into, no, I'm going to become a professor and this is going to be my, my life. But yeah, it's, it's, it's Dr. Wilson. Now, she's certainly not the only good teacher I had, but she was the one that changed the course of my, of my life. Yeah. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

And since you mentioned Kate chopin and some 19th century, you mentioned Jane Eyre, your specific area of expertise is Victorian literature and the fallen woman. What was it that set you on that path, that particular set of interests?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, that's very like Elizabeth Gaskell.

[Thomas Banks]

Like, when did you first read her?

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I Life. So college and grad school gets sort of blended together in my mind a lot because it was in college that I fell in love with the Victorians and started writing papers on them. But then it was in grad school that I made that my official concentration. So they kind of blend together. So I can't remember if Elizabeth Gaskell was grad school or college. I can't remember. But yes, I, I, I Had an affinity for the 19th century in general because of Jane Austen, but I, I bet it was that women in literature class, because we read a lot of Victorian women. And so I. That may have been the first time I read Jane Eyre, actually was in that class. So I'm reading Bronte, I'm reading Elliot, I'm reading Elizabeth Gaskell, who I just absolutely adored Elizabeth. I love Elizabeth Gaskell. It was around that time that I fell really hard for Thomas Hardy. Oh, yeah, I loved Thomas Hardy.

[Thomas Banks]

He was one in college that I. I never read him before college, except for maybe a few poems. But, yeah, I remember reading Jude the Obscure in an afternoon just because I lost track of time and I needed to finish that.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, exactly, exactly. I mean, I, I adore him. I really, really. Of course, I read more Charles Dickens, but I read Wilkie Collins and I. George Moore. I really liked George Moore.

[Thomas Banks]

You're the. I think, the first person I've met who really liked George Moore. Yeah. Esther Waters is a really fine book.

[Angelina Stanford]

Really fine book. And I, I think I. I read that for a class. And again, it's. I'm actually not 32 years old. This is a lot. I mean, we're talking about stuff that's 30 years ago. And I, I don't remember. I took a number of classes on. On women and Victorian literature and different variations of that with Dr. Wilson over the years. But I. I loved those books. And, you know, looking back on it, I heard. Well, I heard the name Northrop Fry a whole lot in college. When I look back over my college notes that I still have, it's really funny for me to see how many times I had written in the margin, read an ad, Enemy of Criticism. I kept writing that to myself because it kept coming up. But there were. There were definitely things that happened that really shaped me. So Dr. Fields, who was my Shakespeare professor and my Metaphysical Poets professor, is from him that I learned medieval cosmology in the Shakespeare class. He started off with that. We read the Elizabethan World Picture and other things like that. And that was a. That was another big turning point for me was to. To, to see. And, you know, the way all that cosmology kind of comes through in the stories. It was also in college, when I look back at some of the papers I wrote in college, it's really funny because I can see that I did metaphorical and symbolic readings of stories. I just didn't know that that's what I was doing. I just did that all the time. And my teachers praised it. I was the, you know, I was. I was. I went from, you know, having arguments with my high school teacher telling me, you don't know what the theme is to everybody in college, with every paper just being like, this is brilliant. This is brilliant. There actually was a little bit of a bidding war over me between the History Department and the English Department. Yeah. Because I minored in history and they. When I would write history papers, they would try to convince me to switch to history and to publish in the history publications. But, yeah, I started to. I started to read symbolically. It was also in college that I started to become very aware of the shape of stories and that I could start to. I could kind of predict things based on the shape. I started to formulate some theories in college that I now have. You know, 30 years later, I can completely articulate them. I can prove that they're correct. But back then, they were just sort of an inkling in my mind. I remember telling. This was, this was a not great professor. This was. This was a not great professor professor. I don't. Dr. Wilson would not have responded this way, but this was a different professor from the Folklore Department, and she was talking about Shakespeare. And. And I said, you know, I feel like I've observed that all of Shakespeare's plays follow the same pattern. They all go from order to disorder, back to order. And a comedy works like this, and a tragedy, it works like this. And I just laid out what is. Now, I could completely articulate this and prove 100% that it's correct. And she just looked at me like, blink, blink. Like, I have no. I, you know, I have no idea what you're talking about. Like, you know, even back then, in the early 90s, people wanted to talk about, you know, literature in. In not great ways. Which we'll get into that more when I get into grad. My grad school portion of today's talk. But. But my college English experience was very good. I had excellent professors, and I read a lot of great things and. And I gained a whole lot of confidence in my ability to read things. And I also had, though, the first real challenge to myself in college. That was when I took the Flannery O'Connor class and we read Mystery in Manners, which I loved. I mean, I loved. And I loved Flannery O'Connor so much, and I loved those books, and I loved them for a number of reasons. Reasons 1 was having grown up in the 1980s in a Christian school, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, the idea of Christian art was pretty low. It was pretty low. I mean, I grew up in a time where people literally wore T shirts with a Coca Cola can on it that said Jesus Christ instead of Coca Cola. The real thing, okay? We had Michael Jordan T shirts, but.

[Thomas Banks]

