Aurielle Lucier Academic Statement Contest 1/10/2016

My father had an affinity for black renaissance poets (we’re talking Harlem, not Italy).

Langston Hughes greeted me at breakfast; a small paragraph, once read, rewarded me with a meal. I memorized his words like prayers, often challenging my summer nights with a loud

“Black as the night is black! Black as the depths of my Africa, I am a Negro!” to scare away whatever ghosts may have followed me home between the street lights. I was introduced to

Zora Neale Hurston, quite young. Long after I was supposed to be sleep, I marveled over the works of her prime by flashlight. Often I would wonder what she’d make of the poems I penned. “And what about this, Zora? Do you think I’ve effectively communicated what its like to be eight and black and misunderstood?”

Even before Michael Brown was murdered in Ferguson, I knew I was dedicated to using my voice and body as a vehicle for eradicating white supremacy. It all began as a love affair with the liberation of poetry. Writing was a vehicle for catharsis, a necessary step in processing my world. My hunger for poetry exposed me to philosophy on white supremacy and injustice, by black artists. I noticed that the experiences I had with poverty: lack of access to health resources, and lack of equitable reproductive care, weren’t limited to me. In fact, these issues stretched across the span of the entire Black Experience.

It was said once by the great Nina Simone, “It is the responsibility, I feel, for black artists to speak about the times.” In the same way, I felt it my duty to use artistry to project my lived experiences as a black queer woman onto the world around me. The anthology of blackness Aurielle Lucier Academic Statement Contest 1/10/2016 often came through poetry, jazz, and hip-hop. There was the Harlem Renaissance, then activist/artists like Lorraine Hansberry and Nina Simone. Then Nikki Giovanni, and Ntozake

Shange, MC Lyte, and Tupac. To discover those writers was to discover myself. It wasn’t long before I realized that the space poetry and black radical artistry provided me should’ve been accessible to all youth of color. At seventeen years old, I created a curriculum that took me all over the country. The Tupac Shakur Center for Arts, Harvard University, NYU, Columbia, all places that carried high esteem, wanted me to create alongside them! And then, My poetry lead me to the frontlines when the call for #BlackLivesMatter rang out. My words confronted

Attorney General Eric Holder when I was invited to discuss the state of black youth. They challenged Hillary Clinton when I was asked to represent Atlanta in a private meeting. I called on the enchanting power of Zora, and Langston, and myself, to weave a story for these political leaders about the violence a black kid can endure in our toxic system.

I was moved to finish my bachelors at Evergreen, because like most Greeners, I know the value of lived experiences. I am very familiar with the social political, legislative, and systemic impact that the voices of marginalized communities create. My program for Winter quarter, Out of the

Shadows: Women of Color in the Era of Civil Rights, has been a catalyst for challenging the way we view women in relation to leadership and political strategy. Women of color were and are warriors, galvanizing an entire movement despite threats of violence and limited resources.

These women embody everything I know of what it means to be an artist: to be willing to sacrifice all conveniences and comforts, in order to create (be it change, or masterpiece). I am Aurielle Lucier Academic Statement Contest 1/10/2016 taught to deny myself, to limit my full spirit in order to make white supremacy comfortable.

However, at Evergreen my value is not in how well I can appease dominant culture; rather, my value is linked to how different I am, how my presence makes supremacy uncomfortable, how my ability to speak up disturbs the surface of the pool. I want to use all that I learn here to create sustainable programs merging grassroots activism, poetry and hip hop culture. I want to inspire young folks to be vehicles of change, while looking at literacy with a completely new lens. I want to disrupt the insufficient models of racism. Because of poetry, I am able to resist this conditioning and stand in antithesis to those demanding my silence. At Evergreen, I am being given the tools to create a new world in which we can create change.