I was in Minnesota for a few days last week with some of my SIETAR-USA colleagues, scouting the location for our 2012 national conference and strategizing about the future of our professional organization.
There's something about the culture of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul that feels really grounding and inspiring to me at the same time. My local friends talk about the small-town feel of their big cities and the way that everyone knows everyone else. Six degrees of separation seems more like one or two degrees of separation there. Unexpected connections and inspirations seem to be everywhere.
One of my best friends from college lives near Minneapolis and we try to spend time together whenever I visit the area. During this recent visit she invited me to a Family Weekend event at University of St. Thomas, where one of her sons is a Senior. She wanted to hear Michele Norris, host of NPR's All Things Considered, speak about her book, The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir. I wanted to spend time with her and her family so I happily agreed to tag along.
I've listened to Michele Norris and enjoyed her voice and her show for years, but I really didn't know much about her. I had no idea that she was born and raised in Minnesota or that hers was the first black family on the block in a south Minneapolis neighborhood. I knew nothing about her book, and had never visited her website or heard about her Race Card project.
As I sat in the auditorium with my friend and her family I was captivated by Michele and her story. She described how the original intention for this book, to write about the conversations around race in America, had morphed into a deeply personal family memoir which, in turn, had been selected as the "first-ever community read" in the One Minneapolis, One Read program.
When Michele first toured the country talking about her book, she printed postcards with the word RACE at the top and invited her audiences to share their thoughts in six words. At the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis last week, people who had read Michele's book stood up and read their Race Cards aloud. Michele said she was awed and humbled by the experience.
Not only were people in her hometown reading her book. They were having the kinds of real conversations about race that she had originally hoped to capture in print. By exploring her own family's history and sharing their story, she's inspired others to share their stories in a way that has amplified the conversation exponentially.
And she inspired me to return to a second day of SIETAR-USA Board Meetings with a much bigger vision, for our conference next year in Minneapolis and for the impact we can make through the conversations we initiate through our work.