Speaking Truths

The twenty-first century is already riddled with protests demanding social justice, and in every instance, young people are leading the charge. But in addition to protesters who take to the streets with handmade placards are young adults who engage in less obvious change-making tactics. In Speaking Truths, sociologist Valerie Chepp goes behind-the-scenes to uncover how spoken word poetry—and young people’s participation in it—contributes to a broader understanding of contemporary social justice activism, including this generation’s attention to the political importance of identity, well-being, and love.
 
Drawing upon detailed observations and in-depth interviews, Chepp tells the story of a diverse group of young adults from Washington, D.C. who use spoken word to create a more just and equitable world. Outlining the contours of this approach, she interrogates spoken word activism’s emphasis on personal storytelling and “truth,” the strategic uses of aesthetics and emotions to politically engage across difference, and the significance of healing in sustainable movements for change. Weaving together their poetry and personally told stories, Chepp shows how poets tap into the beautiful, emotional, personal, and therapeutic features of spoken word to empathically connect with others, advance intersectional and systemic analyses of inequality, and make social justice messages relatable across a diverse public. By creating allies and forging connections based on friendship, professional commitments, lived experiences, emotions, artistic kinship, and political views, this activist approach is highly integrated into the everyday lives of its practitioners, online and face-to-face.
 
Chepp argues that spoken word activism is a product of, and a call to action against, the neoliberal era in which poets have come of age, characterized by widening structural inequalities and increasing economic and social vulnerability. She illustrates how this deeply personal and intimate activist approach borrows from, builds upon, and diverges from previous social movement paradigms. Spotlighting the complexity and mutual influence of modern-day activism and the world in which it unfolds, Speaking Truths contributes to our understanding of contemporary social change-making and how neoliberalism has shaped this political generation’s experiences with social injustice.

The twenty-first century has seen countless protests demanding social justice, and in every instance, young people are leading the charge. But in addition to protesters who take to the streets with handmade placards, there are also young adults who engage in less obvious change-making tactics. In Speaking Truths, sociologist Valerie Chepp goes behind the scenes to uncover how spoken word poetry—and young people’s participation in it—contributes to a broader understanding of contemporary social justice activism, including this generation’s attention to the political importance of identity, well-being, and love.

VALERIE CHEPP is an associate staff qualitative researcher in the Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic and associate professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Previously she served as associate professor of sociology and director of the Social Justice Program at Hamline University. She is the editor of Readings in Social Justice: Power, Inequality, & Action and co-editor of the qualitative methods book Cognitive Interviewing Methodology.

List of Tables
Preface 
1 Spoken Word Activism: Young Adults and Social Justice in the Age of Neoliberalism 
2 Spinning Stories from Words Got Spit: Researching a Verbal Arts Community 
3 Speaking Truths: Experiential Knowledge, Embodied Testimony, and Activist Storytelling 
4 Creative Politics: Art, Justice, and Empathic Possibilities 
5 Healing Justice: The Politics of Healthy Selves and Communities 
6 #Activism and Beyond: Sustainability and Social Change in a Digital World 104
7 Intersectionality as Activist Strategy: Toward a New Identity Politics 
Appendix A: Doing Ethnographic Research in the Era of Social Media 
Appendix B: Core Sample by Venue Participation 
Acknowledgments
Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 

"This beautifully written work deftly interweaves vignettes and poems to illustrate the culture of spoken word in meticulous detail."

 

"Valerie Chepp’s Speaking Truths beautifully adds to the growing literature on poetry slams, spoken word, and their surrounding communities. By exploring young poets as social justice activists, Chepp reminds us of the arts' undying capacity to imagine and build new, just, and more equitable worlds. Speaking Truths is a necessary offering in the burgeoning sub field of slam and spoken word studies." 

New Books Network: New Books in Popular Culture interview with Valerie Chepp "In this timely and deeply incisive investigation of poet-activists in Washington, D.C., Chepp illuminates the capacity of spoken word to transcend single-axis identity politics and create visionary, intersectional coalitions."