UW English 2024 Writing in Colour Colloquium

Five talented Ontario high school students explored the topic of connections during the annual UWaterloo English Writing in Colour Colloquium, held on May 15 at the University of Waterloo. The colloquium is the climax of the English department’s Writing in Colour Contest, which invites Black or Indigenous students or students of colour  who are in grade 11 in Southwestern Ontario to submit essays on a chosen topic. The five colloquium participants were invited to the colloquium on the basis of their winning essays, which were selected by English faculty member Dr. Paul Ugor from a pool of nearly thirty submissions from across Southwestern Ontario.

The five colloquium participants were Cheryl Yefon Jokwi (Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary School), Krushni Nizahan (Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy), Yaaline Vigneswaran (Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy), Darcie Watson-Green (Eastwood Collegiate Institute), and Mingzhi Xue (Milton District High School).

The participants’ essays took a variety of approaches to the topic of connections:

• Cheryl Yefon Jokwi, in “Give People a Chance,” told the story of how finding a friend who accepted her wholly allowed her to accept herself and to re-connect with her Cameroonian identity.
• Krushi Nizahan, in “The Interior,” explored how pressures in her early school years separated her from her Tamil culture and how a desire to re-connect with family led her to reclaim it.
• Yaaline Vigneswaran, in “My Purple Box,” poetically described how the growing contents of a memory box reflected the shifting and varied personal connections that had accumulated over her life.
• Darcie Watson-Green, in “Losing Connection to 50% of My Complexion,” examined the complications of having a bi-racial identity when knowledge about half of her identity is limited.
• Mingzhi Xue, in “War’s Paradox,” examined the moral complexities around a Nazi businessman who moved to Nanjing during World War II and saved hundreds of thousands of citizens during the second Sino-Japanese war.

The colloquium day included a writing workshop led by English faculty member Dr. Andrea Jonahs and participation in Dr. Frankie Condon’s Discourses of Dissent class. During the final colloquium, led by Dr. Ugor,  participants shared their thoughts on the nature and importance of connections, the experiences and ideas that formed the foundations for their essays, and the role of writing in their own lives and in creating social change.

Following the colloquium, Dr. Ugor presented Cheryl Yefon Jokwi with the award for best essay for her piece, “Give People a Chance.” Dr. Ugor commented on the excellence of the essays that all the participants had written, and both faculty members and proud family members who were in attendance were impressed by the depth and thoughtfulness of the participants’ comments on the importance of personal, familial, and cultural connections to individuals and to society.

The Writing in Colour Contest was created by the English Department as part of its commitment to racial equity goals, as an investment in the long-term success of Black and Indigenous students and students of colour in our community, and as a means of supporting and strengthening students’ interest and talent in writing.