WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016

CHANGE FOR CHANGE:

The Realities of Panhandling in New Haven

//GRAHAM AMBROSE & VICTOR WANG //PAGE B3

PASSING

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POETRY

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POSERS

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DEATH, AESTHETICIZED

HEALING WORDS

THE SECRET HISTORY

Oriana Tang contemplates the literary and artistic fascination with all things morbid.

Hannah Schmitt explores the power of spoken word to amplify marginalized voices.

Katie Martin on how the novel’s sensational events reflect the psyche of ordinary Yalies.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND VIEWS

MORBID FASCINATION TANG

// BY ORIANA TANG Cicadas swarmed my town when I was in seventh grade — one of their mass awakenings every 13 or 17 years, their buzzing brown bodies rising from the earth. They came out to mate and lay their eggs, and then they died.

We found their corpses everywhere, littering the sidewalks and pristine green lawns and floating in the pools that had been uncovered for the summer.

Most people found the bugs too disgusting for words, especially my fellow 13-year-olds, some of whom screamed when the occasional cicada found its way under the crack of a classroom window. They were big bugs, maybe an inch long, covered in a tough shell, their wings pristine and transparent and the source of the horrible buzzing that permeated everything at all hours. They sounded like a wind that was perpetually trying to rise. During a walk in gym class one afternoon, I picked up one of the bodies that hadn’t yet been crushed or mangled by plodding, incurious feet.

Its wings looked like shards of spun glass. Despite the weird looks my

friends shot me, I kept it.

I still have that dead cicada. It sits on a stack of Post-its on my desk, now broken into two pieces: the natural process of disintegration, I guess. I don’t know what I was trying to achieve by keeping it. Perhaps I thought it would crumple more gracefully into splinters of dust. A book I loved as a kid, “The Mozart Season”

by Virginia Euwer Wolff, featured a mother character who collected the bodies of dead bugs in a dish and let them fall apart. In the book this is a tender act. In the book the corpse-todust ritual completes itself every two weeks. After five years my cicada is still mostly parts.

I think I have an unhealthy fascination with the poetics of death. Over break I went to lunch with a close friend, my writing buddy since middle school. In her creative writing class last semester, she told me, her professor had claimed that every story has one of two plots.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Love or death?”

She gave me a look. “No,” she said.

“Character goes on an adventure or stranger comes to town.”

Of course. How logical. Not nearly so morbid. But then, every story I’ve ever written has been about love or death. Sometimes both.

I don’t think I’m alone in this.

There’s something that draws people to death, that draws art to death: Jacques-Louis David’s “The Death of Marat,” Jeffrey Eugenides’ “The Virgin Suicides,” the opening and closing stories of James Joyce’s “Dubliners.” “It was an exciting day,” Jenny Zhang writes of a classmate’s passing in the essay, “How It Feels”: “To be close to something so genuinely tragic … When someone dies, we go searching for poetry.”

Today, death is simultaneously, paradoxically both closer to us and further away than ever. Think: the 6 o’clock news, photographs of war, Quentin Tarantino movies, Call of Duty. Think: funeral homes, morgues and body bags, wakes where the corpse is made up and dressed up in all its living finery. It is so easy to fetishize, poeticize. Even in the 2008 Japanese

film “Departures” — in which Daigo Kobayashi accidentally takes a job preparing bodies for encoffinment, and part of what Daigo learns is not to fear the dead, not to regard bodies as some frightening and untouchable other — the ceremony is beautiful, a little romantic. Poetic. Think: John Everett Millais’ Ophelia floating still lovely in her river, her gown brocaded and shimmering, lips slightly parted, stillbright flowers trailing down her body.

Death is the ultimate sacrifice, the highest stakes you can play. In the shadow of limited time it casts, everything is illuminated. In her essay, “Notes Toward a Dreampolitik,” Joan Didion writes of the appeal that bike movies have for adolescents, that “to die violently is ‘righteous,’ a flash.”

Artistically, nothing could seem to matter more, even as death becomes cheaper in video games, in movies, in the news, even as with every murdered brown body, every terrorist attack, we are shocked a little bit less. We know nothing of what it means to be dead and so we ascribe everything to it. A dangerous game.

This past Monday, March 28, marked the 75th anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s suicide, when she weighed down her pockets with stones and waded into the River Ouse behind her home.

Once, a few years ago, I read a short story about a girl who tried to do the same. She struggled in the silt until a friend dragged her from her selfmade grave. Like the decay of a cicada corpse, her suicide did not come easily.

It may sound poetic, but I think we forget that Woolf’s death wasn’t beautiful. Imagine the stink of river water and the weight of wet cloth. Giving over your breath. The water closing over your head. There is no tranquility in the last, thrashing seconds of a body trying to save itself. There was no lovely corpse fringed by a spilled bouquet. Even if in art there is. Even if in art we want to make it so.

How could we understand? We are still alive.

goes with a college degree, Dylan was on the third leg of his cross-country journey for inspiration as a prospective marketing intern for Vans. And the Texas A&M couple: happily providing PDA at outlets five and six and boasting witticisms on their oversized Kappa Delta and Delta Tau (“dump a delta”) shirts.

Though the Wi-Fi promise was never realized, the aptly named break room provided a break. Our borrowed patch of dirt was loyal to the desert ambiance: a musky, hot Tangerine dream with a general griminess that only enhanced the barren beauty of southwestern

Texas. Lack of basic necessities enforced an unspoken code among comanche campers, one of vigilance for one another’s possessions and a generous exchange of provisions. At 7:49 p.m., as the sun sank beneath Santa Elena Canyon and strips of coral clouds streamed the cerulean sky, the other online reviews seemed accurate.

This is an Airbnb that can be described by “peace” and “tranquility” without sarcasm.

Contact ORIANA TANG at oriana.tang@yale.edu .

Wi-Fi tents, call (XXX) XXX–XX31 CANAVA

// BY SAMANTHA CANAVA Nora and Jeff’s $26/night, patchof-dirt Airbnb rental is a four-song drive from the Big Bend National Park entrance in Terlingua, Texas. The “comanche camp,” an archipelago of shacks varying in size, age and construction materials sits at the base of medium-sized hills and rock formations. Behind it lie dirt lots and makeshift parking for bring-yourown-tent (BYOT) campers, these “Roadrunner flats” extending into dunes. The more luxurious accommodations — “authentic tipi tents” — line the borders of the property, from the single-camper Lizard Lounge Tipi Tent to the modest Raven’s Roost Tipi Tent to the Horned Owl Tipi Tent on the easternmost hill.

At night, the clustering of cement bricks topped by sheets of metal at the entrance is illuminated only by flickering Christmas lights that border the sole welcome sign: “Wifi-tents call ………” Hidden from view until one is half a mile away, the establishment respects the desert blackness and dim moonlight.

The host, Jeff, a middle-aged and sun-roasted Clint Eastwood with exactly half of a dusty blond beard, approached our Hyundai Elantra as we pulled into the BYOT area. A calloused hand and elaborately inked arm shook mine.

“The restroom facilities are right down yond’r by the Break Room.

Set yourselves up wherever you’d like. There oughta be a nice flat area between the adobe walls tee-pee tent and the Tan-juur-een dream tent.

Text me if ya need anything.”

“And the Wi-Fi?” “Try the Break Room.”

Balancing Clint Eastwood junior on her hip, the dreadlocked Nora directed us to a centrally located building.

The Break Room is a patched-up shack precariously held upright by desert magic: the years of dry heat and weathering that somehow weld even construction materials together.

A shoddy roof of sheaths of discarded metal is insulated with miscellaneous bits of wool and cloth that drip from the frame and reach for the heads of campers as they walk in, seeking electrical outlets and instant coffee. Camping supplies are provided exclusively by donations and laid out on a foldable table. The most recent offerings include firewood and lighter fluid, Jif’s extra crunchy peanut butter, Everclear and disposable utensils strewn between sandy coffee machines and a stained microwave.

Fellow comanche campers were diverse. Our neighbors for the first night included an older group in a white van bearing the seal of Municipal Court of San Angelo, along with an SUV of newly certified teachers (early 20s) who merrily recounted their youth (late teens) and the scandalous happenings that consumed the San Angelo High School class of ’13: Tommy’s having knocked up two senior girls — that diptard. Then there was Dylan, the cargo-pant enthusiast/entrepre- neur there on a solo trip. Foregoing the debt that

Contact SAMANTHA CANAVA at samantha.canava@yale.edu .

// SONIA RUIZ

Dear people I interacted with this week // BY AGNES ENKHTAMIR

ENKHTAMIR

Dear Dog Walker Who Was Walking Literally 500 Dogs by Sterling, When I was younger, my mother used to read me a book about a dog named Spotty. Spotty was this cute Dalmatian who, through his dog walker’s love, grows to be 20 feet tall and saves a small child from a burning building.

Ever since this book was read to me 12,000 times, I have wanted to interact with dogs, specifically in the form of supervising them while they walk. I have been alive for 18 years (and counting) and never has anyone on this planet asked me to walk their dog. Not. Once. (Which is so bizarre — I have been able to walk for almost 10 years!)

So when I saw you, a Dog Walker Who Was Walking Literally 500 Dogs

by Sterling, I was incensed. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins.

Rage was making my head pound.

