Spokane students share the meaning of courage at Spokane Black Voices Symposium: ‘Not dimming your light in effort of being scared to shine’

Jeane Musesambili stood before the crowd and told them how she’s “never known courage by its name.”

”But lately,” she read from a poem she’d written, “I have learned to appreciate it in all its forms.”

The Spokane Community College student was one of 20 from area schools to present at the fourth annual Spokane Black Voices Symposium on Monday. Students shared poetry, paintings, dances and essays with the theme of “Powered by Courage.” The Spokane Black Voices Symposium – which gives Black youth the center stage to express themselves through original art –is presented by the Black Lens newspaper and the Northwest Passages event series, along with collaboration with local school districts and Gonzaga University.

For Musesambili, courage takes shape in myriad areas of her life . Most recently it manifests in standing “in front of people to tell your story,” as she did at the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center stage in front of a large crowd.

“It’s smiling even when all you want to do is cry. It’s crying and never stopping,” she read. “Courage is being able to own up to your mistakes and errors.”

Mwajuma Ishibaleka shared an essay about the ripple effects of courage. The Lewis and Clark senior often needs to summon courage in school, to overcome “suffocating fear” and impostor syndrome she feels when she’s the only Black student in a class, as is often the case, she said. Feeling like the odd one out fueled a perception that she doesn’t belong and stifled her desire to participate in school.

“I remained silent and not contributing to the conversation,” she read. “My fear was not solely rooted in my childhood silence, but also the overwhelming sense of impostor syndrome.”

Her academic performance suffered because of these feelings, until courage found her through the ripples made by mentors in school and finding community in her Black student union.

“Courage is about being an example of fearlessness and change for those who are underrepresented, demonstrating that you can show up, speak up and make a meaningful impact. Courage is about remaining true to yourself and not dimming your light in effort of being scared to shine.”

Shadle Park senior Jase Bower shared a vulnerable story about a time of tremendous loss in his life. A friend died by suicide during Bower’s freshman year, spiraling him into depression, and he lost interest in school. A year later, two young cousins died unexpectedly, and he grappled with mortality at a young age.

“This experience allowed me to find different perspectives about life,” Bower read. “It made me not want to take life for granted, because life is too short to have doubts.”

For him, it took courage to ask for help, to build a village around himself and lean on those people in times of strife, rather than try to take on everything by himself.

“The biggest courage is letting people in at your most vulnerable point to let them help you,” Bower said. “A big thing for me is community and the village that people create, and that’s just a big part of who we are as people.”

While Bower summoned courage to turn to others, Liberty High School senior Z’Hanie Weaver needed bravery to center herself, to break generational cycles and uplift her own goals.

She wrote about often being expected to sacrifice parts of herself and her feeling of comfort and self-determination for those in her family.

“The connection of my blood tied me to my family and culture, but left my boundaries wounded, continuing a cycle of a wrong sense of generational love,” she read from her essay.

Centering herself in her own life required courage, she said. She’s the first in her family who will go to college, and she learned on the drive to the symposium she’d been accepted with a full ride into her top school, Hamilton College in New York.

She wrote in her essay about writing as a means to build courage and find empowerment, to center herself and reclaim her voice through the written word. Weaver is a contributing writer in The Black Lens newspaper and worked at The Spokesman-Review as part of the newspaper’s Teen Journalism Institute. As she breaks generational cycles, she hopes to bring positivity back to her community and the kids growing up behind her.

“I want to put back into my community,” Weaver said, “to replace the hardships that I’ve experienced and possibly the negative interactions that have been put out towards me, to replace them with good, positive opportunities for other kids.”