It was Jesus duck between that New Coke. It was a hard time.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, it's true. Jesus ducking the ball. And it would say, air Jesus. Like that was okay. And I hated it. I hated. I hated the Christian. Yes, I'm going to say it. I hated the Christian music. I hated all of the Christian culture. I was. People accused me of being a non Christian in high school because I wouldn't listen to Christian music. Because I just said, but it's not honoring to God that it's bad music. Okay? But I was so out of step with everybody. No one. No one agreed with me. I had teachers lecturing me that, I know you. Basically, my soul is in danger if I don't listen to their, you know, cruddy Christian music music. So I. I read Mystery and Manners, and I'm blown away because it's the first time that I see a Christian wrestling. Well, what does it mean to be a Christian artist? In a way that felt real to me and deep and. And much more than just sort of like, you know, baptizing the culture, but, like, really trying to do something different. So I was very, very captivated by her. But there was something that she said that really threw me for a loop. She has an essay about high school English, and she rebukes people for analyzing her stories. And here I am, right? I am at the height at this point. I'm in college. I've had my. My epiphany where, like, I'm good at this. I am good at analyzing literature. I kind of, to myself, I would call it slice and dice. And I will slice and dice. Kate Chopin. You bring me here, I can write you your paper and blow away the teachers. I'm so good at this. You know, my stuff is being published. They're sending me to conferences. Like, I got this right? And then I'm reading Flannery O'Connor, and she's like, stop. Stop what you're doing. And that was hard. That was hard. I got mad at her. I got mad and I was like, I don't. What are you talking about? Like, this is what you do with books. But long story short, she becomes this nagging voice to me that I can't shake all through my grad experience. Like, if I'm not supposed to be analyzing literature, like this, what am I supposed to be doing? And of course, you know, my attempt to answer that question has led to House of Human Letters. But yeah, so that, so that's it. So I decide I'm not going to law school. I decide to go to graduate school. But I took a year off in between college and graduate school and that was my first teaching position. So that was. When was that? I graduated in 1993. So yeah, in the fall of 1993 I started teaching. I taught AP English at the high school I graduated from. And, and, and that story is really funny because I was now a colleague with the teachers that I thought had destroyed literature for me. So I'm 21 years old and I, I've got a, it's a part time job. So I'm part time in grad school and I'm part time teaching this class. And this is a story that is going to make me sound like a jerk unless you remember that I'm autistic. And I took something literal and I didn't know it wasn't supposed to be literal. So dear. Yeah, for teacher orientation we all get together and the headmaster says, I would like everybody to get together with the other members of their department and talk about how we can make the department better. And I took that literally. And I was so excited. I know you're laughing. I know, I know.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I can see where this is going.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I was so excited because I thought, oh my gosh now. And I was really genuinely was not trying to be a jerk. I thought I have learned so much in the last four years about teaching literature. Like I, I understand where my high school classes went wrong and now I'm going to get to help them see where it went wrong. And they're going to be so grateful that I have explained it to them. And now we're going to fix the English department at the school. I know, I know. I was a complete idiot.

[Thomas Banks]

An interesting parallel I just thought of. So you're teaching at the school you were graduated from. Isn't that the case with Robin Williams character in Dead Poet Society? Doesn't it say that he graduated from the school? I think your kids ended better. No one killed themselves.

[Angelina Stanford]

But it went about at about after.

[Thomas Banks]

Playing in Midsummer Night's Dream.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it went about as well as you'd think. So we get together and now I am face to face with the man who I think is a hard. I still maintain to this day that he is a horrible English teacher. And I honestly think he came to realize that himself, because he actually left teaching. And I say to him, I didn't learn anything in your class. And he says, okay. And again, I'm not, I'm not trying to be a jerk. And I don't think I was a jerk. And I just, I said, you know, know, I learned all these things in college, and I think I understand better now, like, where we went wrong. And I said things that I absolutely stand by. I said that I thought it was a mistake the way that the English class in high school was designed, because instead of just teaching literature, we taught grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and literature all in the same period. It's too much like we weren't giving. And that wasn't his fault. That's just an admin thing, right? And I said, I, you know, I thought our entire approach to the literary analysis was wrong and destructive to the text. I thought, you know, the. Using the teacher's manual and the worksheets. And I laid out my whole case. I wasn't a jerk. I didn't blame him. But I, I, I, I laid up my critique. And I did say to him, no, I didn't just say I didn't. He said, so are you saying you didn't learn anything in any of my classes? And I said, no, I didn't. I answered him honestly, and he thought for a while, and then he said this. I will never, ever forget this. He said, do you think if you had not gone on and majored in English that you would have known that you didn't learn anything in my class?

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, my gosh.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right? Wait.

[Thomas Banks]

That's what he took away from that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Is what he said to me. And in that moment, I thought, oh, so we're not really having a conversation about how to improve the department. Oh, my bad. That I thought this, and I was just like, I did. I mean, I just didn't even know how to respond to, like, he was perfectly fine with not teaching anything. And, you know, honestly, Angelina, I don't think anybody notices. So I.

[Thomas Banks]

This was more. When we say improve the department, we're talking about, should we have the desks arranged in rows or in a circle sort of thing? Yeah, I know.

[Angelina Stanford]

Gonna rebuild this thing from the ground up, and it's gonna be amazing. Right now, for some odd reason, they let me design that AP English class myself, and I did. And so we had no workbooks. And I, yeah, I'm glad this story.

[Thomas Banks]

Didn'T end with you being fired on the first day, because, yeah, eventually I do get. And we have a fire starter Here.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was definitely the seeds of my own destruction. But I had a great time teaching that class and I taught it like a college class. And, and I remember them telling me, oh no, no, you need the teacher's manuals, Angela, you're going to see. And I said, no, no we don't, no we don't. I remember them saying, you can't teach Shakespeare to them without like playing the records in class. And so, and I was like, no, I don't think so. I'm just going to teach it like a college class. I was like, these are your advanced 18 year old students. They can handle this. And they did. They did.

[Thomas Banks]

And you can teach like.

[Angelina Stanford]

I know, it was just this weird.

[Thomas Banks]

Idea that Shakespeare is insurmountably difficult and just impenetrable or something. No, I hate that idea. But continue, please.