How could one person be so selfish as to walk 500 dogs? Leave some dogs for the rest of us! Do you know how many people in this city would like to walk a dog? Many, many people, probably!

You looked so happy. Sunshine was radiating out of your being. I can’t

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believe one person would be heartless enough to hog literally 500 dogs. I am so mad. This would never happen if Bernie Sanders were president.

Please feel free to email me with tips on how to become such a successful dog walker.

— A. Enkhtamir P.S. You really did look so happy.

Honestly, looking at you made me kind of happy. Hope you and your 500 dogs have a good day.

you and slipped my hand into yours.

(Your hand was kind of calloused and dry, like you had been doing just the right amount of pullups. I loved it.

Your arms also looked like you had been doing just the right amount of pullups. I enjoyed that as well.)

U n fo r t u n a te l y, y o u were n o t m y good

*** Dear Unidentified Insanely Attractive Male, You were walking down Broadway wearing a light blue button-down and mint green shorts. (Spearmint has always been my favorite flavor.)

Your luscious dark brown locks were covered with a “Yale Grandpa” baseball cap. This, in addition to your navy Jansport backpack (and bodacious butt) led me to believe initially that you were my good friend Robert Proner ’19.

Since I thought you were my good friend Robert Proner, I ran up behind

JOOK SONGS: WAX//WANE Calhoun Cabaret // 7:30 p.m.

Gaze at the waning crescent moon after the show, wondering why good spoken word performances must come to an end.

friend Robert Proner. Which is why I, a total stranger, forcing you to hold my hand might have been weird or awkward or kind of insane. I do not want you to think that I’m weird or awkward or kind of insane. That is one of the three reasons I am writing you this letter.

First, let me apologize for making you hold a stranger’s hand.

Second, let me apologize for not letting you take your hand away for a block and a half. Your crystal blue eyes (bordered with beautiful eyelashes that must have been longer than a couple of inches) sort of just paralyzed me like the basilisk in that one Harry Potter book. (Please make a mental note that you understood my reference.

That is already one thing we have in com// CHAIRIN KIM mon, Unidentified

Intensely Attractive Male! We already have the basis for a long and lasting friendship.)

Third, allow me to dispel all suspicions that I am weird and awkward. I am not weird and awkward.

On the contrary, I am unique and quirky. Another friend of mine, Nadrina Ebrahimi ’19, once told me I was the ninth-funnest person she knows.

When prompted for a comment, Eleanor Pritchett ’19 gave me three out of five stars! My freshman counselor, Warner Overhauser ’16, once told me I was “kind of okay”!

For a full list of character references, please feel free to email me.

Your Potential Friend, A. Enkhtamir P.S. I guess I just want you to know that accidentally holding your hand was thrilling but also the most cringeworthy experience I’ve had at Yale so far, and I have had a lot of embarrassing experiences. I would not want to do it again. I’m sorry I wrote 500 words about holding your hand and also that I held your hand.

Contact AGNES ENKHTAMIR at dulguun.enkhtamir@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Dating your TF, so that you ditch section together for the rest of the semester.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

THE PRACTICE OF PANHANDLING // BY GRAHAM AMBROSE & VICTOR WANG

yan Liu ’18 had finished dinner with a friend in Berkeley and was headed back to his room in Morse.

When he opened the gate onto Elm Street, a familiar face stopped him in his tracks. A middle-aged woman with worn clothing held out her open hand. “Can you spare some change?”

Last fall, Liu transferred to Yale from Pasadena City College, where he graduated first in his class. After two years of community college, a week of transfer orientation and seven months of political science at Yale, he had never been taught the ethics of interacting with panhandlers.

The woman stood before him, begging for money. He had chatted with her before outside the Starbucks near Old Campus, where the woman frequently asked passers-by for loose change.

Liu looked around ambivalently.

He had no cash, just a debit card and a lot of questions. He knew the woman had limited resources, and wanted to help her — how could he? What would be most effective? And could he trust a stranger, however dire her circumstances? Would a little money really make a difference to her?

The dozens of New Haven residents who lack permanent shelter face daily uncertainty as to whether their basic needs will be met. As a result, many turn to nontraditional work — perhaps most notably, to panhandling. In the Elm City, panhandlers frequent the same sidewalks trodden by University personnel. Interactions between panhandlers and Yalies are quotidian. Every member of the University community interviewed — from the youngest freshman to the most senior administrator — had interacted with a panhandler on University property, many on a daily basis.

At a university older than this nation, the age-old problem of homelessness exists in plain sight. Just beyond the gates of Yale’s historic colleges, the homeless see themselves as forgotten citizens hidden under the university’s Gothic spires.

R

FACE TO FACE “You’re the first person to stop and talk to me today,” said Tracy, who declined to give her last name.

Tracy, a panhandler who often finds herself within the Yale vicinity, said most passers-by ignore her, although she has spoken to many students over her 11 months in New Haven. Still, Tracy, who said she sleeps on the streets and occasionally in garages, knows little about the community service programs addressing homelessness offered by either Yale students or the city.

There is nothing illegal about panhandling itself, says Sgt. Roy Davis, who oversees the Downtown and Wooster Square districts for the New Haven

Police Department. Davis, who joined the NHPD in September, identifies two categories of panhandling: the passive and the aggressive.

“There are those panhandlers who stand along with their sign, which isn’t really harming anyone,” he said.

According to Davis, the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protects panhandling. He emphasized that aggressive panhandlers are a small and well-known number in New Haven.

NHPD officers give tickets to those few panhandlers who demonstrate aggressive behavior such as stalking, physical violence, disturbing the peace or violating any kind of ordinance.

On and around campus, students interviewed unanimously cited peaceful, nonaggressive interactions with panhandlers. Many recognize familiar faces who consistently work the same area or street.

Territoriality is a hallmark of the trade. An elderly man who panhandles every day near the corner of Chapel and College says he has considered moving, but his success is heavily dependent on this specific location.

“I’ve thought about going elsewhere, but people know me here,” he said. “The lunch crowd, the businesses, the storeowners, they all know me here.”

The panhandler, who says he seldom gives out his real name, has worked the corner outside Claire’s Corner Copia for nearly 18 months. The market crash of 2008 ruined his retirement savings and forced him into homelessness.

Like other male panhandlers interviewed, the man said Yale students generally do not contribute much to his efforts. Students interviewed all expressed ambivalence about the decision over whether or not to give, though most said they tend not to donate. Even those who said they do occasionally lend spare change or offer to purchase food said that most times, they don’t do anything.

Female panhandlers interviewed indicated greater receptivity among students. One particularly well-known panhandler, Annette Walton, known around campus as “The Flower Lady,” frequents the corner of Elm and York.

“Everybody knows me. You can ask anyone if they know about ‘The Flower Lady.’ They say that I’m part of the family,” she said.

As we spoke to her on a Wednesday afternoon, three passers-by — all affiliated with Yale — came to greet her. One gave her a coffee, another hurriedly gave her a dollar bill, adding apologetically, “I’m sorry I’m in a rush, but I didn’t want to forget about you.” The third, a student, just smiled and waved.

Walton, who has been around Yale’s campus and community for more than 27 years, said she is relatively settled in, although she is still homeless.

“I’m obviously not good, or else I wouldn’t be out here everyday in the cold and rain. But all the stores and people know me and don’t bother me.”

Walton, who gained her “flower lady” moniker by selling paper-wrapped flowers to pedestrians, had been arrested 69 times until she received a selling license — with some help from Yale students.

In the early 2000s, when Walton was arrested for disorderly conduct and faced a 90-day jail sentence for selling flowers without a license, students held a rally and slept out on the New Haven Green to protest. Yalies also led a fundraising event that successfully helped Walton obtain a $200 license. All charges against her were also dropped.

Yet, even for such a regular presence in the community, Walton said her relationship with undergraduates is in flux.

She said that undergraduates in the ’90s were more likely to stop by or buy her flowers. Senior societies even took her to society dinners, Walton said.

“A few undergraduates still buy flowers, but many like to use their money to go shopping. I’m not mad at anyone.

It’s their money,” she said. Still, she remains in that exact same spot on the corner of Elm and York, in case alumni return to look for her. “They come say hi, and sometimes they even bring gifts.”

All students interviewed said they were uncertain as to the best course of action when deciding whether or not to donate to a panhandler. Some question whether panhandlers are spending the money on substances like cigarettes and alcohol. Others wondered whether a short-term donation could help improve the panhandler’s longterm state.

Sydney Marks ’18 summarized the moral apprehension. “The right thing to do is help the homeless. But it’s really conflicting what to do. Long-term solutions are better — education, housing, the tools to get out of homelessness.”

Yet in the final calculus, many students are left unsure about how to best help. “I’m not sure there’s a right answer. Giving them money feels right to me, but often I just don’t know,” she added.

Darby Henry ’17 is a former board member of Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project and a frequent volunteer at Sunrise Café, which provides meals for low-income New Haven residents five days a week. Henry said she always engages with panhandlers when asked to help out.

“I either know them by name or have seen them around before,” she said. “I normally direct them to services that offer food or shelter, depending on what they are looking for.” While she has nothing against those who give change to panhandlers, Henry said she believes donating to organizations and services is generally the most effective solution.

BIRDSEYE: WHAT REALLY HELPS John Bradley ’81, associate master of

Branford College and executive director of Liberty Community Services, used to give panhandlers loose change, until he became involved in anti-homelessness work. Now, like Henry, he prefers focusing on long-term solutions.

