Staceyann Chin, celebrated slam poetry performer, engaged students Thursday night in an intimate performance in Crowell Concert Hall.
“[Chin] has taken her silence and transformed it into language and action,” Associate Professor of African American studies, anthropology and women’s studies Gina Ulysse repeated three times before Chin took the stage.
Ulysse opened the event, acknowledging that the U.S Presidential debates were taking place the same night. She praised Chin for her commitment to make her voice heard about social and political issues.
Chin’s visit was arranged by Associate Professor of African American studies and history Demetrius Eudell, Director of the Center for African American Studies and is the first performance in the series titled “Young Turks Historic Issues: New Approaches.” Chin performed once before at Wesleyan in the spring of 2002 in the MPR.
Chin, who has a noticeably large afro that she made reference to several times during the performance, was barefoot.
“There’s an afro in the back of the room,” Chin said to a round of laughter.
Chin continued to talk to the audience in a conversational tone.
“I dropped a f—ing drawer on my toe,” Chin said as she started to describe a recent injury.
Chin soon broke into a poetry performance, which criticized people’s ignorance and bigotry, drawing on experiences from her personal life.
Chin described her life as a lesbian and as the child of a bi-racial couple. Her father is Chinese and her mother is Jamaican.
“Asians are not one big race,” Chin said in her poem.
She also denounced those who blame female victims of rape on college campuses for being too provocative.
She talked about how she left Jamaica because lesbianism was illegal, but that she came to the United States and found many obstacles, including racism and homophobia.
The subject of Chin’s poetry varied from protest of the war in Iraq to the pleasures of lesbian sexuality. Most all the poems were geared toward bringing about change in society, although they ranged in tone from the serious to the comic.
One of Chin’s poems she called, “How to Get a Straight Girl.” The poem began: “Rule number one, you have to be friends first. Rule number two, wait at least three months and then see if she has a problem with her boyfriend.”
Some of Chin’s favorite poets include Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman.
“I’m a reader and student of literature,” she said. “Since so much of my work is political, I worry that some of the art is lost because it provokes such ire in people.”
Chin said that now politics is more important to her and urged the audience to take action and be vocal.
“Use your voices,” Chin exclaimed.
Chin reinforced the fact that we have the right to speak and encouraged protesters to refine their oratory skill so that those who do not agree with them will be forced to listen.
“If we don’t use our voices, we’ll be forced to strap bombs to ours back [like some in the Middle East and elsewhere],” she said. “If we don’t speak, who will?”
“She was mind-blowing,” said Josh Cohen ’05. “Speech is such a vital part of her performance and making people feel uncomfortable is a positive thing.”
Chin told a humorous story about a meeting she attended in a small town outside of Chicago where students met to discuss race issues and the history of slavery.
“There was a white kid with blonde hair,” Chin said. “Let’s say his name is Todd. He got up and started crying, saying ‘I feel so guilty [about the history of slavery]. I don’t know what to do. So after he was done, a black girl…she said, ‘I know what you can do, give me your khakis, and those glasses, give them to me.”
Chin’s final poetry piece was a dance-like performance that addressed jazz and the history of how white men in the music industry exploited black artists and black music.
“I came back to see [Chin] because I was so impressed with her first performance at Wesleyan,” said Tia Clinton ’06.
“They were exuberant and fabulous, and they were a listening audience,” Chin said of the audience at Crowell.
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