[Angelina Stanford]

So anyway, we had a fantastic year. They took the AP English test at the end of the year and I, I think almost all of them scored a perfect score. But it was very eye opening to me in a number of ways. None of them knew how to write an actual like literary essay because they had all been given like cruddy creative assignments. You know, make a collage, that kind of garbage, which is again, pointless, busy work. But we had a great class. It was really funny too. Everybody in there was like, I think I want to be an English major now. Some of them did, some of them went on to even get grad degrees. But I ran aile of the administration and was not invited back. We'll just put it that way. That's a long story. But God closed that door. Let's just put it that way. The, actually the story for the next season of my life is God closing all kinds of doors in my face because he was leading me to what it was that I needed to do, which was to build a house of humane letter. So that meant not working for somebody else. So after God closed that door, I, I went full time at grad school and I got a assistantship and I was, you know, did the whole grad experience. I was teaching in college and all that kind of stuff and had a really, really good grad experience. I continued at the grad school I did because I wanted more of Dr. Marianne Wilson and she continued to be my mentor. She ended up directing my thesis, which was on Jane Eyre in the Mill and the Floss. I got to study under Burton Rafel, which was amazing. That's a name you should know. Go look at your signet classes.

[Thomas Banks]

I've mentioned him before. Once or twice, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

He translated Beowulf and Don Quixote and Sir Gawain and a number of King Arthur stories and talk through the poetry.

[Thomas Banks]

Section in a Barnes and Noble, and probably one or two books translated by him will be there.

[Angelina Stanford]

And he has that how to read poetry book or how to read a poem, and we really got along. And he. He was a terror. Like, people were terrified of him. And don't take. Don't take Burton Rafael. Don't take Burton Rafael. But he loved me, and I loved him.

[Thomas Banks]

And a terror that he didn't suffer fools or.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was what it was. And, you know, basically, if you're an.

[Thomas Banks]

Idiot, don't take my.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, it's the. It's the. It's the 90s. It's the mid-90s now. And so it's like 1995, and, you know, postmodern literary theory is. Is making a stronghold now. And people would say, oh, he's old school. He doesn't like the new school stuff. But I also was old school and didn't like the new school stuff. So he and I got along really well and had a lot of interesting conversations in his office about my peers and the state of the English Department. But he was a hero to me in a number of ways because he also was not afraid to work outside of the system and to tell people, I think your whole thing is stupid, and to walk away and do things on his own terms. So I had a lot of respect for that. He was somebody who was in grad school in English. It's a very similar story to my own. And he got extremely disillusioned, and he was like, you know what? I'm not going to jump through all your stupid PhD hoops. This is not real learning. Learning. I'm gonna quit and do it on my own. And they said, if you quit, you'll never work in the academy. Like, you'll be done. And he basically said, we'll see. And he quit and he went to law school and. And then he just started publishing. He was like an independent scholar. He started publishing all this stuff. He invented the whole, like, theory and philosophy of how to translate Old English and Middle English into Modern English. How do you do it in a way that, like, kind of, you know, gets the literal meaning across, but also the idiomatic meaning and gives you a sense of the rhythm of the alliteration all. Like. He invented that whole school of thought, and he just kept publishing and publishing and publishing. And he just made such a name for himself as A scholar that, guess what, the academy welcomed him right back in and he got to teach as a professor. And I just thought everything about that story was amazing.

[Thomas Banks]

And we have crow on the menu for today.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's okay. Yeah, you don't have to jump through other people's hoops. You can just do your own thing. Thing. So while my college experience was you.

[Thomas Banks]

Also have to be brilliant, but yes, that's, well, okay. Some people should not do their own thing.

[Angelina Stanford]

Perhaps that's, perhaps that's true, dear. But he was a great inspiration to me. I'll just put it that way. And so while I had fantastic professors, my graduate experience was incredibly disillusioning. And it was disillusioning because of my peers. So this is another, this is going to be another. You know, I have a number store of stories like this. I'll get ready, gang. This is another just, you know, slam.

[Thomas Banks]

The door, you meet a pseudo scholar.

[Angelina Stanford]

And they, well, it's just another God closing the door kind of stories for me. And I loved the stuff I was learning. I was in a, an old school department, but it was at a time when the older professors were retiring and the younger ones coming up were all 100 postmodern. And I went out of my, my way to take only old professors as they were about to retire. So I got a fantastic graduate education. I really, I really, I mean, I look back on and I'm just like, oh my. Holy cow. Like that was, that was amazing the education you got. But I've very much steered clear of these younger guys. They were all just so enamored with Derrida and Foucault and, and language deconstruction and you know, just, just the whole thing.

[Thomas Banks]

And all publishing peer reviewed articles with title slash like othering and postcolonial alienation in Heart of Darkness.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Or is there a text in this class?

[Thomas Banks]

Is there a text?

[Angelina Stanford]

The Stanley Fish. Yeah, but sorry, that was a little inside academic joke, ladies and gentlemen. But he got it. So I got. Oh gosh, let me, let me summarize. And I had to tell a whole long story about this, but my peers did not love literature. The people who were the future college professors did not love literature. And Dr. Marianne Wilson was not the only. I was also very close with Dr. Barbara Sicardo, who also took me under her wing. And I had imagined that if I became a college professor that, that I would, I would be entering this amazing life of the mind with other people who loved it and we would be loving this stuff together. And sharing ideas, and it would just be this wonderful, blissful thing. And that is not what academia is like. Not now.

[Thomas Banks]

Too often it tends to become a gallery of sophists, windbags.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, and everybody's just in their office working on their own research and, you know, trying to publish, to just to not perish, you know, having faculty. I was teaching at the university at this time, too, and having faculty meetings where we're being held accountable for how many copies we're making. I mean, like, that kind of stuff, you know, just being reminded constantly that the academy is a business and students in the seats is money. Like, you know, and being told I actually. And the department had loved me, though. She loved me. Okay? I really. I was a dart. I really was a darling of the daughter department. So it's like I wasn't in trouble for this. It was more like she was just kind of letting me in. And she was like, you're flunking too many people. And I was like, but isn't that my job? This is.

[Thomas Banks]

But they can't read. I mean.

[Angelina Stanford]

And no, I'm not even kidding. I had definitely who I thought, you know, you. You can't. You can't even read. And. And she said. She said, don't worry, Angelina. They're going to flunk out when their pell grant runs out. You just keep them in their seats till their pell grant runs out. And that. I mean, to somebody like me who's an idealist, like, that. Worst possible thing you could say to me, like, I was like, so you were just running a scam here we.

[Thomas Banks]

Get students who don't really have what it takes to succeed, but we're going to get them up to, like, you know, sophomore year.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was.

[Thomas Banks]

Again, we could take their money.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it was against policy to tell somebody they didn't belong in college. You could be fired for that. And I had a student one time in my office, and I was trying to work with him, you know, get him to pass his class. And he said to me, the truth is, I don't want to be here. I want to be a plumber like my dad. But he told me I need to make something better of myself than him. And that was a heartbreak breaking story to me because he would have been a great plumber instead of just a miserable, you know, college student. So I got very disillusioned. But one of the. And of course, I had. I had friends who were just completely immersed in the postmodernism. And I could see. I really could see the direction it was going in. I could see the good professors retiring. I could see what these young guys were up. And I remember at one point telling one of my colleagues, you guys are all running off a cliff. You are running off a cliff. I see where you're going, and I am not going with you. And they would all say, oh, you're so old school, Angelina. And they mean it. Very derogatory. That was one of the reasons why I got along so well with. With Burton Rafel. I mean, you know, I had classmates who were trying to write papers comparing Rob Roy to the film Miller's Crossing. And I wrote my paper for that class on the influence of Addison and Steel Spectator on the work of Jane Austen.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, so. So Rafael loved me. He loved me and I loved him. And I liked that he didn't suffer fools gladly because, frankly, I didn't think grad school should be full of fools. Like, you know, like, you're here because you're trying to be.

[Thomas Banks]

Nonetheless, here we are.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the postmodern theory disillusioned me. The other thing that disillusioned me was that my peers did not love literature at all. They constantly complained about having to take Chaucer, or I was in. I was in a program that required you to learn Middle English and Anglo Saxon. They constantly balked about that. They only wanted to read contemporary authors. And I remember telling. I was like, oh, yeah, God forbid Chaucer has anything to teach us about literature. Like, it was just so absurd to me that they only wanted to study new stuff because I only wanted to study old stuff. And it. It was very clear to me that they didn't read. We'd come into class and they hadn't done the reading, and they would be pretty open about that in the hall. Oh, I didn't do the reading. And I was like, why are we here?

[Thomas Banks]

And Now, I mean, 25, 30 years later, we're reading about. I mean, it seems like the Atlantic, the New Yorker, all these magazines are. You see, think pieces on the. You know, what is going to be the fate of the post literate humanities departments? And this is.

[Angelina Stanford]

And this is the seeds of it, okay? Because the people who are now in their 50s running these departments, departments when they were in their 20s, didn't want to read the books, and they still don't want to read the books. And they don't want to teach old books that they don't love it. And they would end up dumb. And I would get so angry because here I'D be like, I remember this was Test of the Darbervilles.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay?

[Angelina Stanford]

So I'm in this class, and we've got this expert on Thomas Hardy, and he's, like, breaking down the threshing scene, and I cannot take notes fast enough. And he's the Industrial Revolution. And here's what Hardy's doing. I mean, I'm just soaking it up, like knowledge. Yes. Give me more. Give me where. This is amazing. You're blowing this book up for me. But the people who hadn't read wanted to. Well, I mean, Tess being mistreated by Angel Clipman. That's this. This woman literally said this. It just reminds me of this time when I was four and I was on the playground and this boy pushed me off the swing. And, like, I wanted to physically assault her in class. I was so angry.

[Thomas Banks]

Let me get a swing and push you.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was like, yeah, okay. It was clear to me that what they were doing was because they hadn't read the book, they were going to pull the conversation to somewhere else where it was safe ground and they could. They could fake it. Right? And I remember, I think. I mean. I mean, I would go into faculty meetings and say this, and somehow I was still the darling of the apartment, but I was the darling of the department to the older professors. I don't know that the younger guys necessarily liked me that much. I don't know what they thought, you know, but I was. I was winning awards, and my papers were winning awards, and they were sending me to all these conferences. Like, they had a lot of expectations on me that I was going to complete my PhD and become a professor. This was everyone's expectation. And I was just becoming more and more disillusioned with all of it and thinking I couldn't stand those lawyers. But I can't stand y'all either. Like, y'all don't love this stuff. Why do you want. I mean, I would say to them, why do you want to teach this stuff if you don't want to read it? Why are you here? You know, I'm trying to defend old books.

[Thomas Banks]

It can't be for the money.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it can't be for the money. I know.

[Thomas Banks]

I just. I just think that's actually one of the saddest fates, I think, sufferable. I mean, aside from maybe being, like, a victim of a war crime or something, finding yourself doing something for a living that you hate and not even have the benefit of making, like, a fortune off of it, that's just, like, the worst of both Worlds right there. Losing your soul, but not even getting. I know, not even getting the world in return.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's really, really bizarre. And so I remember being in Dr. Rafael's office and him saying, your peers don't read, Angela. No one reads in this department. I was like, I know. And he said, what does this mean for the future of the English department if they don't read, read? And this was all what I was thinking, too. And so, even though I loved my classes, I loved what I was learning, I loved the papers I was presenting. I, I, looking back on it, I was very much reading the way that I read now. I was writing papers that were very symbolic. They were all well received. I remember a paper I wrote on a Margaret Atwood novel where I called it Death, Rebirth and Ceremonial Cleansing, an examination of water Imagery in Margaret Atwood. Later, I found out that Margaret Atwood was a great disciple of Northrop Fry. So she had, she had been very intentional about her archetypal impulse. But, you know, I had seen that I was writing paper like I was doing what I loved, and I, and everyone was like, angelina, you're, you're going places. You know, you're going to be a big name in academia. And I just got fed up. And I was like, I can't do this. And I had this really weird inkling. I mean, I was tutoring, I was teaching classes, I was tutoring students in the writing center. And I just had this voice in my head saying, it's too late to help people by the time they get to college. You. You basically got to go teach kindergarten if you're going to help people. And so I quit. I got the master's degree. I was in one of those programs where it kind of folded you in to get the PhD all at once. And so I, I just said, well, I'm just going to take the master's and I'm going to stop. And they were not only shocked, I think they were mad at me, me, but I just couldn't do it. So I, I quit and I walked away. And I honestly thought, I am walking away from this life forever. I'm walking away from the life of the scholar that I thought I was going to be. I'm, I'm done. It's. It's been quite an irony to see God give it back to me. But what I decided to do instead, you know, I was married at the time, and I decided to go ahead and start my family. And I decided, decided I was going to be a homeschool mom. And. And just do a complete 180. And I was like, you know what? I. I can't spend my life fighting in a department that is committing suicide. But what I can do is have my own children, and I can craft the education for them that I think a person needs. That's. That's what I can do. And that's what I chose to do.

