The group—a professor, a psychologist, and three students—gathered in a classroom in Duane Library on Feb. 14, where they spoke to members of the Fordham community about how love appears in their professional work.  

Literature on Love

Some of them shared their favorite literature on love. Thomas O’Donnell, Ph.D., associate professor of English and medieval studies, printed out three poems and passed out copies to the audience: a joyful poem written by Comtessa de Dia, a 12th-century French noblewoman; a mournful poem by Umm Khalid, an Arabic poet from the 8th or 9th century; and a funny poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, a 14th-century English poet. 

“[Chaucer] says he is so in love that he feels like a piece of roasted fish in jam sauce,” O’Donnell said, to laughter from the audience. 

Asher Harris, a Ph.D. student in theology, talked about American jazz musician John Coltrane, who expressed love and gratitude to God for saving him from his heroin addiction. The most open expression of this love appeared in his album A Love Supreme, particularly in the song “Psalm,” said Harris, who played a recording for the audience. 

Another scholar, Christopher Supplee, FCRH ’25, a creative writing major, shared a poem he wrote and recited in honor of the event: “A World Without Love.” 

“There are matters that cannot be mended by mortal hands alone,” he said to the audience, reading from his poem. “That only miracles may fix, assuming they still exist.” 

Supplee said that when he was writing his poem, he was inspired by the question “What is love?” 

“It made me want to sit down and think about what love means to me—what are my experiences, what I’ve read, what I’ve been taught from scholars, writers, and entertainment,” Supplee said. “Love can be expressed in many different ways, whether it be through justice, romance, or friendship.” 

Queer Love at Fordham

Other scholars shared their own research on love. Benedict Reilly, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who studies theology, discussed the theme of love from his book Queer Prayer at Fordham. He started the book project two years ago, interviewing LGBTQ+ members of the Fordham community about how they pray. During those conversations, he learned about the connection between prayer and love. One interviewee said that she learned to love herself through prayer. Another interviewee—an asexual and aromantic woman who longed to have a child of her own—spoke about how she found love and comfort through a Hail Mary. 

“I’m sharing all of these with you because I want you to think about different prayers or songs that might be helpful to you all as you fall in love,” Reilly said. 

The final invited speaker, Sarika Persaud, Ph.D., a supervising psychologist in Counseling and Psychological Services who specializes in love and relationships, spoke about what her work has taught her about love. 

“When I’m sitting with a person and helping them heal, I’m not only opening them up to love as a feeling, to feel love again, but to love as who you are—to exist in the world as love,” said Persaud, who added that her Hinduism philosophy informs her work. “All of your desires, whatever relationships you enter into, whatever relationships come your way, whatever challenges come your way, they’re all opportunities … to love more.”

What Love Means to a Jesuit

After each guest spoke, event host and theology professor Brenna Moore invited the audience to reflect on what love means to them. 

Among them was Timothy Perron, S.J., a Jesuit in formation and doctoral student in theology. 

“As somebody who has taken a vow of celibacy, a lot of times, people think, ‘What could that person know about love, especially romantic love?’” Perron said. “But actually, I’ve thought about it a lot.” 

Before he decided to become a priest, he wondered if he could commit to that vow. After much thought, he said he realized that every human has the same needs and desires, but they appear in different ways. 

“I still have a need for close friendship, intimacy, love, and care for others … [but there are]all of these different ways that love could be understood,” Perron said. “If I see somebody who is looking for money or something, I’ll often stop and talk to them or take them to the nearest deli … Just stuff like that, where you feel that love and that connection … intentionally developing close relationships with people, keeping in close touch, calling them—all of those sorts of things, I think, are part of what love means.” 

Panjwani was born in India and raised in Dubai and Kuwait. At 18 years old, she moved to the United Kingdom, where she became a British citizen. She is now a Shakespeare expert who has contributed her research to journals and film festivals and has been invited to deliver talks at prestigious institutions, including the Royal Shakespeare Company and the University of Oxford. She is also host and creator of the podcast Women and Shakespeare and author of the book Podcasts and Feminist Shakespeare Pedagogy (Cambridge University Press, 2022), both of which include work from Fordham students. She is currently working on a new introduction for the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream. 

For the past eight years, Panjwani has served as an adjunct faculty professor at Fordham London. In addition to teaching a Shakespeare course there, Panjwani teaches at Boston University and New York University. 

In a Q&A with Fordham News, Panjwani explained why Shakespeare’s work is important to the average person and how she involves Fordham students in her scholarly work. 

How did you become interested in Shakespeare? 

I grew up watching Bollywood adaptations of Shakespeare. I also had a fantastic teacher—a fellow woman of color, Dr. Amina Alyal, who made me feel like people like me could own Shakespeare. 

Why is Shakespeare important to the average person? What can we learn from him? 

When most people think of him, they imagine an old, balding, middle-aged, historical, costumed guy on a pedestal who is not relevant to their lives. This is what some of my students imagine before they come to my class. But that is not how we teach Shakespeare here. In London especially, there are multiple histories of Shakespeare. You of course have the Globe, a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, which has been putting on plays since 1977. You have the British Asian company, Tara Arts, which has been doing Shakespeare since before then. There is also a Black theater company called Talawa Theatre, which has been doing Shakespeare since 1991, when they put on Antony and Cleopatra. All of these intersecting histories are important to note. I think students also realize how diverse people’s histories intersect with Shakespeare when they see a woman of color in London teaching them Shakespeare. 

But apart from these several legacies, I also think that Shakespeare is important for the average person because of the conversations that his work enables. A couple of weeks ago, my class went to see an amazing queer adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Shakespeare and Race Festival is opening at the Globe very soon. And our students want to have these conversations: How is Shakespeare relevant to our lives? So we talk about how he is making an appearance in social justice issues, in agency, in issues about gender that are happening today. My focus is always on what Shakespeare can do for us, what he has done for us, and how we can shape Shakespeare to talk about what is important for us today.

What is your favorite Shakespeare play? 

That is such a difficult question for me because there are many favorites, depending on my mood. My current favorite is A Midsummer Night’s Dream because it is overlooked quite a lot. People think it’s a silly play with fairies, but there are actually deeply embedded issues of consent to be explored there, as well as queerness.

In my Shakespeare course, the plays l teach vary according to what is being performed around London. This semester, we studied A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and Hamlet. We also saw a queer production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a production of The Tempest at Shakespeare’s Globe, and engaged with a Bollywood movie of Romeo and Juliet in the seminar.

What do you love about Fordham London?  

We have a great community here, including Vanessa Beever, senior director of Fordham London; Mary Bly, chair of Fordham’s English department; our great support staff; and colleagues who make time for each other, despite being adjuncts.

Mary has been a part of this community for a long time, even though she is based in New York. She herself visited our campus to teach the Shakespeare course. Although this was around 8 years ago, she has a great grasp on what Fordham London students need. She has given me feedback on the course and assignment design from time to time. She is also a guest speaker on my podcast Women and Shakespeare.

I have especially found great leadership and collaborative support from Mary and Vanessa. It’s great to see women in these leadership roles because women are often not included in the rooms where decisions about their future are made. It’s a breath of fresh air for my students to see them in these positions, and it gives me hope to be working in an institution that respects women. 

You create podcasts about Shakespeare with your students. How does that work? 

My podcast Women and Shakespeare invites experts, local playwrights, academics, novelists, and actresses—the culture makers of the U.K.—to talk about how Shakespeare is used to amplify the voices of women today and how women are redefining him and his work.

