Alumna Tara L. Conley (Ed.D '16) grew up in Elyria, Ohio, five miles and across a bridge from Lorain, the childhood home of the late, much celebrated novelist Toni Morrison. In an opinion piece for “CityLab,” Conley, an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University, asserts that Donald Trump’s presidency has changed their shared world from diverse working-class communities that Morrison called “neither plantation nor ghetto” – and where, in Conley’s words racism “wasn’t talked about so much as it was quietly experienced” – to one where, in her view, the Trump banners on white lawns signify a more overt divide.

Ultimately, Conley writes, “Toni Morrison’s greatest influence on me is not so much written or spoken as it is a whisper to remember that home is strange and borders are everywhere…even though she’s gone, I feel her presence, more visceral than ever. She, like my mother, reminds me what borders cause me to forget: that belonging exists between familiar and unfamiliar places, and crossing is damn painful.”

Read Conley’s piece on the City Lab website.