[Thomas Banks]

And you had a sense by then of, you know, here are some things that are worth preserving. You know, you. You knew the canon, you knew books, you knew movements, you knew authors. So it's not as though it was wasted by any means.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, certainly not. And I mean, looking back on it now, of course it wasn't wasted at all, because, you know, the end of my story, which I'll get to here shortly, is that God gave it all back to me, but I walked away from it and honestly never thought I would. I would go back. But my story is that every time I tried to leave it, I got pulled back. I'm like Al Pacino and the Godfather. And every time I thought I was out, he dragged me back in. Like, that's literally what. Every time I would say, I quit. I'm not going to be a teacher anymore. I'd get a phone call, please, Angelina, please, you have to. We're just dying over here. And I just kept getting sucked back in. So I never was all the way out, although I kept trying to be all the way out, you know, so the next phase is I'm. I'm a mother of. Of several young children, and I know this episode is going long. I'm sorry, guys. I'm getting. The next part will be really fast. But my kids were too young to do any kind of real teaching, too, at that time. And I was really, really struggling. I was really struggling. I had. I had thrown myself into motherhood and was trying to be, you know, the mother that my kids needed me to be. But I was really struggling. I was really dying. And my dad said to me, you need to read again, Angelina. Like, I had just stopped reading again. You just busy with kids, you know.

[Thomas Banks]

Like, I think it's a lot of people's stories.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, People story. You know, you just. You know, I had. Building a home, you're raising a family close in age. You know, I'm just trying to keep everybody alive. I mean, it's not like I didn't read, but I didn't read very much, and I didn't.

[Thomas Banks]

It was something you had to steal. Still in time, basically.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think I read A lot. When my first one was still a baby. Like, you know, you nurse him and read, but after the second one comes, forget about it, right? And my dad says, you need to read, Angelina. You need to find yourself. And I started being really deliberate about reading again. And it did bring me back to life when, when I hear people, when people write to me about the podcast or, you know, I see a social media post and they say something like, you know, I was dying and this podcast has brought me back to life. I know exactly what you're talking about because that was my own experience. Those kinds of comments mean the world to me because that is what books did to me. So during that time. So this is before my kids are old enough to be homeschooled. Old, right. So they're still young. But I made it a project to start reading. Like what in my mind was like the big books that I hadn't read yet. And I made it a project. I don't even know how I did time wise. I honestly don't. Looking back, I was like, how did I have time to do that? But I did, somehow. And I made it a project during those years to read all the big Russian novels. So I read Anna Karenina and War and Peace and Brothers, Karamatsoff and Crime and Punishment. Like, I just, just kept ticking them off. I read Vanity Fair, which is not Russian, but is another big book.

[Thomas Banks]

It's long enough to be Russian, it's.

[Angelina Stanford]

Long enough to be Russian. And. And I found myself slowly, slowly coming back to life. And then my. I mean, I had looked for book clubs and just couldn't find anybody that was interested in this stuff. So I just read them myself.

[Thomas Banks]

Let's read whatever was on Oprah's Last.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I just couldn't find any. I really couldn't. Looking back though, again, I see all of those closed doors as God pushing me. He's. He was pushing me. He was going to give me the people I needed and the calling I was made for. But it was going to be a long road to get there. So the next thing that happens was my kids got to be about school age. And I, I started a school. I started a school, started a classical school. I was actually the head mistress of a classical school for a while. And I'll just say that God closed that door.

[Thomas Banks]

Are, I'm guessing, human folly and neigh.

[Angelina Stanford]

Played a part as well as human folly, neighbor. And that was a really, really hard thing to go through when God closed that door. The school closed down because of a church Split. It wasn't. It wasn't something I did. It was. It was a nasty church split and they closed the school. And that was really hard because I honestly thought this was going to be my life's calling. And I was. I was only partially wrong, right? Like, it was my life's calling to be involved in. In Christian classical education. It just wasn't. Wasn't with that school. But I was devastated, really. It took me a long time to recover from that. So now I'm back homeschooling and, you know, again without. I see the time ticking away, but people are probably like, just go for three hours, tell the whole story. But I kept leaving teaching and getting called back in, so that I should back up a little bit and say, the first time that happened was when my son was nine months old. Several families in the church that I was in had kids the same age. And they were all at the Christian school that I had gone to and had taught at. And they were like, these kids are super advanced. We just don't think they're getting what they need. So would you teach them? And, you know, we'll watch the baby while you teach them. And we were broke. So I said, okay. And so I thought, well, we'll just do Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 8 to 12, half day, three days a week. And I designed this curriculum. And I went and talked to their teacher at the school and. And got some tips. And of course, they were very condescending to me, Me. And we're like, oh, no. Three days a week, half a day. No, that can't be done. It can't be. I was like, I don't know. I think it can be done. And they're like, oh, no, no. And I said, oh, I'm not interested in using your literature book. We're just going to read real books and write papers. And they're like, they're in the sixth grade. Anthony, what are you thinking? I was like, I'm thinking they can do this. And so I took that group of kids, and in a spare bedroom in my house, we set up a school room. The parents all chipped in. It was very cool. And they would take the baby and I would take their kids. And so three mornings a week we did that. And they told me I would never finish. We finished in April. We finished their entire sixth grade curriculum in April. And we did the same thing that they did at the Christian school. But then I did my own literature thing on top of it. And we read real books. And because no one told Me, I couldn't. I just taught it like a college class. Like, I taught a college class. We read animal form and then they wrote me real college literature papers on it. And they loved it. And they, and they did so well. So over the next few years, that just kept happening. I would get phone calls. Hey, I heard you're teaching out of your, out of your, out of your house. You want another student, another. And it just kept growing and growing and growing. And then I'd have another baby and I'd say, no, I'm stopped. Nope, I'm taking a break, I'm taking a break. And then I, you know, then I get a call again, I'll watch the baby, teach my kid. I just kept getting pulled in. Before I knew, knew it, I had so many students that we ended up taking two classrooms at the church. I hired another teacher. Like, it just kept growing and growing. And that's why I was like, that's it. I'm just starting a school. So that, that really is my story. Every time I thought I had left, I got pulled back in. I thought I had left again when the school closed, but sure enough, parents started pulling. What were they going to do that the school closed? So now they're calling me, can you teach my kid on the sly? And this just happened over and over and over. And, and you know, the next big thing in my literary life, though, is when. So I'm homeschooling them and I'm making again, a lot of the same mistakes everybody does. I'm trying to do school at home, and it didn't work. And it was around that time that I found Cindy Rollins's blog and started reading about morning time. And of course I ended up meeting her and becoming friends with her. But.

