Laura: Mhmm

Benita: Alright um, what is your full name?

Laura: Laura Rebecca Boutwell

Benita: Ok.  The first question is to like talk about your childhood, where you were born and anything else you feel like we should know.

Laura: I was born in Bristol Tennessee and I grew up in Virginia.  So my first three years were in a trailer in a really small town in Southwest Virginia very rural area.  I spent the next three years in that same town. And I moved a whole thirty minutes away to the town of Abingdon Virgina which is where I lived until I moved to Hollins.  Um real rural, real conservative, real white, um… very  Christian, very family oriented, there are some things that are amazing about where I lived. 

Benita: Mhmm

Laura: We didn’t lock our doors.  I still sometimes have a hard time remembering to lock my own car door because this is not how I grew up.  So there was all of that kind of good stuff.  There was family close by.  I literally spent my childhood playing in the woods or hanging out with the residents of my dad’s nursing home because we lived right behind my dad’s nursing home.  So there was a lot of things that I really loved about where I grew up but some of that real white real conservative real Christian real “we’re all the same and if you are different there’s something wrong” a lot of that was pretty difficult for me.  And I didn’t have language for that growing up there was just this sense of like “this ain’t me and I don’t know what’s wrong here but this is not quite right something needs to change here.”  And it really wasn’t until I was probably later on in high school that I started realizing “Oh (laughs) there is a different world and we all don’t have to look like this”

Benita: right

Laura: and maybe I wanted to find this different world because it would feel a whole lot more like about a place where I want to live.

Benita: ok, that’s cool like can you talk more about your family?

Laura: Mhmm

Benita: like your mother and dad?

Laura: My mom was a first grade teacher until I was born and then she stayed at home with my sister and I. (more serious tone) My dad was an Amway salesman and he was a social worker and then he had three nursing homes that he owned and operated. And that was really his life’s passion. Um he was very very good at what he did.  He was good at being a business person.  He was also very skilled at working with the residents at the nursing home.  Um my mom taught my sister and I at home for three years and both my parent were really engaged in their church.

Benita: ok, Do you think your family like brought like lead you to a life of social change or…

Laura:  In some ways yea, a lot of the things that (p) I believe in most strongly come from my parents- my sense of  loyalty, my sense of  there… there has to be integrity, that relationships are important, that you are good to people, that you see ways of service.  A lot of that comes from my parents. Some of my more critical ways of looking at the world, about distribution of wealth or about racial equality or about gender equality or about sort of U.S. wealth versus the rest of the world wealth, I didn’t necessarily get that from them but they always encouraged me to think and to learn.  Being a student was something that was really prized in my family. 

Benita: ok

Laura: And doing well in school was prized in my family and so a lot of the ways that I’ve become the person I’ve become I mean my parents didn’t teach it to me but they gave me the tools that I could learn what I wanted to learn.

Benita: Do they support you in your efforts for social change?

Laura: (P) That’s a great question. (p) It depends on which kind of social change we are talking about.  If we are talking about a way I impact one particular youth then they think that’s great.  If I start talking about marriage equality or about racial equality or about well you know, “I kinda think that people working here for five years and don’t have their papers need to get citizenship ‘cause I’m not real sure how they’re different from me.”

Benita: Mhmm

Laura: That’s interesting on a person by person basis for my parents but when you start talking about groups of people  (p) then some of their more conservative or less progressive viewpoints come out.  They’re willing to have me challenge that though.

Benita: Ok.

Laura: As long as I do it in the context of stories.  Um… If I do it in the context of facts that becomes less interesting to them.  So this is part of the way that I interact with people.  We probably look at the world from very different lenses.

Benita: true, well…my next question is to talk about your education like at Hollins and before you talked about how you…you always did well in school?

Laura:   Mhmm

Benita: ok

Laura: Ask me what you specifically want to know about Hollins.

Benita: Like what made you decide to come to Hollins?

Laura: (laughs) Um so my parents told me that I had to go to a Christian college or they wouldn’t pay for it. 

Benita: ok

Laura: And I dropped out my second semester. And said that college maybe wasn’t for me.

Benita: From here? {Hollins}

Laura:  No from this Christian college that I had to go to. 

Benita: ok

Laura:  I mean like hardcore you had to go to chapel to chapel two times a week

Benita: Which school was it?

