Creative Works

Host Introduction

Hey guys, Corey Poirier here. Welcome to Blue Talks and I hope you enjoy this video.

Dr. Ruby Mendenhall

Thank you, it's wonderful to be here at UCLA. So I want to ask you, raise your hand if you have big dreams. Right? Big dreams. Love it. Love all the hands up. There's a saying that said, if your dreams aren't scary, then they're not big enough. So raise your hand if you have big, scary dreams. Yes. Love it. Okay. So I want to talk about tiny steps to big dreams. And I want to start with saying how in society, we often applaud those who are struggling, right? They're kind of coming up through the cracks and we should because that's important. It shows resilience. But what if their big, bold, audacious dream is to be a rosebush and to perfume the air? And then that's what we should help people strive towards. Those big, bold, audacious dreams. And I want to tell you a little bit about mine, but I'm going to take you back to grammar school when I was a child. And I want to tell you stories about my mother and father who were makers and who also facilitated my big dreams.

Family Foundations

So my father — I loved to play with dolls growing up as a child. And I asked him to make me a bunk bed, a red bunk bed. He did that from wood, from his own imagination. He would take bikes that were often discarded and would make these beautiful bikes that I enjoy. And I also asked him to make a swing where I could sit in the backyard and just swing. And he did that. So whatever I asked him to do, right, he was able to make it and have it come to life. And so my mother — fast forward to high school graduation — and she is a seamstress. Her mother is a seamstress. They tried to give me the skill. I didn't quite have it. That's not quite my gift. But my mom was like, "I'll make a dress for your graduation." And as I was leaving out the house, she's like, "Okay, don't go get the most fancy, the most complicated pattern." I was like, "Okay, mom," went to the store, right, went to Vogue and got the dress that had ruffles on the side, ruffles on the chest. It was satin material. It was complicated to make. And I brought that raw material to my mother — buttons, thread — and she made the dress exactly like it looked in the pattern. But all that to say that, again, right — skills to bring to life whatever can be imagined. And both of them grew up in the South. My mom in Macon, Mississippi, my father in Camden, Alabama, and they picked cotton before migrating to the North. So when you look at me and as I tell my stories, those are the foundations that I stand on.