Speaking Truths: Young Adults, Identity, and Spoken Word Activism

By Valerie Chepp

The twenty-first century is already riddled with protests demanding social justice, and in every instance, young people are leading the charge. But in addition to protesters who take to the streets with handmade placards are young adults who engage in less obvious change-making tactics. In Speaking Truths, sociologist Valerie Chepp goes behind-the-scenes to uncover how spoken word poetry—and young people’s participation in it—contributes to a broader understanding of contemporary social justice activism, including this generation’s attention to the political importance of identity, well-being, and love.
 
Drawing upon detailed observations and in-depth interviews, Chepp tells the story of a diverse group of young adults from Washington, D.C. who use spoken word to create a more just and equitable world. Outlining the contours of this approach, she interrogates spoken word activism’s emphasis on personal storytelling and “truth,” the strategic uses of aesthetics and emotions to politically engage across difference, and the significance of healing in sustainable movements for change. Weaving together their poetry and personally told stories, Chepp shows how poets tap into the beautiful, emotional, personal, and therapeutic features of spoken word to empathically connect with others, advance intersectional and systemic analyses of inequality, and make social justice messages relatable across a diverse public. By creating allies and forging connections based on friendship, professional commitments, lived experiences, emotions, artistic kinship, and political views, this activist approach is highly integrated into the everyday lives of its practitioners, online and face-to-face.
 
Chepp argues that spoken word activism is a product of, and a call to action against, the neoliberal era in which poets have come of age, characterized by widening structural inequalities and increasing economic and social vulnerability. She illustrates how this deeply personal and intimate activist approach borrows from, builds upon, and diverges from previous social movement paradigms. Spotlighting the complexity and mutual influence of modern-day activism and the world in which it unfolds, Speaking Truths contributes to our understanding of contemporary social change-making and how neoliberalism has shaped this political generation’s experiences with social injustice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Release date: Feb 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781978801127

Book preview

Speaking Truths

Speaking Truths

Young Adults, Identity, and Spoken Word Activism

VALERIE CHEPP

Rutgers University Press

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Chepp, Valerie, author.

Title: Speaking truths : young adults, identity, and spoken word activism / Valerie Chepp.

Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021016604 | ISBN 9781978801103 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978801110 (hardback) | ISBN 9781978801127 (epub) | ISBN 9781978801141 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Social justice. | Youth—Political activity. | Social change.

Classification: LCC HM671 .C479 2022 | DDC 303.3/72—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016604

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2022 by Valerie Chepp

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

www.rutgersuniversitypress.org

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Zavi

Contents

List of Tables

Preface

1 Spoken Word Activism: Young Adults and Social Justice in the Age of Neoliberalism

2 Spinning Stories from Words Got Spit: Researching a Verbal Arts Community

3 Speaking Truths: Experiential Knowledge, Embodied Testimony, and Activist Storytelling

4 Creative Politics: Art, Justice, and Empathic Possibilities

5 Healing Justice: The Politics of Healthy Selves and Communities

6 #Activism and Beyond: Sustainability and Social Change in a Digital World

7 Intersectionality as Activist Strategy: Toward a New Identity Politics

Appendix A: Doing Ethnographic Research in the Era of Social Media

Appendix B: Core Sample by Venue Participation

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Tables

2.1 Overview of poet sample

2.2 Description of poetry venues

B.1 Core sample by venue participation

Preface

I was finalizing my last edits for Speaking Truths when George Floyd was murdered three miles from my home in Minneapolis. Floyd’s murder was the most recent incident in a long line of Black people killed at the hands of police, this time a white officer, Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes while Floyd repeatedly pleaded, I can’t breathe. Floyd’s alleged offense was an attempt to use a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill at a neighborhood grocery store, which led to his arrest and eventual murder. Captured on cell phone video, footage of the fatal encounter went viral. The day following his death, protests began in Minneapolis and soon spread throughout the Twin Cities; within weeks protests developed in all fifty U.S. states and around the globe. Polls estimated that, in the month following Floyd’s murder, between fifteen and twenty-six million people participated in U.S. demonstrations, making it the largest protest in the country’s history.¹

