“I’ve been told…
When I was younger, I believed…
But now I know…
If you remember nothing else, remember this:”
On Thursday January 5th, these sentence starters became prompts etched into notebooks all across campus as students were given the opportunity to construct poems inspired by the community curriculum presentation of educator, performer and writer Carlos Andrés Gómez.
While advisories sat down and dedicated themselves to writing about their own identities or experiences, Andrés Gómez’s words woven together with a balance of literary and theatrical artistry permeated the minds of students; motivating each individual to compose a piece distinct from the next. After all, the personal, striking quality of Andrés Gómez’s spoken word poems enabled the assembly to author its reputation as a performance to remember, and Gómez a presenter to never forget.
A New York-based Colombian American poet and actor, Andrés Gómez has focused his career around the norms and notions of interpreting identity through the art of writing. His memoir Man Up explores the meaning of masculinity in the twenty-first century through a coming-of-age framework. Fractures as well as Hijito, two award-winning poetry collections by the writer, introspectively examine concepts like sexuality, race, gender, assimilation, violence and toxic masculinity among other pertinent ideas. Essentially, his writing aims to epitomize social justice through art.
Andrés Gómez however does not limit himself to the page for alongside being a distinguished author, he is a talented performer who sculpts his written work into captivating monologues and scenes vastly different from one another, but each intricate and noteworthy in their own regard. Featured in HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, Spike Lee’s Inside Man, TV show Verses and Flow and as a headliner on stages across 26 countries, 5 continents and 47 U.S states, his words and stories have evidently reached a number of audiences and individuals over the years. Through a collaboration between the Progressive Teaching Institute and Community Curriculum, an auditorium full of Fieldston students Form III-VI became one of these audiences.
As conversations subsided and lights dimmed, Andrés Gómez took the stage simultaneously taking on a lively disposition; interacting with the student body as if in a personal conversation with each individual.
“Do you like to dance? What music do you dance to?”
The seemingly arbitrary questions filled the auditorium as tentative hands were raised, nobody entirely sure how to respond. Some courageous souls spoke up answering Andrés Gómez’s inquiry with Ice Spice and Bad Bunny, to which cheering ensued. Even immersed in applause for the recognition of two commendable artists, the audience remained somewhat perplexed and intent on seeing where Andrés Gómez would go with the question, or much less the responses to it.
The answer was a spoken word poem.
What began as an ad-lib conversation shifted to an anecdote reenacted in real time of Andrés Gómez’s own dance experience. Then, the story became one of being asked where he was really from- a recollection of a stranger’s demands to label his identity and make sense of how and where he existed in the world. Andrés Gómez detailed stories of discrimination, fatal cases of assumption, all preceded by the question: “What assumptions do people make about you?” He connected with the audience and subsequently connected to himself and the world around him- what assumptions had been made of him or others? He sought to not only answer, but emphasize the importance of the question as a means of powerful reflection.
Perhaps one of the most poignant points of reflection shared throughout the assembly was an experience Andrés Gómez had as his very own sister was learning to read, or struggling to do so. Seeing as the entirety of his career as an educator, writer and actor revolved around literacy, his sister had assumed the skill was second nature to her brother and felt alone when she found it difficult to obtain. Andrés Gómez was forced to reflect on how though so much of his identity revolves around his ability to organize words in meaningful ways, there was a time in which he himself doubted his ability to ever comprehend them. He dedicated his presentation to those who feel similarly for though he got a late start to reading and writing, it has impacted the entirety of life in allowing him to express himself in a manner that feels as real and genuine as possible.
Curious about the formation and planning of the creative, reflective assembly, I consulted the Upper School DEI Coordinator and Director of the Progressive Teaching Institute, Mx. Choi. When asked why they chose Carlos Andrés Gómez as a presenter and how the Fieldston community benefits from having creatives like Andrés Gómez come into the space that is Fieldston and share their craft or expertise with the broader school community, they stated, “We wanted to bring a diverse array of speakers and make sure we are including individuals who identify as Latinx. I love that [Andrés Gómez] is someone who talks a lot about masculinity and intersectionality which is a word we talk about a lot, but it would be helpful to have a common experience of what talking about intersectionality can look like. He is an incredible educator, he has been working in schools for multiple decades at this point and is one of the best people in the field right now doing what he’s doing: make storytelling through social justice and conversations about intersectionality super accessible. He’s so engaging and somebody who can get people excited about writing about social justice.”
Echoing Choi’s comments, Form III student Iris Sullivan claimed the presentation and related writing activity helped her connect to her own identity. She shared, “I think it was very interesting to explore my voice as a writer due to the prompt given. It really made me think about what opportunities I would be given throughout my life and also how other people view me.” In regards to the presentation, Sullivan commented, “I enjoyed how [Andrés Gómez] would break up the more serious poems with small anecdotes about why we should care about what he is saying and why it relates to us. This made it easier to think about myself as a person and how my identifiers, whether I want them or not, affect my life daily.”
Ultimately, the way in which Andrés Gómez paired his talents for writing and performance with important ideals around social justice and societal constructs proved effective in creating a meaningful space to explore identity, performance poetry and all in between.