[Thomas Banks]

Pause a second to clarify. You say you were trying to do school at home, meaning you were trying to, to replicate the experience of the. What a brick and mortar school is like, exactly. With.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

So I mean, class periods and bells.

[Angelina Stanford]

And class periods and little desks and, you know, worksheets. I mean, yes, I was giving my kindergartener worksheets because I didn't know. I just thought, I never taught kindergarten before. I thought, this is what you do. I bought the lesson plans and I'm doing what it says, but I'm like, I. And I remember thinking, wait a minute though, but I'm one person. I have three kids. I can't, I can't be the full time teacher. Like a classroom for all, like, as only one of me. And this can't Work. And so I started. I went through a very intense period where I thought, this can't be the model. It can't be the model that you're trying to do school at home. It's got to be something else. And sorry if I'm going too fast and not making sense because I'm feeling very self conscious about the time. But finding Cindy's blog where she talked about morning time and, and then I started reading. Charlotte Mason gave me a vision for what education at home could look like. And, and I started to realize that education in a classroom was an attempt to take that kind of pure education and make it something that you could pull off with a large group of people. Right. It's like a factory model. And so there was no reason for me at home, who has the ideal one on one tutoring to try to replicate the factory model. Right. Because the factory model is trying to replicate me. So I got rid of all of that. And those, honestly, were some of the best years of our lives, was when I just scratched all the school at home stuff and had a stack of books next on the sofa. And we would just sit there and read all day. We read Shakespeare, we read Plutarch, you know, we read history books, we read so much literature. And we just read and read and read. And then they would do Latin and math and grammar on top of that. And then my kids would tell people, we don't even do school. And I was like. And I remember grabbing my son. I was like, in a store.

[Thomas Banks]

He said, there's no truant officer around here.

[Angelina Stanford]

We don't really do school. And I pulled him aside, I was like, don't do school. It's like, son, today we did Shakespeare, we did Plutarch, we did Latin. Like, what? What are you talking about? He goes, oh, that. Well, that's not school, mom.

[Thomas Banks]

