The Schomburg Center's Public Programs Pre-Professional, Jamara Wakefield, shares what inspires her as a spoken word artist in honor of April's National Poetry Month:

My mother’s collection of African-American literature was my first black history library. Her books became a  literary sanctuary where I discovered Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Zora Neale Hurston’s I Love Myself When I Am Laughing And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean & Impressive. I thought I was a little Zora, and I aspired to embody her quirky style. Ntozake Shange’s writing  also made me want to twirl and dance in my room. As I grew older, I lost myself in books like Alice Walker's Possessing The Secret of Joy, books that taught me what it means to be a black girl and now a black woman—things I could never learn from reading the required 17^th century Victorian  literature in school. 

April is National Poetry month and here at the Schomburg Center  we recently hosted two exciting poetry events: Teen Night: Open Mic and The Eyes Have It: Poetry and Photography. The energy at these events inspired me to me to explore the work of playwright and poet Ntozake Shange, featured in our podcast selections, and the Gwendolyn Brooks papers found in our Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division. My mother once told me how she performed Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool” at a her predominantly white school in the ’60s, at a time when the message of the poem was at powerful as it was risky. After hearing my mother's story, I became obsessed with memorizing poems and reciting them for my audience of dolls, neighbors, family or anyone who would listen. I too wanted to find my voice. I wanted to be a poet.

As I reflect on those early encounters with poetry and my current work as a performer, it is clear to me that I stand in the long tradition of using performance, poetry and theater as a resistance strategy to revise, interrogate, and re-examine the historical events of our past. This foundation not only nurtures my self-esteem, but allows me to critically think about my role in the world today.