TED Radio Hour - The Artist's Voice

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

Art not only spreads joy, but also inspires us to think deeply about the world around us. This hour, TED speakers explore how dance, poetry, and film can shift beliefs and empower creative expression. Guests include choreographer Camille A. Brown, director Jon M. Chu, and poets Amanda Gorman and Lee Mokobe.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Mnuch here. Before we start the show, I need to acknowledge a big milestone, NPR's 50th anniversary. The team and I want to take this moment to renew our commitment to you, dear listener, and our commitment to serving an audience that reflects America in which we hear every voice. And in that spirit, we have a brand new episode for you today called the artist's voice. It's all about the power of expression through art. We hope you enjoy it, and thanks so much for being here. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big.

Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy?

And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Anoush Zamoroti. On the show today, finding your voice through art.

You know, I'm a person that was teased tremendously for speaking and for my voice and the way it sounds. And everyone's entry point to their power is. is not always speech, is not always using their voice. So dance was really something that I found where I could be myself. And dance was really a way that I felt that I could best communicate. This is Camille A. Brown. She's a dancer, director, and perhaps one of the most sought-after choreographers on Broadway. And her passion for dance started right in her living room as a little girl.

I used to watch a lot of Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson videos and try to copy what they were doing and run the routine over and over again. Solid 80s. I love it. I'm telling my age now, so we know exactly where we're going with the time period. The other memory I have is going to the library with my mom, and we would take out some videos of musicals because she loved musical. She introduced me to musical theater in that world, and I would just memorize them. And I remember having a hat that I would use to go over that last number and chorus line where they're all in gold and wearing the hat.

And I had my hat. And when they did it and got into places, I got into place. So those are the memories that I have. When I was younger, danced with something that I loved. There was just that pure, wonderful joy that I felt. Camille loved dancing so much that at age four, her mom signed her up for ballet and tap classes. And Camille was really good. And as she got older, she got more serious about it.

But then something started to change. There was something that was introduced to me that I didn't really understand and had to struggle many years to get an understanding of it was the issue of what does the ideal dancer's body look like. And I just didn't fit in. So when did that happen? How old were you when you even started becoming aware, or I should say other people made you aware, that there even was such a thing as an ideal dancer's body? Yeah, it's sad because I was maybe 11 or 13.

or something where I was told, oh, you have to lose weight or I was put on a diet. I was told to go see the nutritionist. I mean, I was eating salads every day. So to already go into a situation where you're told that you're not good enough and you have to change and it's not right and you're not going to get better unless these things happen. And it has everything to do with body and nothing with the true intention of why you're there in the first place is for the love of dance. that's hard to get through as a kid.

Yeah. So it was hard to have that pure joy turn into something that was polluted a little bit with judgment and feeling of unworthiness sometimes. And I felt invisible. Despite all that, Camille forced herself to keep dancing, all through high school and into college. And then she discovered,

choreography through composition classes. That's where you make up your own dances and really find your own creative identity. And I hadn't understood that because as a dancer, as a student, I was taught the choreographer or the teacher comes in. They show you the material and you do it. But here, my first composition teacher, she was asking us how we felt about creating. And can we apply certain feelings and emotions that have to do with what we're going through in our life into a step? And I was just like, what kind of concept is that? You're actually asking me to think about this?

Okay. And the performance is coming from what you want to do, which is very different. So what changed for you? Like, how did that change the way that you thought about dance? I think that was the first time dance was a form of survival. And finding choreography and really understanding that it was a way for me to share my voice when I didn't have any other way to do that really helped me get through those hard times and continue to find and sustain the love of dance

and constantly tap into that little girl that was always trying to make up things. to the video. And I feel like with any medium, whether it be singing or acting or dance or writing or whatever you do, I think the closer you get to who you are as a person and finding your own entry point, then the more powerful in a sense like holding your power and your space and understanding who you are as a creative in the world, it just maximizes and it expands. And I think that's what dance can do. That's what dance did for me.