One of my guests, Kathryn Pogson, talked about issues of consent in Richard III and how these are relevant today. Another guest, Doña Croll, told us how she imagined Cleopatra as a sharp political operator as opposed to just sexy and sultry and how the treatment of Cleopatra by the Romans can be compared to the way in which the British press treated Meghan Markle. So they provide nuanced perspectives not only on women characters, but also on how Shakespeare’s plays are pertinent to issues today.

On my podcast, students have a chance to be researchers, interviewers, or producers. They also receive credit on the podcast. I think it’s a very meaningful way for the students to engage with local culture makers. I firmly believe that to be a global citizen, you have to learn how to be a local elsewhere, and this helps them to not only meet local culture makers and learn from them, but also to co-create a resource that is useful for themselves and their communities. I also think this is a great way of decolonizing education because you’re not going somewhere with just the aim of what you can take from them, but also the aim of what you can give back to your academic and social communities. 

What do you hope your students take away from your course? 

Anyone can harness Shakespeare’s cultural power and bring it back to their communities. Shakespeare need not be inaccessible—his work should be made to work for everyone.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The April 29 event was the deans’ second forum for alumni on their commitment to furthering the University’s action plan for addressing racism and educating for justice. Fordham announced the plan in June 2020 after nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice prompted members of the Fordham community to describe their own experiences of discrimination on campus.

“We’re asking hard questions, addressing proposals that have come forward, and moving forward indeed with hope and confidence into a future … that is marked by greater inclusivity, greater diversity, and greater commitment shared to building a much more just world as we educate for justice and seek to eradicate racism,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, in opening remarks.

Father McShane and the four deans were joined by moderator Valerie Irick Rainford, FCRH ’86, a Fordham trustee who is spearheading anti-racism training efforts within the University, and Rafael Zapata, Fordham’s chief diversity officer.

The panelists spoke of changes underway in the curriculum, recruitment of faculty and students, new programs, and other efforts to embed anti-racism in the University and effect permanent change.

“For students to come here from different backgrounds, it is vitally important that they feel that this institution represents them, that they do not feel like … they are here on sort of sufferance, that they feel that their communities are a part and parcel of what makes Fordham tick, what makes Fordham an excellent place,” said Tyler Stovall, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Faculty Diversity, Community Connections

Stovall emphasized the importance of forging links between the University and the diverse, vibrant communities surrounding the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses. Zapata noted current efforts like a collaboration with the Bronx Book Festival and a speaker series focused on Bronx writers facilitated by faculty. “We are an institution of this wonderful borough, and I think that’s something we need to talk about a little bit more,” he said.

In efforts to diversify the faculty, Eva Badowska, Ph.D., dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and associate vice president for arts and sciences, said 50% of the arts and sciences faculty members recruited to begin this academic year are people of color. In addition, Fordham announced the creation of the Margaret Peil Distinguished Chair in African and African American Studies and is currently recruiting for a newly created postdoctoral fellowship in critical race studies in the sociology and anthropology department, as well as a new position in the English department—a rhetoric specialist—to support the faculty’s work on revising the composition program toward anti-racist learning objectives and pedagogy.

Arts and Sciences also announced the creation of a new affiliate program in African and African American studies to elevate that department’s visibility and foster an interdisciplinary approach to anti-racism, Badowska said. Fifteen faculty members across departments have committed to joining the initiative.

On the point of hiring diverse faculty, Rainford noted that “once you hire those individuals, I think it’s also about inclusion and access.”

Stovall said a newly formed group of Fordham faculty members of color would be meeting soon to discuss diversity among faculty and at the University generally. “I think these leaders are going to have an awful lot to say, and it’s going to be up to us to listen,” he said.

He pointed out the importance of integration, “one of the terms we tend not to talk about.”

“Ultimately, what we are all about in this endeavor is producing an integrated educational experience and ultimately an integrated society,” he said. “Study after study has shown, in despite of people’s fears of integration, that actually integrated education benefits not just students of color but all students, and makes them stronger students.”

“This is a major pathway towards the ultimate goal of Fordham University,” he said.

Zapata said his office is offering a grant program titled Teaching Race Across the Curriculum to help academic departments integrate questions of race within their courses, particularly those that all students take.

“Students want to see themselves in the people that teach them, that they encounter throughout [the University], but they also want to see themselves in the curriculum. They’ve talked a lot about that,” he said.

Expanding Scholarship and Internship Opportunities

Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, pointed to the Office of Undergraduate Admission’s “above-and-beyond” efforts to increase diversity among incoming students. Changes this year include an effort “to appreciate and value a wider range of student experiences in the admissions process,” she said, as well as new events for prospective students of color who would be part of the fall 2021 entering class.

Also important, Auricchio said, is the recently created Trustee Diversity Scholarship Fund, which grew out of a scholarship fund that Rainford founded. “Before we could even announce it, we were starting to get donations,” Rainford said.

A new Cultural Engagement Internships program, funded by Fordham College at Lincoln Center and Fordham College at Rose Hill, has created paid internships that place students with New York nonprofits and cultural organizations that mostly serve communities of color or advance the work of anti-racism. “This opens up the internship opportunities to students who might not otherwise be able to afford” to take unpaid internships, Auricchio said.

And diversity in the yearlong Matteo Ricci Seminar for high-achieving students on both campuses has grown by opening it up to all students who want to apply, rather than relying on a select pool of students recommended by faculty, she said; she also cited the importance of bringing on Assistant Dean Mica McKnight, a woman of color, as co-leader for the Fordham College at Lincoln Center program.

Supporting Students

In other efforts on the undergraduate level, Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, said administrators on both campuses are developing a program to support first-generation students—61% of whom are students of color—and their families as the students navigate college life. At Rose Hill, the college is expanding access to undergraduate research opportunities by developing a one-credit course on the ins and outs of conducting research, such as developing a proposal and finding a mentor, Mast said.

“It’s … so important that we intentionally support students as they are and who they are, when they get to Fordham and when they’re at Fordham—that we are transparent and effective in this work,” she said.

In a culmination of longstanding efforts to increase diversity in the college’s Honors Program, 60% of students offered admission this year are either BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or people of color) or first-generation students, Mast said.

The University has also secured a planning grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to join a national learning community aimed at building capacity for developing inclusive, equitable, anti-racist approaches to STEM education—in first-year “gateway” courses, in particular—to support students who are underrepresented in these fields, she said.

The panelists took questions, including one about why the University doesn’t have an Asian American studies program with a major and minor offered. Badowska said she had met with members of the faculty—which would have to propose any new program, according to University statutes—about surveying the existing classes and resources to see what might be offered immediately while they work on developing a program.

“It is the curriculum that reveals who we are, and it is our academic programs that say we’re an anti-racist university or we are not an anti-racist university,” she said. “So that’s one of the reasons why an Asian American studies program is so critical for us to develop at this moment.”

Eradicating Racism

In response to another question—“Do you really believe that racism can be eradicated at Fordham?”—Rainford spoke of a long-term effort.

“There are some that still believe that racism doesn’t exist,” said Rainford, who is Black. “But the fact of the matter is, it’s in the fabric of everything in the country.”

“It will take time and effort, and we will not eradicate racism in our lifetime, but we certainly can help advance racial equity,” such as through the efforts the deans described, she said.

Zapata responded, “It’s going to take courage, the courage to … listen to the experiences of people who don’t always feel they have a chance to voice their experiences.”

Stovall said, “We currently live in a world where scientists are literally talking about creating human immortality in less than a century. So in that kind of world, I think all sorts of things are possible, including eradicating racism.”

Hurdles to Surmount

Asked about obstacles the University faces, Mast mentioned funding—for staffing, on-campus housing, and financial aid, for instance.