“After entering the field, I started to encounter panhandlers I recognized. They weren’t necessarily homeless. Now … I’m much more skeptical,” Bradley said. “I generally don’t give money out. I try to focus my attention on long-term solutions rather than Band-Aid ones.”

Bradley’s shift in attitude highlights the wide range of opinions and rationales Yalies have about panhandlers.

Although all students and faculty interviewed have encountered panhandling around campus, the Un ive rs i ty and officials have little in terms of guidelines.

Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway said the college has no official policy or guideline about how students should deal with panhandling in the neighborhood, but like many others, he said the appropriate response is to at least acknowledge panhandlers.

Deputy Vice President for Human Resources and Administration Janet Lindner, who is in charge of police and security at the University, similarly said panhandling and ordinances are city jurisdiction, rather than a University one.

Without official guidelines or guidance from the University, students have drawn from personal experiences and undergraduate social justice organizations to address panhandling and homelessness.

Ian Garcia-Kennedy ‘18, the former coordinator of the YHHAP’s semesterly fast, encouraged students to be compassionate in their interactions with panhandlers.

“Regardless of your ability to give money to any individual panhandler, it’s important not to avert your eyes or try to ignore them. This may seem like

“I’VE THOUGHT ABOUT GOING ELSEWHERE, BUT PEOPLE KNOW ME HERE.”

SEE COVER PAGE B8

// ASHLY N OAKES

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THE FIFTH HUMOUR PRESENTS: APRIL FOOL’S SHOW

WKND RECOMMENDS:

JE Theatre // 8 p.m.

But seriously, can someone tell us if this is a joke or if it’s actually happening?

Moving onto Cross Campus so you can enjoy the spring weather at all times.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND SALON

Africa Salon: Not an Exhibit, an Education // BY SARAH PEARL HEARD

// KEVIN BENDESKY

By now, you’ve probably seen the trippy black, yellow and pink posters featuring negatives of gorgeous Black people. They are advertisements for Africa Salon, a week of events featuring contemporary African artists and intellectuals. Africa Salon itself is the brainchild of Ifeanyi Awachie ’14, a Nigerian-American Yale alumna, as an attempt to “reclaim the narrative about Africa through engaging contemporary African artists.”

In light of the controversies on campus last semester, the phrases “diversity,” “ethnic studies” and “racial tensions” bring on the same exasperation and weariness that a mention of Donald Trump does. Opening your mouth, posting a thought or even sharing an article is political, which before might have been recreational.

But like it or not, conversations about differences and identities — racial or otherwise — are a part of our “global” education. So where’s the middle ground?

I think we can find it through art.

For years artists of color have build their careers around putting their voices on paper, images, poetry, paintings, photographs, videos and music. In this tense, highly political environment, it’s hard to maintain the spontaneous, breezy cultural exchanges through which learning happens.

So far, I’ve attended two events which have been transformative. The mo(ve) ments reception was unlike

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anything I’ve experienced at Yale. Immersed in fine wine, music, fantastic and stunning photos, I had the opportunity to be in the presence of, and converse with the artists that produced the work I was enjoying.

Helen Harris from Namibia lamented the fact that it took a Western institution like Yale to bring African artists together.

“We look to the West for inspiration constantly, and it’s sad that I must travel to the West to meet other contemporary artists.”

2ManySiblings, a Kenyan duo comprised of Velma Rossa and Papa Petit, said of their connection to their communities, “We have an obligation to make art that is honest.” Rossa spoke about the challenges of navigating a social media presence as an introvert. I can find nothing remotely inauthentic in examining their gorgeous, sociologically complex photos.

But Africa Salon is far from over yet; several not-to-be-missed events remain. Saturday’s interactive fashion show will feature various professional models on campus. Audience members will split into groups and stand as the models perform, showcasing the designs of Zimbabwe-born, cutting-edge designer House of Chihera.

These designs blend contemporary African style with bold, classic, striking looks.

Immediately after the fashion show, the African Dance troupe Dzana will perform, prefiguring the

afterparty at Harvest later that night. If you’ve never experienced the company, dancing and music of African students and professionals blended with the beats of famed DJ Kash, you haven’t partied at Yale.

The next day will include a brunch “darty” (or maybe a hangover cure?) at the Af-Am House and a staged reading at Battell Chapel, “In Continuum.” The reading will feature Director Risë Nelson of the AfroAmerican Cultural Center, Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway and the viral and hilarious Hannah Giorgis. Now a well-known BuzzFeed contributor, she created the viral and necessary listicle “27 Facebook Life Events Every Black Girl Should Brag About;” items in the list range from “staying in your lane” to “narrowly escaped public ashiness.” Needless to say, she is expected to provide an interesting, light-hearted and entertaining perspective on Black life at Yale.

“In Continuum” will also include a reading of a contemporary play by FOLKS, a thespian group of Black artists at the Yale School of Drama aiming to create and cultivate a legacy of Black solidarity there. Later that night Thomas Mapfumo, known as “The Lion of Zimbabwe” for his ferocious talent and political activism, will give a concert at College Street Music Hall, made free by donors.

He will be accompanied by the Ghanaian-American hip-hop and visual artist Blitz the Ambassador whose unique sound combines rap

GOLDWASH // GLUEBOY // DOGS ON SUNDAY // SEUNGJU HWANG AND THE SQUADETTES 216 Dwight // 8:30 p.m.

More like Dogs on Friday night in a dark basement, amirite?

and afrobeats. Also featured will be Wambura Mitaru, who uses a blend of soul and traditional African sounds to create far-reaching pop music reminiscent of Angelique Kidjo. A student body that turned out in record numbers for President Peter Salovey’s bluegrass appearance at Toad’s will certainly find something to enjoy here.

So many Yalies make sure they can adroitly reference Alfred Hitchcock or Wes Anderson, but most of them know nothing about the founder of African cinema. The Tuesday screening exploring this legendary man, Ousmane Sembene, was sparsely attended, and I have no doubt why: we are uncomfortable expanding the boundaries by which we define our intellectualism. It’s easier to rely on the things that have always been termed “classics.” But by continuing to let our ideas be defined by the limited perspectives of those who built this University, we are missing out on the worth of modern Black voices and Black artists.

Even when political tensions seem overwhelming, we can explore our differences by getting together and collectively enjoying art. Art appreciation is often seen as, but doesn’t have to involve, wandering around a gallery in silent meditation about the greatness of the Western tradition, or musing on the angst of old white men. Art is now on Instagram, in pop songs, in film, in philosophy.

Africa Salon provides a window into one of the

largest and most underrated influences in modern art — that of the continent, cultures and peoples of Africa. At the same times, it will help viewers resist the habit of making generalizations about African experience or art. Recently someone in my seminar referred to an “African friend” who provided an “African perspective” on a topic. This is just one example of the unfortunate tendency to reduce the planet’s second-largest, second-mostpopulous continent to the views of a single student, as if all of African experience could be summed up through one person’s “perspective.” Fortunately, it’s no longer acceptable to reference one’s “Asian/Queer/ Native/Black/Trans” friend anymore; Africa Salon will help expand that ban to include the term “my African friend.”

So sit back and make sure you attend this week’s (free!) events. Do yourself a favor and talk to people who have traveled here this week from the continent.

They are the living, breathing dynamic people that are not preaching post-colonialism but living it. Africa is not safaris, not the backdrop to a Taylor Swift video, not a purveyor of poverty porn or Facebook profile pictures from mission trips.

“Africa is not gonna be the future,” proclaimed Rossa of 2ManySiblings at a reception Tuesday night. “Africa is the future, and it always has been.”

Contact SARAH PEARL HEARD at sarah.heard@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Selling dining hall plates as “original Yale frisbees” to unsuspecting frosh.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B5

WEEKEND ARTS

YALIES TRAVELTO WYOMING - VIA KROON HALL // BY ERIC LIN

// JENNIFER LU

The most important piece of information at the small exhibit in Room G01, Kroon Hall is its title: “Ucross: A Portrait in Place.” The exhibit only makes sense with the knowledge that all the works were inspired by the same place, Ucross Foundation’s cattle ranch in Wyoming. The artworks produced by the seven featured artists initially seems too diverse to cohere, but by keeping an idea of the ranch as setting and source of inspiration, I could see them begin to speak to each other, and a portrait of the place really does emerge.

The works displayed range from watercolors to digital prints to small sculptures, and they concern very different ideas, some of them very personal. Cynthia Brinich-Langlois’ watercolors are a highlight that at first seem to stand apart from the rest of the works. Recording an uprooted leafy spurge every day for a week, her series depicts the decay of that poisonous, invasive plant. As Brinich-Langlois tells us, the plant turned out to be remarkably hardy, so that in order to kill it, she had to dry it out in the sun and eventually burn it. She calls the series a “performance”; the word is apt because it becomes a psychological portrait of the emotions she feels toward the plant, playing out before us. The caveat is that the plant looks pretty and graceful, rather harmless. She ups the tension by painting in a style that recalls the serenity of Chinese painting. It is an intensely personal drama, and somewhat removed from the

Ucross setting.