Humans have always used dance, music, theater, painting, and poetry to express ourselves and entertain each other. And some become skilled enough to make art that not only delights, but makes us rethink our history and the world around us. And so on the show today, the artist's voice. ideas from artists about finding their purpose and using their unique perspective to create works that shift beliefs, change cultures, and help us understand each other. Camille A. Brown is finding new joy in dance and choreography. She spent the last few years exploring the origins of social dance. If you've ever been to a party and everyone is doing the electric slide, That is a form of a type of social dance. When you see everyone doing one step,

but if you look at everyone doing it individually, they all have their own very specific way of doing it, and that's their creative identity. A social dance isn't choreographed by any one person. It can't be traced to any one moment. Camille A. Brown continues in her TED talk. Because of that, social dances bubble up, they change, and they spread like wild.

fire. In African-American social dances, we see over 200 years of how African and African-American traditions influenced our history. The present always contains the past. And the past shapes who we are

and who we will be. So when you are thinking about incorporating different dance moves, maybe ones that have been passed down through the ages, do you do you talk about the history or legacy of some of these dances with your dancers?

How do you go about incorporating them into your work? Yeah, I mean, I do it my way. You know, it's hard to describe because we're not literally cutting and pasting things. You know, I'm more so riffing off of these dances. So, for instance, when I did once on this island, it was inspired by several Caribbean islands, which gave me an opportunity to tap into Afro-Hatian, Afro-Cuban, West African dance. So I reached out to Maxime Montalus and I asked her if she could consult me in some Afro-Hatian dances. And when I spoke to her, I said, okay, now when you come to see the show, don't necessarily expect to see the dances because it's not about you teaching me the dance and then I go and teach it to somebody else.

Like that's not what this is about. This is about me understanding the origins for myself so then I can use my choreographic voice and riff on that. And then when it comes out, it's something that is Camille and not someone else's. So during the pandemic, you have actually continued with this idea of celebrating the origins and community, people coming together with social dance by starting an online school. Yeah, so I think my friend named it that I was doing at school. I actually didn't think of it in that way. I just thought, you know, we're doing these live classes. And then also I wanted there to be an additional understanding that this is all intellectual as well.

So I connected with a lot of people who are my friends and scholars and basically gave over my platform during COVID to them and to my dancers to teach. Five, six, seven, step. One, two. If I were to come to one of these Zoom classes, who would I meet? What would I learn? Can you give me some examples? Yeah, you would meet Catherine Foster, who really has a beautiful sense of the West African dance. Yeah, so let's do that much with music.

Let's walk through it. How are we feeling? You'd see Dexter Jones, who is a legend in terms of, uh, jazz dance. And we can't discuss swing dance without first acknowledging the music that went with it and its roots. And then you'd also meet musicians, Martha Redbone, who is a fantastic musician and composer. And she focuses on the indigenous dances. So you'll meet a collective.

of people. And I think the beautiful thing about it is we all understand that this is about African American social dance and the diaspora, but everybody has their own creative liberty to go about teaching that the way they want to. So this idea of education, is it in some way activism? Is it about expression of identity? Like, what do you see that dance brings to communities that have lived with these dances and to communities who are maybe being introduced to them for the very first time. I mean, dance, it brings all of it. You know, I think we would be putting it into a box to just say, dance is activism. It's like, yeah, but dance is also healing.

Dance is celebration. Dances is used in a time of morning. You know, there's so much, and we're all different people, so we're going to see different things. I say all the time that if I want change, I have to look inward first. And so how does the love of social dance, understanding a love of a people, understanding a love of who you are and as black people where we come from and the dances that came out of, out of celebration, out of pain, out of exhaustion, out of love, out of perseverance, how do we change the world with that? Change each other, change the world. That's choreographer Camille A. Brown. You can see her full talk at TED. On the show today, the artist's voice.