An epicenter of the Minneapolis uprising—the third police precinct—sat less than a mile from my home. Although protests were mostly peaceful, the precinct was burned to the ground, with hundreds of surrounding businesses along the Lake Street corridor suffering arson fires and other forms of property damage. For the first time since World War II, the Minnesota National Guard was fully mobilized in an effort to quell the unrest. Standing on my front porch, I could see the sky ablaze from burning buildings, plumes of smoke rising, the smell of fuming destruction hanging heavy in the air. Loud unidentified booms, armored vehicles, a Black Hawk helicopter, and sirens occupied my neighborhood. Community watch groups formed as state officials warned residents of outside agitators (some connected to white supremacist groups) coming into the Twin Cities to capitalize on the unrest and incite fear and violence.²

Despite the flood of emotions—anger, fear, sadness, and a small glimmer of hope—consuming that moment in time, I was also cognizant of the fact that I was completing a book about social justice activism in the midst of the largest and perhaps most impactful racial justice protest of my lifetime. I couldn’t help but compare the spoken word activism I describe throughout Speaking Truths and the racial justice uprising condemning the murder of yet another unarmed Black person at the hands of law enforcement. My mind harkened back to reviewers and friendly skeptics over the years who would ask me, "But, what is the outcome of spoken word activism? What social change does it produce?" Placing spoken word activism alongside the George Floyd protests—and the clear, measurable, and immediate victories gained from these protests—I could once again appreciate how challenging it might be to see significance in spoken word’s more personal, intimate, and seemingly gentle approach to social change.³

And yet, while spoken word activism is clearly distinct from the 2020 racial justice uprisings, these different social justice approaches share some similarities, which are harder to quantify or capture as tangible activist outcomes. One goal of Speaking Truths is to document these frequently overlooked or underexamined activist features. Like the activists in the George Floyd protests, spoken word activism is carried out overwhelmingly by young people—many Black, Brown, Indigenous, multiracial, and white allies who hail from the Millennial and Gen Z generations. These early twenty-first-century activists have come of age under neoliberal policies and ideas that have resulted in mounting social inequities. Placing their various tactics side by side illustrates the myriad ways one can show up for activist movements. Occurring against the backdrop of a global pandemic, the racial justice uprisings underscored the importance of face-to-face participation as well as remote forms of activism, such as giving money to racial justice causes, donating supplies to protesters (e.g., water bottles, face masks, and milk for pepper spray relief), and engaging in political activity online. Social media continues to be a prominent fixture in many twenty-first-century activist efforts, including spoken word activism and the George Floyd protests, used to mobilize, communicate, and grow activist networks.

As Speaking Truths documents, contemporary activists also give attention to the political importance of personal and collective well-being and the activist role of healing from social trauma. Art and beauty can play an instrumental role in this healing process. While Speaking Truths shows how poets understand the healing power of spoken word, in the days and weeks following Floyd’s murder, public street murals—including those painted on boarded-up businesses—emerged as an important way to communicate social justice messages, grieve, and honor Floyd’s legacy and humanity.⁴ Many twenty-first-century activists also emphasize insights of intersectionality and standpoint theory, drawing attention to how our location within social groups shapes our experiences with inequality and informs our perspective and knowledge of the world; this includes whether, for example, we regard prejudice and violence disproportionately directed toward a particular group to be just. For this reason, as Speaking Truths shows, personal storytelling can be an effective tactic, forging paths for empathic ways of relating to people across difference and further building support for a cause.

While large demonstrations, confrontations with law enforcement, and property damage—all strategic tactics in their own right—tend to captivate audiences, there are other components of early twenty-first-century activism that are harder to measure but still very meaningful to the people who practice them. Healing, art, empathy, and personal storytelling are activist features that often go unseen or underreported in news coverage of social justice activism. Speaking Truths gives voice to some of these underseen tactics. In doing so, this book offers a fuller and more complex picture of contemporary young people’s social justice work.