I think my mom worried about that too. Like, that, like you, you kind of wonder if your child is going to describe their education. Because we homeschooled briefly when I was in lower elementary grades and yeah, that was you probably. You probably. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, well, well, once he explained to me that he just didn't consider that school. He's like, school is like, you know, worksheets and stuff. And I thought, but, you know, he's right, he's right that he just thinks of, this is just life. It's not school. Of course, he went on to. He has an English degree and he's an English teacher himself now at almost 29 years old, because, yes, I actually am A middle aged woman. But, but those, those were really, really good times. And again during that time, people would call me up and say, hey, how about, how about, how about taking my kid too? And then when my, the oldest two are very close in age, so when they got to be high school age, I thought, well, let me, let me see if the stuff I'm teaching them, if I could like open it up to the church kids. And so of course, you know, not the same church, but the church split. This is long time has gone by now. But so I, the stuff I was teaching them, I was now teaching to other kids for money. And you know, we're doing that and then, and again I'm reading during this time. So I would say once my kids got to the age where I could start reading to them, that's when things really changed again for me. And that's actually when I started giving myself all the classic children's literature. I read Narnia for the first time with my kids. I read the Lord of the Rings for the first time with my kids. I read Alice in Wonderland and you know, all, all of those kinds of books that I had never read as a kid. So I was able to kind of fill in the gaps. Like when they were really little, I wasn't exactly sure how to homeschool them because I knew what like high school literature should be looking like. I just didn't know what elementary school. And so I ended up spending a lot of time, which has served me well, educating myself in that. And so then in 2011, I needed to be working full time. At that point my, my, my life circumstances had changed and so I decided to teach online. And basically whatever I was already teaching my two kids, I was offering to, to everybody. And that was really the birth of the House of Humane Letters. It wasn't under that name at that time. I was Angelia Stanford.com but I just started teaching classes and it started to grow bigger and bigger. And it was during, it was during that time when I was, when I was teaching those classes that I was really, really intensely thinking through all this Northrop fry stuff stuff and was able to better articulate what I was doing. And I had a few more closed doors. You know, when, before I hung out my own Shingle in 2011, I actually applied to teach online at some of the big online schools. And I won't say what they are, but I got rejected by all of them. And now all of the people who rejected me to teach online for them have now tried to be advertisers on this podcast or get me to speak at their conference. I mean, it's pretty hilarious, honestly. Like, well, no, you snoozed. You lose, buddy. But again, those were all, those were all really hard closed doors because I think God was moving me to, to build my own thing where I could. And I wouldn't have been happy at those other academies. I wouldn't have been. So, you know where I am now with House of Humane Letters, and it's just exploded. And of course, you work there with me. And we have such fine group of scholars, you know, Dr. Phillips and Jen Rogers, Dr. Baxter. I mean, honestly, I pinch myself. I mean, Dr. Drow, like this dream team of professors. And the crazy thing is, you know, I walked away from all of that 30 years ago in 1996. I officially left academia. Academia. So 29 years ago. And I really thought that was it, you know, I was done. I was just going to do something else. And it, it strikes me now, though, that God has actually given me what it was I wanted 29 years ago. I now have that community of scholars who love this stuff, who, who for them. This is air also. And we read and we, we do scholarly research. I mean, yeah, we present things in classes and webinars, but behind the scenes, like, it's non stop. It is non stop. We share, we share with each other the exciting things we're learning. We ping off of each other. It's so exciting. And when it manifests itself in different webinars and classes and conferences. But it's the behind the scenes life that I, I just can't get enough of. And I just pinch myself that I actually got it. I actually got it it. And, and weirdly enough, I. I had to build it though, before I could, I could get it. You know, like the life I wanted, I had to make for myself. And I'm. I'm just so grateful. And it's so funny too, because, you know, in the culture you're often acted like you have to choose between a path of motherhood or professional path. And for me, the way to my professional path was through mother motherhood. It was through motherhood and homeschooling that I have found my professional vocation. And the first homeschool conference I ever went to, I was stunned because I was sitting at a table with a bunch of women who read Elizabeth Gaskell for fun. And when I was in grad school for my oral comprehensive exams, they had asked me a question and I had answered with Elizabeth Gaskell. And I remember it was the department head. And she said, I am really surprised that someone your age reads Elizabeth Gaskell. She goes, no one reads Elizabeth Gaskell anymore. No one in the academy. And here was all these homeschool moms who read it, and I. And that was like a huge moment for me because I thought. I think. I think these might be my people. I. I think the people who really want to read are not in the academy. I think they're in homeschools. And that was really exciting for me. Of course, since then, that's just become even more apparent with the. With the podcast and everything thing. And I have. I have such a heart for any woman who reminds me of me. And what I mean by that is women who are intellectual and desire a life of the mind, but also want to have children and want to take care of them and. And don't want to have to choose between caring for children and having a mind. And I feel like God has put me in a position where I can help. Help people. You know, not to embarrass her, but Jen Rogers always tells me, she says, it's like you're able to help your younger self when you help me, you know, And I don't know if that makes sense or not, but that's what it feels like, that I. That I see them, these. These young moms like Dr. Phillips and Jen Rogers, and, you know, they're great moms, and they love their kids, and. But they also have these amazing minds and these gifts. Gifts. And. And God has allowed me to create a place where you can be both of those things. And I. I hope that the podcast and my experiences with that allow people to feel that, too, that you can be a mom at home. And it is hard. Okay. Like, there's. I know some people on Instagram romanticize being at home with your kids. It is hard. It is hard. It's hard to be alone. It's hard to have all that pressure on you. It's hard to just be with children all the time. Not that there aren't great things. I loved my kids. I loved reading with them, but it's just hard. It's hard. And if I feel like I can do anything on this podcast, in my classes to help those women feel more alive, like that. That's everything to me, because I needed that. I needed that when I was. When I was struggling. But should I say something about what my literary life is like now and then sum it up?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, tell us the last one or two books you read that you really, really Felt moved by.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, you've taken me by surprise. And I'm drawing a blank. I'm almost finished. A reread of Vanity Fair.

[Thomas Banks]

That's right. We both picked that one up again, that one.

[Angelina Stanford]

Past few months conversations. And. And I'm enjoying that. That's a wonderful novel. My literary life now is very, very joyful and a little bit complicated. Complicated. It's complicated because my favorite things to read are also the things I do professionally. And so I have sort of the reverse problem of when I was younger, and it was like, you know, how am I going to have time to read now? It's like, how do I make sure all this reading I do doesn't feel like work? Oh, yes.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I think that's very important for someone in our profession.

[Angelina Stanford]

And I love reading from my. I mean, honestly, my favorite thing to read is books about books. I love reading scholarly articles. I love reading Northrop Fry books. Like, I just. I can't get enough of that. I feel like, you know, I just. The deeper I understand the nature of literature, the happier I am. And so I love that. But there are also moments when I'll catch myself and be like, what's the last time you just read something for. Just, like, just. Just for fun that's not going to turn into a conference talk or a podcast or something, you know, so I. I try to be deliberate about making sure I'm getting rest because, I mean, you know, I. I'm very intense. I pour myself into things very intensely, but then I get burnout, and I'm trying to do much better about resting. So, you know, for me, detective novels, that is. That's pure candy. The p. I love it. You know, I. I started rereading all of the Dorothy Sayers books in order. That was. That's a fun project. I've made projects for myself of rereading all of the Jane Austin in order. Again, that's just pure fun for me. Although it probably will end up being a class at some point. Some point. You know, Agatha Christie's PG Woodhouse. No. Vanity Fair. That's a. That's a for fun read. But I have to be deliberate about it, you know, because we're. Most of. What we read is something for the podcast or for class or for a conference or for a mini webinar. But it's something I tried. I try to be more deliberate, to do something so that my brain feels like I'm off the clock.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Yes. As. As your husband, I think I can say with authority that you have a hard time going off the clock.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that is, that's really true. I really, I really do struggle, but I mean, I love what I do.

[Thomas Banks]

So it's, it's hard. Yeah, it's hard.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's, it's hard. But, yeah, I guess that's my advice. That was a wonderful show.

[Thomas Banks]

Very well narrated, Ms. Stanford. Very well. And talking in just on what, just.