Turning to Bill Gilbert’s work sheds light on how to think about Brinich-Langlois. Gilbert’s prints are the biggest works in the exhibit and show the silhouette of a human filled in by an aerial view of the Ucross landscape in front of a mysterious surface, surrounded by little pictures of plants. He took these pictures around Ucross by making shapes of constellations, and his prints map out a personal cosmos that depicts, according to him, the effort to bridge heaven and earth. His affection for each plant in the small photos is palpable. The prints are ambitious, beautiful, personal and clearly tied to the ranch.

Gilbert’s grand scope and attachment to the ranch illuminate Brinich-Langlois’ watercolor performance. Perhaps the leafy spurge and the artist can be taken as emblems of something else. The identity of the leafy spurge, something natural, pretty and resilient, yet also invasive and poisonous is particularly evocative. Her work is incredibly thoughtful, and I could start to fathom something of the artist’s feelings towards the ranch.

The most masterful move in the exhibit is the scattering of Joseph Mougel’s photographs.

His work is a series of closeup ambrotype pictures of different seeds. The pictures are spooky, even though the classroom setting makes the effect hard to see. They look like ghostly X-rays. On this piece the artist writes, “It is fascinating that early humans,

some 9000 years ago, could look upon a plant, see the potential of a grain, and begin to take steps towards a partnership that would ultimately tie together both humans’ and plants’ cultural paths.”

He was partly inspired by the deep past, yet it is ambiguous where these photos would take place. The documentation of these seeds in such a scientific way seemed to have a certain apocalyptic flavor. There is a continuous line between humans’ discovery of agriculture and our present destruction of the environment, and there is an eerie parallel in the way both events begin with small intentions and lead to extreme consequences. The placement of these photos all around the exhibit reminds the viewer that the beautiful Ucross landscape might not last.

Seeing the portrait of Ucross is an oddly cerebral experience. The exhibit originally showed at the Ucross Foundation ranch, so perhaps visitors would see the art after seeing the landscape which inspired it. At Yale, the physical ranch is gone, but the art continues to refer to that same place. The ranch becomes an imagined place formed by the individual visions of the artists bouncing back at each other. The setting of the exhibit in a classroom is not optimal; it takes a bit of mental work to get there. But I recommend making the trip. It’s quite an interesting place, and it’s right here at Yale.

Contact ERIC LIN at eric.lin@yale.edu .

Art Stepping Into the Digital Landscape // BY IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY

// COURTESY OF YANNICK ANTON

“mo(ve)ments: African Digital Subjectivities,” part of Africa Salon’s slate of activities, can be found at the School of Art this week. The exhibit is meant to explore the ways that technology intersects with contemporary African art, and the way that African artists have incorporated the Internet and other digital media into their canvases.

The space for the exhibition feels cavernous, and when I visit it in the middle of the afternoon, it is completely empty and silent. The windows have also been shuttered, creating a warehouse-like space lit only by buzzing fluorescent lights. The effect is almost eerie, but this is before my eye is caught by the various projections playing on the walls.

The first one playing is a series of gorgeous photos by a Kenyan brother-sister duo, who have aptly named their artis-

SATURDAY APRIL

2

tic partnership 2 Many Siblings.

Their photos are vibrant and colorful, showing various people standing against blank backdrops with other images projected over them. They range from cosmic and awe-inspiring, such as a man with telescopic images of outer space superimposed on him, to surreally gorgeous, such as a lone figure who appears to grow butterfly wings. The photos are miraculous for the unreality they capture without straining for effect.

The images all feel breathlessly super-cool.

Next on the show is Helen Harris, a Namibian artist whose pictures of young people simply hanging out are superimposed on what appears to be colorful stitching. It’s an odd effect, as scenes that look like they could easily belong in any one of Yale’s various social spaces become strangely segmented and almost

alien. This technique and other digital manipulations are further applied to video montages of various artists at work. The effect is distancing, and makes ordinary photos feel almost expressionistic in their abstraction.

William Ukoh, from Nigeria, displays photos with less obvious manipulation, yet their vibrancy and popping, Lichtenstein-like colors suggest some imagined reality. The photos show contemporary Nigerians, seemingly at ease and not acknowledging the camera, against a series of pop-art backgrounds. Little out-ofplace details, which I will leave you to discover for yourself, further suggest that we aren’t looking at our own world, but rather a comic-book version of it, as written by Andy Warhol (visual references to Coca-Cola solidify this impression).

SCHOOL OF ART OPEN STUDIOS

1156 Chapel, 353 Crown & 36 Edgewood // 12 p.m.

Practice your hand-on-chin pose before you go.

David Uzochukwu is an Austro-Nigerian artist based in Brussels. The opening image of his section of the slideshow is striking and eerie. A man covered in an oil-like sludge sits on a perfectly white bed, staring impassively into the distance.

As the show progresses, we see more and more tar-coated people against nondescript, beige backgrounds, and even in the middle of everyday situations.

I can’t claim to know what it all means (perhaps something about exploitation of Africa’s oil), but it certainly yields some of the exhibit’s most disturbing images.

Projected on another wall is a static collage of South African photographer Kent Andreasen’s works. The pictures have a wide variety of subjects and even forms, ranging from photographs to drawings. Unfortunately, when I went, the pro-

jector was slightly blurry, so it was hard to make out the exact content of the images. Still, it’s an interesting choice to display everything at once, separated by large negative space on a white background. It leads to a more comprehensive feeling for the vibe of his work.

Finally, my favorite part of the exhibit was Nicola Brandt’s spectacularly realized video installation exploring the legacy of German colonialism in her native Namibia. The installation takes place on three side-byside monitors, sometimes playing completely different images, other times lining up to create one wide panorama. Footage mostly contains images of Jodorowsky-esque desert landscapes, awe-inspiring in and of themselves, and yet Brandt has taken their inherent surrealism one step further by filming them being traversed by an

unknown woman in a series of gorgeous, elaborate dresses. We see bookshelves filled with German books, hear bits of the history of the native Namibians, and learn (in a long shot played in reverse) a little more about the dresses the woman is wearing, as well about as the woman herself.

A poetic, fragmented voiceover accompanies the images. The installation is lyrical and melancholy, and almost any given shot of the videos could be framed and hung on a wall.

These six artists are creating gorgeous, original art that gleefully breaks with traditional form and content. “mo(ve) ments: African Digital Subjectivities” is a wonderful exhibit, one that gives contemporary African art the showcase it so deserves.

Contact IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY at ian.garcia-kennedy@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Barricading I-95 to prevent your professor from making it to class.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND WORK

LAND A SUMMER INTERNSHIP: THE BOARD GAME // BY WEEKEND

To play, all you need is a die, a strong stomach, and proficiency in Microsoft Office and social media platforms. It’s impossible to win, unless you know a guy. Pick a player: Pencil Pusher, Former Actor, Slave to Capitalism or Tech Guy. Isn’t the real world fun?

FINISH

Succeed in your PJ Goreman group interview by eating your competitors alive — you’re hired! Skip ahead to the end.

START

Confusing it with NYC, accept an internship in Yorkville, Illinois (pop: 6000). Move back two spaces.

Opt out and study abroad in Paris, because you’re, like, totally interested in Film Noir.

Skip ahead to the end; you win.

Your Greyhound bus to Boston breaks down in New Hampshire two hours before your scheduled interview. Move back four spaces.

Your roommate’s aunt summers in the Hamptons and leaves you her Chelsea apartment for free. Move ahead five spaces.

Silverman Sacks gives you a free Clarisonic face scrubbing brush after a networking event! Move ahead three spaces.

Your email notifying you of your interview went to your spam folder.

Return to start.

Symplicity. Skip seven turns.

Trump wins, so you spend the summer living off of rations in your apocalypse bomb shelter. Use this paper as bedding; game over.

You accidentally drink too much wine at a networking event, then throw up in the Marriott lobby. Move back five spaces.

// DAN GORODEZKY

Your roommate’s dad is an Executive Producer in L.A. Skip ahead to the end; you win.

SATURDAY APRIL

2

BuzzFeed buys the newspaper you’re interning with, and you don’t know how to make GIFs. Go back to start.

Turns out the apartment you found on Craigslist really was too good to be true, and does not exist. Move back two spaces, then skip a turn for good measure, you idiot.

“MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” WITH DAVID CROSS

John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts // 8 p.m.

Will David Cross autograph my jorts?

WKND RECOMMENDS:

You forget to take down your weed poster before a Skype interview. Skip a turn.

The firm you’re planning to work at gets shut down for fraud. Skip a turn.

SATURDAY APRIL

Cutting the sleeves and midriffs from all of your shirts to enjoy the sunshine.

2

Bernie wins, so Hillary’s campaign no longer exists. Go back to start.

YSO 50 WITH OLE AKAHOSHI AND SCARLETT TONG ZUO

Bernie wins, so Wall Street no longer exists.

Go back to start.

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Woolsey Hall // 8 p.m.

If only WKND could age as gracefully as YSO.

Exhuming colonial corpses from the New Haven Green to work on your summer body.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

Homelessness in the Elm City // BY GRAHAM AMBROSE & VICTOR WANG

COVER FROM PAGE B3 the easiest option, but it’s very dehumanizing.”

Garcia-Kennedy, who is a staff reporter for the News, referred to a common tactic among members of the University community: avoidance. Across campus, students, faculty and visitors said they avoid potentially awkward encounters by taking alternate routes to evade panhandlers or averting eye contact when confronted.

