Tope Folarin, an author from Utah, visited campus to speak about his writing process and his experience growing up as a Black man in Utah.
Westminster held the Anne Newman Sutton Weeks Poetry Series on Wednesday in the Gore Auditorium, featuring Folarin as a guest speaker.
His best-known novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man, is a fictional story inspired by his own life experiences.
The novel explores the themes of identity and self-reflection, particularly what it means to be Black, American and Nigerian while growing up in Bountiful and Ogden, Utah.
Folarin explained that from a young age, most people’s communities shape their identity.
Half of the event was an open discussion between Folarin and Ranjan Adiga, an LMW professor.
Adiga asked Folarin to further elaborate on his process of using “honesty and freedom” in his writing.
Folarin emphasized that his book is not an immigrant narrative.
“[Without] mumbo jumbo, I wrote a novel based on life, and that comes from an honest place that is often scary, now I tend to write towards that fear,” Folarin said.
An audience member asked Folarin about what it means to write from a place of fear.
“The thing you are afraid of, like admitting you love someone, or […] something you’re not supposed to, […] often ends [up] being more vulnerable and gripping,” Folarin responded.
Violet Czech, a junior neuroscience major who attended the panel, said she liked Folarin’s approach to writing.
“I had never heard of an author taking it from that approach, it’s a good way to bring a deeper emotion into the writing versus not feeling a thing from it,” Czech said.
Another audience member particularly enjoyed Folarin’s vulnerability.
“Not many authors even want to talk or be that vulnerable about what they’re feeling on the inside,” said Fatima Romero, a junior business major.
