Salamishah Tillet’s

The Penn alumna and English professor—survivor of two rapes while an undergraduate—

has become a lauded scholar and teacher and a leading activist

in the effort to end violence against women and girls. Byy Kathryn Leevyy Feldman

an undergraduate at Penn in the 1990s, Salamishah the Edward W. Kane Professor of English and current department Tillet C’96 experienced some of the best and very chair. “We see her very much as the future of our department.” AS worst that a young person’s college years can offer. Much of Tillet’s work as an activist is channeled through A Long It was here that she made lasting friendships and found the Walk Home, a nonprofit she co-founded in 2003 with her sister inspiring classes and mentors that sparked her ambition to Scheherazade, which uses art therapy and the visual and perform- become a scholar and teacher herself. And it was also here that, ing arts to counter violence against girls and women. A Long Walk during her freshman year, she was sexually assaulted by a fel- Home’s programs include the multimedia performance Story of a low student—a trauma compounded by a second rape while she Rape Survivor (SOARS), based on her own story of healing. was on a study-abroad program in Kenya during her junior year. Tillet has appeared on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR, written The rapes left her suffering from post-traumatic stress, but for The and The Root, and currently guest blogs for with the support of her family and friends, and successful The Nation. She wrote the liner notes for C’99’s therapy, she managed to recover and share her story and even Grammy-award winning 2010 album Wake Up! on which Legend become an activist for ending violence and empowering women performed with The Roots. (They’ve known each since 1997, and and girls. This work goes on alongside and interwoven with have remained close.) She’s currently working on a book about the a thriving academic career and a significant presence as a famed jazz and soul singer and civil-rights activist Nina Simone. cultural commentator on cable TV, online, and in print. In 2009-2010 Tillet won the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Award An associate professor in the English Department, Tillet holds for Distinguished Teaching by an assistant professor. She’s also secondary appointments in the Department of Africana Studies the 2013 recipient of the James Brister Society’s Dr. Gloria Twine and in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies program. Her Chisum Award for Distinguished Faculty. Beyond Penn, her acco- 2012 book, Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the lades include being named one of the country’s “30 Top Leaders Post Civil-Rights Imagination, which examines the ways in which Under 30” by Ebony in 2006 and being nominated (with her sister) contemporary African-American artists, writers, and intellectuals for Glamour magazine’s “Women of the Year” award in 2010; in explore the topic of slavery, is “a double contribution to African- 2013 she was selected as one of the “Top 50 Global Leaders Ending American studies and American studies at large,” says Amy Kaplan, Violence Against Children” by the Together for Girls’ Safe magazine.