Some University personnel, like Refi Aksep Sativa, a Fulbright language teaching assistant from Indonesia, receive a formal education on panhandling and homelessness from an institution abroad. Sativa, called “Puan,” or “teacher,” by her students, was instructed by her home university not to remove her wallet or purse on the street for fear of robbery.

The lesson came as part of a “tips and tricks” session on life in the United States.

“They said, ‘You need to stay alert. There are dangerous things out there in America,’” Sativa said.

Xander Mitchell ’19, a coordinator of YHHAP’s Project Homeless Connect, attributes discomfort among University personnel to cognitive dissonance. “Both Yale students and the New Haven homeless population more or less occupy the same space, and yet the experience for the two groups is vastly disparate.” The paradox of abjectly impoverished individuals living in one of the wealthiest properties in the nation can be “awk-

ward or uncomfortable for some students.”

Henry said Yalies sometimes treat panhandlers as a “regular nuisance,” but said students’ discomfort mostly comes from a genuine desire to help, coupled with an uncertainty about how to do so. She suggested a variety of responses — carrying food or street sheets, which offer a succinct list of shelters and food kitchens.

BEYOND PANHANDLING But for some students, even coming up with an appropriate response to panhandling does little to help them understand or address the broader issue of homelessness in New Haven. In fact, multiple students interviewed guessed that there are 1,000 to 3,000 homeless people in New Haven. In reality, the number is closer to 100.

Estimates on the number of panhandlers vary, but numerous sources familiar with the topic estimated the number of regular panhandlers in New Haven between 20 and 25.

The students’ overestimates likely stem from a misunderstanding of panhandling. Several students interviewed believed that panhandlers were homeless and conflated panhandlers with homelessness, attributing the ostensibly high number of panhandlers with high rates o f

homelessness.

Like other college towns, downtown New Haven attracts a high number of panhandlers relative to other neighborhoods in the city.

“We have a large college atmosphere which brings in a constant change in population, both in students and in families and visitors,” Davis said. “So it’s almost like there’s constantly new targets coming through for those panhandlers to ask.”

But not all panhandlers are homeless, and not all homeless individuals panhandle.

In fact, according to Davis, many panhandlers are “professional;” they panhandle regularly, for many hours at a time, despite having a permanent shelter in the Greater New Haven region.

He said that panhandling and homelessness rates in New Haven are similar to rates elsewhere.

“There is some connection between panhandling and homelessness,” said Ed Mattison LAW ’68, who is involved with Continuum, a nonprofit organization that provides housing options for the homeless. “But many panhandlers often do have a place to stay, because they need a base to operate out of.”

Mattison and o t h e r s

involved with social justice organizations in the city said the state of homelessness in New Haven is more closely linked with federal programs and state policies, rather than with the individual interactions between students and the small number of panhandlers around campus.

According to Bradley, severe cases of chronic homelessness have been in sharp decline over the past three decades. “We are making progress. The number of chronically homeless individuals in the past two years has gone down about 20 percent.”

Mayor Toni Harp has made the abolition of homelessness a priority of her administration. In summer 2014, the 100-Day Challenge to End Homelessness permanently housed 102 chronically homeless individuals. State and national legislators lauded the initiative.

But New Haven’s real homelessness problem today has little to do with street beggars. Instead, New Haven homelessness more often centers on families.

“Family homelessness is more a function of economic circumstances,” Bradley said. Unlike the common student conception of a homeless individual perpetually condemned to life on the sidewalk or the streets, family homeless is (often) more temporary, lasting days, weeks or months at a time before a family can find permanent housing. Once housed, however, formerly homeless families often continue to live in poverty for indefinite periods of time.

“Many families remain on the edge of homelessness,” he added.

According to Bradley, structural forces affecting the national economy are mostly responsible for the increase in family homelessness.

“Now there’s a more frequent disconnect between wages and housing costs. Housing costs are going up, but wages are stagnant,” he said. *** Liu faced the very situation many sources across the University hoped to avoid. Halfway into his undergraduate career in New Haven, Liu had been in this position before. But unlike many of his peers, accustomed to constant confrontations with panhandlers, Liu opted to do something different.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t have any money on me, so I offered to drop by Gourmet Heaven to get money from an ATM,” he said. En route, the two struck up a conversation. “I learned more about her and her background: that she was born in Guilford, spent the last few decades in New Haven, and was really smart in school, but had to drop out.”

Liu withdrew money from the ATM and offered to buy the woman food. What she said next shocked him: “This was the first time during her time in New Haven that a Yale student has walked her anywhere.”

For Liu and the dozens of Yale students devoted to the eradication of homelessness, the battle is personal.

“As a first-generation college student from a low-income background who started the beginning of his undergraduate education in a community college, I spent formative years around veterans, single parents, former inmates and other low-income students who were at a time without a home,” Liu said. “Speaking personally, my mother and her family escaped as refugees from the Cambodian genocide and spent many months without a home — so I understand that, at times, uncontrollable circumstances lead to one’s condition in life.”

However an individual treats the homeless and panhandlers, Yale agrees on one matter: empathy. “I think beyond all, the most important thing is just to treat people with respect,” Liu said.

“So even if I’m not able to spare any change or much time, I try to be nice and approachable, and to treat them with the same respect I would give to anyone I meet in my classes at Yale, because for all I know, they might even be a Yale student in the future.”

Contact GRAHAM AMBROSE at graham.ambrose@yale.edu and VICTOR WANG at v.wang@yale.edu .

// ASHLY N OAKES

SUNDAY APRIL

3

IF ONLY I WERE THAT WARRIOR (ITALY, 2015)

WKND RECOMMENDS:

WHC Auditorium // 2 p.m.

A documentary about the unresolved legacy of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, followed by a discussion with director Valerio Ciriaci.

Becoming involved in a freak Spikeball accident to get a Dean’s excuse from coursework.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND POETRY

A SPACE TO SPEAK // BY HANNAH SCHMITT

// MATTHEW LEIFHEIT

SUNDAY APRIL

3

A classroom. A coffee shop off campus. Circles of plastic chairs or worn couches, tucked into the nooks and crannies of any one of Yale’s cultural centers. The middle of a wood-paneled room, people crammed shoulder to shoulder on the floor. The Sterling Nave. Cross Campus on an autumn afternoon. Sudler Hall. A common room.

Any one of these spaces can be home to spoken word, and all of them are transformed by it.

“It’s one of the most accessible art forms,” said Eli Benioff ’17, an artistic director for TEETH, one of Yale’s many spoken-word groups. “All you need is a stage and a poet.”

If you’ve ever been to a show, you’ll understand what he means. Onstage, poets spin syllables towards the audience in long, vaulting arcs of emotion, then draw them back to themselves for a quietly powerful moment of reflection or confession. When a line resonates with the crowd, audience members hum and snap, filling the air with an energy that shifts endlessly from painful to ecstatic and everywhere in between, angry or grave or bright with laughter.

The poet could be anyone, anywhere. For as long as they need, they fill the space with words, and all that matters is their story.

“You’re letting people into your self, right in the moment,” said Elisa Martinez ’18, director of Oyé, a group of spoken-word poets based out of La Casa Cultural. “It’s like telling a secret to a whole group of people.”

The deeply personal nature of spoken word constitutes part of what makes it so powerful. While novelists or painters can use their medium to express their own feelings and thoughts, they often do so through fictional characters or scenarios, distancing themselves from the story they are telling, at least to a degree. In contrast, spoken-word poets tend to write directly about themselves, typically using the first person. They often explore private or fraught moments in their lives, resulting in a kind of writing that is immediate, intimate and often visceral — alive with pain and joy.

“The point of spoken word is sharing what you feel and what you went through,” Martinez said. “Spoken word is almost always about your personal experiences.”

Another unique aspect of spoken word is the proximity between artist and performer. While a painter or novelist rarely presents their art to an audience directly — instead packaging it in a book or a museum — a spoken-word poet must stand in the middle of an empty stage and speak to an audience that is right there, living and breathing, waiting for words.

The interaction is strikingly intimate, almost like a conversation, except for one vital thing — everyone else is there not to speak, but to listen. In that moment, the room belongs to the poet and no one else.

This is where the transformational power of spoken word comes into play.

When a poet takes the stage, she creates a space to speak.

The concept of such a space — to tell a story and be heard — can be a political one, as forms of oppression such as racism and sexism have tended to marginalize people by depriving them of a voice in mainstream art, literature, culture and politics. It makes sense, then, that spoken word has a rich history of use as a political tool.

Though people have read poetry aloud for millennia, spoken word as we see it performed today is largely the product of communities of color, with roots going back to the Harlem Renaissance and perhaps further. Over the years, the medium has been used by people of color and other marginalized communities to tell their stories — in other words, to speak in a world that has tried to silence them.

“The history of spoken word is tied up in giving people voice if they don’t have it,” explained WORD co-president Olivia Klevorn ’17. “It is designed for that form. Nothing else is designed in that way.”

And at Yale, many students use

IN THE CONTINUUM: A STAGED READING

spoken word as a way to talk about their identities, finding a unique avenue for expressing aspects of their lives that have been shaped by categories such as race, gender or sexual orientation. Through poetry, they explore not only the struggle of living in a world that dismisses who they are, but also the joy of self-expression and affirmation. Above all, they make their voices heard.