Laura: Kings College in Bristol Tennessee

Benita: ok

Laura: You prayed before every class.  Women were there to get husbands, (laughs) it scared me.  But that’s really where I went.  Um because I was told to go to a Christian college or we won’t pay for it.  So I dropped out and said, “forget this I’m not in the mood to go to school, maybe I’m just not meant for college.”  My parents (p) after a year of me working at a truck stop thought, “Hmm maybe she should get to pick the next college.”  And my best friend was coming here and so I moved here to go to school because I’d came to visit her a few times.  It was the only school I applied to .

Benita: cool

Laura: I moved two hours down the road to go to Roanoke.

Benita: ok, we did some research through newspapers and stuff  and I was looking for like, I didn’t see anything but maybe I didn’t look hard enough like were you involved in any clubs?

Laura: No.

Benita: or organizations while you were here.

Laura: Well that’s not true.  I was involved with SHARE. 

Benita: ok

Laura: But I didn’t like any of SHARE’s volunteer projects so I developed the independent projects part of SHARE.  And became the co-chair of the independent project (both laughing). Which just translated into the fact that I got to work with refugees and I got to work with an after-school program that I really wanted to go to. 

Benita: Ok, which one?

Laura: Um.. The after school program is West End Center for Youth on Patterson Avenue and then I also was an ESL tutor, English as a Second Language tutor.

Benita: Are they still operating?

Laura: Mhmm both are still operating.

Benita: Ok, that’s cool.  And West End, what does it do again? I didn’t… 

Laura:   Um West End Center is an after-school program for predominately youth of color for predominately youth of economically disadvantaged backgrounds .

Benita: ok

Laura: There were one hundred youth when I was there. I want to say they are up to one thirty now and I also worked as an English a Second Language tutor for a family from Vietnam.  So I was very involved with the outside community but I wasn’t very involved with the Hollins community.

Benita: Are there any specific professors that you remember who helped shape you in good or bad ways?

Laura: (P) I’m thinking (P) (awkward) you know there weren’t a lot of really amazing professors here in my time.

Benita: ok

Laura:  There were people who were supportive.  There maybe weren’t people who pushed me. Susan Thomas had just been hired.

Benita right

Laura: Uh and, she was probably the person, the closest I came to somebody who really pushed me and challenged me.  There were people who gave me space to do what I wanted to do but there maybe weren’t a lot of people who took where I was, recognized what I was capable of and sort of steered me.  Hollins gave me the space to become who I needed to become.  Hollins didn’t necessarily help shape that person.  And maybe that’s enough. Maybe providing space is all an institution is supposed to do.   I wish I could tell you about this amazing mentor that I had, but I didn’t have that at Hollins.

Benita:  Cool… so um next question is:  How do you feel like your education at a women’s university has affected your life and community work?

Laura:  In terms of Hollins itself that is a little tricky for me to define.  But in terms of a women’s college and the experiences that I had at a women’s college I think it very much impacted me.  I was very quiet.  I (p) wasn’t necessarily insecure in what I thought it just didn’t occur to me to say it out loud because of the schools that I come from

Benita: Mhmm

Laura: There is this idea that you speak your mind and you don’t worry about who’s going first and, you know, this idea that your voice actually does matter.

Benita: Mhmm

Laura: That’s definitely something that I credit going to a women’s college that helped develop in me, and develop in me possibly younger or earlier than life than some of my other female friends.  That’s something that got instilled in me and that’s something that I am grateful of Hollins for.  In terms of how it has impacted my community organizing (p) I never really thought about that question. That’s a great question (P) And I need to think about it more because I’m not so sure that I know how specifically going to a women’s college has or my experiences at a women’s college has shaped me as a community organizer.

Benita: Ok

Laura: So ask me in two weeks.

(Both Laugh)

Benita: I will.   Can you tell me about like your experiences after Hollins?

Laura: Mhmm Um… I actually stayed in the area until last November then I moved to North Carolina

Benita: You went to Radford?

Laura: I went to Radford but I still lived in Roanoke.

Benita: Ok.  You commuted (knowing laugh from both).

Laura: (sarcastic) Lovely drive… uh, I actually ended up working for the two places I volunteered at.  At the refugee office I started there for three months and then I went to West End Center and I was a tutoring director there for two years.  Then I dropped out of the non-profit world and became a massage therapist and then I came back into the non-profit world and I did refugee work .  I was… it was called the School Liaison, which essentially means that I enrolled kids in school

Benita: Ok

Laura:  But there was a whole lot more to it.  There was when kids would come explaining to their parents how schools worked because it’s different in every country, explaining the US education system.  Explaining things like if your kid’s under twelve than they can’t be left at home alone.  Things are just different in other cultures where at the age of five kids are really capable of taking care of their siblings because they’ve been taught to do that.  So teaching those kinds of things but more than anything I taught US citizens how to deal with other people (laugh).

