VALDOSTA – Valdosta State University students are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. Faculty and staff gathered Wednesday evening from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. to hear guest lecturer Essah Diaz, a Liberian-American poet, podcaster and PhD candidate of the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras.

Diaz completed her undergraduate degree studies at Valdosta State University in 2014 where she received a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. After graduating, Diaz went to complete a study abroad program in Panama and later completed her master’s degree in Puerto Rico.

Students from the university’s Women and Gender Studies and Africana Studies classes first participated in a session with Diaz early Wednesday morning. She led a discussion among the students and asked them to reflect on what they were missing in their literature. Students voiced concerns on lack of diversity in healthcare and artwork.

One senior biology pre-medical student asked, “How do you go about advocating for your own voice when society doesn’t want to hear it?”

Diaz said all of the responses and questions highlighted that sometimes the works of minorities have been written or completed; it just needs to be found. She challenged students to continue to look for those works, to ask more questions and to navigate their education.

Her work and lecture focused on the textual, cultural and digital representation of African Diaspora women by analyzing Afro-Femme narratives from Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, centering radical corporeal consciousness, kinship and storytelling across the Afro-Atlantic.

Her lecture also showcased her work with Diaspora Solidarities Lab, a multi-institutional Black feminist digital humanities partnership. Through the lab, Diaz and other members were able to review the registers of enslaved people in 1872 and were able to conduct research on where the listed individuals’ lineage travelled.

Dr. Susan Wehling, a professor in Valdosta State University’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages, said Diaz’s evening lecture was well received from the students marking 50 physical attendees and about 24 virtual guests.

“She talked about her research which was really cool because she was reviewing the registers where they registered the enslaved people in 1872. With this DSL – Diaspora Solidarities Lab – they were taking each person and tried to find where they were and where they came from. It was really cool to see how they were bringing these people who have been erased back to life,” Wehling said in a phone interview Thursday.

Students also learned from Diaz that the number of people in Puerto Rico identifying as Caucasian or White in the Census dropped about 70% when the territory added “of Afro-descendants” from a2010 to 2020. That change resulted from the United Nations marking 2014-2045 as the International Decade of African Descendants.

“It is really important that we continue as a community to have events that diverse communities can attend and learn from,” Wehling concluded.

More events in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month will soon be announced.