Thursday, December 30, 2010

Can y'all hear me?

The story itself needs a lot of work. I'm too ashamed to post what I handed in to my magazine professor (though it appears she liked it because I got an A- in the class?--still, I know it's not as good as it can be). But here's the lede; this still needs work too, thinking about changing the first sentence altogether:
Dim lights illuminate the 307 descending seats that lead to the center of the auditorium. Christiona Hawkins walks up to read her poem. The light shines brightest on her smooth coffee-colored complexion. But her eyes, instead of looking at the audience, focus for a moment on the Webcam resting on the orange plastic-covered podium set in front of her. “Can y’all hear me?” she yells. A few seconds later, an emphatic “Yes” emanates from the speakers, the voices of a group 1,000 miles away filling the room, their own stage at the University of Minnesota projected onto the large screen that hangs behind her. She begins to read, “A Warrior Out of Us,” from her phone. Her kind voice becomes firm, urgent, unwavering as she unravels a combination of metaphors expressing her observations of the African-American experience. The frustration overflows from her voice as she alludes to the false illusions of progress that plague the black community. Don’t be fooled, she says. I’ll let you think you’re flying high, but just like kites, I have strings attached to you. Snap, snap, snap. The audience appreciates her clever prose. We will really see what a disaster our people have become. An eruption of applause and snaps follow the last line. While Hawkins walks back to her seat, the host in Minneapolis says, “Someone in the audience has a special note for the young lady who was just on stage.” “Uh-oh, uh-oh!” shout men from the audience. But the message doesn’t come with the expected flirtation—just admiration: "You are an amazing poet," the person says.

Hawkins, a sophomore international relations and policy studies major, belongs to Verbal Blend, a spoken word program at SU.

###

No comments:

Post a Comment