“Through spoken word, I can make people laugh, cry, think about race and gender and learn something important about themselves,” said WORD poet Alex Zhang ’18. “That’s nothing short of magical.”

Klevorn, too, highlighted the tremendous power of spoken word as a way to express her identity.

“There are very few forms in which I, as a woman of color, have been able to say, ‘Look at me, watch me, hear me; this is my voice, this is my time, this is now,’ and have it actually work,” she said. “Spoken word gives us a moment in which we can create ourselves and present it to other people.

It’s a totally empowering experience.”

Because of its close relationship to race and gender, spoken word has also provided a space for students to heal after the events of last semester, which served as a painful reminder to many of how much work Yale has to do before its campus becomes a truly inclusive space for people of color, especially women. In response, Next Yale came together to advocate for a more racially just campus. Many of the movement’s ideas resonated with the politics of spoken word, and a good number of Yale’s poets became involved with the group.

“I think some of our members felt an obligation to be more involved, and other members were sort of trying to find where they fit in,” WORD copresident Connor Szostak ’17 said.

Szostak also emphasized that, as individuals figured out their place in the movement, the group strived to be a restorative and productive space for all its members.

“A lot of these discussions have been happening in WORD for a while,” he said. “We wanted to make sure everyone had opportunities to heal and opportunities to vent so that members were best able to use their abilities to move the discussion forward on campus.”

For those who are not part of a performance group, the Women’s Center offered an informal space for students to use poetry to process and take care of each other. On a rainy night in December, people squeezed onto couches or cuddled on the floor, sipping hot chocolate and chatting quietly before the first performer took the floor. Hums and snaps filled the air as students used spoken word to tell stories about their feelings, relationships and identities — stories that belonged to them, that were charged with pain, resilience, joy and love. This marked one of a series of open mic nights that the Women’s Center began last semester, partly inspired by Next Yale.

“It was about how we could find a way to talk freely about what is going on within our community,” said Ashia Ajani ’19, who runs the open mics with Nicole Chavez ’19.

Ajani also hopes the open mic nights will promote collaboration between different cultural centers on campus without overshadowing the vital work that each group does on an individual level. To make space for conversations about the intersections of different identity categories, each night has a different theme. A performance last February highlighted Black feminism in honor of Black History Month; next Friday, the focus will be on queer feminism. Chavez explained that the open mic nights are meant to provide an opportunity for students to develop a sense of closeness and community by sharing experiences across different identity categories.

“It’s a place where people talk about their stories in a way that creates solidarity,” she said. “Regardless of whether or not you particularly empathize with that experience.”

The nights were an instant success, so popular that Chavez and Ajani had

to relocate to the Afro-American Cultural Center in order to comfortably accommodate everyone who wanted to attend. The enthusiasm surrounding these events is telling; it speaks not only to the appeal of spoken word as an art form, but also to a deep need on campus for the catharsis and community it offers. What’s more, the excitement surrounding spoken word is far from new. Over the past several years, demand for performances has skyrocketed both at Yale and in general, and many groups on campus have moved to bigger and bigger venues in response.

For example, WORD has gone from performing for groups of 50 to groups of hundreds in only a few years, and just last week, Jook Songs collaborated with the Asian American Writer’s Workshop in New York City, where they performed to a full house. For many poets, performing serves as not only a chance to express themselves, but also a reminder of how important it is to do what they do.

“My favorite part is actually the fact that I’m performing with all these beautiful people who I trust,” said Victoria Wang ’18, a poet in Jook Songs, a group for Asian-American students. “The sense of community and empowerment is so strong. It makes me feel like I can make a difference just by speaking my truth, and I always feel proud of the work I’ve done.”

The increasing popularity of spoken word allows poets to communicate urgent messages to more and more people, in addition to providing them with opportunities to build themselves as artists and performers. Though it is relatively young, the genre, historically devalued due to its association with marginalized communities, is quickly gaining traction.

This change is not only exciting; it is important.

But change does not come without its challenges. As audiences flock to shows by the hundreds, poets must navigate the complex relationship between performance and authenticity, at times forced to choose between the stories they have to tell and what people want to hear. This tension is especially difficult because, unlike other forms of art, spoken word encourages an audience to respond directly to a poem in the same moment it is being performed. When people snap and hum in appreciation, a poet can tell right away if her piece resonates or not, which often creates pressure to appeal to an audience.

Many members of the spoken-word community treasure the intimate nature of the medium, and they worry about the increasing focus on audience reception, which can distract from the inherent value of the poet’s story. Sarah Pearl ’18, an artistic director for Oyé, emphasized the vitally personal nature of poetry, explaining that it is not an object for consumption by an audience but rather an open, honest way for people to explore their own thoughts and feelings. She hopes poetry at Yale stays a place to tell all types of stories.

Pearl also highlighted the importance of maintaining racial diversity in spoken word.

“It’s great that people are hype about poetry. It’s super exciting,” she said. “But I think that, as poetry continues to grow, we have to make sure that minority voices are represented.”

Art is always in flux, and spoken word is no exception, especially as the genre becomes more institutionalized. But some things never change, and the power of spoken word to give people a voice is one of them.

When a poet steps up, adjusts the mic and utters the first syllables into the waiting silence, the room changes.

Whether it’s an auditorium or a coffee shop, a cultural center or a classroom, it becomes something new. A place for confrontation, discovery, healing. A space to speak.

And that’s the thing about spoken word — no matter what, a story is being told.

Listen.

Contact HANNAH SCHMITT at hannah.schmitt@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

BATTELL CHAPEL // 3 p.m.

FOLKS perform this contemporary play followed by a talkback led by director Lauren E. Banks ’17.

Hanging your laundry to dry from Harkness Tower to reduce your carbon footprint.

PAGE B10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

MORTALS ON OLYMPUS // BY KATIE MARTIN

If Donna Tartt had written her first novel with the sole intention of appealing to spoiled Ivy Leaguers, she would probably still have ended up with “The Secret History.” It’s basically

// CATHERINE PENG

a laundry list of things a certain kind of Yalie loves: elitism, the classics, substance abuse, bisexuality, exorbitant wealth and a truly shocking lack of consequences for bad behavior.

This isn’t intended as a condemnation. Tartt is a gloriously evocative writer who knows how and when to linger over a well-crafted sentence like no one else, whether it’s her own or one of the many obscure quotes scattered throughout the text like Easter eggs for Classics majors. “The Secret History” is chock-full of the sort of overly pretty phrases that people like to get tattooed on their ribs, but her masterful touch makes them seem integral to the text.

Tartt’s writing is luxuriant and intoxicating, just melod ra m a t i c e n o u g h to sell her at times implausible plot, selfindulgent in the same way as her characters.

And boy, are her characters ever awful: privileging intellect over simple human decency, cliquey and selfinvolved, unhealthily fixated on the Ancients.

And boy, do I ever want to be just like them. The portrait Tartt paints of fictional Hampden College’s Clas-

sics department, a one-man operation completely divorced from the petty concerns of university funding and distributional requirements, is incredibly appealing. Having now met a thousand cut-rate versions of genius linguist Henry Winter, one of the novel’s protagonists, I still long to regard someone with “chill distaste” and tartly assert “I love Homer.” I still, despite having witnessed firsthand how awful they can be, long to be surrounded by “clever rich boys in dark suits” who marvel at my beauty as I quote the Oresteia from memory.

“The Secret History” is told from the perspective of people for whom, it seems, nothing ever really goes wrong, for whom money hardly ever runs out, for whom domestic violence is sexy instead of devastating; people who live in a world where the cops are happy to look the other way and everything can be fixed if you just put your mind to it. Watching them glamorously float above the trivialities of daily life is a heady, envy-inducing experience.

Sure, they don’t end up particularly happy. Some of them even end up dead. But it’s all aesthetically pleasing and poignant in a way that real pain never is. We barely hear from the people who don’t even register on the rich kids’ radars, whose drug problems ruin their lives instead of just adding a splash of pathos to their image, who are shattered by the death of their friend.

Sometimes they’re visible at the edge of the frame, but it’s usually just in time for someone to mock them for their excess of emotion and deficit of knowledge.

Even the secretly lowermiddle-class, Californian narrator is able to adopt the East Coast elitism of his newfound peers, mirroring their disdain for the novel’s new-money antagonists. But his insecurity over his too-cheap clothes and

his public school, over the fact that he didn’t get the chance to learn Latin in high school and his inability to casually drop hundreds of dollars on a boozy brunch, was the part of the charmingly implausible characters and narratives of “The Secret History” that rang truest.

It’s a feeling that most Yalies can relate to: the desperate sense that you could finally fit in, if only you were just a bit better connected and a little more independently wealthy, if only you had gone to a better high school or been able to get a high-powered internship at your parent’s company. It’s the ache of wanting to belong in a place that doesn’t want you and wasn’t built for you, of watching other people float above the problems that drag you down.

And so “The Secret History” speaks to something deeper than sordid college drama. Its plot is founded on a fact that becomes ever more clear the longer you spend at a place like Yale: rich people, especially rich white people and especially straight rich white men, can get away with almost anything. But the novel can’t be summed up in such a pat fashion, since its climactic scene is a revenge fantasy made real, where months of sexist, homophobic and classist insults are paid back in full.

