Join us for an inspiring evening of storytelling and advocacy in partnership with the Middlesex County Chapter of the NAACP, hosted by Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore. Don't miss this opportunity to engage with these courageous authors and advocates as they share their journeys of resilience and empowerment. It's an evening dedicated to celebrating the strength of the human spirit and fostering meaningful dialogue on social justice and healing.
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Peace. Happiness. Love… A Journey to Healing: What’s stopping you from living a life of Peace, Happiness, and Love? Is it your past, your present? Shanay's journey to healing reveals some of her innermost and rawest thoughts during this journey. This is an inspirational book where you will navigate through bouts of anger, hurt, resentment, bitterness, depression, and eventually to a place of being on a spiritual journey and finding herself. This journey takes readers back to her early life in NYC, where life began and traumatic experiences occurred, to journeying through life at every stage and having to overcome these traumatic experiences to live a better life. Each page will have readers on a rollercoaster of emotions as they seek resolve within their own lives. This truth telling story displays resilience, courage, strength, perseverance and determination to defeat the odds. Everyone has a journey that they’re on, and it is the hope that every reader will come to a place within their lives where they can experience true peace, where they can be happy, and know what true love really means.
Shanay N. Fulton is a mom of two beautiful boys who currently reside in Connecticut alongside her partner Q. Her life’s challenges led her to advocacy in the legal and political realm, winning her first election to public office in 2019 and making waves through the state of Connecticut as a voice for women and children.
Blessed Not Bitter: A memoir of Barbara McClane's journey who was named by the hospital staff at birth due to her mother's addiction and abandonment. The story reveals a person working through the trauma of mental, physical, and substance abuse and institutional misfortunes. Thus riddled her spirit for decades. Through lessons, upheaval, triumphs, self-discovery, losses, and various support systems, including the foster care system; she was able to view her life as being blessed, not bitter.
Barbara McClane is a Connecticut-based photographer, author ,visual artist, and community advocate. McClane has channeled her commitment to social justice and humanity into creating art that showcases the complexities and beauty of the human experience. She has led several projects over the course of three years. The 2023 “I Am Woman Project” is currently in production and will launch in March. She published her memoir Blessed Not Bitter: The Barbara McClane Journey in November 2022 after reconnecting with her biological family after six decades. Her work also appeared in the best-selling anthology Every Kinda Lady and Her Sisters’ Pages, 2022. She recently retired from the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, where she dedicated herself to caring for, training, and assisting people with daily life skills. She sits on the board of the Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery, focusing on members of her local LGBTQ+ community and people of color. McClane currently isa Community Fellow in the Embodying Antiracism Initiative at Wesleyan University. She is the recipient of several awards, including the “2021 100Women of Color” and the “2022 Nomination for the Martin Luther King Award at Connecticut Valley Hospital.” She was a featured author at Hartford’s Literary Integrated Trailblazers Hartford Book Festival, part of her effort to support others to tell their stories and to help others trying to locate their families. In addition, she has yet another book soon to hit shelves, a “how-to find your family” and reflection journal.
A writer since the age of 8, William H. Foster III has written 15 books and ten plays. He is presently a retired Professor of English at Naugatuck Valley Community College. A long-time comic book collector and researcher, Foster has been an expert commentator for both CNN News and National Public Radio. In 2008 he was appointed to the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Comic Art. In 2010 his research was cited in the Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture. In 2011 he appeared as an expert on the PBS series, History Detectives. He is the author of two collections of essays on Blacks in Comics: Looking for a Face Like Mine (2005) and Dreaming of a Face Like Ours (2010).
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A percentage of sales from the evening will be donated to our partners at the Middlesex County NAACP.