Benita: Mhmm

Laura: Like the assumptions of race, the assumptions of ethnicity, the assumptions of language like just because they don’t speak English doesn’t actually mean that they are stupid.  They actually speak five languages, this is their sixth.

Benita: Right

Laura: Wait for them to learn it.  So some of that real basic stuff teaching younger kids, you know elementary school kids, how to work with people who were different than.  You do not need to feel sorry for refugees but you do need to recognize that they have lost everything and that they are starting again and here’s how you can be a friend.  So part of it was working with refugees, but part of it was working with the Roanoke community to kind of educate people about refugee issues.

Benita: right

Laura: I loved that job! Refugee work very much changed my life and that isn’t a phrase I use very often.

Benita: Did you just come across it, or were you passionate about it before ….

Laura: I think teaching the family from Vietnam.

Benita:ok

Laura: Um, when you are in someone’s home and you are watching them navigate a new community in a new country and in a new everything.

Benita: right

Laura: you, um…it definitely sparked an interest in me and then when I began working there full time it just, it became the thing that I loved.  And out of all of my jobs, and I’ve had some amazing jobs, the refugee work is probably the thing that I’m still the most fond of and the most grateful for getting to do. 

Benita: Can you talk more about working with the family from Vietnam?

Laura: I taught four kids.  But they were like, the kids in the family were my age and then I taught the mom of the family and her name was Sen. So I taught Sen, Hein, Thu, Qua and Hau.  So those are the sibling. And I got really close to them. And so my senior year  actually Thu was killed in a car accident and I became extremely close to the family in that time because in some ways they needed help navigating the funeral system and navigating little things say they needed me to do this…And not that that all fell on me as the ESL tutor because the refugee office did a great deal of that work

Benita: ok

Laura: But there were other things, like they wanted a plaque for the urn so I went and got the plaque.  So it was those little type of things that when you’re mourning your brother or your mourning your son you don’t have the energy to do.

Benita: Right

Laura: So in some ways it was my senior year and that experience that I, in some ways,  they allowed me to share with them that really connected us. Um and Hien, who was the sister to Thu, and I were extremely close and so a lot of what I learned about being a refugee initially I learned through her eyes.

Benita: Right.. Well ok next question is to talk about your job experience, are there any other jobs that …

Laura:  Really significant?  I mean I’ve done, I think I’ve had twenty-nine jobs since I was fourteen.  Like I, I’ve had a lot of jobs.  In terms of major jobs the tutoring director position at West End Center that I’ve mentioned and then the school liaison at the refugee office and then when I was in graduate school I was the program coordinator of the group called the United With Youth and it was the leadership development program for teenagers.  Most recently I was the executive director of the organization called North Carolina Lambda Youth Network which was a leadership development and social justice organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered youth- most of whom are youth of color, most of whom are in the fifteen to nineteen block.

Benita: right

Laura:  And I did that for ten months and in January I said goodbye to that job and now I am a temp for Duke.

Benita: (both laugh) that’s cool.

Laura: And I am waiting to here about school in the Fall.

Benita: You?

Laura: I’ve also worked with kids as a mentor.  I’ve been an after school tutor.  I’ve been a Homebound teacher.  I’ve done a lot with youth in different capacities.   I‘ve also been a massage therapist and cleaned houses.  You know I’ve really done it all. (laughs) 

Benita: Why did you decide to work with youth?

Laura: (P) You know I, maybe I didn’t decide.  I mean maybe it’s just sort of what I fell in to.

Benita: ok

Laura: Um, maybe the youth found me and said you are going to need to show up and start doing some stuff with us. (p) I just moved into a new house and within two days the neighborhood kids were like camped out on my porch and my girlfriend is like, “Did you talk to them?” and I said, “No I didn’t.  I mean they just kind of showed up.”  And she was like, “How do they find you wherever you go?   Like how do they just know?” And I was like, “ I don’t know.  I didn’t do anything! I just waved. That’s it.” (Both Laugh) Kids find me.  They also know that I truly adore them.  I love being in the presence of kids and not because they are cute or adorable, I love what youth bring to my world

Benita: right

Laura: and I think youth know that I genuinely have that like, “You’re cool! Can I sit and talk to you?”

Benita: (laugh)

Laura:  So they show up on my porch and maybe they call me into their lives and it became sort of what I did.