Badowska spoke of the challenges that would be inherent in changing the University’s culture to a point where everyone in the arts and sciences community would possess the five competencies that the deans have proposed:

• Knowledge about racism, white privilege, and related topics;
• Self-knowledge and a commitment to self-work and continuous learning in these areas;
• Commitment to disrupting microaggressions and racist dynamics in the classroom, the workplace, and beyond;
• Commitment to systemic change through examining policies and practices to make sure they support racial equity; and
• Reimagined community and allyship, or a capacity to form equitable partnerships and alliances across racial lines.

“We know that we have a long road before we can say that everyone has these five capacities, but we’ve identified them,” she said.

The event drew 64 attendees, nearly all of whom stayed nearly a half-hour beyond the event’s one-hour allotted time.

“That, I think, shows the great hunger and thirst that the people of Fordham have for this great work that we’re about together,” Father McShane said. “One of the things we have to remind ourselves is that this is a beginning, and that’s an important observation and an important thing for us to own. We have a long journey ahead of us, but we are up for it and will keep at it.”

“The biggest thing is just the scope of it—and to realize that hundreds and hundreds of people are working on this thing that started out just in your head,” Quinn said, addressing more than 100 members of the Fordham community over Zoom.  

‘A Once-in-a-Lifetime Thing’: Stories From the Bridgerton Set 

Quinn recalled the journey from landing a contract with Shondaland Media, the company behind award-winning series Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder, to watching her romance novels become a television series. 

“It started with sitting in a Starbucks, drinking coffee, and getting a phone call and practically falling off my stool,” Quinn said. “[But] it was a very slow process. I thought publishing was slow, but adapting a book is glacial. From the very first phone call to the time the show actually appeared on Netflix was four years.” 

In those four years, Quinn served as a consultant for the TV series. She read the scripts before they went into production, but her involvement was limited. Quinn relinquished creative control on the project—and for a good reason. 

“I did not want to do anything to jeopardize this. This was clearly a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me,” said Quinn. She also knew her work was in good hands: “One of the smartest things that you can do is recognize other smart people. And I was not going to tell Shonda Rhimes how to make television.” 

Quinn said she loved the results, especially the color-blind casting and the diverse storytelling from the scriptwriters. 

“There were somewhere between 15 to 20 writers working on the project, and that group of people was incredibly diverse—not just race, but gender, sexual orientation, religion … they all can bring life experiences and imagination to the story that I can’t,” said Quinn. “One of the main things about a romance novel is the way it makes the reader feel and the happiness that you get at the end … I love that Bridgerton the television show has managed to create something where more people can see themselves in the story and see themselves getting the happy ending.” 

Quinn’s lips are sealed on the show’s second season, which will begin filming this spring. But she showed her audience an iPhone photo of her and Regé-Jean Page, who plays a leading character on Bridgerton, from a season one filming location. 

“Regé-Jean Page is absolutely as handsome as you think,” she said, while a few students gasped from their screens and typed their reactions in the chat box, including “JEALOUS” and “Love Love Love!!!!” 

Tips on the Creative Writing Process 

Two students from Fordham College at Lincoln Center, senior English major Mary Alter and junior art history major Sophie Choo, asked Quinn questions about her creative writing process and background, while several other students typed questions in the Zoom chat box. 

“All of your characters are very well developed. Any tips for developing characters and making their backstories?” wrote one student, Madeline Lanni.

Quinn advised her to think deeply about her characters’ backstories before beginning to write a novel—something she started to do while writing The Duke and I, the first novel in the Bridgerton book series. 

“I ended up understanding these characters so much more. Since then, I have adopted this in my prewriting. I’ll spend several pages talking about who these people are … because we are all shaped by our experiences. Does this person have brothers and sisters? Are they the oldest? Are they in the middle?” Quinn said. “Many of [these details]never show up in the book. But it means that somehow, in some amorphous, creative way, I know the character better. And I think that comes through.” 

‘Believe in What You Do’

Another student, Vivienne Blouin, asked Quinn how writers, especially young women, can defend the merit of their work genre—particularly in romance—against condescending peers.

Quinn recalled a quote from Nancy Pearl, a famous American librarian. 

“She said once that literary fiction is always judged by the best example of it, and romance is always judged by the worst. And it’s so true,” Quinn said. “I think you just have to stick to your guns and believe in what you do.” 

Mary Bly, Ph.D., chair of the English department, said Quinn offered some valuable advice and analysis. 

“Julia Quinn gave us a fascinating, authentic look at the life of a bestselling author, now propelled into the forefront of American pop culture by the Netflix series. It’s important for students to meet people at the top of their profession, if only to see that they are merely people. Julia offered great advice about writing, as well as explaining the process by which a book is optioned. Her discussion of consent in the first Bridgerton book—the fact that what is now seen as the hero’s lack of consent was greeted at the time by readers as the heroine’s feminist triumph—is also significant as a counter-weight to judgement of the past,” said Bly, who writes fiction and romance novels under the pen name Eloisa James. 

“Perhaps equally importantly, she confessed that she had no real idea why she chose her major [art history at Harvard College]. That was perhaps the most inspiring of all. My takeaway: learn how to write, and you can do anything with your degree.”

For the past five years, Fordham’s creative writing program has hosted the Golden Gloves Literary Competition, an annual event where creative writing classes from the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses present their literary pieces and compete for prizes. But this school year, with a new name, the event struck a different tone. 

“We wanted creative writing to act as an opportunity for community building as opposed to competition … We wanted all our classes’ stories to be celebrated in equal measure,” Sarah Gambito, an associate professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Fordham, explained in an email. 

On Dec. 6, nearly 150 students and faculty members gathered in Lowenstein’s 12th-floor lounge to retell the stories they had written this past semester. 

The event began with a story from Fordham’s second Writer at Risk in Residence: Felix Kaputu, Ph.D., a scholar from the Democratic Republic of Congo who arrived at Fordham this past October through a collaboration that gives writers a “free, safe place to live, work, and write without the threat of violence from their home countries” for two years, according to the program’s description.

Kaputu spoke about life in his native Congo, from the political environment to how his father and uncle shaped his identity as a storyteller. In 2006, Kaputu was falsely accused of participating in anti-government activities and jailed in solitary confinement. 

Below is an excerpt from Kaputu’s piece shared at the Story Circle: 

“My father, who was working as the catechist for the Catholic Mission, had an extraordinary talent as a storyteller of a particular kind. However, he would not use his talent for tales, legends, epics, and other oral narratives that had well-known narrators. They produced their stories in royal courts with a big group of musicians and drumbeaters. My father had the talent to make, keep the suspense, and talk about his personal life, and encounters. His stories included running from both the local and neighboring countries’ police. A famous story was about fighting a lion from a hut where he was hiding from the police. Another narrative was about moving from Congo to neighboring countries using a bicycle to celebrate life with the locals sharing the same culture. However, he would run back to the Congo whenever the locals would find him too much seductive of their women. He had more stories of that kind.  Then, my uncle, a professional hunter, had a significant influence on me. I lived with him a couple of times during school vacations. He shared with me traditional knowledge and curing diseases with medicinal plants. He taught me how to interview community leaders and wander in the forest at night without being lost.

That background has made me strong over the years. I learned to resist when condemned for prison without reason, and I easily travel around the world as a scholar and writer at risk without remorse.”

This semester, Kaputu taught a creative writing class at Fordham. 

“It means a lot to me,” Kaputu said. “One of the most important things I like in my life …  is [teaching]. There is nothing else in the world, I think, I like [more than]  being in class with students … They learn from me, I learn from them.”

Eight students also presented work from their creative writing classes. They took turns and sat in pairs, facing each other. Surrounding them were their classmates and mentors, along with flower petals and yellow candles on the carpeted floor. For more than an hour, students retold personal experiences from their lives. After each student spoke, the next speaker gave them a wish relating to their story, like “I hope that you are always surrounded by the ones that you love,” said Gambito.

