I invited Idris Goodwin to speak to some of our kids today, as he is spending this week on campus hosting various events each evening. He was really exciting; the kids seemed really interested in what he had to say. I'm really looking forward to processing some of it with them tomorrow.
One thing I don't want to process them tomorrow is Goodwin's response to the question, "How do you make a living writing poetry?" He answered that in this capitalist society, everybody's gotta sell what they can. When people call Kanye West a sell-out, he went on, that's unfair. Everybody's selling something. He goes around selling his type of hip-hop at poetry slams and at schools. Ms. Dahlke, he continued, comes to school to sell herself.
Yeah, he said that. And yeah, the kids got it.
5 comments:
uh that is so cool and so cool that he came to your class
totally. so nice.
It is cool that he came to your class but the terms that he used are interesting. Interesting because when people talk about sex workers, we always say that they are 'selling themselves' or 'selling their bodies' and sex activists and researchers are always trying to get them to change the way they speak (they're selling a service, not THEMSELVES). Our retort is always "you don't say that teachers, lawyers, and doctors are selling themselves!"
I don't know whether that's what he was getting at (hyperbole?) or whether it was something related or whether he just didn't think about what the hell he was saying, lol
oh yeah, it was for sure the last one. because right after he said it (and right after the kids went crazy) he clarified, "i MEAN she sells her ABILITY to TEACH!"
What a great video! Too Shy to Stop writer Fawn Clark just did a piece on Goodwin's visit to the University of Illinois. You can read the article here.
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