I'm Manus Shumeroady and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manus Shumeroody. And on today's show, the artist's voice. Hey, John. Hey. Nice to meet you online. That is...

How do I sound? How do I sound? You sound good to me. Well, there's a new house and so it's a little empty, so it's a little echoing. That's my only concern, but I might bring a pillow over here. This is Hollywood director John Chu. I'll get this on the little tee desk that I have. Congrats on the new house.

That's a big deal to move. New house, new baby, new movie, it's a lot. John's new movie is in the Heights. It's adapted from Lynn Manuel Miranda's musical with the same name. Before that, he directed Crazy Rich Asians. Say, hey, I'm Rachel. It's like an Asian bachelor. the highest-grossing romantic comedy of the 2010s,

a majority Asian cast that dominated the box office. You know you should have told me that you're like the Prince William of Asia? That's ridiculous. Much more than Harry. But way before Crazy Rich Asians, way before John was making big hit movies, John was growing up in California as the youngest of five kids to two immigrant parents.

Yeah, my parents came from overseas. My mom's from Taiwan. My dad's from mainland China. and they came to the Bay Area of all places and started a restaurant called Chef Chuse in Los Altos in 1969. And it's still there till this day. When John's parents first arrived, they didn't speak much English. But they wanted to fit into American culture. My mom really pushed us to fit in and to assimilate so that we weren't looked at as strange or foreigners.

and she saw herself as Jackie Onassis and us as those kids. I mean, she would call me John John. They put us in dance classes in etiquette classes to know how to like drink tea and ballroom dance. I took tap for 12 years. Piano, drums, saxophone, violin. It was tennis. There was a lot of classes.

And did I get this right that when you weren't taking etiquette classes or tap dancing. You were watching a lot of TV, right? Yes, TV and audio and music and movies were a big part of my life, especially because with five kids, I think you need distractions to keep everyone busy. And so TV was on all the time. Someone's moved in with the Barclay family. And there was no filter as terror. Child play, Freddie Krueger. We were watching airplane, which was kind of a concert rotation. Surely you can't be serious. I am serious.

And don't call me Shirley. Yeah, the fact that me and my sister are named after Jennifer Jonathan Hart from Heart to Hearts. This is my boss, Jonathan Hart. And I luckily had my parents' camera. And it was one of those big, large ones you put on your shoulders. And so they gave it to the youngest one to haul everywhere. And I decided to make my own little movies with it. And I didn't know how to put them together.

but one day I saw in this sharper image there was this mixer board that you could put like VCRs together and cut it together. So I convinced my dad to get me one and in a house full of kids we have a bunch of VCRs in people's rooms and so I stole them all and connected it all and made a video of like, I think it was a trip to Boston or something.

So I brought them into the living room one night that's probably 1991 somewhere on there. Here's John Chu on the TED stage. And I sit them down in the living room and my heart was pounding, my breaths were deep, sort of like right now. And I pressed play, and something extraordinary happened, actually.

They cried and cried. Not because it was the most amazing home video edit ever, although it was pretty good, but because they saw our family as a normal family that fit in and belonged on the screen in front of them, just like the movies that they worshipped and the TV shows that they named us after. And I remember, as the youngest of these five kids,

feeling heard for the first time. There's this place where all these things in my head could go into the great electric somewhere out there and exist and escape. And I knew from this moment on, I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. I remember my mom giving me a pile of filmmaking books one day in high school.

I'm like, if you're going to do this for real, it's not going to be a joke, then you have to study it like a real craft, like a real subject in school. And I took that very seriously. And the best place to go, of course, they want, what's the Harvard of film schools? And that is USC.

So I went to USC School of Cinematic Arts and started to go there. And my mom and dad would always call me randomly and remind me that I've got to do movies about my Chinese heritage. That China was going to be a huge market for movies one day. I was like, yeah, right, yeah, right, guys. Always listen to your parents.