Among the student speakers was Patrick Raneses, a senior English major and theology/creative writing minor at Fordham College at Rose Hill, who read a piece he wrote about his grandfather for Luminous Details, a graduate-level creative writing course. 

Below is an excerpt from Raneses’s piece, “Some memories”: 

“I remember when I was back home one summer and you and I were sitting on the ugly orange couches in my living room. Mom wanted you to visit, because you were getting stupid old. We were sitting there, silent. You were penning a letter while I was flicking through something on my phone.

Unprompted, you turned to me and started telling me this story about when you were in the Philippine Army during World War II, you were a cook and you weren’t much younger than I was. And when you were carrying a tray of food from one barrack to another, a Japanese soldier rushed you and buried his bayonet into your gut. 

You lifted your shirt and started laughing: I stared at the striated patterns of flesh that was your marbled torso and I tried looking for the scar. I think I saw it there in the folds. I smiled, saying that was amazing, because I thought it was at the time, even though that’s a strange way to describe a thing like that. You giggled, too, and stared at me with your giggling eyes.

Then you turned back to write your letter. About ten minutes later, you started telling me when you were in the Philippine Army during World War II, you weren’t much younger than I, a man gutted you. I told you that was amazing, again. You looked at me, again, with your giggling eyes, and you told me, dementia is like hell.”

Raneses said he realized he was a writer in the first creative writing class he took at Fordham, nearly a year ago. 

“I really identity myself as a writer, in the same way that I am an Asian American,” Raneses said. “I am a writer because I have to write. It’s like a release valve. It’s therapeutic in a lot of ways … It forces me to challenge myself, whether that means confronting certain truths or hard things.” 

Camille Hermida-Fuentes, a junior English major at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, wrote about her grandmother Alicia—the “unluckiest” person she said she knows. 

Below is an excerpt from Hermida-Fuentes’ piece, “Carcassonne”:

“Alicia had really, really bad luck. In 1985, she was at an art museum in D.C., with her son and daughter. Her son said, “Alicia, look at this painting”, so she turned around and then she was collapsing, and then she was waking up in a hospital and they were telling her it was cancer. Multiple myeloma. The kind that clings to your bone marrow for its life. The kind that doesn’t go away. And it didn’t. For 27 years, it didn’t go away. Doctors said it was a miracle but there was nothing miraculous about her life, about how she was always collapsing. Once, she tripped over her own feet on her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night and caught pneumonia because of the angle her broken shoulder bones forced her to stay in, pushed liquid into her lungs.”

For Hermida-Fuentes, a self-described “shy” person, storytelling helps her to convey her emotions. 

“I truly love telling stories … I feel like when I write, I’m finally getting to say what I want to say,” she said. “And there’s something really cool about being able to create your own kind of world when you write.”

She said the Story Circle—her first-ever public reading of work—was also an opportunity for healing.

“This is a story I’ve been having a hard time telling. There’s a lot of complicated feelings and guilt,” Hermida-Fuentes said. “It was very healing to have everyone that I know from class there to support me.” 

With just 5% of the world’s people but more than 20% of its prison and jail inmates, the United States clearly has an incarceration problem—and experts say it will take far more than federal legislation to truly fix it.

“Mass incarceration is not just a huge policy failure. It’s a humanity failure,” says John Pfaff, Ph.D., a professor at Fordham Law School and author of Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform (Basic Books, 2017).

Pfaff has shifted the debate about criminal justice reform by challenging the standard story about the runaway growth of the U.S. prison population since the early 1970s. The primary cause, he argues, is not the war on drugs and the proliferation of nonviolent offenders in prison but the unchecked power of local prosecutors and how we respond to violent crime.

Part of the solution is to give prosecutors incentives and tools to take a less punitive approach, Pfaff says. He has also called for more public consideration of the prison system’s impact on people and communities. “We spend $50 billion a year on running the prison system,” he says. “But we can’t tell you what we’re really spending in terms of the actual human costs.”

In prison, people contract diseases like HIV and tuberculosis at a rate 10 to 100 times higher than outside the prison system, he says. They suffer physical and sexual abuse, develop mental health problems, and have a hard time earning enough money when they’re released. Their families earn less and suffer from mental health trauma as well, and their children face a greater risk of going to prison. “And despite doing this for 40 years,” he says, “we’ve just never estimated those costs, and I think we haven’t measured them, because at a very real level, we don’t care.”

A change in attitudes is needed, he says. “How do you get people who aren’t in the prison system to care about those who are? Until we make that move, we’re going to really struggle to not be the world’s largest jailer.”

Prevention Before Incarceration

Like Pfaff, Anthony Bradley, Ph.D., GSAS ’13, decries overly punitive approaches to criminal justice, and points to a host of additional causes of mass incarceration: class, poverty, race, family breakdown, and mental illness.

In his book Ending Overcriminalization and Mass Incarceration: Hope from Civil Society (Cambridge University Press, 2018), he argues for taking a comprehensive, long-term approach to safeguarding the well-being of people who are at a higher risk of getting in trouble with the law. Everyone can help in this effort, he says. “This is largely an issue about who we decide has human dignity and who does not.”

During a lecture at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus last November, he explained that the book had its beginnings in a class he took while earning a master’s degree in ethics and society at Fordham. He was “blown away,” he said, after learning about the links between young children developing post-traumatic stress disorder and ending up in the juvenile justice system later on.

“I realized that we’re not just locking up bad kids, we’re locking up hurt kids. It completely changed the course of my career,” said Bradley, a professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Human Flourishing at The King’s College in Manhattan.

The federal government’s war on drugs since the early 1970s can’t be the main cause of mass incarceration, he said, because 90% of all inmates are in state prisons, and of those, only 17% are drug offenders. In part because of a focus on federal prison data, “we get the story wrong,” he said. “If we don’t get the story right, we’ll get the solutions and interventions wrong.”

Part of that story, he said, is society’s views toward the poor. “Here’s a tough social fact in this country: We resent poor people in America regardless of their race,” he said. “We’ve used the criminal justice system to remove them, the poor, from civil society.”

And those who enter the criminal justice system are “overwhelmingly poor,” he added. With no money to pay legal bills, they have to rely on overburdened public defenders, and their poverty is compounded when their prison records create a barrier to employment, he said.

Caring for the Whole Person

Last December, the federal government enacted the First Step Act to reform criminal justice and reduce prison crowding, following on many state governments’ legislative efforts over the past decade.

While the new law is commendable, deep and meaningful change can only come from convincing the nation’s local prosecutors and police chiefs to do things differently, Pfaff says. “We tend to focus on the federal government as what is going to fix the problem,” but solutions must come on a “city-by-city, county-by-county level.”

In his talk at Rose Hill, Bradley also called for grassroots, “upstream” efforts to provide emotional, social, psychological, and moral support to children before they wind up in trouble with police.

“As long as we have hurting children, we’re going to have violent children,” he said. “We need to invite more players to the table. Yes, we need lawyers; yes, we need judges. … We also need coaches and teachers and business owners and cousins and aunts and uncles and community nonprofit leaders to offer the sorts of interventions that address the whole person.”

Bringing Ignatian Spirituality to the Incarcerated

Public defender John Booth, GRE ’14, has taken an interdisciplinary approach to the problem. After a decade representing people charged with serious crimes in Hudson County, New Jersey, he felt he was burning out, tired of watching clients repeat the cycle of incarceration.

“Why do I find myself representing the children of former clients?” he wondered. “When will all of this hurt end? Most importantly, where is God in all of this and why am I a witness to such horror?” He examined his own motives for becoming a public defender. “I knew I cared for them and was always fighting for them,” he says, “but I didn’t realize just how deeply they had touched me.”

