By Liz Lewis ‘22
Publisher & News Editor
The Frances Perkins Monologues, like all events nowadays, looked different this year. According to Niki Haswell FP ’22, this annual showcase of writing, art and stories from the Mount Holyoke community’s nontraditional-aged students felt different, too.
This year’s FP Monologues took place as part of Mount Holyoke’s annual BOOM! Conference on Tuesday, March 23. Haswell is a social chair for the Frances Perkins Scholars Association. It was the first FP Monologues she has been able to attend, as the event was canceled last year due to the COVID-19 campus shutdown. Despite the fact that her first experience with this event was a virtual one, Haswell noticed an overwhelming sense of community that shrouded the evening. To her and others, the 2021 rendition of the FP Monologues felt as warm as ever.
“There just seems to be something special about this one,” Haswell said. “I’m not sure if it’s the amount of people who were able to attend because it was virtual, I’m not sure if it’s the pandemic and it just helped bring people together, … [but] us FPs, kind of crying [at] the after party last night, … felt more connected to each other in a way that we hadn’t been able to do this whole year.”
Yvaine Neyhard FP ’20 emceed the event and introduced each speaker throughout the evening. According to Neyhard’s opening remarks, the FP Monologues were started in 2013 by an FP as an annual opportunity to share FP stories with the wider community. Neyhard encouraged the virtual audience to express their support, which otherwise might manifest as applause, through the Zoom chat function. Throughout the evening, comments flooded the chat in the moments between presentations as audience members congratulated the speakers, complimented their words and art and offered support and encouragement during emotional monologues.
Every year, each monologue tends to vary considerably in tone and subject matter. On Tuesday evening, speakers covered everything from their own artwork to their personal journeys with education, family and identity. Some monologues were lighthearted while others were more emotional. To Haswell, this is a fine line many FPs are uniquely equipped to walk.
“Some of our experiences are funny and positive, but I think as FPs, we’ve all had some crazy journey to get here,” she said.
Bethany Powell FP ’22 delivered a comedic piece about her relationship to her own whiteness and culture. Keeping to a mainly lighthearted but earnest tone, Powell spoke about how she watched her Irish and Italian heritage morph into the Mayflower-born whiteness that her family and country deemed acceptable. “Isn’t it wild how quickly we tried to make our family trees touch the colonizers?” she asked, dwelling on the loss that came with her family’s movement away from their roots.
Other monologues featured different types of stories from the speaker’s life. Earnest Malarkey FP ’18 presented a piece about their friendship with photojournalist Donna Ferrato. The two have clashed in the past over their approaches to the consent of the photographed, a debate that Malarkey dwelled on throughout their monologue.
Mary Tobin FP ’21 spoke on her experience with higher education and the success she has found with the FP program. Francesca Marie FP ’22 touched on her experiences as an immigrant in her monologue as well as her relationship to the concept of home. “Home is where your heart is, they say,” Marie said. “And I am finally finding mine.”
Many of the monologues further explored the speaker’s sense of identity. Jasmine Erico FP ’21 offered an emotional, poetic account of the trajectory that led her to Mount Holyoke. As she spoke on her experience growing up in poverty, the presentation filtered through black and white photos that bordered on abstraction. Though she grew up just down the street, she said that she felt removed from the prestige of Mount Holyoke with its “brilliance and traditions.” “But I am brilliant, too,” she said. These words were echoed in the Zoom chat as supportive messages flooded in.
Nic McGrath FP ’23 delivered a similarly intimate monologue, taking the audience through the emotional journey that led them to the FP program. Again, in lieu of applause, the audience sent messages of support and affirmation in the chat. To Haswell, the chat was one of the main contributors to the sense of community at this year’s FP Monologues. “The moments when somebody repeats your words ’cause they really loved the phrasing — that’s not something we would have done if we’d had it traditionally, in person,” Haswell said. “In person, people might cheer you on in the crowd, but they’re not nearly gonna say what they were comfortable saying in the chat.” After the event, all of the speakers received a copy of the Zoom chat.
Haswell herself also spoke. Her monologue drew from her experience as a sociology and psychology double major and from her Nexus minor in data, analytics and society. She explored different facets of her identity through the lens of the boxes people are routinely asked to check for data accumulation purposes such as race, gender, age and education. As she touched on each box, she explained her relationship to that specific part of her personhood.
“Each data point represents a person,” she said. “Now you know some of my stories behind these boxes. Just imagine all the stories behind [other people’s boxes].”
Haswell has since received encouraging feedback about her story as well as the format in which she presented it. “An FP alum sent me a message that said, ‘I will never look at those boxes the same,’” Haswell recalled. “That was neat, to have people not only recognize my story but what I was trying to do with it regarding data points. We’re all a data point, but how does all that information intersect, you know?”
In addition to these explorations of identity, several of the monologues were dedicated to showcasing the speaker’s artwork. Deborah Uller FP ’20, a recent graduate and art studio major, walked the invisible audience through her portfolio of colorful, expressive sculptures. She uses found objects in her practice, such as cardboard and house paint.
Jamie Capps FP ’21 presented a work of vivid shades of blue made from cyanotype on fabric. Another artist, Alyce Koon FP ’20, simply displayed a piece of artwork in silence for a few moments, allowing the painting to speak for itself. Kylie Gellately FP ’22, who is publishing a book of poetry later this year, presented selections of her work as well. Her poetry, each word seemingly cut and pasted from different places, was assembled to fit into visual designs of red, black and gray.
At the end of the evening, the speakers held a virtual after party, which audience members were encouraged to attend.
According to Haswell, this has been a tough year to be an FP. “Forty-three percent of FPs that we currently have have not even been on campus for a whole semester, let alone at all for some of them,” she said. “That's almost half our population in the community.”
As social chair, Haswell has helped lead the effort to build a sense of community among FPs despite the circumstances. The FPSA hosts movie nights and game nights and started the Fledgeling Phoenix Forum, an online space for those who started the FP program in the spring of 2020.
Even so, some FPs often grapple with feeling as though they exist at the margins of the Mount Holyoke community. “Sometimes we feel forgotten — there’s only like 70 of us on a campus of 2,000, give or take those numbers,” Haswell said. “And that’s not a lot, let alone in a pandemic, where … not many people are on campus, let alone the majority of FPs.”
“It’s like we’re this mysterious community that people don’t really understand,” Haswell said. “Just recognizing that we exist is a big deal.”
Haswell also mentioned that there are a lot of unique struggles and experiences that come with being an FP. “There’s a lot that we balance,” she said. “So for me it’s just about getting to know our community, [letting them know] that we exist and [sharing] what it takes to be us.”