In the last day, two GGI grads have been sharing their strongest words about the work we do in the world and how to do it better.
Seema Reza’s article — “The Work of Waking Up the Sleeping in a Broken World: We Are Together” — was just published in The Feminist Wire. This essay was based on the commencement address she gave at her graduation from GGI in February of 2016 when she received her Individualized MA degree in Transformative Language Arts. Seema Reza, author of When the World Breaks Open, which grew out of her final product for her BFA from Goddard, works at military medical centers in the Washington, D.C. area facilitating writing and arts programs to help wounded warriors grapple with the unseen injuries of war. She was awarded by very prestigious Co. John Gioia Patriot Award by the USO of Metropolitan Washington-Baltimore for her work with the military. As she writes in this article,
“If each of us wakes the sleeping, there will be far more of us than there are of them. This is our work. Whichever corner of the earth we focus our attention upon.”
Read more here. You can see her website here.
Taina Asili, as an IMA-TLA graduate, was just featured in Yes Magazine in an interview entitled, “Black Lives Matter “Anthem” Writer Talks Music, TPP, and Being a Mom to a Black Son.” Taina is a singer-songwriter who offers writing workshops focused on social change for intergenerational, multi-ethnic and other communities. She ours with her band, Taina Asili y la Banda Rebelde, which has recently released “And We Walk,” on the need for environmental justice, following up on her anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement, “Freedom.” She says,
We’re constantly in the process of not only thinking through strategies of survival, which is a huge question right there, but also how do we continue to survive as Black people in the midst of this violence, whether it’s emotional or physical. How do we survive? How do we thrive? How do we continue to raise our children and give them hope? How do we give each other hope?
Read her interview here. You can see her website here.
