Iambic identity : multiracial individuals and ontological inquiry through the medium of spoken word poetry

This thesis, an example of arts-based inquiry, concerns the relationship between multiracial poets and Spoken Word performance. To that end, this paper performs scholarly analysis of data from interviews and workshops with multiracial poets; moreover, consistent with the arts-based approach, the paper also conducts a careful reading of submitted poems by these writers, and explores relevant themes through the creation of found poems by the author herself. This study finds that multiracial poets utilize the emotive and evocative artistic medium of Spoken Word poetry to explore and communicate their complex subject positions, taking advantage of the performative and discursive capacities of Spoken Word. Multiracial artists, themselves multidimensional people who are uniquely positioned in racialized and non-racialized communities, explore the six elements of dilemmatic positions (agency and control, difference and sameness, and constancy and change) through postcolonial discourse and poetic narrative. In doing this, the poets create windows to their experiences and mirrors to reflect how society views them through their past (memory), present (experience), and future (hope/fear).

Author dc:creator

• Estoesta, Samantha

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Black, David

• biracial
• identity
• multiracial
• race
• spoken word
• spoken word arts

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10170/914

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.viurrspace.ca/server/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=dim&identifier=oai%3Anull%3A10170%2F914