Booth recognized there was a spiritual element to addressing the problems of criminality, mass incarceration, and recidivism. But there were limits to what he could do as a lawyer, ethically and practically. He knew it was inappropriate to discuss matters of faith with his clients, that “melding the roles of attorney and minister can add another injustice upon the accused person,” as he put it, but he also had no plans to give up his day job.

So in 2009, after he and his wife lost a child to stillbirth, Booth began further exploring his Catholic faith. He took “the Ignatian retreat in daily life,” a way to complete the 500-year-old Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola over a period of eight months instead of during an intensive 30- day retreat in solitude. Afterward, he felt that undertaking the Spiritual Exercises—a mix of meditations, prayers, and contemplative practices—could prove as valuable a healing process to incarcerated people as it was to him.

That thinking led him to Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, where he completed a master’s degree in religious education in 2014. His thesis explored how the exercises could provide emotional support and spiritual freedom to inmates and help them transition to society after release.

“A lot of [inmates]will say that they can’t do this on their own,” he says.

Bringing Guidance Behind Prison Walls

After completing his master’s degree, Booth met Zach Presutti, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic and a psychotherapist with an interest in prison ministry. Presutti read Booth’s thesis and realized it contained the kind of spiritual guidance he wanted his new nonprofit, Thrive for Life Prison Project, to provide for the incarcerated.

Booth created a brochure for Thrive for Life volunteers providing Ignatian spiritual direction to inmates—and he began volunteering with the group as a spiritual director. Several times a month, he visits with inmates in New York—at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, the State Correctional Institution in Otisville, and the Manhattan Detention Complex, also known as the Tombs—and leads them through an abridged version of the Spiritual Exercises, providing a safe environment that fosters self-expression.

“They can just kind of let go and be themselves,” he says. “And as time goes on, you see them expressing more and more and more, individually and collectively.”

Breaking the Cycle, Building Relationships

Thrive for Life’s spiritual directors stay in touch with the group’s participants. One former inmate now works full time with the group. Many other former inmates gather once a month with volunteers, friends, and family at the Church of St. Francis Xavier in Manhattan, where the organization is based. And Thrive for Life recently opened Ignacio House, a Bronx residence for people recently released from prison.

Meanwhile, Booth says his workload as a public defender was made more manageable by bail reforms New Jersey instituted two years ago, which include new standards for deciding whether an inmate poses a danger to society. His time at Fordham gave him new perspective on his day job—and on practicing his faith in service of others. “Courses were geared toward trying to live out your faith in the modern world, with constant interaction with the real world,” Booth says. “Fordham made me into the best spiritual director that I could be.”

College in a Maximum Security Prison

Since 2015, Steve Romagnoli, FCRH ’82, a playwright, novelist, and adjunct professor of English at Fordham, has been helping to bring the transformative power of education to women in prison. On a Thursday evening near the end of the spring semester, he led his students through the moral ambiguities of Ruined, Lynn Nottage’s 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the wages of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The scene in the classroom was reminiscent of an undergraduate seminar on any college campus, with one exception: Students wore the green uniform of inmates at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, the only maximum security women’s prison in New York state.

Like all guests at the prison, Romagnoli enters the compound through a trailer-like structure that separates the visitors’ parking lot from the prison buildings, which are ringed by metal gates topped with razor-wire coils. He passes through a security checkpoint carrying only his car keys, driver’s license, and notes for class.

“It’s like going in and out of a concentration camp, with the walls and the wires,” he says. “But sitting in the room and watching them talk and laugh and banter, you could be anywhere.”

Romagnoli’s students range in age and experience. For one woman, the course—Social Issues in Literature—is her first taste of college; for another, it’s the next-to-last class needed for her bachelor’s degree in sociology.

“Steve is always in demand,” says Aileen Baumgartner, FCRH ’88, GSAS ’90, the director of the Bedford Hills College Program. Overseen by Marymount Manhattan College, it offers courses leading to an associate’s degree in social sciences and a bachelor’s degree in sociology.

“Students really get a lot from his classes. I don’t know how he does it—I’ve said, ‘Really, Steve? You think they’re going to get through all this in a semester?’ Somehow or other they do.”

‘Students Have to Feel There Is Love’

At Fordham, Romagnoli teaches a similar course on ethics and literature, albeit with a more sensational title: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness. In both settings, students focus on “moral dilemmas and ethical questions that confront us throughout our lives,” he says.

“The Fordham students have great things to say, but they’re initially a bit shy,” he says. “At the prison, sometimes you’ve got to pull them together, but they’re totally engaged, and they say what they’ve got to say.”

Romagnoli began his career as an educator at P.S. 26 in the South Bronx during the mid-1980s, not long after earning a bachelor’s degree in English at Fordham. He later earned an M.F.A. in creative writing at the City College of New York.

For 15 years, he was an itinerant teacher for the New York City Department of Education, working with students in their late teens to early 20s at drug rehabilitation facilities, homeless shelters, and halfway houses, among other locations. “I would go in and teach a lesson and go out,” he says. “Engage them, that was the whole thing. You’ve got to engage them.”

No matter where he teaches, his approach is essentially the same. “Students have to feel there is love there—not love love, but a deep respect. And if they come to the conclusion, consciously or unconsciously, that you have that deep respect, then it allows you to be as demanding as you want to be.”

Baumgartner notes that all of the students at Bedford Hills are required to work during the day—as porters or clerks or sweeping floors, for example. And they complete their coursework in the evening and early morning hours without the benefit of internet access.

Like Romagnoli, Baumgartner went to Fordham, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English. She started teaching at Bedford Hills in 2001, when she was a professor at Mercy College, and became the director of the college program in 2002.

“I had never given any thought to prison education programs,” she says. She recalled that on her first day of class, “all the students were looking at me, sizing me up, and they asked, ‘Why are you here?’ ‘I was asked to teach, and so here I am.’”

Baumgartner’s straightforward answer satisfied the students, who, she realized, didn’t want to “hear someone come in and talk to them about high-minded ideals.”

She notes that prison education programs reduce recidivism and create better employment opportunities for former inmates. “Whether you’re a prisoner or not, you have many more options in life if you have a college education. And if you are a prisoner and you have a felony conviction on your record, when you return to the outside, it’s very nice to have a college degree on your record too.”

Students also benefit in ways that are less tangible. “They gain a deeper understanding of the forces that shape communities, that shape themselves, that shape their children,” she says. “They learn that they have the power to act in positive ways in their communities that perhaps they didn’t feel they had before.

“And then there’s that ripple effect,” she adds. “They’re concerned with their children going to college. Now it matters to them.”

Regarding costs, she says “the college program is not as expensive as keeping people imprisoned.”

Approximately 150 women—or roughly 25% of Bedford Hills’ standing inmate population—are enrolled in the college program, Baumgartner says. And every spring, the program hosts a graduation ceremony. This year, she says, six women earned a bachelor’s degree and 14 received an associate’s degree.

‘A Fairer, More Effective Criminal Justice System’

Inmates at Bedford Hills have benefited from college education programs for decades. “Mercy College had a college program there until the tough-on-crime bill was passed,” Baumgartner says, referring to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which eliminated Pell Grants for inmates.

“Across the country, a lot of colleges, including Mercy, closed their prison programs in the mid-1990s because they just couldn’t afford it” without federal funding, Baumgartner says. The number of U.S. prison college programs dropped from about 300 to just a handful.

At Bedford Hills, a coalition of community members designed the college program, which is funded by private donors and grants. Since it began in spring 1997, more than 200 women have earned college degrees there.

