Sarah Jen

Topic: Intergenerational Mentorship

Mentorship takes many forms and I find that it is often best offered and accessed through a rich, diverse network of individuals who can lend expertise and/or experience in different areas of life. I have been the beneficiary of many mentorship relationships and I see my mentors as making up my own queer kinship network, wherein the typical boundaries of generational divides, chronological age, and biological relations are relatively meaningless. In order to create this collage, I asked 10 of my closest mentors to provide representations of the areas of life in which they have guided, supported or inspired me - navigating academia without losing my own integrity, forming queer community, engaging in activism, balancing work with personal and family needs, etc. I then compiled these images with some of my own, representing my own growth and development across varied aspects of life. This is certainly not a representation of an end point, but some then-and-now points which inspire me to imagine the possibilities of my own future.