Speaking Truths

1

Spoken Word Activism

Young Adults and Social Justice in the Age of Neoliberalism

All This for Poetry?

Turning the corner, I saw a line of people already forming outside the front door, a full hour before the show was set to begin. It was ten o’clock on a warm spring Friday night. The bustling nightlife of Washington, D.C.’s U Street neighborhood was in full swing. Patrons packed themselves into overcrowded bars. Couples strolled by hand in hand with leftovers swinging carelessly in doggie bags by their sides. A group of fashionably dressed women donning clutch purses and four-inch heels laughed while a pair of men flirted for their attention, with little success.

I took my place in the queue and watched it grow as the eleven o’clock hour approached. The line was made up of predominantly young African Americans, between the ages of twenty and thirty, decked out in casually hip attire: bangles, braids, hoodies, and T-shirts with clever expressions plastered across the front. As we waited, anticipation built and questions began to ripple through the line: When will the doors open? Do you think they’ll sell out before we get in? Is this your first time? Are you performing tonight?¹ Passersby gawked with curiosity at the length of the line, extending halfway down a full city block. One gentleman intrigued by the spectacle asked, What are you all waiting for? A young woman in the queue responded, The poetry slam. The man chuckled in disbelief without breaking his stride: All this for poetry?

As I waited, I jotted notes in my small pale blue notebook, recording the conversations, interactions, and scenery happening all around me. Just a few months earlier, I had begun conducting fieldwork at the 11th Hour Poetry Slam to explore the political dimensions of spoken word poetry.² As a thirty-two-year-old white cisgender woman pursuing a doctorate in sociology, I had never previously performed spoken word myself. However, I was intrigued by claims that poets frequently made about spoken word’s ability to change the world, dismantle oppression, save lives, and move people to action.³ As a sociologist and social justice scholar studying inequality, I wanted to know how poets—who were mostly young adults (in their late teens, twenties, and early thirties)—understood their participation in this artistic practice as a way of inciting social justice and change. Why spoken word? And, perhaps more importantly, what difference did it make?

On this particular night, the stakes were especially high. The outcome of the poetry slam would determine who made it on the final D.C. slam team. The team would consist of four or five poets who would travel to compete at the National Poetry Slam (NPS) later that summer in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Near the front of the line, I spotted some of the poets—Ty, Yaya, and Jonathan—playfully chatting and joking around; by this time, I knew them as some of the regulars. Right then, I saw 2Deep the Poetess walking the length of the line. A twenty-nine-year-old Black poet, 2Deep usually hosted the 11th Hour Poetry Slam.⁴ But that night, 2Deep was competing for a team spot; as such, she had handed over hosting duties to another prominent D.C. poet: Drew Anderson (aka Droopy the Broke Baller). 2Deep was a self-described very blunt and sometimes raunchy host, and her approach often resembled that of a comedian, drawing heavily upon wit and humor to keep her audience entertained. She had a seemingly natural performance instinct about her, and I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn she had earned her master’s degree in theater (by day she worked as a federal government employee). 2Deep helped start the 11th Hour Poetry Slam in March 2008 by approaching the owner of Busboys and Poets, a well-known D.C. restaurant/bar with a performance space, and successfully lobbying the establishment to host a monthly slam. Within months, poets were performing to sold-out crowds, and in 2009 the 11th Hour Slam sent its first team to compete at NPS.

As usual, 2Deep was dressed for performance. Her hair was perfectly styled into a cascade of thin braids descending down her back. She wore tall black heels to match her black leggings, which peeked out from under a long brightly colored shirt kept in place by a thick black belt, showing off her curvy hourglass shape. 2Deep found me in line, hugged me, and gave me a complementary five-dollar wristband to get in, which I accepted with gratitude.