Maybe the novel’s true lesson is that no one is completely invulnerable, that even the richest party boy is shamed for his sexuality and even the most glamorous woman is subject to abuse, that even aloof geniuses long for love and approval. Even though the narrator is blind to his friends’ flaws, unable to see past their easy glide over the choppy waters of life, Tartt parts the ocean enough for us to see the swans frantically paddling just under the surface.

Contact KATIE MARTIN at katherine.d.martin@yale.edu .

Ask Jack: Making the most of your time at Yale // BY JACK BARRY DEAR JACK: I’m so excited to be back on campus after a great spring break. I love hanging out with my friends on Cross Campus, eating potatoes for every meal in the dining hall and sleeping on a bed of metal coils in the same room as the girl who vomits in my wardrobe after each Woads. I love it all so much that I’m worried about how I’ll feel when the summer starts. Our time at Yale is so finite and there are so many things I’ll miss once I’m gone. How many more times will I be hit by a Frisbee on Old Campus? How many more times will my damp underwear be stolen from the washing machine? How many more times will I scoop my roommate’s partially digested Yorkside pizza from my shoes? I just don’t know! How do I stop mourning the semester before it’s even ended?

— Wistful Bile Scooper DEAR WISTY: I understand your internal turmoil. As it reads on my cousin’s lower back, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” I’m unsure why she decided to place the tattoo in that particular location. Maybe there wasn’t enough space on her neck after she inked “BITCH” across

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her throat. Now she always wears scarves at my grandma’s house.

I think you should follow the advice on my cousin’s lower back and savor your time here at Yale, instead of shedding tears over milk that has yet to spill. Here are a few tips for making the most of your final days: 1) Face your fears directly.

Leave school. Run away. Tell no one. You think you’ll miss Yale now, but just you wait ’til you’re living out of a motel in South Cleveland that rents by the hour.

You’ll fondly remember those dining hall potatoes when the only meal you have each day is a used teabag you find behind the 7-Eleven down the street. Your chronically vomiting roommate will look like an angel in comparison to your new roommate at the motel. Crystal was just another girl with a dream — before she tried the meth she was named for.

Scraping tequila-scented vomit off your favorite blouse is a lot easier than fending off midnight knife attacks from Crystal when she mistakes you for a demon sent to eat her face.

2) Break out of your rut! Shake up your routine and plan fun activities with your friends, making memories that will last as long as it takes you to drink an entire carton of wine by yourself. Go bowling, see a play or kill a man.

Nothing bonds a group of people like a deadly secret. Twenty years

from now, you can tell one another’s kids about the night that you watched the life drain from a man’s eyes. If murder isn’t your thing, you can always slay at the bowling alley with your pals.

3) Make a concerted effort to become immortal. Once forever young, you can endlessly transfer from university to university, perpetually enjoying the college experience. Relive the excitement of freshman move-in year after year as you loop through the American higher education system. Have dorm room hookups night after night as the glow of youth leaves your hollowed eyes, but don’t let your world-weary soul betray the fact that you are an immortal, eternally trapped on the cusp of adulthood. And don’t forget to save all of your class notes! Everyone will want to be study buddies with the girl who’s taken Intro Econ 15 times over the past century.

I know that this point in your life can be stressful and challenging. But remember to keep your friends close and the shiv you’ve fashioned from a toothbrush to protect yourself from Crystal closer. Your best days are always ahead!

Your friend, Jack Contact JACK BARRY at john.c.barry@yale.edu .

AFRICA SALON CONCERT FEAT. THOMAS MAPFUMO, BLITZ THE AMBASSADOR, AND WAMBURA MITARU College Street Music Hall // 6 p.m.

Hear “The Lion of Zimbabwe” roar at this free concert.

// ASHLY N OAKES

WKND RECOMMENDS: Wearing sunglasses everywhere.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

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TWO’S COMPANY

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// BY ANDREW STAUTZ It is 2:02 a.m. A man sits in his study, putting twos with twos. Doublings double doubled doublings.

Binaries have long been out of fashion. Deconstruction shows that two-by-two is not how meaning’s made. But this play is built of pairs of pairs. With “Venus in Fur,” a 2010 play by David Ives going up this weekend at the Off-Broadway Theater, Simone Policano ’16 and Ari Zimmet ’16 act as Vanda and Thomas — who act as Vanda and Severin, who act as Aphrodite and Pentheus.

The setup is the simplest of misesen-abîme: An actress auditions for a director’s new play. From there, we’re off to the races. Our source texts range from the “Book of Judith” to the “Bacchae of Euripides” to the 1870 novel “Venus in Furs” by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the eponymous sadomasochist.

What is this play about? Thomas says, “You might say this play is about … beware of what you wish for.” Vanda says, “Don’t fuck with a goddess is what it’s about.” This play might be about gender politics. It might be about Dionysian impulses, or Apollonian reason. It might be about performance, the self, the line between the two, art or reality, art and reality.

One could here digress into a

// KEN YANAGISAWA

thousand other byways of thought.

We know from “Song of Songs,” Petrarch and Donne that love of Love and love of God can sound the same.

Or, we venture to Faust Part Two and find Helen, another Venus in disguise. Or, in studies and visitors, there is Faust Part One, Jerome or “Paradise Regained.” The signs point outward in all directions.

What the play is about doesn’t matter. Its very structure is exuberant, joyful and fun — playful, if you will. And it is the transparent structure that lends the play meaning.

When the script reaches to establish too explicit a significance, it goes flat. But when it is content to merely play with mirrors, which is most of its hour-and-change run time, the effect is heady and exhilarating.

Thomas and Vanda are just substantial enough to function as characters. The distance between Policano as herself, in the 10 minutes before dress rehearsal begins, and Policano as Vanda, in the fictional world of the play, remains wonderfully slight. She handles the character shifts — functionally, playing Vanda entails playing three roles (modern Vanda, 1870s Vanda and Aphrodite) — with fluidity and grace. Zimmet, in trying to do more, accomplishes less: his acting occa-

sionally feels like overacting, but it is never so heavy as to drag down the fun of the production. Together, they effectively handle the script’s sustained sexual tension, although this is (perhaps surprisingly, as Policano spends upwards of an hour in her underwear) not too central a focus.

And thankfully so, because in a play built around the multiplicity of possible pairs, it allows gender to act as one among many binaries.

For a play whose interest is mostly structural and abstract, it is the duty of the production to intrude as little as possible. With no scene changes, a minimum of lighting effects and no formal boundary between onstage and off, the director and producer team of Zachary Elkind ’17 and Alison Mosier-Mills ’17 have achieved this. The minimalist set, composed only of a desk and a divan, keeps the audience’s focus on the clarity and classical proportion of the script.

Nabokov, himself a master of mirrors, maintained that the pleasures of reading ought to be the pleasures of writing: that is, formal puzzles and games, not sentimental immersion. “Venus in Fur” is a very good game.

Contact ANDREW STAUTZ at andrew.stautz@yale.edu .

Gender bending, genre bending // BY AGNES ENKHTAMIR Critics have always been wary of “Cymbeline.” The general consensus is that if Shakespeare literally gave birth to his plays the way Zeus gave birth to Athena, Cymbeline would be the ugly child who never really grew out of the “I Am SOOOoOO Random! XD” phase.

Samuel Johnson, the man who wrote “A Dictionary of the English Language,” was the most famous critic of Cymbeline, writing: “To remark the folly of the fiction … [is] to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.” Others have floated theories that Shakespeare was becoming a “wearied artist,” or was “bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama.”

“Cymbeline,” like other obnoxious preteens, was not well received, perhaps because the play defies categorization; there are scenes too heavy for it to be a comedy, but its ending doesn’t make it a tragedy either.

But despite the sick burns dealt by 18th-century scholars (or perhaps because of them?), the Yale Repertory Theatre is staging “Cymbeline” through April 16.

Evan Yionoulis is directing.

One of the most interesting choices Yionoulis and casting director Tara Rubin made in staging this adaptation was gen-

der-bending this genre-bending play. “Cymbeline” has two female characters, and, like many of the women in Shakespearean plays, they are two-dimensional: good and chaste, or evil and ambitious.

The most notable gender swaps are of Cymbeline and the Queen.

While Shakespeare intended the titular character to be physically domineering and brimming with testosterone, the Rep has cast Kathryn Meisle, a petite actress, plays the titular character, a king whose authority is inextricable from his maleness. The Queen, played by the six-foot-something giant Michael Manuel, towers over her king. It is important to note that Yionoulis’s “Cymbeline” isn’t drag, though; gender-swapped characters don’t exaggerate their masculinity or femininity, which is part of what makes this production so unique.

But what makes this adaptation notable is not its genderblind casting; “Cymbeline” has been cast gender-blind many times. What makes this adaptation so notable is the actors’ dexterity. Meisle’s Cymbeline is so artful. When she walks across the stage as the king, she carries herself with such authority and selfassurance that it’s disorienting to see that kind of power emanating from such a feminine actress.

Witnessing scenes wherein Cymbeline is exercising his very male authority over his Queen and subjects is disconcerting, which is the reaction Yionoulis undoubtedly wanted.

Meisle and Manuel aren’t the only capable actors in the show.

The cast is one of the strongest I’ve seen this season at the Rep. Jeffrey Carlson as Iachimo strikes

the perfect note between desperation and repentance. Christopher Geary’s Cloten huffs and puffs, in just the right keys, up and down the set. Posthumus Leonatus, another gender-bent role, is played so naturally by Miriam Hyman that I actually can’t imagine the character being played by a man.

