Alok Vaid-Menon walked on stage wearing a bright blue dress and platform shoes with his colleague Janani Balasubramanian, who wore tight brown skinny jeans and a patterned button-up. Both had matching bright blue lipstick and immediately started performing.
Saturday night, the poetry duo Darkmatter, comprised of Balasubramanian and Vaid-Menon, spoke at the Indiana Memorial Union as part of the duo’s “#ItGetsBitter” 2015 tour.
They presented poems about transgender youth, American politics and sexual identity.
“Once a white woman asked me where I was from, no, where I was really from,” Balasubramanian said. “Then she told me she was going to India for her nonprofit that year. Oh, tell me more. Take me with you.”
The duo is based in New York City and plays sold-out venues like the Asian American Writer’s Workshop and La MaMa Experimental Theater, according to the IU Student Association’s website.
The show started with an introductory act of poetry written and performed by Chris Redding. Redding is a 22-year-old senior at IU studying telecommunications. Redding also raps and acts.
Redding recited poetry about social, college and relationship issues. He reflected on time with his grandfather, who inspired some of his poetry. His grandfather is always talking, Redding said.
“He’s talking and you miss the highlight play of the night,” Redding said. “One thing he always said that sticks out to me is, ‘When I was born, I wasn’t a full human being. I was half a man. I was born as half a man when all this stuff (civil rights) was going on. So, I was Mr. Black Nationalism.’ So that got me thinking. You don’t know where you’re going unless you know where you came from.”
The poem that followed spoke about black social issues and black pride.
Darkmatter took to the stage next, starting with a poem about coming out to traditional South Asian families.
“When I pierced my nose and told my grandmother that I am no longer a boy, no longer marriage, no longer patriarchy, she tells me that I am a disgrace to our family,” Vaid-Menon said in his poem. “That I let the white man inside of me when he bit my tongue. And I am sorry, sorry, sorry, broken phone call.”
Darkmatter’s other points of discussion included reproductive rights. Reproductive rights have traditionally been about women’s bodies, but Balasubramanian said that actually isn’t true — they’re about everyone’s bodies.
“It’s particularly about different racialized people’s bodies because our bodies have always been seen as a threat if we’re having too many children, and we’re always seen as having too many children,” Balasubramanian said.
Darian Tanner is a senior at IU and is an active member in the Sigma Lambda Gamma sorority.
Tanner said she went just to see her friend, Redding, perform, but Darkmatter pulled her in and made her stay. She said she wanted to support Redding at the show.
“I am familiar with the LGBTQ community on campus, but I had never seen any poetry from them,” she said. “I am a poet, so to hear their issues with that frame was informative and refreshing.”
Toward the end of the performance, Darkmatter’s Vaid-Menon began reciting a poem about becoming politicized after 9/11 and the stigma that followed.
“That day you woke up and found that you were afraid of yourself, too,” Vaid-Menon said. “At lunch, your white classmate asks you why your people did this to us. And you point to your shirt, and you point to your flag and you point to your god, but these are things that no longer belong to you and for the first time in your life you feel ‘We are not them,’ we are feel ‘We are not Muslim, ‘We are feel ‘brown.’”
The Darkmatter “#ItGetsBitter” tour stop at IU was put on by IUSA, the IU Feminist Student Association, the Indian Student Association IU and the CommUNITY Education Program. The event also hosted a clothing drive for transgender youth in Bloomington.
