S229.
Joy Is an Act of Resistance: A Poetry Reading by Women of Color
Saturday, March 26, 2022
3:20 pm to 4:20 pm
In a culture where women of color are ever-expected to perform rage/anger as a primary mode of social protest, five poets flip the script and read poems with joy as their primary focus. These poets find strength in Toi Derricotte’s writing and notion that “joy is an act of resistance.” They explore the powers of gratitude, eros, humor, devotion, and love—those forces necessary to defy/oppose/disarm regimes of hate and division.
Participants
Tina Chang is the author of Hybrida, Of Gods & Strangers, and Half-Lit Houses, as well as coeditor of Language for a New Century. She is a professor and the director of creative writing at Binghamton University.
Brenda Shaughnessy is the Okinawan Irish American author of five poetry books, including The Octopus Museum and Our Andromeda. A recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, she is a professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark.
Patricia Smith's books are Incendiary Art, a 2018 Pulitzer finalist and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah; and Blood Dazzler, a 2008 National Book Award finalist. She is a Guggenheim fellow (2014), two-time Pushcart winner, and a professor at CUNY and in Sierra Nevada's MFA.
Tracy K. Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, memoirist, translator, and librettist who served as poet laureate of the United States from 2017–19. She is a professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
Natalie Diaz is a poet with too many colors and voices and places and identities to live in this short reservation of a bio.
