It’s easy to talk about having hard conversations, it’s another thing to actually have them. Renowned award-winning author and activist, Tami Charles, made having such a conversation about racial representation in education easy at this year’s 13th Annual Jolita Benson Education Lecture entitled “The Beautiful Mind: A Journey from Thought to Page.”
Charles shared her story of struggling to become a writer as a Black woman who “was born to create” but did not see representation to feel reassured to follow her passions. “How can you be someone whom you can’t see?” Charles asked, concluding that it is her job now to provide those windows for diverse young generations.
Now an author of New York Times bestsellers, Charles did not give up after being turned down by big publishers like Scholastic, Disney, Simon & Schuster, etc. Nor did she lose courage after getting rejected to publish Fearless Mary because the company “met their quota for Black people biography.” The writer shared that hearing “no” did not stop her; moreover, Charles chose to help herself grow by sharing the stories she was working on with her students while she was working with Linden Public Schools for 13 years.
While the lecture was free and open to the public, Education Department students from PLU were required to attend. Assistant Professor of Education John Write gives credit for this event to Dr. Wendy Gardiner, who is the current Jolita Hylland Benson Endowed Chair in Elementary Education at PLU. Write shared that people who can speak on issues “that are violently important for education majors and are also good for the community” are sought after as lecturers for this event. Write continued “… in this case, [it was] someone who writes about multiculturalism – about really hard topics.”
Despite the heavy topic, the audience shared laughter with the speaker during the Q&A. While waiting in line for their copy of Charles’ book to be signed, education students chatted about their ambitions to have diverse representation in their future classrooms by having books like Charles’ or their own works.