40 SEPT | OCT 2014 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPH BY CANDACE DICARLO THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE SEPT | OCT 2014 41 And Tillet and her partner—Solomon Besides regular office visits with Griffin, In the classroom, Tillet has served as the Steplight IV EAS’97 GEng’00 WG’05—have Tillet also frequented the periodicals same kind of example that Farah Jasmine a two-year-old daughter, Seneca. section in Van Pelt Library, soaking up Griffin was for her, judging by the testi- “Salamishah is not a one-dimensional the scholarship in academic journals. mony of several former students. person,” says Steplight with a laugh. “She “It was at this time that I made a con- “I’m part of a unique cohort trained by is not just a professor, not just an activist, scious commitment to writing my own Salamishah during her first years of Penn,” not just a mother and partner. She is for- scholarly works in accessible language says Joshua Bennet C’10, currently a PhD midable in each of these areas and she and to be politically engaged,” she says. candidate in English at Princeton. “I want- has committed herself to being that way.” Both her Trinidadian and African- ed to be a professor since I was 17, but none American heritage and her personal of my models looked the way she looked illet, now 39, was born in into trauma played into her scholarly interest or taught the way she taught. She opened a politically conscious household. in slavery, as she noted in a 2013 inter- my eyes—not only to the possibility of THer father was an accountant from view in The Penn Current, a publication teaching, but to the importance of having Trinidad, and her mother was an entre- for University employees. “I’m dealing real social engagement with my work.” preneur and musician. Both, Tillet says, with flashbacks, and then I’m reading Kaneesha Parsard C’11 thought she was were “inspired by the Black Power move- these novels written in the 1970s and bound for law school until she took Tillet’s ment.” Her unusual name combines the early ’80s in which African-American freshman seminar on African American Arabic word for peace (Salam) and Farsi writers like Toni Morrison or Octavia women writers and filmmakers. Instead, for royal or majestic (Shah); her parents Butler have their characters reliving today she’s working on her doctorate in interpreted the mi as meaning black. “I slavery … Why would you go back to this African American studies at Yale. “The always took the literal translation as moment of complete disenfranchise- concepts she taught us in black feminist “Peace/black/majestic,” she says. Except ment at the same moment you’ve become theory changed my thinking, especially between the ages of 10 and 12, when she full citizens? … You’re ‘thoroughly about myself,” she says. “I think that four told people her name was Maggie (from American’ and you’re going back to the out of the 12 students in that seminar are her middle name, Margaret), “I pretty moment when America was founded on currently PhD candidates. I remember tell- much owned it,” she adds with a laugh. your back.” ing her I wanted to go to law school and Her parents separated when she was Tillet dual-majored in English and she told me: ‘We’ll see if you don’t major five, and Tillet moved to Orange, New Afro-American Studies at Penn, graduat- in English and go to graduate school.’” Jersey, with her mother and her younger ing magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Tillet was also there with a pep talk when sister and brother. She spent her middle- She went on to earn a Master of Arts in a “terrified” Parsard was applying to PhD school years in Trinidad, and from eighth Teaching from Brown and her doctorate programs. “She helped me realize that work- grade through the end of high school in the History of American Civilization ing with her had given me the skills to put attended , an indepen- from Harvard (along with a master’s in together a research project and make myself dent school in Livingston, New Jersey. English). She returned to Penn in July attractive to graduate schools,” she recalls. While a freshman she ran in the Penn 2007 and has taught a variety of under- “Being in her class helped me make sense Relays as a member of her school’s 4x400- graduate as well as graduate courses on of where I fit in the academy. Watching her meter relay team. “It seemed like it was African-American literature, women in first years as an assistant professor helped an amazing place,” she recalls. jazz, and film. me realize, ‘I can do this too.’” When it came time to apply to colleges, One course, Race Films: and Not all her admirers are professors-in- she “somehow circled back to Penn,” his Interlocutors—which she co-taught training. Samuel Mondry-Cohen C’10— attracted by the fact that her cousin was in Fall 2008 with anthropologist and whose job as manager of baseball analytics already enrolled, as well as the urban filmmaker John Jackson [“John Jackson, for the Washington Nationals is a fair setting, academic rigor, and diverse stu- Ethnography, and the Hebrew Israelites,” distance from the ivory tower—credits dent body. Mar|Apr], currently dean of Penn’s School Tillet’s classes with shaping his world-view. An excellent student who loved literature, of Social Policy and Practice [“Gazetteer,” “Salamishah taught a mode of thought that Tillet nevertheless had her sights set on a May|June]—was inspired by a course she was relevant to more than books,” he says. law career when she arrived on campus—but took as an undergraduate, Blacks in Film “Technically it was a black feminist perspec- a class on jazz and literature taught by Farah and Television, taught by the film histo- tive, but it was more than okay with a white Jasmine Griffin (now the William B. Rensford rian Donald Bogle. She wrote her final male. She is very concerned with people on Professor of English and Comparative paper for that course on Spike Lee’s the margins and what it means to be placed Literature and African-American Studies at films, which may have helped convince there. I was lucky to find her and very quick- ) convinced her she the filmmaker to come to the 2008 class. ly I just wanted to be around her.” wanted to be an academic instead. “He was willing to spend the afternoon An avid sports fan herself, Tillet encour- “I didn’t grow up having academics in my at the end of the semester with our stu- aged Mondry-Cohen to pursue his passion family,” Tillet explains. “I didn’t know you dents, which was fantastic,” Jackson for baseball. Even so, he admits to con- could be an English professor, but Farah recalls. “He was so in his element that templating an academic career. “If I could provided a lot of insight as well as a model it’s no wonder he’s now teaching pretty be the type of academic that she is, then for how I could do work that was relevant.” consistently at NYU.” I would.”

