Audacious Resistance

The Union on a Thursday night is not usually the loudest of places. People gather around the TV or else sit in groups and either study or, more likely, just hang. Feb. 3 started out like any other Thursday night in the Union. A couple was curled up watching NCIS, a few students were gathered outside the IIC and people walked quietly through in ones or twos.

            The quiet night would not last.

            People started showing up around 8 p.m.  Individuals and small groups soon conglomerated into a gathering of about ten people.  Ten people became twenty, which became thirty, which eventually climaxed as about forty people, excited and shouting, gathered around a microphone that had been set up in front of the fireplace. Finally, one more person joined the group; the one they had all been waiting for.

            Sonya Renee is an internationally recognized Slam Poet.  She has won several national and international Slam Poetry competitions and has appeared on shows such as HBO's Def Poetry Jam and Monique's Fat Chance. Last Thursday she came to Northwest.

            Renee's success has been attributed to her brutal honesty, unabashed emotion and her complete, unhesitant willingness not only to approach and discuss many of the uncomfortable social topics that have affected her life, but her willingness to throw them straight at peoples' faces.

            All of this was undoubtedly present that night.  Despite her boldness and the uncomfortable nature of many of her topics, Renee was more intimate than intimidating.

            "Slam poetry is about an exchange of energy," Renee said at the outset of her performance.  "We play off each other.  I say something you like, you shout out and let me know it. You have a question for me, you shout it out."

            Just to make the point, and to work up some energy, she started a round of call and response.  If anyone still had hopes of a quiet night in the Union, they were immediately dashed.

            Renee's poetry was a blast of lyrical wit fused seamlessly with scathing social commentary. Her words carried the weight of honest, personal experience and they painted startlingly intimate pictures from her life.

            Renee touched on a myriad of topics that often overlapped but were always sharp and poignant. From drug addiction to gender confusion, from abusive relationships to Alzheimer's, from the complexities of love and self-respect to dealing with HIV/AIDS, nothing that Renee touched could hide from the light.

            She could discuss topics as simple as safe sex ("Don't love 30 minutes with anybody's genitals more than you love yourself.") before touching on something as complicated as drug addiction.

            But just as Renee was intimate as opposed to intimidating, she was there to discuss problems and not place blame.

            "I'm not into morality tales," Renee said. "I learned to engage people in a way that didn't involve judgment. I'm here to translate the language of street desperation."

            And if Renee's performance got loud and intense, it was met by the crowd's enthusiasm. People would shout encouragement, yell out agreement, and sometimes just scream in approval.  And then there were the questions.

            The questions spanned the gambit from, "How long have you been doing this?" to, "What was it like being on Def Jam?" and, of course, "Where did you get your earrings?"

             The night was filled with question and answer, call and response, rallying shouts and seconds of awed silence. Renee's message is as uplifting as it is unsettling, as entertaining as it is eye opening.  She exposes brutal truths one moment and gives hope for a solution the next.  She shows a world where people are oppressed by themselves and their neighbors. A world where people are expected to accept the roles society gives them. 

"As women we're expected to be quiet and submissive," Renee said. "As black women we're told that we're lesser, that we're not the standard of beauty. We're told to accept the way things are. My goal is to live in audacious resistance."