Faculty & Research News
FACULTY GRANT AWARD
A grant was awarded to Core renewal class, Where #blacklivesmatter Meets #metoo: Violence and Representation in the African Diaspora, co-taught by Professors Régine Jean-Charles (Romance Languages and Literature) and C. Shawn McGuffey (Sociology and African & African Diaspora Studies). The Tillet sisters, Scheherazade and Salamishah, talked about surviving rape and going beyond the #MeToo movement.
Story of a Rape Survivor
Introduced by Régine Michelle Jean-Charles, associate professor of French and longtime friend of the Tillet sisters, as “living and breathing examples of what it means to be the change you wish to see in the world,” Scheherazade and Salamishah Tillet came to Boston College this past October to share their journey.
In 1997, Scheherazade Tillet learned that her older sister, Salamishah, was a rape survivor. By the early 2000s, what began as a photography project to help her sister heal from sexual violence had evolved into a multimedia stage performance and a nonprofit organization. Together, Scheherazade and Salamishah wrote and directed Story of a Rape Survivor, a narrative that uses Salamishah’s story as an entry point to understanding the healing process around sexual assault. They simultaneously worked to found A Long Walk Home, Inc., the only organization in the country that uses art therapy and the visual and performing arts to end violence against women and girls. The Tillet sisters spent time with BC students discussing the individual and joint paths that brought them to this formational work–the emotional trials and process of founding a nonprofit organization–and the groundbreaking projects they are working on today.
In addition to Story of a Rape Survivor, Scheherazade and Salamishah now run The Girl/Friends Leadership Institute, which empowers teen girls to use art to advocate for themselves and other girls in their Chicago schools and communities through A Long Walk Home. Scheherazade also does critical community organizing work, described by her sister as “masterful at helping people reclaim traumatic spaces,” while Salamishah works as an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently writing a new book about Civil Rights icon Nina Simone. The sisters are influenced by the beauty of honoring healing, and serve as an inspiring testimony of hope and perseverance to all who know them.
Caitlan Griffith ’20, Winston Center Undergraduate Assistant
Read Heights article "'A Long Walk Home' traces the story of sexual violence"
Presented with the African and African Diaspora Studies Program.