Our Culture

Ok so we're supposed to make this our space, and I've been meaning to for a while, so I'm going to.  I've spent a little bit over 45 minutes on YouTube watching Def Poetry Jam videos and wanted to share a few that I thought were of particular meaning to me.  I'm going to put up 3 videos, the most striking of which is one of Suheir Hammad and her poem "First Writing Since" which deals with her experience as a Palestinian woman post 9-11.  These 3 poems gave me a lot of perspective and a lot of food for thought about the topics of religion, the word nigger and it's use today, and how we deal with living in a world after 9-11.

Here's the link for the Suheir Hammad video-

This is Julian Curry "Niggers, Niggas, and Niggaz"-

This is Talib Kweli with "Hell"-

I think sometimes that we can get caught up in a lot of things that detract from the real root of the issue, and that these poems helped sum up a lot of the feelings that I've been having about these issues and cutting through a lot of the spin and opinion presented as fact.

I hope that these links work...