“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
~ Anais Nin
I am surrounded by extraordinarily gifted friends. Everyday, I am humbled by their contributions to the world. Not a week passes when I don’t see one of them making a grand contribution to society. No longer am I stunned when I see my friends in print, on television, or hear them on the radio. My late grandfather used to say, “If you live long enough, life with grant you many unexpected surprises.” And that is exactly what happened this week when I learned that my dear friends Jennifer Richeson, Ph.D. and Sarah Lewis were both profiled in the May issues of O and Vogue Magazines respectively.
Jennifer Richeson, Gloria Richeson & AYG
I have had the blessing of knowing Jennifer since she was a Western High School Dove and I was a Baltimore City College High School Lady Knight. We were both active in student government and shaped in part by the Associated Student Congress of Baltimore City. Jennifer and I reconnected when we found ourselves at Harvard– she as a Ph.D. candidate in the psychology department and I as a master of theological studies student at the Divinity School. For a short period of time, we were roommates in the Inman Square neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts. After earning her doctorate in social psychology, Jennifer taught at Dartmouth College, was a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and is currently the director of graduate studies and an associate professor of psychology at Northwestern University. Her intellectual work focuses on prejudice, stereotyping, and intergroup relations– more specifically, she investigates how social group memberships such as race, socio-economic status, and gender impact the way people think, feel, and behave.
In 2006, Jennifer was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, commonly referred to as the “Genius Grant.” In classic “Jennifer” form, she shared this wonderful news with an intimate group of friends in an email whose subject heading read, “some wonderful news!” In much the same fashion, I received an email from her this week entitled, “May Issue of O Magazine.”
Jennifer Richeson in O Magazine 2010 Photo: Christian Witkin
Needless to say, I rushed to the store to purchase a copy! I squealed with delight as I turned to page 108 to find Jennifer rockin’ a fuschia L’Wren Scott dress, platform heals to die for, nails perfectly painted, and a chunky gold ring that subtly accented the entire ensemble! And while the fashionista in me reveled in the sheer fabulosity of her styling, I was moved most by the fact that my dear friend and African American daughter of Baltimore, was chosen as one of “O’s Women on the Rise!” Highlighted as “an academic trailblazer,” the magazine declares, “the coming decade belongs to these ten women, fittingly dressed by emerging designers.”
AYG & Jennifer Richeson, June 2007
Jennifer is a humble soul, fiercely committed to her work, family, friends, and civic commitments which she attends to with great discipline and efficacy. In a sea of younger intellectuals who are often more eager to secure the adoration of major media outlets rather than the respect of their colleagues and students, she is a rare, refreshing breed. Jennifer is all about doing the work that must be done and is keenly aware of the importance of her role in its completion. When I started my nonprofit, Jennifer was one of the first people I shared my vision with and she has served on our board of directors with great benevolence and distinction. As a friend, she continues to offer me life-altering gifts of insight that are definitively loving and instantly transformative. She could not be a better standard-bearer for herself, family, friends, community of origin, the field of social psychology, and the academy in general. And, with certainty, for women and African Americans.
Susan Fales-Hill, April Yvonne Garrett & Sarah Lewis
In the late 1990’s, Sarah Lewis entered my life like a breath of fresh air. At 18, she was perfectly coiffed, poised, and exceedingly self-possessed for someone her tender age. Her years at New York’s prestigious Brearley School, gift for painting, and incisive yet gentle intellect, instantly made Sarah a quintessential Harvard woman. These attributes were only made more pronounced by her striking physical beauty– she has a delightfully delicate and optimistic cocoa brown face and rare is the time I have seen it without a smile. Hardworking and engaged, Sarah graduated from Harvard with honors, attended Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar, and is now completing her Ph.D. in the department of the history of art at Yale University where the legendary historian of African and African American art Robert Farris Thompson is her mentor. She is also a writer, curator, and critic at the Yale University School of Art.
AYG, Jericho Brown, Sarah Lewis, Thomas Allen Harris & A. Eisa Brown
Over the years, I have watched Sarah’s evolution. She has the career of her dreams and has found a way to integrate her intellectual, spiritual, and personal desires with persistence and discernment as evidenced by her latest venture: co-curating The Dissolve: SITE Santa Fe’s Eigth International Biennial with Daniel Belasco. Ever the measured busy-bee, she is publishing two books, one on Circassian beauties (women who were thought to be unusually beautiful, spirited and elegant, and as such were desirable as concubines) and Rise, that explores the value of failure in one’s life experiences. The later subject is one we have spent some notable time during our friendship identifying, discussing, and surmounting with remarkable flair. Sarah has a knack for acknowledging difficulty yet overcoming it quickly without assigning it too much weight and gravity– a gift I have found comforting and useful on many occasions. It is only fitting that theses two books highlight her intellectual curiosity and her personal values.
Robert Farris Thompson and Sarah Lewis in Vogue May 2010 Photo: Annie Leibovitz
In the May issue of Vogue, Sarah is highlighted as one of their “Great American Women.” The article, adroitly written by Dodie Kazanjan (I am so compelled to read any and every thing she has ever penned), does a beautiful job of weaving Sarah’s precisely measured eclecticism into an inspired narrative. When I got a copy of the magazine, I expected to find Sarah in haute couture. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to find that Vogue– more specifically Annie Leibovitz– chose to capture Sarah in her essence engaging her advisor Robert Farris Thompson. As monumental as this profile may be, the magazine, perhaps unwittingly, provided us with a priceless gift: an incredible intimate shot of a respected academic deliberately and faithfully passing the intellectual torch on to a scholar in the next generation he most assuredly groomed for grand success. At the age of 30, Sarah has accomplished so much and yet president emerita of MoMa Agnes Gund’s observation in the article could not be more astute, “You don’t know what she’ll end up doing– there are so many possibilities.”
In a world where women are more likely to be acknowledged for their superficial rather than substantive attributes, it is refreshing to find profiles in well-regarded mainstream publications that highlight women for their tenacity and intellect (I gratefully acknowledge that O Magazine does this by design). African American women in particular are all too often pathologized in the media in a manner that sustains a pantheon of overwhelmingly stereotypical caricatures. Like Jennifer and Sarah, there are so many amazing women whose stories and accomplishments need to be told.
With optimism and joy, I call your attention to these two stories that show women as personally enchanting and professionally exceptional. Join me in applauding O and Vogue Magazines for praising these brilliant and beautiful women. I hope there is a groundswell of support for these two stories that ignites a shift in magazine publishing and in the media in general toward highlighting the majestic accomplishments of all women as opposed to their easily identifiable foibles. Let us do all we can to support such a movement.
Resplendently inspired,
AYG
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