In Deaf Jam, Aneta Brodski seizes the day. She is a deaf teen introduced to American Sign Language (ASL) Poetry, who then boldly enters the spoken word slam scene. In a wondrous twist, Aneta, an Israeli immigrant living in the borough of Queens in New York City, eventually meets Tahani Salah, a hearing Palestinian slam poet. The two women embark on a collaboration/performance duet – creating a new form of slam poetry that speaks to both the hearing and the Deaf.
Tahani Salah is a dynamic spoken word poet, educator, and activist from Brooklyn, with a bloodline to Palestine. She’s a member of the 2007 Nuyorican National Slam Team and a graduate of Columbia University. A high school teacher who has worked for the United Nations and for such nonprofits as Urban Word NYC, Family International Support Team, and the AAFSC, serves on the Urban Word NYC board of directors. She is a 2006 Urban Word NYC Slam Team Member and has performed at the Apollo Theater in New York, at universities in South Africa and Germany, and on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam. As a Muslim Palestinian-American woman, she is committed to bringing light and solutions to problems faced by people from communities and experiences whose voices are silenced.
Reception to follow
Co-sponsored by the Scripps College English Department