And I wanted to be Zemeckis, Lucas, and Spielberg. The last thing I wanted to talk about was my own cultural identity, my ethnicity. And honestly, I had no one else to talk about. There was no one at school that I could really open up to. And even if I did, like, what would I say? So I ignored it, and I moved on with my life. The prototype for me was Batman when Tim Burton did that. I was the fact that it was an event.

He got the toys and you played with more adventures in your back. yard, that you listened to the soundtrack before you went to sleep, you danced in your living room to it. To me, that was like the ultimate form of entertainment. And that's what John made right out of college. Stephen Spielberg saw one of his student films, helped him get an agent, and five years later, John put out his first feature film. Are you ready to step up? My first movie was a step up to the streets, a dance movie. Then there was Step Up 3D, a sequel to the sequel.

And then... Never say never. Justin Bieber. A documentary about Justin Bieber. Then a G.I. Joe sequel. Then another Justin Bieber doc. And a cartoon-turned-movie, Gem and the Holograms. It's all in the wrist.

And then I did. Now You See Me Too. You want to see a thing of beauty? Sort of magic heist movies. Seven years, seven movies. John was on a role. And making Hollywood studios a lot. So, John, just go with me here. If we were making the movie about you, I mean, clearly somebody very famous would play you.

But it's kind of like fairy tale, right? Like parents come from hardship. They open a restaurant that everyone loves. You go to the most amazing schools. You're making these movies that are just like big time. But then you, like, in the movie of you, there's a moment, right? Where you're like, wait, hold on. something happens where you're like, I need to make a change.

Yeah. I felt a little bit creatively empty. I'd been doing movies for about 10 years at that point. And a lot of sequels, a lot of franchise stuff, been making a lot of money for people. But I didn't know why I was doing it anymore. What am I actually saying? What do I want to say? What am I supposed to be saying?

What needs to be said? I never talked about my own cultural identity crisis being Asian American. Wait, what do you mean? You just referred to it as an Asian American crisis. That's the first time I've heard you use that word. Where was the crisis part? I think it was when you don't acknowledge how important the Asian part of your identity is and how many others out there are like you in terms of balancing these different cultures.

and so you just bury it. If someone says something to you on the street, if someone says something to you in a meeting, you bury it. Like, don't spend the energy on fighting it because your vengeance is when you make the thing, when you succeed on the other side. Just do better than that.

My sister reminded me the other day. It's like, do you remember when we crossed this, when we were like seven or eight and we went across the street to the Tower Records and that car pulled over and said, go back to your country chinks, to us, kids, three, three kids. She's like that, I've never forgotten that moment.

And I was like, that's crazy to me, because it just was a blip. And then I realized how lucky I actually was that I was so young and naive that I, and maybe my parents purposely protected us from that so we didn't have to deal with it. But at some point, there's a reckoning. At a certain point, I'm like, no, now they need to see me. I got a sign. I heard voices from the sky. And more it was like birds.

Okay, fine, it was Twitter. And in Twitter, it was Constance Wu on Twitter. It was Daniel Day Kim. It was Alan Yang, all these people who were writing their frustrations with representation in Hollywood. And it really hit me. I thought these things, but never really registered. I was really focused on, I felt lucky to be working. And so then I realized, yeah, what is wrong with Hollywood?

Why aren't they doing this? And then I looked at myself in the mirror and realized, I am Hollywood. I literally, I'm so holly. I popped my collar before I came out here. That's how Hollywood I am. Is it still up? Is it still out?

Okay, good. For all these years, I felt just, I've been given so much. What was I giving back to the film business that I loved? I earned the right to be here, not just to have a voice, but to say something. And say something important. And I had actually the power, the power,

the superpower to change things if I really, really wanted to. And so I found, Kevin Kwan's amazing novel, Crazy Rich Asians, and we went to work. John thought Crazy Rich Asians was his chance to tell an Asian-American story, with a multi-ethnic Asian cast using Hollywood money. Singapore for spring break. If you haven't seen the movie, it's got the classic rom-com trappings. A college professor is in love with a handsome guy from Singapore.

