LaWanda Dickens writes about how J. Janice Coleman’s quilts share themes with the late author Toni Morrison’s books.
LaWanda Dickens
LaWanda Black Dickens is a faculty member in the Jackson State University (JSU) Department of English and Modern Languages, where she teaches composition and rhetoric courses. An advocate for student engagement in campus and community leadership, she oversees programming that showcases students’ research and writing. Dickens also wrote the curriculum for the Jackson Middle College (JMC) Summer Program’s English Composition Preparatory course for dual enrolled Jackson Public Schools (JPS) students. JMC is a partnership between JPS and JSU’s College of Education and Human Development. During the fall of 2023, she served on the steering committee that made the 50th Anniversary Reconvening of the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival possible. Outside of JSU, Dickens partners with the Mississippi Humanities Council to implement youth programs for the Magnolia Literacy Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that promotes multimodal literacy. One of the organization’s most popular initiatives is the intergenerational Blossoms Mother-Daughter Reading Club, which brings female Gen-Z students together with their mothers for reading and dialogue that fosters voice, agency, self-confidence, and leadership.
