43 min listen
Strange Fruit #165: "Lipstick Wars" Brings Women to the Slam Poetry Stage
FromStrange Fruit
ratings:
Length:
30 minutes
Released:
Mar 26, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
If you think of poetry slams as sedate affairs where people sip wine and read monotonously from notebooks, you might want to go visit one. Louisville's vibrant poetry slam scene is made up of a diverse groups of poets reciting works that often tackle deeply personal topics, and encourage audience reaction and participation. But as encouraging as these spaces are of free expression, Louisville poet Rheonna Thornton noticed they didn't always feel welcoming to women poets. "And when they did go up," she said, "you'd hear, 'another angry black woman piece.'" So Thornton started her own poetry slam, for women: Lipstick Wars. Thornton joins us this week to talk about how she made that happen, and to look ahead at her next project, The Lip gloss Diaries, a poetry slam for girls ages 15-18. She also sits in for our Juicy Fruit segment, where this week, where we keep the Women's History Month love going by celebrating 10th grader Akilah Johnson. Her Google doodle, which honors her African-American heritage, was selected from 100,000 submissions to the "Doodle 4 Google" competition for young artists.
Released:
Mar 26, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Strange Fruit #31: Urmi Basu of New Light India; Kaitlyn Hunt, Statutory Rape & Queer Relationships: Activism runs in Urmi Basu's family; her grandfather was a doctor who set up a school for _dalit_ children (India's untouchable caste) in his own home. Urmi says her family "always challenged everything that's traditional in India." Thirteen years ago, she combined her passion for gender equality and her background and education in social work—along with 10,000 rupees, or $200—to found [New Light India](http://www.newlightindia.org/). New Light is non-profit organization based in the red light district of Calcutta, intended to help victims of sex trafficking and provide healthcare to people living with HIV/AIDS. With an estimated 40,000 new trafficked sex workers in the city each year, it's no small task. But Urmi is a woman of great determination. She was in Louisville recently and she sat down to talk with us about her work, and how sex trafficking in India is part of the larger globa by Strange Fruit