TU invites poetry and activism

By: Sierra Underdue, Staff Writer

As a part of the continuing diversity initiatives at Towson, the Center for Student Diversity in collaboration with Lambda Theta Alpha brought in poet and author Elizabeth Acevedo to campus last Wednesday night. 

“It’s a diverse event,” senior English major Alana Whearry said. “When you say or when you think about diversity, a lot of people think about color and not multiple ideas and identities as far as sex, gender and even artistic talents. There are a lot of people here that write poetry or rap and this definitely caters to them.”

Elizabeth Acevedo is an Afro-Latina spoken word poet that hails from New York City. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland.

Since then, she has gone on to win several spoken word competitions including the recent 2016 Women of the World Poetry Slam, and has had the opportunity to give many TED talks and was even featured on BET. She currently lives and works in Washington D.C.

“I’m actually super, super excited to be here,” Acevedo said. “When you all reached out and asked me to do something on intersectionality, talking about what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a woman of color, to have an immigrant background to be accented to walk in this body every day I was like, ‘yasss!’” Acevedo said.

Acevedo went on to perform all of her poems in her series, each touching upon ideas of race, womanhood and truly loving and appreciating who you are.

“This experience has brought me to the forefront of womanhood,” junior mass communication major Josephine Hill said. “I felt a greater sense of awareness when she talked about abortion, intersectionality, and the politicization of hair. My mom is of immigrant background, so I feel that she did a phenomenal job of bringing cohesion to women. Being a woman of color and being a woman of immigrant decent and coming from a poor community that really resonated with me.”

Leave a Reply

Close

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.