We've been dating for over a year now, and I think it's about time people met my beautiful girlfriend. who invites her there to visit his family, but fails to mention that they are incredibly wealthy. One could even say, crazy rich. We're comfortable. That is exactly what a super rich person would say. You might remember just how big the movie was when it came out in 2018. But when John first pitched the idea, Hollywood execs thought it was really risky. And there wasn't much to compare it to, because the most recent Hollywood film with a majority Asian cast,

and director, it was the Joy Luck Club from 1993. It was not a guarantee at all. Every time we did surveys and stuff, the audiences weren't going to show up. In fact, even in our test screenings, where you give free tickets to people to watch your movie, it had a 1 to 25 ratio, meaning after 25 asked, only one person said yes, which is super low for these types of things. So we were pretty screwed. But then the electric somewhere struck again.

And this army of Asian American writers, reporters, bloggers, went to work, unbeknownst to me. They sort of post stuff on social media, write stuff about us in articles. It was like this grassroots uprising of making ourselves news. I'll never forget going, opening weekend, and I went into the theater, and it's all, not just Asians,

all types of people, and I go and I sit down and people laughed, people cried, and when I went to the lobby, people stayed. It's like they didn't want to leave. It was the same thing that my parents felt when they watched our family videos in that living room that day. Seeing us on the screen has a power to it. And the only thing I can describe is pride. Crazy Rich Asians did really well at the box office. But it also generated a lot of conversation about who and what moviegoers want to see on the screen.

To be clear, like the movie is not all relatable, right? I mean, these are like some of the most wealthy, ridiculous, over the top people. I mean, there are also a lot of stereotypes like the tiger mom, Chinese mother, and some thick accents. Do you think that anyone else could have made this movie? Did it need to be an Asian American director? Yeah, yeah. Listen, I am not in the business of telling artists what they can or cannot be doing. I think that's the point of artist is to shake things up

so we can fight about it and debate about it. However, I do believe that I was meant to do this movie. I do believe when I read the script at first, which was not written by an Asian person, that it was not a funny movie because they couldn't go to the places that I could. I can make fun of my mom. I can make fun of my grandma. And the best part of that is that we get to make the rules.

Like, it was us in control of that. We are so grateful for... Penjong, I could flip it on them and say, you're not going to have any accent in this, but let's trick the audience. Your first line is going to be in an accent. Nice to meet you, too. Chu?

Pooh-poo? I'm just kidding. I don't have an accent. So you can mess with the audience. No, no, I studied in the States too. Lights up on Washington Heights up at the break a day. So your next project, the one that's just about to come out, actually, is in the Heights.

It's the movie version of Lynn Manuel Miranda's musical about a bodega owner in Washington Heights in New York City. So this is another huge film that features all actors of color. Is that why you wanted to do this film, in part at least? It's true. I saw it back in 2010, 2011, somewhere there. I didn't have that sense of purpose yet. But I was crying during that show.

Broadway because I saw my immigrant family. I came from a Chinese family, working family that took care of each other. And that's what this show was about. This idea that every generation can see a little bit further that the generation before can't, which is kind of what creates the discrepancy between the two. I love that nuance between that. I felt that. The family dinners that I would have, they had these family dinners in this Broadway show. And it was about dreams. We were taught. to dream really big when we're young. So I always thought that that's what I'm bringing is I understand. I'm not Latino.

