Mwende Katwiwa, who performs under the name FreeQuency, is a Kenyan-American slam poet, community organizer, and activist.[1][2] Their poems address issues of identity, emotion, racism, colonialism, and police brutality in the United States. They live in New Orleans.[3]

Katwiwa graduated from Tulane University in 2014.[4] [5] They self-published a book of poetry, Becoming//Black, in 2015. They have also been touring the U.S. to perform spoken word poems since 2011.[3] They gave a TED Talk in 2017 called "Black life at the intersection of birth and death."[1] They work for Women with a Vision, a nonprofit based in New Orleans.[5] They also work with slam poetry and open mic organizations in New Orleans.[3]

They won the 2018 Women of the World Poetry Slam.[6] At the poetry slam, Katwiwa performed "Dear White People" and "The Gospel of Colonization."[7] Katwiwa also placed at both the 2015 and 2016 Individual World Poetry Slam.[3]

Mwende Katwiwa is active in the Black Lives Matter movement, reproductive rights and abortion rights activism, and LGBTQ+ advocacy.[8] Katwiwa is part of the New Orleans chapter of BYP100 and is involved with youth organizing.[9][10] For example, they helped organize a protest march in 2014 regarding the killing of Michael Brown by police.[11] Although they were primarily involved with in-person organizing, they also used the social media site Tumblr to promote the protest.[12]

Katwiwa is genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns.[5]

Bibliography

  • Alonso Castro, Laura María (2019). Slam Poetry vs. Racism: Awakening Awareness and Social Change in FreeQuency’s “Dear White People” and “The Gospel of Colonization” (BA thesis). University of Zaragoza.

References

  1. 1 2 Goughnor, Kara (January 28, 2018). "An Interview with Poet "FreeQuency"". The Insider. University of Pittsburgh.
  2. ↑ Alonso Castro 2019, p. 1.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Samuels, Diana (November 13, 2016). "Poetry off the Page; New Orleans artist intertwines spoken word, activism". The Times-Picayune. p. D01.
  4. ↑ Johnson, Fawn; Hollander, Catherine (July 13, 2012). "Washington, D.C.: Still a Tough Town for the Ladies". The Atlantic.
  5. 1 2 3 McTighe, Laura (June 2020). "Theory on the Ground: Ethnography, Religio-Racial Study, and the Spiritual Work of Building Otherwise". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Oxford University Press. 88 (2): 409. doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfaa014.
  6. ↑ "Slam poet champion to perform Nov. 8". Nebraska Today. University of Nebraska-Lincoln. November 1, 2019.
  7. ↑ Alonso Castro 2019, p. 8.
  8. ↑ Wilkerson, Emily (November 18, 2020). "A Roadmap for Understanding". Tulane University School of Liberal Arts. Tulane University.
  9. ↑ Oliviero, Katie (2018). Vulnerability Politics: The Uses and Abuses of Precarity in Political Debate. NYU Press. pp. 276–277. ISBN 9781479838677.
  10. ↑ Hogan, Wesley C. (2019). "The Movement for Black Lives". On the Freedom Side : How Five Decades of Youth Activists Have Remixed American History. JSTOR: Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. p. 134. ISBN 9781469652474.
  11. ↑ McTighe, Laura (June 2020). "Theory on the Ground: Ethnography, Religio-Racial Study, and the Spiritual Work of Building Otherwise". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Oxford University Press. 88 (2): 428–429. doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfaa014.
  12. ↑ Safronova, Valeriya (December 19, 2014). "Millennials and the Age of Tumblr Activism". New York Times.
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