Soon after, Jonathan, a twenty-six-year-old white Jewish man, walked in my direction and greeted two young people standing directly behind me; they exchanged hugs. Jonathan then recognized me and introduced me to the pair: Neethi, a thirty-five-year-old South Asian woman, and Chris, a thirty-five-year-old white man who I soon learned was gay. Jonathan was familiar with my research and described Chris as a very important person in the slam community. He then confessed he was nervous and had yet to decide which poem to perform that night. Hugging us goodbye, he returned to the front of the line to reunite with his poetry friends, soon to be his poetry competitors.

Chris, Neethi, and I continued our conversation. I learned they were involved in starting a new D.C. slam venue, located across town in the Eastern Market neighborhood, in August. Named the Beltway Poetry Slam, this effort sought to draw participants from around the DMV, that is, the greater Washington Metropolitan Area comprising D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia.⁵ 2Deep had mentioned this new slam in our interview the previous week, though proclaimed to know very little about it:

From what I understand, it is directed at the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender crowd because someone said that the 11th Hour isn’t welcoming to that crowd. And I was like, No one ever comes to our shows! You know like, if they came, we’d be welcoming. But it’s like they just show up, you know. And so, it’s interesting that even in poetry we all can’t come together in one venue, or some feel that they can’t come together in one venue to express themselves and even then, you feel separated. And I don’t think there’s a race separation, but of all things I think it’s hilarious that there is a sexual preference separation.

2Deep’s impression of the new slam’s mission and target audience highlights broader themes I observed throughout my fieldwork. Poets regularly discussed issues related to social identity, both in their everyday conversations as well as in their poetry. Poets paid much attention to the significance of different experiences across identity groups and the challenges—and possibilities—associated with coming together around a common cause in light of this social diversity.

Indeed, the limited academic research that has been conducted on spoken word suggests that ideas about race—and identity more generally—profoundly shape discourses and interactions in poetry communities.⁶ Over the course of my fieldwork, I often heard the 11th Hour described as the Black slam and Beltway as the white slam. During this time, discussions about race, gender, and sexuality took center stage—literally and metaphorically—as poets performed poems that drew upon their personal experiences with these and other identity categories, including religion, class, disability, ethnicity, nationality, body size, and language status, among others. I became enthralled by the centrality of identity in spoken word, and I wanted to learn more about how poets understood its significance—in all its complexity and multifacetedness—particularly from a political perspective. How, if at all, did this focus on individual identity and personal experience play into poets’ perceptions of spoken word’s ability to incite social change? What was at stake if a strong attention to individuality was at the heart of their social justice activism? Did that alter the activist impact of their activities?

My findings illuminate how broader social, economic, and political factors provide an underlying logic to the poets’ approach to activism. Through their poetry, poets reimagine and remake identity as a political concept, simultaneously privileging identity and transcending it. Upholding values of individuality in their understandings of truth and knowledge, they challenge dominant narratives that marginalize the experiences of oppressed groups and contribute to social inequality, in both explicit and unspoken ways. Poets understand personal healing and well-being to be a hallmark of social justice, and they connect individual artistic creativity to broader social change tactics.

As I will show, the poets’ political interpretations of self-improvement and individual well-being, personal storytelling, and measures of impact are all compatible with early twenty-first-century neoliberal sensibilities; poets also rely heavily on the neoliberal apparatus of social media in their activism. At the same time, poets use spoken word to challenge the injustices produced by neoliberalism. In these ways, poets deploy tools of neoliberalism in their efforts to confront it. Some social change perspectives might doubt the effectiveness of this approach, captured in activist poet Audre Lorde’s famous claim that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.⁷ Yet the poets find spoken word to be a profoundly powerful activist tool. This book shares their story.

Identity, Narrative, and Poetic Politics

That night, Jonathan made the team. In part, it was his second-round poem titled Dear David that secured him a ticket to NPS. I watched Jonathan walk to the stage as the crowd clapped, whistled, and shouted words of encouragement. Jonathan’s young poetry competitors were the loudest, yelling supportive quips such as I know him! and Go ahead, poet! Once onstage, Jonathan adjusted the mic, waited for the noise to settle, took a deep breath, and, as the poets said, goes in.