The set and costume matched

the production’s tone very well.

It’s a consistent show, with the exception of the combat scenes.

The battles were drowned in alternating white and red lighting, which might have been a powerful choice had the actors been trained a little more thoroughly — the fights looked more like interpretive dances.

The Rep is reliably good, and

this production of “Cymbeline” is no different. The cast is delightful to watch, even when they are waving their arms around and clinking plastic swords together. Under Yionoulis’ wing, Shakespeare’s ugly child might have grown into a mature adult.

Contact AGNES ENKHTAMIR at agnes.enkhtamir@yale.edu .

// COURTESY OF YALE REP

Seeing Color // BY SOFIA BRAUNSTEIN I left feeling like I had been shot, straight to the heart. I stumbled out of the dimly lit theater with the play’s final, cacophonous sound ringing in my ears and my bones, conflicting with lilting jazz piano music coming over the speakers, an attempt to quell the audience’s nerves.

“White History,” written and directed by Dave Harris ’16, is an undeniably powerful work of art.

It means to shock and cripple its audience, and it succeeds. It’s at once outrageous, realistic and disturbing.

The play begins with a rumbling sound and a ticking clock.

At once, we meet Bonnie and Todd, a saccharine white couple, who have recently moved into the neighborhood. Their married rapport is suddenly interrupted

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by a Klu Klux Klan member, who kicks open their door, barging in with a rifle and noose. Once he realizes they are not the black couple he expected, he begins to break down. Bonnie, taking pity on him, eventually invites him to join them for dinner. Their table conversation reveals that Bonnie and Todd are “colorblind,” meaning that they don’t see race.

This revelation spurs an epiphany for the KKK man, who declares, “This is progress,” as he rips off his mask. The moment is cast in a disturbingly red light, and concludes the first act on a sinister note.

The second act opens with Bonnie and Todd preparing dinner; now, they are hosting Monica and Perry, the black couple whom the KKK man had origi-

nally intended to lynch. As the dialogue degenerates from small talk to more surreal, racially charged discussions, the atmosphere grows more and more tense.

Queasy, wince-worthy moments abound in “White History.” Much of the dialogue seems intentionally forced, with the actors overenunciating and extorting laughter from their vocal cords. As jokes are made, the actors face each other and laugh for a few seconds before turning onto the audience to laugh a few decibels louder, as if we are all in on some unspoken joke. But we are not. Quite literally in the dark, we are left bewildered, laughing uncomfortably, as though we’ve heard a politically incorrect joke but aren’t

YEU FILMS: THE LIVES OF OTHERS (GERMANY, 2006)

sure whether to speak up.

These moments beg the audience to question their own biases. We are supposed to wince and squirm as the word nigger is repeated over and over by various characters. We are supposed to collectively gasp as Bonnie makes comments about Monica’s hair and her desire to touch it. They are phrases we may have heard before in daily conversation, but recognize as wrong.

For a student-written play, “White History” delivers a mature, phenomenal production.

All five cast members perform at a high caliber, delivering a cohesive, impactful drama. Lauren Modiano ’17 stood out for playing a particularly difficult role in Bonnie, whose naive fixation with black culture morphs into dan-

gerous obsession. Olivia Klevorn ’17 also delivered a remarkable performance as Monica, the most affected by the racial illiteracy of the characters who surround her.

The production also makes remarkable use of sound and light. The play’s most haunting moments occur when the characters are silent, and background sounds or natural light effuse through the theater.

As impressed as I was with the production and construction of the play’s storyline, I left with many unanswered questions — which Harris likely intended, clearly having handpicked these phrases and reactions, puppeteering his audience’s emotions and thought processes. There are so many questions: Is it possible to live in a colorless, raceless

world? Or are we deluding ourselves into thinking that such a reality is possible? And is such a reality destructive in nature?

Bonnie and Todd emphatically state that race no longer exists, and by denying a racially fraught history that is as much black as it is white, they only perpetuate modern racism, as shown in their interactions with Monica and Perry. Perhaps most of all, I wonder what solution Harris wants us to imagine: the haunting production feels misanthropic, though vital. “White History” will force you to reconsider history, and leave you with food for thought and — perhaps most importantly — action.

Contact SOFIA BRAUNSTEIN at sofia.braunstein@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

JE Theatre // 8 p.m.

Snacks and refreshments will be served at this screening of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s magnum opus.

Leaving your windows open so woodland creatures can inhabit your suite and become your confidantes.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

SIBLING FASHION DUO TALKS ART AND POLITICS // BY IVY NYAYIEKA

// COURTESY OF 2MANYSIBLINGS

A photo on their blog shows the two style masterminds behind 2manysiblings seated next to each other against the background of a starlit sky. The sky boasts a mix of orange and yellow and blue that you only see when you leave Nairobi. The type of sky that inspires the fear that even though we live in places and meet people that every second in the world there are a million a billion a zillion different things happening and we are missing out on them. 2manysiblings is a two-person art collective who, apart from running a popular art and style blog, get styling gigs and also organize events where fellow style enthusiasts can buy and sell fashion-forward clothing.

Velma and Papa Petit are siblings (truly brother and sister, Velma insists) who call Nairobi home and whose art has been on the tips of the lips of many. While their blog, on which they display their style through various forms of art, has earned them a name internationally, they are most famous for engaging the local community by curating events like Thrift Social Nairobi, a marketplace where people can buy and sell vintage or second-hand clothing but also encourage people to bring clothes they no longer use, which are then donated to the Jacaranda School. The duo is passionate about creating a space where African artists like musicians and fellow style enthusiasts can meet each other and share their work, and where audiences can interact with these artists.

I am surprised by their identification of themselves as African — I feel that I only took on African as a label central to my identity after I came to the U.S. and met fellow Africans. But perhaps while every country and every city is unique, there are similarities among African cultures across the continent in terms of language, cuisine, fashion and music that would allow for the celebration of differences as well as collaboration between different artists.

If Velma and Papa Petit get the funding they are working toward acquiring, they hope to create an opportunity for these artists to meet within spaces in various African countries and to share their work with the audiences whose stories they are telling, while still maintaining the fluidity of traveling outside the African continent and meeting people who admire their work — not just Africans in the diaspora, but also the many other people who can access their work now thanks to their great social media presence.

Papa Petit tells the story of how they started their work, unaware how far they would come eventually. In the beginning, his sister was still in South Africa studying, and he was home in Kenya. He says that they would share ideas, and they realized that they were both interested in the same thing and eventually started the blog.

They are themselves walking testaments of their art. For the exhibition of their work, they show up in eye-catching outfits, with Velma in a neckpiece with a wooden brown detail at the front and tall black shoes that make her seem like she is walking on top of the world. Papa Petit is

wearing a red leather jacket and a hat. His short dreadlocks peek out above his forehead underneath its brim.

They do not have a 9-to-5 schedule, something that they both think is one of the perks of the job. Their team includes the two siblings and an administrator. When people reach out to them, they get to work, each sibling carrying his or her weight. Papa Petit is a stylist and Velma a hairdresser. They are thankful that once word started to get out about them, their work has been recognized by many within Kenya and internationally. However, Papa Petit is careful to point out that they do not do their work so that people acknowledge them, but rather are just glad to do what they love. Their modesty could make the unsuspecting fail to notice that their work has been acknowledged by Okayafrica and Yasiin Bey. They are excited to have their work featured in AFRICA SALON’s “mo(ve)ments: African Digital Subjectivities” and to lead conceptual tours of this work.

Both of them value the joy that they get from working in art more deeply than they value its other benefits. Velma’s face, with her long black braids on each side, becomes animated when she talks about how her favorite thing about the work she does is that it makes her happy. She is surprised that I am pursuing writing and in between knowing giggles we discuss how I convinced my parents to let me write. She wishes that African parents would allow more of their children to pursue art-related careers rather than the stereotypical medicine, law or engineering. It reminds me of an image I saw online in which my friends were joking that in an African home you could either be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or a disappointment.

2manysiblings wish that more people were willing to fund art in African countries. Many people are willing to invest in health and education in Africa, but not music and photographs.

They wish they could communicate the importance of art to more people, because art is an expression of experiences, of what we go through in life and it is important to invest in that. Organizations like Creatives Garage in Nairobi and Kuona Trust have managed to get some funding and are able to compensate artists for their work.

Recounting Lupita Nyong’o’s success, Velma advises that more African students should be bold enough to give art a chance. 2manysiblings for them is about shaping the contemporary African narrative. African countries have suffered because their narrative has always been shaped by people other than themselves, and this is one of the things that inspires 2manysiblings’ passion for recounting experiences through art.

The caption of the image with the starry night reads: “We must be the ones who see the blaze in ourselves before anyone else. They claim it’s only a trick of the light but we must know that we have stars within us. — Ariana.”

Contact IVY NYAYIEKA at ivy.nyayieka@yale.edu .

THE DUO IS PASSIONATE ABOUT CREATING A SPACE WHERE AFRICAN ARTISTS LIKE MUSICIANS AND FELLOW STYLE ENTHUSIASTS CAN MEET EACH OTHER AND SHARE THEIR WORK, AND WHERE AUDIENCES CAN INTERACT WITH THESE ARTISTS.