Academic Enrichment: Attending Honors Program Event-- Book Talk w Prof. Benson (3 pts) Ayanna Lonon

As part of the Honors Program, I attended a book talk with Professor Benson on her poetry collection Black Pastoral. I first read this book last year in Contemporary Black Writers with Dr. Maner, but revisiting it this year gave me the chance to engage the work with a more mature understanding. Currently, I am taking a course called Composing Across Genres, and I am considering how the poetic form allows Black writers to capture a cultural energy that an essay, perhaps, could not. During the book talk, Benson discussed how poetry as a mode allows us to express humanity and personhood in ways we’ve historically been denied. 

In class, we recently revisited Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” in which Walker posits that Black women are always doing the sacred work of creating and producing culture, even when their work is not recognized as artistic or intellectually drawn. I began to see how both she and Benson use the physical landscape—gardens, fields, nature—and the metaphorical landscape of literature as places where Black people could reclaim freedom and sovereignty through expression. Benson read one of my favorite poems from the book, “Theodicy on My Blackness,” and it brought up questions I’m still sitting with in my research process—especially around Blackness as something expansive, spiritual, and alive.

Right now, I’m working on a zine about the current moment in Black women's intellectual lives, and this event definitely poured into that project. I want the zine to reflect rooms like the one we met in that day, places where women like my Honors sisters, Dr. Hite, and Professor Benson can do sacred work. I want to create something that extends these spaces beyond the Spelman gates—to branch beyond boundaries and borders.

By: Ayanna Lonon