42 SEPT | OCT 2014 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE his past June 19th—aka Juneteenth, “The two times when girls are most sus- and nightmares. This time she sought pro- the holiday commemorating the end ceptible to rape are during freshman year fessional help and was referred to Edna Foa, Tof slavery in the US on June 19, 1865, and while on a study-abroad program,” a therapist who was conducting a clinical when “General Order No. 3” proclaiming Tillet notes. She experienced both. trial using PTSD methodology for rape sur- that “all slaves are free” was issued in It was in October of her freshman year vivors—uncharted territory at the time. Texas (which up until then had been ignor- that a senior “frat boy” she was dating Results published last year in the Journal ing the Emancipation Proclamation, the sexually assaulted her. “He was continu- of the American Medical Association showed last state to do so)—Tillet was in Provi- ally pressuring me to have intercourse, but that the methods used by Foa (professor of dence, Rhode Island, reliving her own I wanted to wait. One night at his frater- clinical psychology in psychiatry at Penn journey to freedom. nity house, I said ‘No,’ but he didn’t listen. and director of the Center for the Treatment Along with her sister Scheherazade and Afterwards, I didn’t tell anyone and tried and Study of Anxiety) were two to three times Regine Jean-Charles C’00, assistant profes- to convince myself that it was consensual,” more effective than standard counseling, not sor of Romance Languages and Literature she says. “It was out of my framework that only at soothing the psyches of the victims at , Tillet was giving the someone you knew could rape you.” but at eliminating their symptoms. The inten- keynote address at the annual conference She was 17 years old and her world was sive 14-week treatment, called prolonged sponsored by Day One, Rhode Island’s shattered. She suffered from flashbacks. exposure therapy, is now being used for rape sexual assault and trauma resource center. Two months later, her then-boyfriend was victims at the center as well as by therapists The three women performed Story of concerned enough to arrange her first at Women Organized Against Rape. a Rape Survivor, the multimedia presen- therapy appointment at Penn. “It didn’t “Part of working through the trauma tation of Tillet’s recovery from her sex- go so well,” she says. “After that I just shut was owning the experience,” Tillet says. “I ual assaults. SOARS is told through it down and never dealt with it.” had to work through my experiences col- intimate, black-and-white photographs During her junior year abroad in Kenya, lectively in order to heal from them.” It is of Salamishah taken by her sister, Tillet was violently raped by someone she difficult and terrifying work that requires accompanied by a diverse cast of musi- considered an acquaintance shortly before the commitment and cooperation of the cians, dancers, and stage performers she was scheduled to leave the country. patient, who must relive and confront her “He was supposed to take me home but experiences again and again. “I still con- instead he took me to a room somewhere. sider myself remarkably lucky to have been I was forced to spend the night with him enrolled in this trial,” Tillet adds. because I had no money, no transportation, In the fall of 1996, a year after the vio- and no phone and no idea of my location,” lent episode in Nairobi, Tillet began shar- she relates. “I thought he was going to beat ing her experiences. The first person she me. He pinned me down and violently raped told was her sister, then a sophomore at me. Once again, I was silent.” Tufts University. “She told me on the Upon her return to Penn, Tillet was haunt- phone, and it was totally overwhelming,” ed by symptoms of post-traumatic stress— recalls Scheherazade. “I remember think- more flashbacks, along with body tremors ing that the one in Kenya had happened on my birthday, May 15.” Images from Story of a Rape Survivor, which In the fall of 1997, Tillet published her combines photos, spoken word, music, and dance to tell the story of Tillet’s recovery story in Generation, a feminist newspaper from sexual assault. on campus. Entitled “Hollow Body, Skin

who bring the story to life. The music is the music Salamishah listened to during her recovery; the spoken words are taken from her journals. The 90-minute pro- duction is a powerful story of rebirth and transformation. The Tillet sisters do about 30 perfor- mances of SOARS a year. They introduce each one, telling their stories and joining the cast in a “Talk Back” at the end of each show. When asked how she could relive her experience again and again,

SCHEHERAZADE TILLET Tillet says she focuses on the end.

