by | Gianna DiPasquale
Editor-in-Chief
Although the Martin Luther King Jr. march was canceled due to the extreme cold, the San Antonio Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation and the Literary Empowerment Network Summit (LENS) held their own celebration. On Saturday, January 13 LENS held an event showcasing six authors and how their books aligned with King’s legacy. They also recognized local San Antonio actress and author Tabyana Ali and gave out a scholarship to the National Teacher Preservation University.
“I have a deep love for writers,” Ali said. “We have the gift of capturing intangible feelings. The feelings that can’t be expressed or held by verbal words.”
On January 13, 2024, Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert announced “Love Without Walls Day” in honor of Ali’s writing. She was also given the City of San Antonio Emissary of the Muses award. She went on to describe her journey as a writer and the connection of what her accomplishments mean to her.
“I want to thank everybody who helped put this together,” Ali said. “It’s really important and it’s very inspiring for young black women who don’t feel like they have that ability to use their voice, or speak, or to write, or whatever the case may be so I’m very blessed and I’m extremely thankful.”
After this, a scholarship for $5,000 was given to the National Teacher Preservation University, which was accepted by Dr. Daniel Martinez. The money will go towards helping the program and its students with their educational goals.
“We only offer one degree and that’s an undergraduate degree for teachers only, and so we’re very proud and it’s going to be a unique situation for us so thank y’all very much,” Martinez said.
The authors represented at the event all had their own approach to their books. Howard Leslie Smith, a UTSA professor, talked about the book he co-authored with Kalpana Mukunda Iyengar called Multiliteracy and Language Arts for Multicultural Classrooms. He discussed how it was a guide for education and for teaching.
“There is a myth that every classroom is alike, and one approach will work for all students,” Smith said. “Students come to our classrooms from different experiences, different cultural groups, different perspectives and different strengths.”
Another author, Mecka Miller, spoke on the people that inspired her book Broken for a Cause. One of the people she mentioned was poet and activist Maya Angelou, and how the way she spoke influenced her own writing.
“Maya Angelou because she was a phenomenal woman,” Miller said. “And Maya Angelou stood through adversities.”
The purpose of LENS was described by Dr. Rajam Ramamurthy before the authors spoke. She went into detail about the message the organization hopes to send throughout the community under the San Antonio Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation.
“It establishes an emerging author to consider new ideas and the audience, the readers, to open their mind to receive new, or a different viewpoint,” Ramamurthy said. “In so doing, we hope to encourage literacy and authorship and lift literary awareness. That is the mission of LENS.”