Dear David is one of Jonathan’s most well-known poems. Speaking directly to the Star of David—the symbol of the Israeli flag—in his wordplay Jonathan explores the complicated relationship between his own Jewish identity and his disapproval of Israeli government actions against Palestine. I listened, rapt, as Jonathan’s voice echoed through the microphone with acoustic clarity and emotional conviction, reverberating slowly and cautiously through the first two stanzas.

A six-sided star fishes for identity on my chest

Tucked under a mixed family

It dangles like a worm on a hook under American waters

David, you’ve become a constellation we no longer strain to see

Like a king’s crown

Your yellow light showed us through the darkest times

Exposed us to the darkest crimes

When you labeled us a problem

A question

They answered with genocide

Another problem

Another question

They answered with atomic bombs

More problems

We stop asking

And instead promise never again

The audience was captivated. Jonathan stepped closer to the mic. His voice grew thunderous and angry as he vividly described the deceit, death, and senselessness that has accompanied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We lie

Dead

As our babies

Boom

Might as well drop them out of the planes

Makes as much sense as cartoons as war propaganda

Dear David

They gave you a nation but what did you say?

Are you trapped between those two blue bars or can you still get away?

Because Israel was dropped on top of Palestine and is there to stay

Like one triangle

Turned around and dropped on another

You see, David, my brother cannot be anti-Semitic if he is as Semitic as me

Isaac, Ishmael just wants to be free

But you’ve got him building pyramids out of the charred dust of bulldozed homes

In the Gaza

Stripped of rights

You’ve let your brother sleep naked and hungry too many nights

Specks of spit flew from Jonathan’s mouth, visible in the bright spotlight aimed center stage where he stood. He shook his head and closed his eyes in frustration:

You pharaoh

Cashing checks from the West

Bank

You’ve become

Settled

In your thinking

Unlike your Torah

You do not move

You have not turned

You six-sided sinner

You blind Goliath

You have a hexagon center that points nowhere but inward

What are you looking for out in that desert?

Is it another ghetto?

Are you somehow jealous of the swastika’s popularity among disaffected youth?

I mean, are you trying to be a bad ass?

At that point, Jonathan slowed his pace, quieted his voice, and asked, Or are you just an abused child / Now grown up / Molesting your nephew and calling him names? He continued: Dear David / Our homeland is neither / Just like the Christian Right.… How ashamed you’ve made us. The young audience screamed with approval and admiration of Jonathan’s play on words, which expressed opposition to conservative social politics. Then, Jonathan confessed to his once beloved star:

I used to cover all my notebooks with little pictures of you

Now I tuck you under my shirt in order to hide my association with

My role in unwillingly supporting your racial, national, religious apartheid

You make me sick

David

Oceans away

You fish for identity on my chest

Reminding me who I am

Because of how you can’t be

Reminding me where I come from

By showing us where we can’t go

You are a fallen star

Not lucky

Nor bright

Yet I still see myself in you far too often

Like some birthright trip to hypocrisy

From Crofton, Maryland

Because all I can say

Is never again

As I tuck my necklace away

And pray that we end this oppression⁸

Identity, art, and personal narrative are central to Jonathan’s spoken word approach to political engagement. Jonathan uses his personal experience as both Jewish and American as a window through which to articulate his antiwar message and disapproval of Israeli governmental policy. In fact, it is his personal experience that lends a unique political perspective on the situation and a type of authority with which to engage in social critique. Such a standpoint is highlighted in his conflicted personal relationship with the six-sided star [that] fishes for identity on [his] chest, which he used to proudly draw all over his notebooks but now hides under his shirt so as to conceal his role in unwillingly supporting [Israel’s] racial, national, religious apartheid. His lived experience and distinct standpoint provide Jonathan with a credible epistemological perspective and a unique authentic voice.

