Wellesley College Outreach Week of April 3rd

Written By Izzy Torkornoo

This week has been about finding my footing back on campus since Monday was the first day of classes after Spring Break. I want to get back on track with my ambassadorship and finish strong so the focus of this week has been to finish up incomplete work and pursue new modes of outreach. I emailed Professor Carter Jackson, Professor Fitzpatrick and Regina (the student judge) the two submissions from the Black History Month Digital Archive Contest along with the following rubric which judges the submissions based on Creativity, Thoroughness, Storytelling, Utilization, and Engaging categories. I am hoping to have their scoring in by mid to late next week. Furthermore, I have followed up with both students who have submitted so that they know where we are in the contest judging process and with my own personal work.

A club that I would love to collaborate with is Poetry Out Loud. Poetry Out Loud at Wellesley is our poetry and spoken word organization and I have a deep love for poetry and spoken word as well as an appreciation for the roots of Black communities in the art form. I emailed Poetry Out Loud this week and am hoping to hear back from them soon in order to further finalizing an event with them to highlight HistoryMakers important in the poetry community such as Nikki Giovanni and Maya Angelou. Additionally, April is National Poetry Month which presents an awesome opportunity to center Black communities and The HistoryMakers.

As someone who loves spoken word and poetry and the rich history of the role of Black communities in the origins of these art forms, I would love to collaborate and meet with Poetry Out Loud and particularly highlight famous Black poets featured in The HistoryMakers Digital Archive such as Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Angela Jackson, Abiodun Oyewole, Naomi Long Madgett, Malik Yusef Jones, and Amina Baraka and I am excited to make social media content for this month!

Additionally, I have followed up with the Wellesley Asian Alliance in hopes to finally set up a time to meet and discuss the importance of archiving in Black and Asian communities and The HistoryMakers! I am in a South Asian Diasporas class right now where we learned about “Bengali Harlem” and the applicability of this history to the historical ways that Asian Americans and Black communities have been in community can be a focus of the presentation that I put together for the meeting with the Wellesley Asian Alliance. I also reached out to the Wellesley College Government Senate which I am a part of to find a time to present there! I am confirmed to present in College Government on 04/24/23!

Izzy Torkornoo

Isabel (Izzy) Torkornoo (she/her/hers) from New York CIty, is a first-generation Ghanaian-American young woman who currently attends Wellesley College. At Wellesley, Izzy has continued her passion for global Black studies by majoring in Africana Studies. Her courses have created an expansive understanding of the vastness and incredible diversity of the African Diaspora across the world. She has also furthered her interests in education through becoming an Education minor and has aspirations to increase the presence and centrality of global Black studies in K-12 curricula. With a love for the spoken word and her own family’s oral traditions, Izzy brings a level of deep intentionality to the work of The HistoryMakers. Izzy is a rising senior at Wellesley and will graduate in the Spring of 2023.

Previous

Taking things for Granted
Next

Dillard University Student Ambassador Update