And since 2016, it has also received support through the Department of Education’s Second Chance Pell Pilot program, a three-year experiment that aims to “create a fairer, more effective criminal justice system, reduce recidivism, and combat the impact of mass incarceration on communities.”

Inmates who take part in prison education programs are 43 percent less likely to return to prison in three years, compared to those who don’t take part, according to a federally funded RAND Corporation study from 2013, the education department noted in announcing the program.

Baumgartner credits the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision for supporting higher education programs in prisons, including the one at Bedford Hills. “These programs sometimes tax their resources,” but the department understands their importance, she says.

Romagnoli talks with his Fordham students about his work at Bedford Hills, and about mass incarceration and criminal justice reform. “It resonates strongly with them,” he says. “And it’s something that’s really come into the public consciousness [in recent years]; the ball’s rolling a little quicker.”

‘Knowledge Is Power’

Back in the classroom at Bedford Hills, after a heavy but lively discussion about Ruined, Romagnoli gives the students a brief break before moving on to Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Asked to reflect on the course, which also includes discussion of philosophers from Socrates to Simone de Beauvoir, students say they’ve learned that “knowledge is power.” They say that “perception plays a big role in how people judge people,” that the readings have helped them “gain different perspectives,” and yet the class “brings a unity, even if we agree to disagree.”

“You learn more about yourself, about your ethical system, and you question the things you do,” says one student. “I am one class away from a B.A. When I leave here, I will always question the morality of a situation.”

—By Chris Gosier, Adam Kaufman, and Ryan Stellabotte

At the heart of the drama is a brutal irony: When rape is used as a weapon of genocide, a ramshackle brothel can be a haven.

The establishment in question is run by Mama Nadi, who profits from the women she protects—and from the war. She runs a business, she says, not a mission. She provides food and shelter, and in exchange, the women prostitute themselves to government and rebel soldiers alike, all of whom must check their ammunition at the bar.

“How many of you give her a pass?” Romagnoli asks his students, a group of 11 women. Opinions are split.

“I hated her at first, but by the end, I understood why she was the way she was, and why she did what she did,” one student says.

“Which of the philosophies we’ve discussed could you use to support defending her?” Romagnoli asks.

“Utilitarianism,” suggests one student. Romagnoli nods. “And what would Kant say? Is there a redeeming element in her behavior?”

“It’s wrong to use people the way she did,” one woman says emphatically; several others agree. “OK,” Romagnoli smiles, “we have some Kantians here too.”

A College Class Like Any Other

To an outside observer, the discussion could have been part of an undergraduate seminar on any college campus—with one exception: Each student wore a green uniform that marked her as an inmate of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, the only maximum security women’s prison in New York state.

Romagnoli, a playwright, novelist, and short story writer, has been teaching at Bedford Hills since 2015. Like all guests at the prison, he enters the compound through a trailer-like structure that separates the visitors’ parking lot from the prison buildings, which are ringed by metal gates topped with razor-wire coils. He passes through a security checkpoint carrying only his car keys, driver’s license, and notes for class.

“It’s like going in and out of a concentration camp, with the walls and the wires,” he says. “But sitting in the room and watching them talk and laugh and banter, you could be anywhere.”

Romagnoli’s students range in age and experience. For one woman, the course—Social Issues in Literature—is her first taste of college; for another, it’s the next-to-last class on the path to earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology.

In addition to studying Ruined, they read and discuss a broad range of books, including Night, Elie Wiesel’s account of the Holocaust, and Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. They also screen several films, including Do the Right Thing, and Romagnoli introduces them to philosophers from Socrates to Simone de Beauvoir.

“Steve is always in demand,” says Aileen Baumgartner, FCRH ’88, GSAS ’90, the director of the Bedford Hills College Program, which is overseen by Marymount Manhattan College and offers courses leading to an associate’s degree in social sciences and a bachelor’s degree in sociology.

“Students really get a lot from his classes. I don’t know how he does it—I’ve said, ‘Really, Steve? You think they’re going to get through all this in a semester?’ Somehow or other they do.”

‘Students Have to Feel There Is Love’

For the past several years, Romagnoli has also been an adjunct professor at Fordham, where he teaches a similar course on ethics and literature, he says, albeit with a more sensational title: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness.

In both settings, students focus on “moral dilemmas and ethical questions that confront us throughout our lives,” he says.

“The Fordham students have great things to say, but they’re initially a bit shy. At the prison, sometimes you’ve got to pull them together, but they’re totally engaged, and they say what they’ve got to say.”

Romagnoli began his career as an educator at P.S. 26 in the South Bronx during the mid-1980s, not long after earning a bachelor’s degree in English at Fordham. He later earned an M.F.A. in creative writing at the City College of New York.

For 15 years, he was an itinerant teacher for the New York City Department of Education, working with students in their late teens to early 20s at drug rehabilitation facilities, homeless shelters, and halfway houses, among other locations.

“I would go in and teach a lesson and go out,” he says. “Engage them, that was the whole thing. You’ve got to engage them.”

He says that no matter where he’s taught, his approach is essentially the same. “Students have to feel there is love there—not love love, but a deep respect. And if they come to the conclusion, consciously or unconsciously, that you have that deep respect, then it allows you to be as demanding as you want to be.”

It’s a lesson Romagnoli learned decades ago, particularly at Wadleigh High School in Harlem. He taught English there starting in 1993, later served as dean of students, and, although he had no prior coaching experience, was appointed head coach of the school’s fledgling boys’ basketball team. In 1998, he led the team to an undefeated season, capped by a victory in the Public Schools Athletic League B Division championship game at Madison Square Garden.

“He became a coach by chance, but turned players into students by design,” the Daily News reported at the time, adding that Romagnoli “took on the kids as he took on their problems: truancy, drugs, death, violence, poverty, fatherlessness, the entire roster of urban ills that puts teenagers ‘at risk.’”

He’s still in touch with his former players, who now joke about how strict he was at the time. “I felt that to succeed they needed a certain amount of rigor and discipline that they really didn’t have,” he says. “But they saw that I was in the gym with them after school and that I lived in the neighborhood. That definitely makes a difference.”

‘When They Get to Class, They’re Motivated’

At Bedford Hills, Romagnoli is helping to turn inmates into students, although he insists that the women in the college program don’t need much coaxing.

“They just live for this,” he says. “They know it’s not something that’s guaranteed. Some of them have had to get their GED” before they could even apply to the college program. “When they get to class, they’re motivated, they’re good to go.”

Baumgartner notes that all of the students at Bedford Hills are required to work during the day—as porters or clerks or sweeping floors, for example. And they complete their coursework in the evening and early morning hours without the benefit of internet access.

Like Romagnoli, Baumgartner is a Fordham graduate. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English at the University. In 2001, she was a professor at Mercy College when she started teaching at Bedford Hills.

“I had never given any thought to prison education programs at the time,” she says, recalling that on her first day of class, “all the students were looking at me, sizing me up, and they asked, ‘Why are you here?’ ‘I was asked to teach, and so here I am.’”

Baumgartner, who has been the director of the college program since late 2002, says that her straightforward answer satisfied the students, who, she realized, didn’t want to “hear someone come in and talk to them about high-minded ideals.”

Still, she is quick to extol the benefits of prison education programs, citing data about lower recidivism rates and better employment opportunities for former inmates who have a college education.

“Whether you’re a prisoner or not, you have many more options in life if you have a college education. And if you are a prisoner and you have a felony conviction on your record, when you return to the outside, it’s very nice to have a college degree on your record too. You have a better chance of earning a decent living.

“And, practically speaking, keeping people in jail is extremely expensive,” she adds. “The college program is not as expensive as keeping people imprisoned.”

