Dispel Your Single Story

When a story is endlessly repeated it assumes the status of truth. Single stories can be dangerous, not because they are untrue: there is always some truth to a single story. The danger is when the one story becomes the only story.  “Spoken word poetry is the type of poetry that is written on a piece of paper, but performed for an audience. A performance unlike a theatrical monologue, the spoken word is an ecstatic rendition of a personal experience using word play, free association, alliteration and slang. Zeal and attitude are the key ingredients. Spoken word relies on the poet’s own experiences and his or her own narrative style. It is almost like a chic rant of aggression waiting to be unleashed. Since it is performed poetry, spoken word gives the writer the freedom of slang and uncontained rhythm in expressing their piece.” (Veda Nadendla).

An artist that truly inspired me was Amal Kassir: Story-telling activist and Spoken word poet. Amal was born and raised in Denver, Colorado to a German-Iowan Mother and Syrian Father. Two seemingly opposing worlds combined to grant Amal her lived experience. Her fiery spoken word poetry and story-telling activism is the result of her lived experience. Her sadness and frustration seeps through every single word. The urgency to act now boldly echoes in her voice. But she never walks away without giving you a sense of her name. Her name, Amal, which means “Hope” in Arabic. The hope that we will live to see a better world : one that doesn’t hate people seeking asylum, discriminate over race, religion or gender – or look the other way when seeing police brutality in the streets.  As citizens of the globally connected world, we need to be armed with information more than ever. It’s at our fingertips.

 When given this assignment, I thought about how art can be used as a form of activism. I was also always fascinated by the art of spoken word performances. After doing some research, I realized that activism through poetry has been around for as long as the art form itself has. “From the times of Shakespeare to the Beatniks, till the time of hip-hop and slam poetry; the spoken word has successfully revolutionized poetry to give it a commercial, yet essential flavour. Spoken word has brought poetry to life; it is the art of storytelling in rhythm.” (Veda Nadendla)  Knowing this, I decided to take a poem I had written about a year ago, that its sole purpose was for an English class assignment, and started to think “What’s the next step for making this into something bigger?” I decided to produce this poem as a video that lives on YouTube: “Dispel Your Single Story”. Production was a huge part of my project. I decided to put a video overlay of everything that is depicted as “Islam” in the media to  symbolize that that’s the perception people have of me at first glance, but if they listen and really get to know me, they’ll learn that that is just a single story. Hopefully my project will encourage other young activists to “complain” with me and tell their own stories. Get “DYSS” trending with me and Dispel Your Single Story

             

Dispel Your Single Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-UcLUlh9WY 

Works Cited

“Amal Kassir.” Book A Muslim, https://bookamuslim.com/amal-kassir/.

Nadendla, Veda. “The Art Of Storytelling In Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry Through Ages.” Youth Ki Awaaz, 28 July 2014, https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2014/07/art-storytelling-rythm-spoken-word-poetry-ages/.