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MnWE Plenary: We Are Meant to Rise
April 7, 2022 @ 10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Do you believe stories frame identities, infuse the texts we explore, and inspire our students’ and our own writing? Join Kevin Lindsey as he hosts a conversation with Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura about their new anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World. This brilliant and rich gathering of voices on the American experience of this past year and beyond, from Indigenous writers and writers of color from Minnesota, not only provides valued witness to our present but also speaks to our collective future. This collection of stories is an ideal lens to focus pressing themes central to this year’s conference. Their conversation will include how dominant cultural narratives about race, gender, or class impact teaching and relationships with students, how educators navigate these dominant narratives, and how educators may question and resist persistent cultural narratives that reproduce inequality in the classroom.
“For readers, this anthology of Minnesota writers of color and Indigenous writers will serve many things. A presentation of the growing diversity of Minnesota and of the many voices great within us. A series of lens on the American experience. A bouquet of wordsmiths and thinkers, memorialists and novelists, poets and activists.” ~ David Mura
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About the speakers:
Kevin Lindsey, who joined the Minnesota Humanities Center as CEO in June of 2019, is a widely-respected advocate and lawyer with a wealth of experience in public policy and education reform. A proven change-maker, Kevin’s career has focused on finding solutions to complex issues for institutions, both internally and externally. He has a passion for inclusion for all, building a stronger democracy, and leveraging the power of personal stories. Kevin has held numerous governmental and nonprofit positions such as board chair and interim executive director of Walker West Music Academy and, most recently, Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights from 2011 to 2019. He also was honored by his alma mater in 2017 with the Iowa Law Review Distinguished Alumni Award and recognized as a “50 Over 50 disruptor honoree” by AARP Minnesota and Pollen 2018.Carolyn Holbrook is a writer, educator, and longtime advocate for the healing power of the arts. Her memoir in essays, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify (U of M Press, 2020), won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for memoir and nonfiction, and was an honoree for the 2021 Society of Midland Authors Literary Award in Biography & Memoir. She is a co-author, with Arleta Little, of Minnesota civil rights icon Dr. Josie R. Johnson’s memoir, Hope in the Struggle. She is co-editor with David Mura of an anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (U of M Press, forthcoming this November). Her personal essays have been published widely, most recently in A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota and Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (both from MN Historical Society Press). Her work is supported by the MN State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. She was a “50 Over 50” honoree (AARP/Pollen Midwest). She was the first person of color to serve in a leadership capacity at the Loft Literary Center, and the first person of color to win the Minnesota Book Awards Kay Sexton Award for significant contributions to and leadership in Minnesota’s literary community. She teaches at the Loft Literary Center and other community venues, and at Hamline University, where she won the Exemplary Teacher award in 2014. She is the Director of More Than a Single Story, which she founded in 2015. She is the mother of five, grandmother of eight, and great grandmother of two.
“Art and writing have kept me alive. When a student leaves my class, I want them to know and believe that their voice is important. I want them to learn not only from me and the pieces we read; I also want them to learn from other writers. To do this, I bring writers into the classroom to talk with them about their writing and their writing practices.” ~ Carolyn Holbrook
David Mura is a writer, memoirist, poet, and performance artist who brings a unique perspective to our multi-racial and multi-cultural society. A third-generation Japanese-American, he has written intimately about his life as a man of color and the connections between race, sexuality, and history. In public appearances interweaving poetry, performance, and personal testament, he provides powerful insights into the racial issues facing America today.
Mura’s memoirs, poems, essays, plays, and performances have won wide critical praise and numerous awards. Their topics range from contemporary Japan to the legacy of the internment camps and the history of Japanese Americans to critical explorations of an increasingly diverse America. He gives presentations at educational institutions, businesses, and other organizations throughout the country.