Baumgartner also speaks of individual and communal benefits of prison education that are less tangible, noting that students in the college program learn that “the world is wider.”

“They gain a deeper understanding of the forces that shape communities, that shape themselves, that shape their children,” she says. “They learn that they have the power to act in positive ways in their communities that perhaps they didn’t feel they had before.

“And then there’s that ripple effect: They’re concerned with their children going to college. Now it matters to them.”

Approximately 150 women are currently enrolled in the college program, which Baumgartner says constitutes about 25% of the standing inmate population at Bedford Hills.

Every spring, the program hosts a graduation ceremony. “It’s a big one for us this year,” she says, noting that six women will be getting a bachelor’s degree and 14 will receive an associate’s degree in June.

‘A Fairer, More Effective Criminal Justice System’

Inmates at Bedford Hills have benefited from college education programs for decades. “Mercy College had a college program there until the tough-on-crime bill was passed,” Baumgartner says, referring to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which eliminated Pell Grants for inmates.

“Across the country, a lot of colleges, including Mercy, closed their prison programs in the mid-1990s because they just couldn’t afford it” without federal funding, Baumgartner says, noting that the total number of prison college programs in the U.S. dropped from about 300 to just a handful at that time.

At Bedford Hills, a coalition of community members—including Elaine Lord, the superintendent at the time; Regina Peruggi, then president of Marymount Manhattan College; and Judith Clark, an inmate at Bedford Hills—formed a committee that designed the Bedford Hills College Program. It opened in spring 1997, and since then, more than 200 women have earned college degrees there.

Today, the college program is funded by private donors and grants. And since 2016, Bedford Hills has received some additional support through the Department of Education’s Second Chance Pell Pilot program, which aims to “create a fairer, more effective criminal justice system, reduce recidivism, and combat the impact of mass incarceration on communities.”

In announcing the three-year experimental program, which is testing the effectiveness of making Pell Grants available to incarcerated people again, the Department of Education cited a 2013 Department of Justice-funded study by the RAND Corporation; it found that “incarcerated individuals who participated in correctional education were 43 percent less likely to return to prison within three years than prisoners who didn’t participate in any correctional education programs.”

Baumgartner credits the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) for supporting higher education programs in prisons, including the program at Bedford Hills. “These programs sometimes tax their resources,” she says, “but DOCCS understands the importance of higher education in reducing recidivism and enriching the lives of inmates while incarcerated and upon their release.”

Romagnoli says he talks with his Fordham students about his work at Bedford Hills, and about mass incarceration and criminal justice reform. “It resonates strongly with them,” he says. “And it’s something that’s really come into the public consciousness [in recent years]; the ball’s rolling a little quicker.”

‘Knowledge Is Power’

Back in the classroom at Bedford Hills, after the heavy but lively discussion about Ruined, Romagnoli gives the students a brief break. Some of them take the opportunity to reflect together, for the benefit of a guest, on the course.

They say they’ve learned that “knowledge is power,” that “perception plays a big role in how people judge people,” that the readings have helped them “gain different perspectives,” and yet the class “brings a unity, even if we agree to disagree.”

“You learn more about yourself through the process, about your ethical system, and you question the things you do,” says one student. “I am one class away from a B.A. When I leave, I will always question the morality of a situation.”

The images in this story are taken from a 2017 video produced by Marymount Manhattan College professor Erin Greenwell in honor of the Bedford Hills College Program’s 20th anniversary.

These words, taken from the poem “Thunderdome” in Sarah Gambito’s new book Loves You, evoke the kind of nourishment the poet hopes readers will find in her work.

In 96 pages of poems, Gambito, an associate professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Fordham, presents a gamut of personal life experiences: how Filipino Americans—and people of color—are assailed and fetishized; the struggle to hold on to cultural identity as an American-born child of immigrants; the nuances of everyday life; and what it’s like to be the mother of a biracial child. But her book has a tasty twist.

Loves You is part poetry, part cookbook. Her poems are divided among five flavors: umami, sour, salty, bitter, and sweet. Most of them reference food in some shape or form. (Example: “When God was Filipino, / he put a pig and fire together and called it porkissimo.”) And her poems give readers a taste of not only her life but also her actual cooking. There are recipes for family favorites—salmon sinigang, barbecue scepters, watermelon agua fresca—scattered throughout the book.

Her ultimate goal? To nurture strangers with her words—to make people feel, she says, even if they are occasionally puzzled by her poems, published by Persea Books on Jan. 22.

“I want people to feel nourished. I want people to feel provoked. I want people to feel … a little freaked out,” she said, laughing a little. “I don’t see it as sort of just a sweet book. There’s anger here, as well. But I think anger can hold equal footing with joy and creation, and with thinking about community and family.”

In her poem “Don’t Eat Filipinos!” Gambito speaks about the subtle symbolism of a biscuit called Filipinos. The controversial cookie is sold in Spain—a country that controlled the Philippines for years.

“To name it after a people, a country that was colonized for 400 years … I really thought it was a joke,” she said. “Literally, it’s like you have Spanish people eating Filipinos.”

As an antidote, the page after that poem lists her husband’s recipe for lychee macarons.

“The epigraph is instead of eating Filipinos, eat these,” Gambito said. “The idea is to be thoughtful about what we’re doing, what we’re putting into our bodies—what it means.”

Gambito’s new poetry book also melds meals with motherhood. Her poem “Hapa,” defined as a person who is partially Asian or Pacific Islander, is about her 8-year-old son. He was born with blonde hair and blue eyes—a stark difference from his Filipina mother. Strangers would mistake Gambito for his nanny. She felt like they were “othering” her from her own child, she said. “Orangutan nanny in the garage / my pleasure—a disappointment,” she wrote in “Hapa.”

Gambito mentions a more universal aspect of motherhood—the joys and fears of being a mother. In the poem “First Born,” she writes, “Basically: my wish is that you are never, never pierced through the heart. / My aim is ordinary. / My anthem open. My berries gasping together in pie.”

Those last six words describe the feeling of being breathless, she said. “You want to provide. You want to give your son beautiful, sweet things, and you feel like always short to the task.”

Loves You is Gambito’s third published collection of poetry. This book was 10 years in the making, she said. But back in the book’s infancy, she recalls sitting at a ramen shop with a friend, pondering over the purpose of her new poetry collection.

“What do you think poetry should do?” her friend asked.

“It should do this,” Gambito said, cradling her warm bowl of broth with her hands. “It should nourish you from the inside out.”

Text of Gambito’s poem “Holiday” in Loves You:

Crashing across cousin stars with deep listening holes. Because we’re

related and every wren that has nested abroad would like to become

my mother. I’d like to lie flayed open upon her twelve breaking torsos.

This blood would weld us to the chair and I’d let a crowd in. I’d always

thought that crowds were created in a panic. A great anti-system of

people fleeing fire. Rather crowd dynamic is cultivated because you

run towards. You want concert tickets or something to do the day after

thanksgiving. They’re almost giving it away. This is what she says as

the gold metal hits the outline of her. She says I want you to find me. I

want that you never give up and you find me.

Cindy, a victim of domestic violence, escaped her abuser with her three children and $50 to her name. She used it to pay the cab fare to a safe house.

After being beaten by his stepfather and losing his mother to suicide, James saw his crack addiction spiral wildly out of control, sending him out on the streets.

Challenged with a learning disability and mental illness, Lisa tried to piece together a life for herself and got her own apartment. After a couple of weeks, she came home and found her belongings on the curb. Her landlord kicked her out after discovering her medication for bipolar disorder because he didn’t want “crazy people” living in his house.

These are among 13 stories of homelessness in the new book Sacred Shelter: Thirteen Journeys of Homelessness and Healing, published by Fordham University Press and edited by Fordham University English Professor Susan Celia Greenfield, who conducted hours of interviews with each contributor to help distill their stories.