I'm not from Washington Heights. I'm all California kid. But that core, I got it. And I could communicate that. And what I learned, I'm so glad I did it after Crazy Rich Asians, because Crazy Rich Asians woke me up just seeing people see the movie, realizing they're not alone in that struggle and that identity, Asian identity crisis and then going out to eat afterwards, the same food you just saw in the

movie. Like, if you could eat together, if you could listen to the great music that you hadn't heard before in another language and share that together and watch a movie and share that together, imagine what you can do when you understand each other and see each other. To me, that was so powerful to experience. So going into in the Heights, I only protected those things more this time. Like, all right, you tell me what are the traditions? What are the sauces I need to have on this table? Where is everyone sitting? Crazy which agents allowed, gave me the experience to know make room, make room, make room and make time to have those conversations. And is that the way forward then? Putting people on screen who are underrepresented, I mean,

especially perhaps it's even more urgent considering the discrimination against Asian Americans, the real divisiveness here in the United States. Yeah. Is that your responsibility to use pop culture, art that is accessible to everyone to try and make people understand each other better? My dad always said, like when I would see someone treat him poorly out there, and he would treat them nice right back at the restaurant feeding them through, I would be like, Dad, they can't talk to you like that.

And my dad would say, like, you're representing, we represent. we represent, that's probably your first time they know a Chinese family intimately. And my responsibility is to treat them kindly and fill their stomachs. So next time they see another Chinese family, they won't treat them like that. Wow. My mom and my dad made, did what they could to give us safety, to give us confidence, to give us things they didn't have, to build the America that maybe wasn't, but what they really wanted it to be. what it had to be for them to survive. America is the idea of what we're making.

It's not what we are. It's what we all want it to be. Every generation has to keep getting us closer. That's what I want my stories to tell. I want you to come to the movies and come out of it feeling hopeful, not naive, but hopeful that if we all do our little piece

that we can meet this moment that is begging us to meet, that makes it more containable for me. That's director John Chu. His film In The Heights is out in June. You can hear his full talk at ted.com. On the show today, the artist's voice. I'm Anoush Zamorodi, and you're listening to The Ted Radio Hour from NPR.

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoosh Zomerode. So far, we've talked about dance and film. And now, let's talk poetry. In January, a young poet stole the show at the presidential inauguration in Washington, delivering a soaring poem and becoming pretty famous in the process. That poet is Amanda Gorman. But Amanda was thinking about the intersection of art and politics well before this year. In 2018, she gave a TED talk all about the artist's voice and how, for her,

poetry and politics are inseparable. I have two questions for you. One, whose shoulders do you stand on? And two, what do you stand for? These are two questions that I always begin in my poetry workshops with students, because at times, poetry can seem like this dead art form for old white men who just seem like they were born to be old,

like, you know, Benjamin Button or something. and I ask my students these two questions and then I share how I answer them which is in these three sentences that go I am the daughter of black riders were descended from freedom fighters who broke their chains and changed the world they call me

and these are words I repeat in a mantra before every single poetry performance in fact I was like doing it in the corner over there I was like making faces and so I repeat them to myself as a way to gather myself Most of my life, I was particularly terrified of speaking up because I had a speech impediment,

which made it difficult to pronounce certain letters, sounds, and I felt like I was fine writing on the page. Once I got on stage, I was worried my words, my jumble and stumble. What was the point in trying that to mumble these thoughts in my head if everything's already been said before? Poetry is interesting, because not everyone is going to become a great poet,

but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry. And it's this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language people. And it's this connection making that makes poetry, yes, powerful, but it also makes it political. One of the things that irritates me to no end is when I get that phone call, and it's usually from a white man,

and he's like, Amanda, we love your poetry, we'd love to get you to write a poem about this subject, but don't make it political. Which to me sounds like I have to be to draw a square but not make it a rectangle or like build a car, not make it a vehicle. It doesn't make much sense because all art is political.

The decision to create, the autistic choice to have a voice, the choice to be heard is the most political act of all. Poets have this phenomenal potential to connect the beliefs of the private individual with the cause of change of the public, the population, the polity, the political movement. And when you leave here,

I really want you to try to hear the ways in which poetry is actually at the center on our most political questions about what it means to be a democracy. Maybe later you're going to be at a protest and someone's going to have a poster that says they buried us, but they didn't know we were seeds. That's poetry.

