Students, professors and other community members gathered at the Southside Community Center Feb. 18 to celebrate authors Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison. The event included performances of both original pieces and specific texts from the authors.
Ithaca’s Southside Community Center was a fitting venue for the commemoration. The Center was established by a group of black women in 1934 .
“That was year that Audre Lorde was born, so it’s these constant connections, awakenings and reasons for celebration and really centering these two black women, black female writers, that is critical to do always but for some reason it just feels extra critical to do this work right now,” said Nia Nunn, president of the Center’s board of directors and associate professor of education at Ithaca College.
IC professors Derek Adams and Nicole Horsley along with students Nicole Bethany Onwuka and Brianna Gibbs were among the performers.
Gibbs danced to an original piece she created to the poem “Harriet,” written by Lorde. Nunn said it was magical to see Gibbs’ delivery of the piece.
“I think Brianna with the dance, dancing to the poetry was everything. She was super nervous at first, told me her journey in creating the piece and then just seeing it come to life was everything,” said Nunn.
Onwuka, an acting major at IC, performed a monologue from “Sula,” a novel written by Morrison. Onwuka also sang the black national anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
She said while looking at both authors’ work, Morrison’s stood out to her the most.
“The monologue from ‘Sula’ by Toni Morrison really just talked about the perspective of being loved through a black woman’s eye and it was so beautiful to me because it really just hit the nail on the head,” she said. “There are so many things I think she could have been saying, but for me, what stood out the most was black women and that battle between black women feeling loved, black women not feeling loved, not feeling appreciated, and being below second-class citizenship even still today. So I thought it would be really interesting to bring that to life.”
Nunn has adored both authors for a long time. She said she fell in love with Morrison while reading “Sula.” To be able to teach some of Lorde’s work to students who then interpret it through performance is special, she added.
“We’re really trying to engage and enroll people in the beauty of their work,” Nunn said.
After hearing pieces from the authors’ writings, IC student Kalena Yearwood said she looks forward to learning more about them.
“It definitely made me curious and want to read their works more. I’ve read ‘Sula.’ I’ve read a couple others but I really have a newfound respect for them coming out of this event,” said Yearwood, who serves as the civic engagement and outreach liaison for IC’s Black Student Union.
Onwuka noted that it was very inspiring to watch the different mediums of art inspired by the two authors.
“They wrote words and through those words all of us were able to capture … dissecting it through a poem or dance or a song, the fact that we were all able to do that and still simultaneously celebrating these two women who were just so great is a testament to how profound and strong the work that they created is and how it’s going to carry over for generations to come,” she noted.
Nunn wants the event to become an annual tradition.
“I’m thinking even next year we might even highlight specific texts and get creative with their work, almost answering our own question and continuing to answer that question and model, what we’re doing with this work? And the power, the pain, the beauty, all of it is so transformative,” she said. “I’m so grateful to have a team of folks that are fully engaged and continuing this journey.”
