Cute as a button and with an outfit to match the attitude, Isa Nakazawa ’08 just might be the nicest person I’ve met on the Wesleyan campus. But don’t let her smiling exterior fool you—this girl is a force to be reckoned with. While she’s been involved in a number of student groups and activities during her time at Wesleyan, in her senior year Nakazawa has chosen to focus on what she is really passionate about: Writer’s Block. A former anarchist from the Boston area, Nakazawa is an accomplished spoken word poet and performer. Yesterday Nakazawa was nice enough to take a break from the sunshine and answer a few questions surrounding her Wes-celebrity status.
Cory Baldwin: I guess we’ll start off with the burning question…you used to be an anarchist? I never would have guessed that.
Isa Nakazawa: [Laughs] Senior year in high school was definitely the height of my militancy. I used to go into the city a lot and organize with anti-Nazi and antifascist collectives. At the time there was such a rise in active Nazis in Boston, and a lot of acts of intimidation or violence were occurring as a result. We used to put padlocks on bandanas and try to swing at Nazis. It was a funny time in my life. It was definitely dangerous. When you’re in high school I guess you feel invincible. You do stupid shit.
CB: Did this just end when you came to Wesleyan?
IN: Well, what happened was a bunch of Nazis found out where I live and put flyers and Nazi paraphernalia all over my driveway and yard but nowhere else on the street. My mom came home and saw it and asked me about it, so I admitted to her that I had been active in antifascist organizing. She made me promise that I wouldn’t do that and put our family in danger, because it was obviously not a coincidence that they had just chosen our house. So I refocused my energies onto different work in the community. You’ve got to kind of pick your battles.
CB: So I’ve seen you perform your poetry a few times on campus, and I know that you are pretty involved with Writer’s Block. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
IN: I’ve been a part of Writer’s Block since my freshman year. One of my good friends, Marc Arena ’07 started it. At that time I had written poetry but I was really nervous about performing. Marc pushed me to perform at this poetry slam for Latino Awareness month. I was really nervous and almost had a panic attack right before I performed it. But it was a really important moment in my life, and since then I’ve been performing around the Wesleyan community and elsewhere. But yeah, I take Writer’s Block seriously. It’s easy at Wesleyan to feel like there’s no outlet for release for everything that builds up during the week, and it’s really nice to convene with other poets every Sunday.
CB: Where do you perform off-campus?
IN: Well, the first time that I performed off campus is actually a pretty funny story. It was at an Asian Awareness summit in Boston. I signed up for what was called the “community showcase.” I was under the impression that the showcase was just a performance for everyone attending the event, all the other poets at the workshops. It ended up being this insanely large event and all of the poets who were headlining were my idols, all of these Def Jam poets. I look up and see this poster with my name one it, next to my idols. People didn’t know who I was… nobody knew if I was a man or a woman because Isa is a really common Japanese male name.
CB: Whoa, that is crazy. And really cool. What was it like performing alongside your idols?
IN: It was great. I mean, I was really nervous. But I got to know all my favorite poets and got to be pretty good friends with them. So it was a really good opportunity to network.
CB: What is your poetry generally about?
IN: I’m a self-conscious poet. I try to call attention to the medium itself. I think spoken word poetry is going in a dangerous direction. Men use it a lot to holler at women. And then it becomes really basic when it’s about identity, you know, about staging an essence… and I’m so not about that. My poetry is about exposing the hoax of superficial identity politics. And corny love poems.
CB: On a more superficial note, I’ve heard you described by more than one anonymous Wesleyan student as “the best dressed girl on campus.” There seems to be some particular emphasis on your shoes.
IN: Well, I worked at a “kicks” store in San Francisco last year, and it was the first summer I decided I wasn’t going to do anything serious and just work in retail. I worked at this place called Villains. It was a tight job. I got mad free shoes. I got to holler at a lot of dudes. I’ve always wanted to work at a shoe store because girls generally don’t work at shoe stores, and I feel like dudes don’t think girls know anything about shoes, which is not true. No one ever thought I worked there. People were confused. I hooked up mad Wesleyan people with discounts.
CB: Feel free to hook me up anytime. Are you going back to the West Coast after graduation, or staying around Boston? What are your plans after the next few months?
IN: I’m going to move to Oakland, California. And I proudly proclaim that I have no formal plans. I plan on performing, I plan on eating some good produce, and getting a job to pay my bills. And then in a year I’m going to go to school for performance studies. Most of the good schools for performance studies are all on the East Coast so that is why I’m going out West again for a year.
CB: That’s cool, so you are really committing yourself to performance and your poetry.
IN: Yeah… I feel like I wanna do something that’s practical, I don’t wanna be an empty academic. I want to affect change and I think performance is a good way of doing that. You are spreading your own truth, and using your body, and spreading your story through your own vehicle. I definitely want to be an active person. And I do, for like a week, want to be a standup comic. Because I admire people like Dave Chapelle. I like jokes.
CB: Any good jokes to leave us with?
IN: Well, the funny thing is, I’m not really a punch line person. I’m good with impersonations and making fun of people. And I’m not gonna start making fun of you, that would be whack.
CB: Okay, well I guess we will leave it at that then. Thank you for sparing me.
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