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE SEPT | OCT 2014 43 and Bone,” it contains the manifesto that Surviving the Silence, a collection of first- served communities. Through national would become the basis of her life’s work: person narratives of rape by 10 African and local programs, including SOARS, “I am telling my story because I no longer American women. Through Pierce-Baker, summer and after-school youth institutes, want to run. I want to wash away the show- she met Aisha Simmons, currently an campus training sessions and workshops, er of shame and impotency that I was adjunct faculty member in the Women’s A Long Walk Home has educated more forced to feel. I want the world to under- Studies and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, than 100,000 survivors and their allies. stand that men and women and children Transgender Studies program at Temple In 2009, the organization added a pro- are being raped and molested everyday. University, who was beginning to work on gram focusing on adolescent girls called “Because people are being ripped open, her groundbreaking documentary, NO! The the Girl/Friends Leadership Institute. The destroyed and silenced. Because some col- award-winning film explores rape and program empowers teenage girls to use lege men and women can relate to what I other forms of sexual assault through the art to advocate for themselves and other am saying and heal. Because some readers first-person testimonies, scholarship, girls and to design campaigns and policies can use my words to speak what they deem spirituality, activism, and cultural work of to end dating violence, sexual assault, and unspeakable, unconquerable and unnam- African Americans. Tillet created the study street harassment in their schools and able. Because some people can take memo- guide for the documentary, in which she communities. So far, 200 girls have par- ries of violation and distrust and forge them and her sister are both featured. ticipated. The goal is for Girl/Friends into cities of power and liberation. Because “Having models of older black women graduates to run their own programs someone somewhere is being raped right breaking the silence with art changed me within eight years, creating leaders who now. Because someone somewhere is dying and my sister forever,” Tillet says. “My in turn train future leaders. A Long Walk to tell his or her parents, friends, lover and sister saw how present my recovery was.” Home also offers individual workshops perpetrators … Because I need to tell the When Scheherazade returned to Tufts for and lectures for audiences of all ages, world that I am healing, feeling and living her senior year, she learned of a grant being including art educators, college leaders, with these memories. Because I believe in given by the Women’s Center for a project students going abroad, and youth activists. a world in which survivors find their voices documenting the impact of sexual assault “Our mission is to create a world without and no longer cry alone.” on families. “I was the only one at the meet- violence against women and girls,” says Scheherazade spent the summer of ing, so I asked them to support my project,” Scheherazade, who serves as executive 1997 with her older sister in Philadelphia she remembers. Her photographs became director. “We are creating a program that and saw firsthand the strength it took the basis for SOARS, which took shape dur- reaches everyone. We are taking the most to heal. That fall she took a semester off ing her senior year at Tufts. “Salamishah vulnerable and making them leaders, cre- from Tufts, enrolled in the Mason Gross was now at Harvard, so we lived together ating a movement to heal the world.” School of the Arts at Rutgers University and transformed the photos into a multi- The Rhode Island performance was an and took a social-documentary class. media production.” They recruited their abbreviated version of SOARS, featuring And then she started taking photographs friends to dance, sing, and act and staged Jean-Charles (who acted in the African of everything her sister did. three sold-out performances at Tufts. American Arts Alliance while she was at “My teacher was taking photographs of a “The woman who was the director of Penn), and without the dancers and musi- family recovering from HIV, and he encour- the Women’s Center emailed her col- cians. Jean-Charles has been friendly with aged us to take photos of things that were leagues at places like Harvard, Dartmouth, Salamishah since their Harvard days (she going on in our family,” Scheherazade recalls. and Penn, and we started getting requests was a year behind) and is on A Long Walk “There were no visual models for sexual to bring the program to other campuses,” Home’s board of directors. She has been assault. The closest I could find were photos remembers Scheherazade. “We knew we appearing in SOARS since 2001, using a husband had taken of his wife dying of had something, but we wanted to be clin- spoken word and body language to act cancer. So I just took pictures of everything.” ically responsible in our documentation out two poems from Salamishah’s jour- Scheherazade documented all the com- of the power of art in healing.” nals that open and close the performance. ponents of her sister’s healing process: To that end, Scheherazade earned a The opening poem, “Do You Know What the individual and group therapy ses- master’s degree in art therapy from the Rape Feels Like?” is so powerful that Jean- sions, the self-affirming messages she Art Institute of Chicago and became a Charles says she prepares for the perfor- left herself on the refrigerator, the books certified rape-crisis counselor. In 2003, mance by offering up a prayer to all the sur- she read, the music she listened to, the the sisters formed A Long Walk Home vivors she has met. “The more I performed, spiritual quests she undertook, the poems (the name comes from a poem Salamishah the more people would disclose to me,” she she wrote, the drawings she created. She wrote after the sexual assault in Kenya), adds, prompting her to become trained as a chronicled her sister’s workout sessions, acting on the advice of their “silent found- rape/crisis counselor. The closing poem, her evenings at the jazz club, and her er” Steplight (“the business guy”), who “I Died and Was Born the Same Day,” is burgeoning activism with rape survivors. suggested that forming a non-profit an anthem of hope for rape survivors. At the time, in between finishing her would increase their impact. In Rhode Island, a survivor in the audi- master’s degree at Brown and starting her Based in Chicago, A Long Walk Home ence confessed the opening poem had PhD at Harvard, Tillet was the research partners with rape crisis centers, univer- made her sob uncontrollably. “I never assistant to Charlotte Pierce-Baker, then sities, and high schools to provide innova- heard anyone put into words something an adjunct professor at Penn, for her book, tive and inclusive programs for under- so grotesque and so beautiful at the same

