style="font-size:15px;"> LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: When we started the Girls Write Now year, my mentee and I embarked on Intergenerational Memoir writing. I learned about her family and story as a friend, writer, niece, and daughter. It was an opportunity for us to share and learn about each other. Six months later, we have built on that experience of learning through our writing.
My aunt is my role model—she inspires and motivates me. She’s an independent woman who came to this country with nothing and made her way up with the help of some friends along the way.
In Togo, the public schools had small rooms—the students were crammed into hot, mosquito-infested spaces. The parents were uninvolved. As a result, the teachers fed off the feeling that the parents didn’t care that much about their children’s education and just needed them to get out of the house. The private schools were different, with better learning environments.
The private school teachers were nuns. As they walked around the school, the extreme heat from the Togo sun left the nuns hot and sweaty under their wool habits, but they never complained. They had dedicated their lives not only to God but also to nurturing the next generation to excel. After a long day of teaching, they went home to their beds in the church and awoke the next morning, doing it all over again. Their lives revolved around the school.
One of the lovely children whom the nuns taught was a girl named Dela. Even though private schools were expensive, Dela’s father insisted that all of his children attend a good school where the teachers and administrators cared more about education. Dela was a small girl who laughed a lot; she enjoyed the time she spent with her friends. While she wore khaki skirts and long black stockings to school every day, she dreamt of wearing shorts or pants and letting her legs breathe! Dela always dreamed of being a fashion designer and going to school in America. Whenever Dela’s mother visited her family, she would find her sewing machine and fix or make new clothes. Dela always knew in the back of her mind that her father did not agree with her dream, but that didn’t stop her.
While she had big dreams, she needed to face reality and middle school first. Dela didn’t grasp things that easily or quickly, so her dad found tutors to help her. Her first tutors were her brothers, but they weren’t that helpful. They would make fun of how slow she was, saying things like “This is so easy, how do you not get it?” or “Only a dummy would get this wrong.” This did not help Dela. Her dad saw that she wasn’t growing—she wasn’t learning to believe in herself at the hands of her brothers. So he got her a new tutor, a close family friend. There was a massive change in her learning, and she started doing better in school.
Dela’s father, proud of how well Dela was excelling, wanted her to be a teacher. He sent her to a boarding high school that focused on language. There she learned how to speak English, and she was very grateful for the opportunity. There were many people living in Togo who didn’t have the privilege to go to school and get a good education or any nurturing. Sometimes strict nuns were available only to the few who could afford it. Many children had to stay at home to take care of their siblings and clean the house while their parents were at work. Others would have to go to work to make some money to support their family.
The boarding school gave Dela many opportunities, including being able to attend university. After she graduated from college, she joined a program that connected her with some summer camps in the U.S., and she traveled there for the first time to work in Massachusetts. When she arrived she didn’t want to leave—she loved it there. The people were nice and accepting. They didn’t judge her or make fun of her accent like her brothers would. She made many friends quickly, many who have helped her to get to where she is now. Every day she is grateful and blessed for the people she has met along the way.
My grandmother passed away a week before Trump’s inauguration. While I missed the Women’s March to celebrate her life, she is my guidepost for strong womanhood today. She is my Generation F.
One month before she passed away, my grandmother condemned me for not wearing lipstick. I was sitting at the edge of her hospital bed, running my fingers through her beautiful gray hair, when she pointed to her purse on the nightstand. She pulled out her beaded makeup case and placed it in my hand, motioning for me to gloss a layer of red lipstick over my heartbroken smile. There was no one quite like her. Even as she suffered from Parkinson’s and dementia, my tiwa never stopped being the fierce, lipstick-wearing grandmother who helped raise me.
She was one of a kind. She was known to place hexes on any driver who dared to cut her off. She always kept her nails long and manicured with a bright, orangey-red polish. She never left the house without her elegantly layered pearls or diamond earrings. She always set the table according to etiquette expert Emily Post and taught each of her grandchildren the purpose and preferred placement of each fork. She owned and managed a Western clothing store with cunning and business savvy. She placed hundred-dollar bills in plastic Easter eggs and hid them around the house during the holidays for her grandchildren, and later great-grandchildren, to find and save for college.
I grew up surrounded by strong women; my grandmother sat at the helm of our tribe. From my mom to my teenage cousins, my grandmother taught each of us how to define our own fierce version of being female. Sometimes the fierceness collided with big opinions and large personalities crescendoing at one of our large family dinners, but at least, because of her, the women in our family have big opinions and personalities to share with the world.
SOLEDAD AGUILAR-COLON
YEARS AS MENTEE: 2
GRADE: Junior
HIGH SCHOOL: Beacon High School
BORN: Bronx, NY
LIVES: New York, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Scholastic Art & Writing Award: two Silver Keys, Honorable Mention
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: These past two years with Linda have been eye-opening! There was this one particular Monday when Linda and I met at our usual spot, the Atrium in Manhattan, and did what we always do, talk. But this time, Linda and I decided to go further in our discussion. Instead of discussing politics or daily life frustrations, we talked about family. From then on, I felt a shift in our relationship and that reflected itself in the topics that we wrote about because we felt more open and comfortable with each other.
LINDA CORMAN
YEARS AS MENTOR: 8
OCCUPATION: Freelance Editor
