The following are the transformational figures whose names will be the 2021-22 Inscriptions for the Future. The selection committee’s multi-step, iterative decision-making process was guided by criteria and principles that reflect core institutional values of intellectual inquiry; social responsibility; and diversity, equity, and inclusion. The committee’s work also drew on substantial feedback from across the College community, with nearly 500 people voting and commenting during the open comment period.
The selection committee hopes that these names, which came through a call for nominations that was open to the entire Grinnell College community, will spur further discussion and debate about who we as a community recognize and honor, and why.
Gloria Anzaldúa
Writer, poet, teacher, feminist cultural theorist, activist (United States/Mexico, 1942-2004)
Gloria Anzaldúa dedicated her life to exploring what it means to exist in borderlands, both geographically and experientially. She is most famous for Borderlands/La Frontera, a genre-defying book that draws on her life in the borderlands of the United States and Mexico to describe a general sense of living in between and on the margins of multiple worlds. Her body of writing develops this idea in a variety of ways, engaging gender, sexuality, language, religion, and race. The selection committee noted that Anzaldúa’s life and work has been transformative for a wide range of people in the United States and beyond, including those identifying as Chicanx, Latinx, queer, disabled, and those who live through geographic displacement.
Image: K. Kendall, CC By 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Marsha P. Johnson
Activist, organizer, and performer (United States, 1945-1992)
Following the Stonewall uprising of 1969, Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender woman, became a pioneering LGBTQ+ activist based in New York City, playing a vital role in connecting the struggle for trans recognition to the burgeoning gay liberation movement. In 1970s, Johnson, along with fellow activist Sylvia Rivera, co-founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a trans advocacy organization providing services to homeless LGBTQ+ youth. Johnson remained a fixture in activist circles throughout the 1970s and 1980s, eventually expanding her work to include engagement with ACT UP, the AIDS advocacy organization. During that time, Johnson also experienced significant mental health challenges. She died under mysterious circumstances in 1992. Investigations into her death remain open. Selection committee members noted that Marsha P. Johnson’s legacy demonstrates the vital importance of intersectional activism in improving the lives of the most marginalized and vulnerable among us.
Image: Flickr, CC by 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Zhuangzi
Philosopher (China, c.369-286 BCE)
Much of what we know of Zhuangzi comes from biographical fragments in his eponymous written collection, which quickly became a core source in Daoist thought and practice. Zhuangzi advocated for an understanding of the dao, or way/path, that upends certainty in the conventions that human beings construct to understand and order the natural and social worlds. Like the world itself, the dao is dynamic, requiring ongoing critical engagement to discern how to live with least encumbrance of expectation. Freedom, he argues, comes in questioning things we think to be true and unsettling the ways we organize our world. Zhuangzi’s articulation of Daoism became very influential in the emergence of Chan or Zen Buddhist traditions. Selection committee members noted that Zhuangzi’s inclusion in the HSSC Atrium expands the civilizational story inscribed on the outer walls of Carnegie Hall and highlights the global nature of the Grinnell community.
Image: CC by 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons