Rose Gershfield of Bennington took the stage of the Hancock Meetinghouse Hall Monday morning with other members of the Avenue A teen writing group to read poems for the town’s Martin Luther King Jr. event.
In her poem, the 18-year-old Gershfield, who is originally from Michigan, expressed the awkwardness of how she is asked about her ethnic heritage. Something people try to ascertain with questions like “Where are you from?”
“Everyone wants to know what I am, why I don’t look like my sisters, where I’m from. And to that I say, I am human, a girl who loves nature, because it asks me no questions. I don’t look like my sisters because If everyone in this world was a carbon copy of everyone else, this world would be a really boring place to call home. And I don’t care where I’m from and neither should you. All that should matter is where I’m going and what I can do to make that a better place.”
Her piece drew a rousing applause from the audience of about 50 in attendance of the Hancock’s Community Conversations on Race second annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.
Monday’s event focused on the power of language, beginning with a recording of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which transitioned to a video made at Hancock Elementary School in which students talked about how words can be used to hurt and bully others. Several community members, including Susie Spikol, Leaf Seligman and Luis Rosa, read excerpts from King’s most famous and most powerful speeches. And members of local youth choirs, Jr. Mints and the Grand Monadnock Youth Choir, led the crowd in several spirituals hailing from the Civil Rights era.
Hancock’s Community Conversations on Race meet every two weeks. The group of about 20 people hail from the towns of Hancock, Dublin, Greenfield and Peterborough and formed in October 2018 in response to a two-session program at the Hancock Library titled “Talking about Race: Staying Curious, Moving Forward, and Being Part of the Solution.”