In his performance that night, Jonathan also leveraged spoken word’s artistic properties to advocate his political message. He performed Dear David with passion and emotion, his words accompanied only by a mic and occasional hand gestures. He artfully used the tempo and volume of his voice as a tool to accentuate the poem’s word play (e.g., But you’ve got him building pyramids out of the charred dust of bulldozed homes / In the Gaza / Stripped of rights) and internal rhyme (e.g., Like a king’s crown / Your yellow light showed us through the darkest times / Exposed us to the darkest crimes). He expressed subtleties unavailable through the written form, tapping into the spoken medium of the art form as he switched from the English pronunciation of David (with a long a and short i vowel sound, i.e., Dā-vĭd) to the Hebrew pronunciation (with a short a and long e vowel sound, i.e., Dăvēd, pronounced Da-veed) after asking: Or are you just an abused child / Now grown up / Molesting your nephew and calling him names? / Dear David.

In addition to his voice, Jonathan drew upon communicative elements of performance, using his body to convey the imagery of the Israeli flag by stacking his arms into two parallel lines as he asked: Are you trapped between those two blue bars or can you still get away? Throughout the poem, Jonathan’s lines were punctuated by audible snaps and ahhs from the attentive and lively audience. After he delivered his closing lines (As I tuck my necklace away / And pray that we end this oppression), the young crowd erupted into a boisterous uproar, shouting, clapping, and some even standing in order to express their appreciation for Jonathan’s artistic craft and anti-oppression message.

Jonathan’s performance of Dear David illustrates the centrality of identity and personal narrative to the type of activism carried out by many of the young people I worked with over the course of my fieldwork. For two and a half years I researched the spoken word community in Washington, D.C. During this time, I encountered hundreds of poets—mostly in their twenties and early thirties—who, through a performative artistic practice of telling highly personalized stories to a listening public, sought to create a more just and equitable society. I refer to this artistic-activist practice as spoken word activism, and I describe its contours throughout this book.⁹ I argue that spoken word activism is a useful case for illustrating a variety of tactics contemporary young adults employ in their pursuit of social justice. These tactics share a common genealogy with social movement tactics used by previous political generations, but they are also uniquely informed by the larger neoliberal context in which this generation has come of age. They are shaped by the state’s shrinking role in supporting attempts at equity and redistribution among the country’s most marginalized populations, while, on a discursive level, individuals are increasingly encouraged to take responsibility for their falling standard of living.

The case of spoken word activism not only reveals some commonly employed tactics of those fighting for social justice today, such as intersectional identity building and online forms of activism via social media, but also illuminates why young people find spoken word poetry to be a compelling activist tool. The art form allows poets to highlight the political power of storytelling, identity, creativity, and healing. Using spoken word, poets convey the reality of multiple truths, the necessity of intersectional analyses, and the social justice possibilities embedded in art, beauty, and empathic relationships. Poets recognize the need for sustainable, long-lasting practices in order to achieve meaningful social justice outcomes, and they strategically leverage the tools of social media and spoken word to amplify and maintain their activism. This activist approach is often intimate, personal, and holistically minded, recognizing the myriad requirements of a healthy existence.

Poets’ attention to the complicated interconnectedness of systems and issues can come at the expense of seeming politically unfocused, ill-defined, and disorganized. For this and other reasons, spoken word activism can be easy to overlook and its impact tempting to dismiss. It is often oriented toward individual or local-level change, such as healing oneself from past traumas, radically loving oneself, critically educating teen poets through mentorship, or cultivating sustainable and healthy community interactions. However, poets employ spoken word activism with the understanding that these micro-level changes can serve as the bedrock for transformations that can ultimately result in a more equitable and socially just world.

---

This book investigates the relationship between art and activism in a city well known for both: Washington, D.C. I examine this relationship through the prism of spoken word performance poetry, an art form practiced predominantly by young people in urban areas. As an artistic cultural movement, spoken word is associated with progressive politics and a revolutionary ethos.¹⁰ The poets in D.C. shared these political dispositions. Within this general understanding of poets’ political sensibilities, many questions remain, which I explore in this book: What does activism among young adults look like in the twenty-first century? How do young people come together to fight against present-day racism, homophobia, sexism, and other intersecting systems of inequality in a context characterized by a multiplicity of intersecting identities? Which social justice