Benita: Ok well…do you think they…You say they have shaped you but what do you think your most rewarding experience besides the Vietnam like what was your from your more recent jobs?

Laura: Hmm (p)

Benita: Or one of them.

Laura: Probably I would count rewarding experiences in terms of relationships that I’ve built.

Benita: Ok

Laura:  I knew some really amazing youth and they’ve let me in their lives.

Benita: right

Laura: and they tell me their stories.  And that’s probably the, it isn’t one rewarding experience but that is probably the rewarding experience that I’m most grateful for.   I also had the opportunity to work with youth both refugee youth and youth, US born youth, on a photography project the last year while at graduate school.

Benita: in Ghana?

Laura: (excited) Wow, yeah I didn’t really think about that as a job.  Yeah, Ghana definitely caps everything I’ve been saying.  Ghana definitely would be number one.

Benita: I went to Ghana.

Laura: You did, where?

Benita: I went to Legon/Accra.

Laura: Oh yeah.

Benita: Yeah it was cool.

Laura: Doing what?

Benita: Oh yeah, just study abroad.

Laura: For how long?

Benita: For four months.

Laura: Did you love it?

Benita: I loved it. I want to go back

Laura: Do you miss it?

Benita: Yeah, I feel like that’s my home.

Laura: I want to go back.

Benita:  Yeah, cool.

Laura: Yeah Ghana, I think of Ghana as some sort of other realm outside of my jobs.  Ghana was definitely my most rewarding experience.

Benita: Can you talk about it some? Like when…

Laura: Yeah!

Benita: When you went first…

Laura:  I went in between my first and second year of graduate school.

Benita: Ok

Laura: And I initially…through friends of friends got an internship with this social welfare agency .

Benita: ok

Laura: …which involved a lot of me sitting and I don’t really sit so well.

Benita: ok

Laura: I do it well at home but not when I’m trying to get stuff done.

Benita: Mhmm

Laura: So I ended up just making friends who just very graciously took me places so I ended up working in an orphanage for like literally half the time that I was there.  Not all at once like a week here, five days there, um I also worked with street kids.  At the end of my time I did a mini research project with about five street kids in three different locations.

Benita: right

Laura:  Asking them questions about their experiences of street of being a street kid because it’s a little different from the western perception of “these kids are homeless.”  There are a lot more involved than that some of which is. “I’m twelve and I’m not in the mood to work for you I would rather go work for myself and sleep on the streets.” Like there are youth who actually decide it would be good for them.  And that kind of complicated scenario I wanted to tease out a little bit so that I wanted kids to raise up what it would be like to be a street kid for them and all the reasons why.  So I did that but for the most part  I just (p) I hung out.  And I lived with families, I learned how to not be so messy eating with my fingers. Like, you know, I learned all of what it means to be an outsider. 

Benita Right

Laura: And all of what it means to have to negotiate that.  Which was really invaluable for me, just that experience alone.  I think that I had a little more sensitivity to those issues because of my refugee friends.

Benita: right

Laura: But hearing stories and doing it yourself is completely different.

Benita: true

Laura: So it was really really good for me. And I miss it (laugh)

Benita: Understandable.  Well, we are asked to ask everyone how do you define activism.

Laura: (p) Ok, I tell a lot of stories and here’s my story for that. 

Benita: ok

Laura: A friend of mine this summer who is like this amazing community activist

Benita: Mhmm

Laura: She does youth organizing on a national level.  We were talking and she said, “Do you ever get tired?” And I said, “Yeah, and I am not willing to have my life only become what I do.”  And she said, “Some of my elders keep telling me that if I move back to Mexico and I help raise my nieces and nephews, that’s activism, that’s being in the movement, that’s social justice, that it isn’t just this work…but it is me being who I am in my life.  That is social justice.”  And I keep that in mind because I kinda think that activism. There is a definition that engages social justice and engages working for equality, working for transformation, but there is also a lot more simple way I approach my life that’s the way that I do what I need to do to be the person I’m committed to being.  And that kind of activism I think is ultimately more transformative…you go to a peace rally and then people get all pissy on the way home because they are trying to get on the metro and they can’t work the change machine.  Like, what’s peace?  Is peace our movement or how we interact with each other when we are all cold on a January day and we’re all trying to get back on the metro.  So I think activism for me is a lot more about how I approach my life and the equality that I try to bring to every interaction.

Benita: So you would consider yourself an activist?

Laura: Mhmm

Benita: Ok, that’s cool

Laura: It’s probably not one of the five words that I use to define myself. (p)  Because it’s more about how I do what I do. 

