One after another, students stood at the podium and told their stories of the black experience.
Some cried and yelled. Others were soft-spoken. They spoke of oppression, stereotypes and the power of their culture.
Roughly 200 students from three local high schools — Bloomington High School North, Bloomington High School South and Bloomington Graduation School — and some from IU, attended the annual read-in at the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center. Students did readings of original pieces of poetry and works by black poets.
The aim of the event is to encourage students to express themselves through writing and think more deeply on their cultural experiences, said Steve Philbeck, a teacher at BHSN who has attended the event every year.
“I think it’s an opportunity for everyone to share in a culture that they experience every day but don’t necessarily recognize it,” Philbeck said.
After students who had signed up to perform did so, the read-in transitioned to an open mic, where anyone in the audience, including IU students and faculty members, could perform poetry, spoken-word pieces or songs.
The event is also a chance to appreciate African-American art and to reflect on a common history, said Stephanie Power-Carter, director of the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center and associate professor at the IU School of Education. Power-Carter improvised a tune and sang Maya Angelou’s poem, “Phenomenal Woman.”
“It’s a celebration of African-American literacy and literature, where the students can speak their hearts and their passions,” Power-Carter said. “African-American history is everyone’s history, and we have to support it and nurture it.”
Many of the students’ original pieces had ties to current events, particularly police killings of Tamir Rice and Michael Brown, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Ignoisco Miles, an IU graduate student who emceed the event for the fifth year, said he was impressed by the awareness students demonstrated in their original pieces.
“A lot of the pieces were weighty in a good way,” Miles said. “It shows that the students aren’t just nonchalantly and naively going through life and ignoring what’s around them. Piece after piece showed students focusing on issues and their social and political feelings.”
IU junior Shai Warfield-Cross attended the read-in three times as a student at BHSN. Despite being extremely shy, she performed her poem, “My Black Is Beautiful,” during her third year at the event. She read the poem, which focuses on the assumptions and stereotypes she has faced because of her race, again this year at the request of Power-Carter.
“Everybody was so inspirational, so even though it was really hard for me to say my piece I felt determined to share it along with everyone else,” Warfield-Cross said.
The success and growth of the read-in has taken it to an unexpected capacity, Power-Carter said.
“It’s grown every year, we really can’t afford to grow any more,” Power-Carter said. “We’d love to be able to invite more schools, but at this rate we’re outgrowing the space. We can’t fit any more people here, and this space is so intimate that we don’t want to have to give it up.”
Jaslynn Guerrero, a senior at BHSN, said the work her fellow students shared was surprising and motivating.
“It just kinda opened my eyes because the problems we are facing are universal,” Guerrero said. “I didn’t realize my peers were so well-informed.”
The scope of the performances impressed the power of self-expression and the opportunity to inspire social change, Guerrero said.
“It made me want to go back to school and try to empower other students too,” Guerrero said. “Twenty-first century oppression is a problem, but our voices can be heard and we can work to improve our situations.”
