SpeakOut with Staceyann Chin in Miami

PERFORMANCE, WORKSHOPS & SLAM
FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL & TRANSGENDER YOUTH

JOIN us for a weeklong residency with nationally recognized Jamaican lesbian spoken word poet STACEYANN CHIN that includes workshops and an open mic for GLBT youth. Chin’s poetry is a bracing, no-holds-barred yet tender examination of her own life and the world around her that locates itself at the complex intersection of sexual, gender and racial identities. She co-wrote and performed in the Tony Award-nominated Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam and presented her own one-woman shows Off-Broadway.

SCHEDULE:

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museum job (new york)- el museo del barrio

Received this info and thought I should pass it along. It would be a great place to work, especially if you are interested in Latin American and Caribbean art.

Here’s the info:

Interested in working at El Museo? Please feel free to check out our job opportunities at http://www.elmuseo.org/jobs.html

Also, if you are looking for an internship, El Museo del Barrio relies on the support from Interns for numerous programs, projects, and events throughout the year. Opportunities are available for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students who are considering careers in the arts, education, and museum profession. Positions offer rewarding and valuable learning experiences with chances to meet and interact with new people, and develop overall familiarity with El Museo’s collection and Latin American and Caribbean art and culture.

Go to: http://www.elmuseo.org
Click on EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS (on the left)
Then Click on INTERNSHIP & VOLUNTEER (on top right)

what makes an “artist”?

Today, Roberta Smith published a harsh review of the show up at the Bronx Museum entitled, ‘How Soon is Now?’ I won’t copy the review here, but I will post some of the harsh highlights (ouch!). Here is one work, by Jeanne Verdoux called “Living Room” that she did actually think was worthy of being called “art.” I haven’t seen the show in person so I can’t really give you my own take on it.

Anyhow, on with the harsh highlights:

zora neale hurston film on pbs

A documentary about Zora Neale Hurston will air this week on PBS.

	Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun April 9, 2008 at 9 pm Check local listings Writer, cultural anthropologist, chronicler of folk roots and ethnic traditions, daughter of former slaves, Hurston was one of the most celebrated – and most controversial – figures of the Harlem Renaissance.

political theater about liberty city

– from the play “Liberty City,” now onstage at the New York Theater Workshop through Sunday, March 16

article online from the NYTimes

and a review from the NYTimes

In the play, Thompson plays generations of characters primarily based on herself, her family and the other African-Americans and Caribbean immigrants with whom they came in closest contact (and conflict) in the struggling, vibrant and politically charged Miami neighborhood of Liberty City from the late 1960s on.

Here are a couple of quotes I found intriguing from the article:

“too much political theater gets locked into preaching to the converted. But it doesn’t have to. As long as you use the central tool of empathy. That’s how you make good theater, and theater for people who may not know about the things you’re dealing with.”  – Jessica Blank

“What so much of the theater of politics is missing is the artistic part.” -April Yvette Thompson

It’s great that a play like this has been written and is now on stage. Now, when is it coming to Miami?

thought for today; embodying home

“I don’t think you can ever leave home.

You take it with you. It’s in your hair follicles,

in the bend of your knees, the arch of your foot.

You can’t leave home. You just take it and rearrange it”

– Maya Angelou, African-American Lives (PBS), 2007

students on hunger strike at columbia

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Statement from the Strikers

Why We Strike…

We are on hunger strike because we want change and because we believe that change is worth sacrifice. We strike against a university that seems not to care for the well-being of its students or of its community. We strike because we feel the urgency of a student voice that is continually being marginalized. We strike because we don’t want students in the future to have to resort to drastic measures to affect change in this institution.

We strike because student input on these issues in meetings, through protests, and through other avenues of vocalization has been ignored or patronized, and the response to our demands for change has been woefully insufficient. We strike because we abhor, viscerally, the failure of current administrators to address student concerns on these issues and because this failure constitutes violence against our intellect. We strike because these are not matters that will, nor can, wait . . .(more on the website)

What are we demanding?

We demand that Columbia expand ethically, support Ethnic Studies, reform the Core Curriculum, and improve administrative support for students of color, students of faith, and LGBTQ students:

Because our cause is multi-faceted, our demands call for change on all levels and ask for a spectrum of responsibility:

• a more systematic response to hate crimes from Public Safety
• a more collaborative expansion effort from the administration
• a revision of the Core that encourages critical engagement with issues of racism and colonialism
• more resources and support for the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER), the Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS), and the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA).

We don’t just want new programs or changes and improvements to existing programs. We want lasting changes in the power dynamics between the university, its students, and its community.

More on their blogspot page.