Benita: ok

Laura:  But yeah, that’s the word that I would use.

Benita: So it’s not you engaging in activism but a way of life where you bring peace or…

Laura: I think so.  I mean,yeah, but I tend to be somebody who says what I do through stories or I do this and this and here’s this person I know, versus (satiric conceited tone) “I’m an activist scholar.”  It’s just not the kind of language I use.

Benita: Ok, that’s cool. Well the next thing is to tell me about your social change/activist work but I think we’ve covered that.

Laura: (laughs)

Benita: Unless you have anything else you want to say about it? For now?

Laura: Mmmm, ask me about it later, ask me that question again in two weeks, and tell me what time it is because I got to go {had speech at 1:15}

Benita: It’s 12:52.

Laura: We’re good.

Benita: Ok.  Why did you decide to take part in this project?

Laura: I like the idea of asking a group of women why they do what they do and how they got there. 

Benita: Ok

Laura: When I was listening to this first speaker talk today I kept thinking you are eighty-eight years old you have been doing this forever.  And somebody actually asked her, they asked the entire panel, how do you keep going?  And her answer was in part, “Because I can’t find anybody else to do this so I got to keep going.”  And I think that there is something really invaluable about hearing the experiences of our elders, about listening to each other and learning about how we have become who we are.  And I’m not so sure that I have something to add to that that is phenomenal but I think that the group what gets combined in that, I think that that is pretty phenomenal.

Benita:  How do you feel like participating in it now.  Now that it has actually started?

Laura: It’s cool.

Benita: ok… (laughs)

Laura: I’m easy. (laughs)

Benita: Well I guess that’s good for now. And we can set up another time to talk.

Laura: Yeah

Benita:  I really want to know more about Ghana.

Laura; Oh, I’ll tell you all you want to know about Ghana!

Benita: and like just another question

Laura: Yeah?

Benita: How does. Like I know that your job before this one working with youth that are like at a questioning time, I would call it a questioning time personally..

Laura: Mhmm

Benita: But like is it like sometimes…I feel like, I don’t know…are you like there maybe sometimes they can’t talk to their parents, and I know your parents are conservative, does that burden you sometimes?

Laura:  That’s a great question. I (p) it’s interesting because I had the assumption that a lot of the youth were going to be questioning.

Benita: Yeah.

Laura: But some kids walked in like, “Mmmm I’ve known since I was eleven and I had my first girlfriend when I was twelve.  And I’m like, “I didn’t kiss anybody when I was 12 much less know that I was gay!”  This really is a different time in some ways.  For some kids. I don’t want to make broad based, that everyone knows when they’re twelve

Benita: Right

Laura: But increasingly kids are becoming able to identify and say out loud and come out to their parents much younger.

Benita: Right

Laura:  So in some ways it’s kind of inspiring.  In some ways I am so in awe of kids’ courage and looking at themselves and knowing themselves and saying, “This is who I am and how I am going to be.”  There are other kids who are like, yeah it’s a lot harder.  And now that I am out of the organization I am able to take care of kids and sort of interact with them in different ways.

Benita: Mhmm

Laura: I mean one of the kids stayed with me last Saturday night after her grandmother beat her   So there are those times and it is hard.

Benita: Right

Laura: I couldn’t really take her in as the director but now that I’m just a temp worker I can take her in and let her stay with me for a night.  And there are those moments.  I think what I have to remember in that (p) Is that this youth has been strong enough to survive her life up until now.

Benita: Right

Laura:  And I don’t do her well by feeling sorry for her.  But I do do her well by saying, “I need to see your back, I need to see if you got bruises and then what movie do you want to watch?”

Benita: Right

Laura: And let’s be silly for the rest of the night to take your mind off stuff.  And I’m not going to bring up that bruise until tomorrow morning when I need to look at it again.  And that, that also comes from having ten years of having done this…I still have my soft heart but I don’t let anybody in to make a permanent home there.

Benita: ok

Laura: Like I learned how to still love and love deeply but also say I can only take on this much, and I don’t need to feel your pain for you.  I can just sit there with you while you’re feeling it.  And that took me a long time to learn and I am not saying that I always do it well.

Benita: Right

Laura: But for the most part I’m able to look at bruises and be silly and watch a movie.  And both of those things need to happen for her.  So my long answer is yeah it burdens me (p) in moments.  For the most part I have pretty significant hope about the youth that I work with and what is possible for them. (P)

I love my babies!

Benita: Well, thank you.

Laura: I’m sorry this was like…

Benita: No it’s cool

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