When asked to attend a meeting on
the subject of gender, race, sexuality, or some other topic, I decided to go
and see the spoken word poet, Michael Reyes. He is a part of the Social Justice
series and has been featured on HBO and PBS and has travelled both
internationally and nationally using his poetry as a way to talk about history
and other important topics to him. He began his presentation by asking the
group to call out 15 different words and then one to end with and he used those
words to come up with a poem on the spot.
The topics of most of his poems for the night were identity and
diversity. He told the group that “As a person of color” he is always searching
for opportunities and ways to find his own identity.
Reyes talked a lot about his life in Chicago.
He described as a place that is violent, has drugs, HIV, and Child abuse, but
is also a place to create your own reality and be who you want to be. He was
questioned all the time on who he wanted be, because no one thought he could
make it as a full time poet. They all doubted his decision. He described the
idea of internal racism. That concept is when you hate the person you are so
much that it makes it easier to kill someone who looks like you. That lead into
his next conversation on how statistically, most of the murders that occur are
done by someone who looks like the victim.
Another big topic that he mentioned
in his poems was the sphere of influence. He said that when we do things for
others, it should not be about instant gratification. He said that we should
focus more on the spheres of influences, or the people that we can affect. Each
of us has our own sphere of influence and just making an impression on one
person in our sphere can cause them to make an influence on one person in their
own sphere and so on. He also focused a lot on the idea of happiness and how it
is different to every person. He said that if you can see the beauty in the
world, then you don’t need money to make you happy. For this he used the
example of feeding the ducks with his god daughter.
Being that this was a presentation
on diversity, and identity, it seemed fitting that he would use a poem about
how he feels about being Latino. He described them as being a cosmic
people. They were mixed with almost
every type of person out there in the past. They had a Spanish influence, but
were also affected by slave trade and colonization, and other forms of movement
as well. He was very proud of who he was and where he came from. He was not
afraid to show it at all. He was proud of coming from a ghetto and emphasized
that if we didn’t have ghettos, we wouldn’t have jazz of many other
contributions that many people love today. He talked about how the word ghetto
has and identity. It is political; they have murals, and food that is popular
in them. He emphasized the difference between a ghetto and a slum and said that
through the negative things, the best work is found and ended his message by
saying that wherever there is oppression, there is some kind of beautiful works
around it.
When entering into this
presentation, I felt nervous. Not that I wouldn’t be accepted, but just that I
would be categorized wrong. I am not in a minority group at all, besides being a
woman. I have never lived in a hard situation, such a slum, or in poverty and I
am not part of the GLBTQ community. I wasn’t sure if showing up to this meeting
would cause people to misread me or misjudge me for it. When I got there, I
realized that no one really cared who showed up. They were just happy that the
word was getting around that people were interested in hearing him speak. The
people there were all very kind and did not treat me different or exclude me at
all. The culture that Michael Reyes talked about was completely different from
what I was raised in and understand. I could never deal with knowing that
people get murdered outside your door or that you may not know when you will
get your next meal. I have always lived a sheltered life and that is becoming
more and more obvious as I get out more on my own in college. This matters
because it shows how everyone is raised differently and it is these situations
that shape us into the people we become. You always hear the saying “we are the
products of our surroundings” and this became more evident listening to Reyes
speak.
He had a passion for speaking and wanted people
to know about the struggles of the poor people of Chicago, yet he proved that
he was able to overcome his obstacles and make something of himself. A meeting
like this exists, in my opinion, to show us that we may all come from different
places or see ourselves differently, but we can still come together as one
community. That is what I learned about my community. As I sat there listening
to everyone laughing as one and genuinely enjoying themselves, I saw that even
though not one person in that room can say that they had exactly the same experiences
as Michael Reyes, they still understood what he was talking about and where he
was coming from enough to appreciate what he was saying. It was eye opening to
see that we truly are a community here at Tech and that everyone respects and
appreciates on another so much.
