Photos and story by Elise Sandlin
Middle Tennessee State University’s Women’s History Month theme this year is “Women Who Tell Our Stories”. Phillips Bookstore in the Student Union Building welcomed MTSU female storytellers to share their creative work with students.
Booths lined the middle of Phillips Bookstore with content of the women who share their stories through art.
E.E. Sorrells, a psychology major with minors in mental health services and writing, found out about the event from the bookstore manager. She decorated her booth with mutued colors and pops of red. It featured bookmarks, a tea set and books from her poetry collection exploring mental health. Stacks of the 256-page poetry book laid on her table, ready for signing.
“With Raspberry Tea” is about her mental health journey as a teenager. It is split into four sections: getting bad, getting worse, getting better and being better.
“It’s just learning how to be okay,” Sorrells said.
Most pages of this window into her soul feature a related illustration by her friend and fellow MTSU student Alexis Goar.
This book is one of three in her poetry collection. In each work, she dives deeper into her mental health. “With Sassafras Tea” follows “With Raspberry Tea”, and last of the collection is “With Lavender Tea”.
“Tea has healing and calming properties, so it’s a progression of me trying to calm myself down and treat my anxieties and other disorders,” Sorrells said.
Maigan Wipfli, the Director of the June Anderson Center for Women and Non-traditional Students and the Chair of the Women’s History Month Committee, organized the event. Wipfil felt empowered to see the amount of femle storytellers on campus sharing their raw truths.
“Getting together a group of women from MTSU who’ve written stories and really showcasing the people here on campus who are these storytellers is special,” she said. “In the future, they are going to be the people who have written and will re-write history. Those pieces will continue on and on.”
In Sorrells’s raw truth, she advises to use discretion before reading. “It might remind you of things you don’t want to be reminded of, but in a subtle way,” she said.
Sorrells also has a book of short story collections called “With Raspberry Jam: Stories from the Berry Patch”.
All of her works can be found online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online publishers. She promotes her work regularly on her Instagram.
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