44 SEPT | OCT 2014 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE time,” she said. “I wanted to run up on the to Tillet on campus in October of her tal human crisis—up there with climate stage and hug you.” freshman year was clearly rape. Not so change—is what keeps me up at night; our “It always happens in a performance,” when it occurred in 1992. “When I finally ability to solve it, allows me to dream.” says Steplight. “There is always an ‘Aha’ got up the courage to go to report it to the And therein, perhaps, lies the key to or an ‘I’m free’ moment, and it is always sex crimes unit of the DA’s office, they Tillet’s approach as a scholar, activist, extremely rewarding and deeply poi- told me ‘No means no’ was not considered and human being: for her, these roles are gnant to hear people share that in a pub- rape in Pennsylvania at the time,” she all of a piece. “A lot of times in academia lic setting. The ability to create a safe says. “Consent” is such a big piece of the there is a false binary between theory and space is like creating an opportunity for definition of rape that A Long Walk Home practice,” Jean-Charles reflects. “She people to learn more about themselves.” sells black tee-shirts emblazoned with defies this. She is very public and very the phrase “Got consent?” on its website. scholarly and she does it in an honest and May 1, the White House released Tillet makes no secret of her history creative way. She’s always making cre- a list of 55 colleges under fed- (SOARS has been performed twice on cam- ative, thoughtful connections.” ONeral scrutiny for the manner in pus), and in her unique position as an “The thing about Salamishah is that which they handle sexual-assault com- alumna as well as a rape survivor, she has everything she does, she does all in,” con- plaints, required under the Title IX law borne witness to many student disclosures. curs John Jackson. “If she’s watching Mad prohibiting discrimination on the basis of Compared to her undergraduate years, “I Men on television, she’s watching it criti- sex in schools that receive federal funding. think there is better outreach and more cally—analyzing the choices that the cre- This list, the latest version of which has concentrated activism on this issue,” she ators are making with regard to the devel- grown to include 64 schools, includes large notes. “But I am not sure the attitudes and opment of the characters. One doesn’t public institutions as well as prestigious behaviors that encourage people to commit choose pleasure or principle. Your job is to Ivies. (At this writing, Penn was not on the acts of sexual assault on other people have do everything at the same time.” list.) The larger issue, according to Time changed significantly.” Tillet is well aware that her life was magazine, which ran a cover story on the Which brings her to the larger subject forever changed by her experiences of subject, is not which picturesque campus of violence against women. In the issue sexual trauma. And that her public trans- became the collegiate rape capital of the of Time that included the story on rape, formation from victim to activist has United States (the University of Montana the following article was about the kid- defined not only her ongoing recovery in Missoula earned this unwelcome dis- tinction), but the fact that one in five women is the victim of an attempted or “Our inability to recognize this fundamental completed sexual assault during college. The University of Pennsylvania prohib- human crisis—up there with climate change— its all forms of sexual violence, which includes relationship violence, domestic is what keeps me up at night; our ability violence, and stalking in any form, as well as sexual assault and rape. “Sexual vio- to solve it, allows me to dream.” lence includes a range of behaviors in which an act of a sexual nature is taken napping of more than 250 girls by the but also her career. “All of these experi- against another person without the indi- Islamic extremist group Boko Haram in ences, including working through my vidual’s consent or when the individual Nigeria. For Tillet, there is a “seamless separate and discrete experiences of is unable to consent,” the policy states. link” between stories like these. sexual trauma, helped shape my activism Sexual assault includes, but is not lim- “We could and should, of course, add the and my life’s work—to end violence ited to, rape, which is defined as “a sexu- story of the mass shooting at the University against girls and women,” she says. al assault involving an act of penetration of California-Santa Barbara to this list as But while activism is part of Tillet’s heal- and includes acquaintance rape.” well because they are so clearly connected ing, she recognizes it is not for everyone. Sexual assault is defined as “any phys- by violence towards girls and women,” she “It is important that we follow the lead of ical sexual contact that involves the use says in an email. “I do not mean to say that each survivor and provide safe spaces for or threat of force or violence or any other boys and men are not experiencing vio- them to share their stories,” she told the form of coercion or intimidation” as well lence and trauma, but I am concerned with Rhode Island audience. “It took me a long as “any physical sexual contact with a the various and disproportionate forms of time to be so public. I needed people to person who is unable to consent due to violence women and girls are facing, sim- believe my story to back me up.” incapacity or impairment, mental or ply because they are women and girls. Even more important, she needed to physical, including but not limited to “I do believe gender-based violence and believe she was strong enough to trust the being under the influence of alcohol or patriarchy sadly are a common denomina- power of self-transformation. “The recog- drugs or being too young to consent.” tor and link us beyond class, race, and nition of self-value is stronger than any- Under these definitions, which reflect nationality. It is exacerbated by other facts thing that happens to us,” she promises.◆ changes promulgated by the Obama such as racism, poverty, and homophobia. Kathryn Levy Feldman LPS’09 writes frequently administration in 2012, what happened Our inability to recognize this fundamen- for the Gazette.

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