Events

• September 20, 6:30 PM

  Vernacular as Resistance

  Three Sessions, 2.5 hours each (6-8:30pm) Wednesdays September 20th, September 27th, and October 4th Fees & Payment Options: $250 General / $220 AAWW Members (Become a Member!) Full payment due before first class. Maximum of fifteen students. Priority will be given to previous students of Vernacular as Resistance. *STUDENT RATE for limited seats, contact Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org for availability!* What is vernacular literature? What is its role in dismantling the oppressor’s language and assumptions? What happens to power when the oppressor co-opts the vernacular of the oppressed? And why would the oppressor want to co-opt the oppressed’s vernacular? Could it be becoz our power is embedded; encoded in our vernacular? We will explore these questions and read texts that challenge imposed ideas of hierarchy. Workshop discussion will center around Rotten English ed. Dohra Ahmed (W.W. Norton, 2017), Sand Opera by Philip Metres (Alice James Books, 2015), Look by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf, 2016), and more. New and continuing students will create original vernacular works as part of the workshop. REGISTER HERE Marwa Helal is a poet and journalist. Her work appears in Apogee, Hyperallergic, the Offing, Poets & Writers, the Recluse, Winter Tangerine and elsewhere. She is the author of I AM MADE TO LEAVE I AM MADE TO RETURN (No, Dear/Small Anchor Press, 2017) and Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019). Helal is the winner of BOMB Magazine’s Biennial 2016 Poetry Contest and has been awarded fellowships from Poets House, Brooklyn Poets, and Cave Canem. Born in Al Mansurah, Egypt, Helal currently lives and teaches in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from The New School and her BA in journalism and international studies from Ohio Wesleyan University...
  
• September 28, 7:00 PM

  Muslim Cool

  Come for a special night investigating how young Muslim Americans resist empire through hip hop and other musical subcultures. Su'ad Abdul Khabeer calls it “Muslim Cool”—her term for how young Muslims in the United States fight state power by engaging with Black identity, particularly through fashion and music. In a time when Black Muslims face both Islamophobia and anti-blackness, her work represents a vital intervention. Zain Alam, the lead singer of the band Humeysha, loops samples of North Indian soundscapes with lyrics that shift between English, Hindi and Urdu to imagine a new Muslim sonic culture, inspired equally by My Bloody Valentine and J Dilla. They’ll speak with the Canadian-Somali writer Muna Mire, a contributor to The New Inquiry, Vice, and The New York Times Magazine. RESERVE A SEAT! $5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Su'ad Abdul Khabeer’s Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States (NYU 2016) investigates the concept of “Muslim Cool.” The term refers to how young American Muslims draw on blackness—often via hip hop—to construct their own identities and challenge American racist norms. The result of ethnographic research with young, black Muslims in Chicago, the Purdue University Professor investigates the interconnections between Black and Muslim identity, countering notions that the two are fundamentally different. H. Samy Alim writes: “Muslim Cool is, as dead prez once rapped, bigger than Hip Hop—it is a must-read for anyone interested in race, religion and culture in contemporary America.” Khabeer teaches American Culture at the University of Michigan. Zain Alam is an artist whose work explores South Asian artistic traditions, transnational movements in the Islamic world, and diasporic identity in the U.S. He was recently BHQFU Fellow at ArtCenter/South Florida and is currently a graduate student in Islamic studies at Harvard University, and the frontman of the NYC-based recording project Humeysha. Muna Mire’s work can be found at the New York Times Magazine, Teen Vogue, The New Republic, Mask Magazine, The Nation, and VICE. She works at The Rundown with Robin Thede, a new late night comedy show on BET. Read their Twitter @Muna_Mire and their classic piece, “Towards a Black Muslim Ontology of Resistance” in The New Inquiry...
  
• October 2, 7:00 PM

  Mouth to Mouth: Open Mic

  Mic Check! Are you a writer? Come share your work at our next edition of our open mic, Mouth to Mouth. Hosted by AAWW Fam poets Sonia Guiñansaca and Kay Ulanday Barrett, this edition of Mouth to Mouth features Tanea Lunsford Lynx and Tonilyn A. Sideco. Mouth to Mouth seeks to provide a safe community space for QTPOC and rising migrant artists. RESERVE A SEAT! $5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | DOORS OPEN AT 6:00 Tanea Lunsford Lynx is a third generation Black San Franciscan on both sides. Tanea practiced Creative Writing throughout her high school career as a student at San Francisco School of the Arts. She then graduated from Columbia University in 2013, earning a BA in Anthropology and a Special Concentration in Human Rights. She graduated from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in 2016 with a MA in Anthropology and Social Change. Her Master's thesis, an ethnographic Activist Research Project, is entitled, "The Circle that Breaks the Square: Reconsidering Restorative Justice in the Context of the Juvenile Legal System." Among her most prized awards for her writing, are recognition as Young Author of the Year (2009), National Queer Arts Festival featured artist at 'Still Here SF' (2016) and a participant in VONA/Voices of Our Nation (2016). Tonilyn A. Sideco is a proud booty-shaking genderqueer love warrior. The fourth child of Filipino immigrants, Toni was born and raised in San Francisco’s Sunset District and is now a Brooklyn-based writer, director and creative educator for both stage and film. Toni holds a BA in Sociology with a minor in Women’s Studies from UCLA and a MFA in Theater & Film from Stony Brook University, Southampton. Toni has 15 years experience in the non-profit sector and public school system as a counselor, case manager and creative healing program coordinator and educator working with queer youth and elders and young people of color in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York. Toni currently teaches Media and Creative Technologies with a social justice and anti-oppression framework at the New School for Drama in New York. Sonia Guiñansaca is a Queer Migrant Feminist Poet , Cultural Organizer, and Activist from Harlem by way of Ecuador. In 2007, Guiñansaca came out publicly as an undocumented immigrant. Since then she has co-founded and help build some of the largest undocumented organizations in the country, coordinating and participating in groundbreaking civil disobedience actions in the immigrant rights movement. She is a VONA/Voices alumni who has performed at El Museo Del Barrio, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, NY Poetry Festival, Galleria de La Raza, and featured on NBC, PBS, Latina Magazine, Pen American, and the Poetry Foundation to name a few. Praised as badass in 1 of 10 Up and Coming Latinx Poets You Need to Knowby Remezcla, as well as one of 13 Coolest Queers on the Internetby Teen Vogue. Guiñansaca was recently announced as the 2017 Artist in Residency at NYU's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, performer, and educator, navigating life as a disabled pilipinx amerikan transgender queer in the U.S. with struggle, resistance, and laughter. When The Chant Comes (Topside Heliotrope 2016) is their first collection. K. has been invited to The White House, Princeton University, UC Berkeley, The Lincoln Center, Queens Museum, and The Chicago Historical Society to name a few. They are a fellow of both The Home School and Drunken Boat. Their contributions are found in PBS News Hour, Lambda Literary, RaceForward, Foglifter, The Deaf Poets Society, Poor Magazine, Fusion.net, Trans Bodies/Trans Selves, Winter Tangerine, Make/Shift, Third Woman Press, The Advocate, and Bitch Magazine. You can read their interview with PBS on poetry as a testimony to survival. NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY *The space is wheelchair accessible. No stairs. Direct elevator from ground floor to 6th floor. *We strongly encourage all participants of the space/event to be scent-free. If you all have any other specific questions about accessibility, please email Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org with any questions on reserving priority seating. /\ /\ \/\/ \/\/ ..