You might be in your U.S. history class and your teacher may play a video of Martin Luther King Jr. saying we will be able to hue out of this mountain of despair, a stone of hope, that's poetry. Or maybe even here in New York City, you're going to go visit the Statue of Liberty, where there's a sonnet that declares as Americans,

give us, you're tired, your poor, your hurtled masses, yearning to be free. So you see, when someone asks me to write a poem that's not political, what they're really asking me is to not ask charged and challenging questions in my poetic work. And the thing about poetry is that it's not, really about having the right answers. It's about asking these right questions, about what it means

to be a right or doing right by your words and your actions. And my reaction is to pay honor to those shoulders of people who use the pens to roll over a boulder so I might have a mountain of hope on which to stand so that I might understand the power of telling stories that matter no matter what, so that I might realize that if I choose, not out of fear, but out of courage to speak, then there's something unique that my words can become. It might feel like every story has been told before, but the truth is no one's ever told my story in the way I would tell it, as the daughter of black writers who are descended from freedom fighters who broke the chains and changed the world. And one day, I'll write our story right by writing it into tomorrow on this

earth more than worth standing for. That was poet Amanda Gorman. You can find her full talk at ted.com. On the show today, how art can be a tool to help us make sense of ourselves and the greater world around us. I came from a background where you don't necessarily see representation of yourself unless it's negative. This is Lima Kobe.

They're from South Africa. Born and bred. Lee's a poet and runs an arts education program in the townships surrounding Cape Town. Most of my work is rooted around writing and performing and creating work about social justices, whether it's LGBTQ rights, African rights, immigrant rights. I'm basically that person that makes difficult topics

accessible to all. Was there like a moment when you first began to see yourself as a poet? Yes. I grew up around a fierce family of matriarchs, really. And all of them during the apartheid era in South Africa used to have so many bright stories. Whatever it was, it was sort of inspiring for me. And I remember when I got to the eighth grade, my mother got into a coma. She got into a car accident. and I saw this thing on TV called Brave New Voices.

And I said, wow, look at these American teenagers talking about like real deep issues, sharing and expressing their emotions, being vulnerable on stage. And they have a voice. And suddenly I started writing. I wrote a letter to my mom to plea with her to wake up from the coma. And I didn't at the time think it was,

poetry until the nurse was like, wow, you write poetry. I said, what? And from then on, sort of sparked this journey of just truly like self-expression and trying to relate not only to myself and heal myself, but heal people who come from similar backgrounds to me. What a story that the nurse had to tell you that you were a poet. I love that. That is great. Okay, so in a minute, you're going to read us a poem about coming out. as transgender to your family. But first, I just want to ask you, you know, what was your upbringing like? And what happened when you realized you were transgender?

I think it's quite fascinating. So growing up, I sort of grew up where my expression was in the middle. So you didn't quite know, is it a boy? Is it a girl? We really don't know, but cute kid, I guess. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't struggle. I think I've always had an understanding.

of what it is. But it was fascinating navigating a world where in my native languages, there are no pronouns for people. People in my community don't understand or even know of the word transgender. I had to go all the way to America to, even for myself, know that what I am, or the language or the title of the word for it as transgender. And I think that's been like the fascinating journey of like having gone over. overseas to know and learn about myself in depth and come back with the language to say this is what I am? And so what language is that? That's, uh, is Khosa and is Zulu. So for example, everyone is their name or if people are really being insistent, they will give you a title out of

respect. So for example, if you see an older woman perhaps, then they would, uh, uh, uh, then they would address them as mama or go-go, which means old lady or grandmother. And that's applied to everyone. So when it's like that, everyone's gender is always assumed. So some days I'm read as your Sisi, which means sister or like young women. Or some days I'm read as Buti, which is brother or young man. And those are the only sort of titles or pronouns they have because they don't have she or he, which has been really fascinating for me to also like sort of navigate. Yeah, I can only imagine.