[Angelina Stanford]

Over two hours here, Just, just at two hours. And I, and I, and I think I've said everything and I, I honestly, honestly I just, I stand in awe about my, my journey with, with books and, and I'm old enough now that I can look back and see all of the ways that God was shaping me. You know, the first time I got my hands on mythology or the Arabian Nights, I mean, that first class I taught in. So when I say I've been teaching for 32 years, that. That is correct. I taught that first year in AP English and then I taught at the university. And then as soon as I left I could me to have a baby. I started teaching sixth grade. Like, I really never have not been teaching. Even though I've quit teaching many times. The most I've gone without teaching has been maybe like six months right after having a baby. But that, that, that, that sixth grade class that I taught in 1997, I taught them the myth of Orpheus. And that was the first time I had ever to a class said that Orpheus was the gospel story like I teach now. If you, you go listen to our episode, why read pagan myths? But that was so that one of.

[Thomas Banks]

Those things you wouldn't necessarily find in a Becca or Bob.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. But it was the first time that I was able to articulate to kids in a teaching situation that what I saw, how I saw that shape of the gospel undergirding these stories and how I could see even in the myths, you know, the seeds of truth that would become the gospel. Because you have Orpheus descending into Hades to rescue his bride, which is, that's the gospel story. And, and of course that, that's going to, you know, become something, something bigger for me. You know, once I started, I kind of left that out, I guess. Once I started teaching online, I was also blogging and I also had. My blog is defunct. You won't find it. But I was also blogging a lot back then, some of you might remember it. And I was also. I had two different columns and two different homeschool magazines at that time. And that started turning me. Generating interest and I started getting Invited to speak at different conferences and well, you know, I probably should tell this story. Pardon me for going a little longer. They're all cheering. For a long time, I didn't understand that I read books differently than other people. I mean, yes, I knew I was getting the answers wrong on the worksheet, but I did not understand that I was having such a different experience reading, reading than other people. Like, I knew I would write a paper and the professors would lose their mind and be like, this is, this is genius. This has to be published. But honestly, that didn't even sink into me. I thought, you guys are making a big deal out of nothing. I'm basically just writing paper after paper that says, and grass is green and water is wet. Like, it was just so self evident to me. It wasn't hard. I was a straight A student, you know, again, all through grad school, because it's just so easy for me. It was like nothing. And like a lot of people, I think, who have a gift, it's hard to understand that it's a gift because it's so easy and so self evident, right? But once I started making the rounds in conference talks and having people come back and ask me questions, that's when I started to realize, oh, wait, you guys think about books entirely differently than I do. And then I started trying to answer myself the question, why? Why am I looking at it differently than you? Well, what exactly is going on here? That actually led, led me deep, deep into the theory of literature so that I could answer for myself, why do I read the way I read? How do I know that I read the right way? You know, why don't we read this anymore? That's why I can speak so knowledgeably on things like the history of literary theory and where we went wrong with the Enlightenment and with the New critics and those guys, like, because I had to answer those questions for myself. And one of the places that that started honestly was, I can't believe I forgot to tell this. It's just now occurring to me when I was in college because you know me, I'm not going to do anything just because it's fun. It's got to be meaningful, right? And so when I had that moment with Kate Chopin where I was like, I'm so good at this, I'm going to do this. I'm going to make this my life calling, I, the next question for me was, why does this matter? And I had to answer that question for myself. And one of the things that really disillusioned me to me was that none of the professors could answer that. When I said, why does it matter? I always thought their answers were not satisfactory. And. And I said, but we teach because we love these books and we want other people to love them. I was like, this got to. I mean, that just seems very, you know, kind of the logical fallacy of begging the question, like, it's not a. This isn't a real reason. It's got to mean something. And that also set me on a very long journey to answer this. The question, why does any of this matter? What does it mean? Why is this worth our time? I think I can now answer that. I think if you listen to the podcast or taking my classes, you're saying, yes, she definitely knows how to answer that now. But that was a lifelong journey to answer that question, why does it matter? So, yeah, that's my literary life. And I pinch myself, as you know, every day that I get a job where I can talk for a living, and I. And I get to talk about books to people who want to learn it, and I. And I get to live the life I had always hoped I could. And I got there in a very unpredictable way.

[Thomas Banks]

Excelsior. Very good. Well, thank you, Ms. Stanford. This has been a most enlightening interview.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, thank you for having me.

[Thomas Banks]

And we definitely didn't rehearse any of these questions before.

[Angelina Stanford]

We did not. And I'm. I'm so glad that at no point did you have a gotcha moment and I had to end the interview. This interview is over. I really wanted to be able to say this.

[Thomas Banks]

I know.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'll just say it at the end. This interview is over. So please check out the House of humaneletters.com to find out all about our summer classes and the other things I've got going on. Mr. Banks is going to read one of my favorite poems at the end of this, so stick around for that. And join us next week because we're going to start talking about Flannery O'Connor. I have lots of things to say about that. So this interview is over. And also, keep crafting your literary life, because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life podcast brought to you by our loyal patrons. Patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning by John Donne as virtuous men pass mildly away, and whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, the breath goes now, and some say no. So let us melt, and make no noise, no tear floods, nor sigh tempests move. Twere profanation of our joys to tell the laity Our love moving of the earth brings harms and fears Men reckon what it did and meant but trepidation of the sphere years, though greater far is innocent, dull sublunary Lover's love, whose soul is sense, cannot admit absence, because it doth remove those things which elemented it. But we, by a love so much refined that ourselves know not what it is. Inter assured of the mind, care less eyes, lips, and hands to me. Miss our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet a breach, but an expansion, like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two, so as stiff twin compasses are two. Thy soul, the fixed foot makes no show to move but doth doth if the other do and though it in the centre sit, yet when the other far doth roam, it leans and hearkens after it, and grows erect as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must like the other foot obliquely run. Thy firmness makes my circle just, and makes me end where I begun.