Emtithal “Emi” Mahmoud is a woman who was born in the deserts of Darfur, Sudan, and has been writing her home into the American consciousness as long as she has had the platform to do so.
Emi was only a child in 1998 when her family moved to the United States to escape war and genocide, visiting as she has grown up, but her heart has never left. A Yale graduate, Emi began writing poetry in her freshman year as part of the group called ¡Oyé!. She has, since, been performing spoken word poetry on a variety of platforms and stages, spreading word and awareness of what has become of Darfur.
She has contributed to multiple UNHCR (The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) campaigns. She became the Individual World Poetry Slam champion in 2015, and has been since her beginnings a champion of women's voices and rights, globally. A strong and uniquely powerful voice for feminism that exists in a larger sphere than that of an individual who has experienced only the United States, and its variety of struggles, Emi brings an important perspective to the table.
In this poem, Emi Mahmoud speaks of arranged marriages and silence it is so often faced with.
As a creator, Emi has been addressing the different oppression women face world-wide, including the subjugation of women forced into arranged marriages by their fathers, treated as property by and for their husbands. It is a stark contrast to the typical concerns that feminists in the United States face. However, this does not discredit those struggles, only serves to put them into a larger prospective. Emi is an expert at this, her poem "How to Translate a Joke" being a powerful piece focused on contextualizing how universal certain experiences are for women.
Her championship winning poem, "Mama", is entirely about her mother, of how woman, to her, has always meant warrior out of necessity. In Darfur, Sudan, there is not a choice. It is not empowerment, it is survival. Woman warrior is not a trope, is not a story, for Emtithal Mahmoud, it is "Mom".
"Mama" was written only hours before the international championship, and on her way to the competition Emi got word that her grandmother, still living in Sudan, had passed away. She received a standing ovation as she performed.
It is so common for me to be catcalled and feel myself shrink into my skin, want to write a rant when I cannot manage a word. When a man called me woman when I was a girl, made it okay in his mind to want to consume me, made me equate woman to object because both meant possessable to him, it felt like ice had crawled into my veins. I am so lucky. I can forget, so easily, that my world is not the whole it. It is not irrelevant that the women in this country, the girls in this country, have to go through these struggles. However, to let myself lose sight of the progress we have made and the advantages I have as a white, middle class, American young woman is damning to those voices I could use my privilege to amplify. When the women of the world must only acknowledge the worst of my worries, there will still be work to be done, but it will mean a far different, better world than exists now. Perspective is everything.
By lending her voice, Emi has reminded me of this, and I am endlessly grateful.
Further reading:
https://www.thecut.com/2015/10/get-inspired-by-this-sudanese-american-poet.html
http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/emtithal-mahmoud.html
https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-02-12/emtithal-mahmoud-and-poetry-resilience
http://www.unhcr.org/uk/south-sudan-emergency.html
https://donate.unrefugees.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1873&ea.campaign.id=62975&ea.tracking.id=D15XSA173XES&gclid=CjwKCAjwo4jOBRBmEiwABWNaMZMg6pbzRjxwHAa3SRSZS-V1SsC0M93ZMB7qn2s-lBeT-wJ_bzVHsRoCfXEQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
https://buttonpoetry.com/emi-mahmoud-translate-joke-button-live/
https://www.facebook.com/oyespokenword/
Works Cited:
“Emtithal Mahmoud.” UNHCR , 2017, www.unhcr.org/en-us/emtithal-mahmoud.html. Accessed 17 Sept. 2017.
Evans, Dayna. “Today’s Inspiration Comes From This Young Sudanese-American Slam Poet.” The Cut, NEW YORK MEDIA LLC, 30 Oct. 2015, www.thecut.com/2015/10/get-inspired-by-this-sudanese-american-poet.html. Accessed 17 Sept. 2017.
Sharp, Jeb. “Emtithal Mahmoud and the poetry of resilience.” Pri.org, Pri's The World, 12 Jan. 2016, www.pri.org/stories/2016-02-12/emtithal-mahmoud-and-poetry-resilience. Accessed 17 Sept. 2017.
Clarity, honesty, and perspective are pretty awesome traits to maintain, especially coupled to the spiritual vulnerabilities they evoke. It is never entirely safe to see the world directly, or to make yourself known, or to open wounds in your ego where empathy can be fit, which makes doing so brave and doing so for others noble. I think both you and your subject are demonstrating those qualities.
ReplyDeleteRecognizing the pain of the world is in my opinion a keystone to being human, and especially to being a BETTER human, but I appreciate that you recognize your own pain, too. You feel what you feel, and there's no right or wrong in that, there's just the truth that you feel it. That's also human.
I think this post was super touching. I learned of spoken word poetry my freshman year at Bloom and since then I've been in love. I don't get to listen to it often so it's super awesome that you incorporated videos into your post. I think it's really smart too because I feel that there's such a difference in reading poetry and then hearing it. Honestly I've never really given much thought about arranged marriages either since it's not something I experience or come across daily but this definitely made me more aware of all of the other things and the oppression that's going on that I'm also not aware of.
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