Describing their life experiences in raw and vivid detail, each storyteller talks about their journey to homelessness and how they healed with the help of faith and community found in a life skills empowerment program for homeless and formerly homeless people. Many of the memoirists graduated from Education Outreach Program (EOP), founded in 1989 by New York Catholic Charities and the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing (IAHH). Today, there are several similar programs in the New York area.

“Telling my story is freeing,” said EOP alumnus Dennis Barton to an audience of nearly 250— including 12 of the 13 contributors—at the book launch at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus on December 3.

“I’ve touched base with all of my secrets,” Barton said. “Now this book is out there and can help the sick and suffering.” The Bronx native talked about years of using and selling drugs, being incarcerated, and getting severely beaten by a group of teenagers while asleep on a park bench.

But Barton, who had taken college classes while incarcerated, sought help; in 2002, he graduated from the EOP, something he views as a real accomplishment. “Until that moment, I had never finished anything in my life,” he said.

Barton has since reunited with his family and became an ordained deacon at Middle Collegiate Church. He is a member of the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing Speakers Bureau and has been a peer facilitator at the Panim el Panim life skills empowerment program. (Panim el Panim is Hebrew for “face to face.”) He now works as a workshop facilitator at Planned Parenthood of New York City.

“I give back because you can’t keep it if you don’t give it away,” he said, referring to the love and support he received throughout his journey that he now wishes to pass along to others who are struggling.

Sacred Shelter memoirist Michelle Riddle, who graduated from the EOP one year after Barton, told the standing-room-only crowd that she recently celebrated 20 years in recovery. She also volunteers as a life skills empowerment program mentor to give back what was “freely given” to her. “I was strung out and embarrassed, and slowly committing suicide,” she said about her drug addiction. “God rescued me from myself.”

All of the stories chronicled in Sacred Shelter are about serious traumas and crises—mental illness, addiction, and domestic violence. A few storytellers spoke of child abuse and molestation—one was chained to a pole in a filthy basement, another was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend, and another was routinely beaten by his alcoholic stepfather.

“The most shocking thing to me was the consistency of the trauma,” says editor Greenfield about the interviews she conducted for the book. “It was story after story of gender violence, abuse … and the preponderance of that kind of suffering.”

Another common thread Greenfield sees among the stories is the love and generosity the storytellers showed others even in their darkest moments. She pointed to Riddle, who once gave all of her money to a mother she met on the street with a hungry child, and Barton, who often helped the elderly in his neighborhood carry groceries and clean up.

“It’s so beautiful that even in the thick of it, they were thinking of other people,” said Greenfield, adding that their compassion for others continues in their volunteer work today. “They took the suffering and turned it into an engine of love.”

Also sharing his experience with homelessness at the book launch was James Addison. Despite the horrors of living on the streets and in the Fort Washington Shelter—nicknamed the “House of Pain” among New York City’s homeless—Addison was the recipient of many acts of kindness.

“I was on 34th Street one morning standing in front of a donut shop,” he recalled. “I was so hungry, I hadn’t eaten for days. An employee from the shop came out and handed me a bag of donuts. Those were the best damn donuts I ever ate in my life.”

Barton was also the recipient of kind acts. “People in the neighborhood helped me, gave me food and clothing,” he said. And it wasn’t only strangers; when he reached out to his daughter while in treatment after being estranged for years, she drove from South Carolina with her children to pick him up so they could spend Christmas together—another moment when Barton says that “God showed up for him.”

In their opening remarks, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham; Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky; and Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, talked about the importance of helping others.

They also pointed to the power of the life skills programs for the homeless that run in different churches, temples, and organizations throughout the city, and of the 13 people who shared their stories for Sacred Shelter, who are living examples that change is possible.

“To the 13 very brave men and women who chose to tell their stories: … We are in your debt for reminding us about the dignity of human beings,” said Father McShane.

Added Monsignor Sullivan: “Homelessness is not hopelessness.”

–Claire Curry

Hear Professor Greenfield with memoirists James Addison and Dennis Barton on the Brian Lehrer Show and on Fordham Conversations on WFUV, parts 1 and 2. 

As the years went by, violence became an everyday occurrence.

“When you left the house to go to the market, you were lucky to return home alive,” said Ugbabe, Ph.D., a South Asian writer and English professor from the University of Jos. “Because on the following day, that open market where you’d shopped was bombed.”

Ugbabe, the newest faculty addition to Fordham’s English department, has lived in Jos for more than 35 years with her Nigerian husband and children. She said the violent clashes between indigenous Christian and Muslim Hausa communities in the central Plateau State escalated in the last 15 years—from arson and machete attacks to suicide bombings in churches, mosques, and public spaces. These incidents not only contributed to displacement, but also led to more than 3,000 deaths in the region, according to Human Rights Watch.

Then, tragedy hit closer to home.

Writing from a conflict zone

In 2007, a colleague of Ugbabe’s, a professor went missing on his way home from an event, while another colleague’s daughter was killed in a bomb explosion. Soon, her neighbor’s home, which was abandoned during the crisis, was set on fire. As foreigners became the latest targets of kidnapping, Ugbabe, who was born and raised in Chennai, India, faced an even greater risk. In the fall of 2015, her family experienced an armed home intrusion that completely shattered her sense of security.

“It was a very stressful way of living,” she said. “My risk was personal to me but also related to the ethno-religious environment we lived in. It was no less disruptive or devastating than political risk.”

In partnership with PEN America, Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), Westbeth Artists Housing, ArtistsSafety.net, and Residency Unlimited, the creative writing program at Fordham offered Ugbabe a newly created position as a Writer at Risk in Residence. The role comes months after she completed a 2016-2017 fellowship in the women, gender, and sexuality department of Harvard University.

The yearlong pilot position will allow Ugbabe, an active member of the Association of Nigerian Authors, to advance her academic work. As the department’s Writer at Risk, Ugbabe will also teach a new writer’s workshop at the Rose Hill campus, called Creating Dangerously: Writing from Conflict Zones.

Glenn Hendler, Ph.D., chair of the English department, said the class will explore injustice and oppression through the works of writers Ken Saro-Wiwa, Edwidge Danticat, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie and others.

“By initiating this pilot position, the English department shows how the study and writing of literature can help social justice goals in a global context,” he said.

Insider-outsider perspective

Ugbabe said that taking a temporary hiatus from the sectarian conflicts in Jos has inspired her to do some soul-searching. Having lived in Australia and Scotland as an academic before settling in Jos, the scholar said she has had to confront issues concerning her multiple identities.

“There is that layering of a European perspective somewhere with a deep Indian sensibility and consciousness, but I’m also looking at the world through Nigerian eyes,” said Ugbabe, who received a doctorate in literature from Flinders University of South Australia and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Madras in India.

This insider-outsider perspective is reflected in Soulmates (Penguin Books, 2011), Ugbabe’s first book of short stories. “Exile,” one of her favorite short stories in the book, also has a protagonist who is accepted into a community but also feels alienated from it.

“It’s like you’re walking on a tightrope and you have to maintain your balance,”  said Ugbabe.

In many of her stories, she sets readers on a path of introspection with narratives that are focused on estrangement, domestic life, and the meaning of home.

“These stories are like fleeting moments that you see from a train window, and that’s how I present them in my writing,” she said.

When Ugbabe looks back at her experience in Jos, she is reminded of the challenges of other creative artists around the world who are facing similar environmental constraints.

“I can only speak from my own experience, but I found that it is almost a strategy for survival to write when you’re in a conflict zone,” she said. “You are writing [so that]the world is going to know about it, and this story needs to be told.”