I do want to ask you also about the work that you do to help other young people navigate their issues. You run a nonprofit. And what are some of the problems that you're helping them with? So first and foremost, the grievances that come most from these young kids is the one of coming from poverty of where everything that is measured with success, including education, has a monetary value added to it. And most of the time, if you're earning less than $200 for an entire family, it's not going to make ends meet. And so those are some of the issues that I have to help them through. So some of the students I've had, one of which is an incredible success story. He started in the program that I created when he was 16.

And he's right now at Cambridge University studying for a PhD. And he came from a one woman working household. He lived in a shack. it was just a situation where every statistic says he will not make it. So to see him through poetry, speaking about the things and issues that plague him, being able to write and articulate himself beyond his situation is something that we really aim to do. So it's not always easy. Sometimes it feels like shooting in the dark, but it's those like little bright lights that we get in the

the representation that really matters. So we're about to listen to your TED Talk slash TED poem, I guess. What should we know before we hear it? First, what's fascinated about it is when I wrote it, I was with my mother and I hadn't come out to her. I hadn't come out to a lot of people. So when I wrote that, I was like, coming out in South Africa is pretty violent with its physical,

sexual, emotional, financial, like, it's a lot of violence that we deal with. And so when I wrote it, I was in America, I was so young. And I was like, I just found out I am trans. Hmm. I don't know how to come out to anyone. And I was like, okay, here's a great way to make my entire family mad. I'm just going to come out on a TED talk. I think it's a great way to just let everyone know so that people aren't just coming to me and overwhelming me. I was just like, it's like a mass broadcasting message. Yes, not subtly, not subtle at all. So I think I knew what the risk was, but I needed to do it for myself and all the other

leaves that were in South Africa at the time. I think at this point, we should listen to your poem. It's called On Coming Out. The first time I uttered a prayer was naglost. cathedral. I was kneeling long after the congregation was on its feet, dipped both hands into holy water, trace the Trinity across my chest, my tiny body, drooping like a question mark all over the wooden pew. I asked Jesus to fix me. And when he did not answer, I befriended silence in the hopes that my sin would burn and salt, my mouth would dissolve like sugar on tongue, but shame lingered

as an aftertaste and an attempt to reintroduce me to sanctity. My mother told me of the miracle I was, said, I could grow up to be anything I want. I decided to be a boy. It was cute. I had snapped back, toothless grin, used skin knees, a street cred, played hide and seek with what was left of my goal. I was it. The winner to a game that other kids couldn't play.

I was the mystery of an anatomy. A question asked but not answered, tightroping between awkward boy and apologetic girl. and when I turned 12, the boy phase wasn't deemed cute anymore. It was met with nostalgic aunts who missed seeing my knees in the shadow of skirts, who reminded me that my kind of attitude would never bring a husband home, that I exist for heterosexual marriage and childbearing, and I swallowed their insults along with these slurs. Naturally, I did not come out of the closet.

The kids at my school opened it without my permission, called me by a name I did not recognize, said lesbian, but I was more boy than girl, more Ken than Bobby. It had nothing to do with hating my body. I just love it enough to let it go. I treat it like a house, and when your house is falling apart, you do not evacuate. You make it comfortable enough to house all your insides.

You make it pretty enough to invite guests over. You make the floorboards strong enough to stand on. My mother fears I have named myself after fading things. As she counts the echoes left behind by Maya Hall, Lila Alcon, Blake Brockington, she fears that I'll die without a whisper, that I will turn into what ashamed conversations of the bus stop. She claims I've turned myself into a mausoleum

that I am walking casket. News headlines have turned my identity into a spectacle while the brutality of living in this body becomes an asterisk at the bottom of equality pages. No one ever thinks of us as human because we are more ghosts than flesh, because people fear that my gender expression is a trick, that it exists to be perverse,

that ensnars them without their consent, and my body is a feast for their eyes and hands, and once they have fed off my queer, they'll regurgitate all the parts they did not like. They'll put me back into the closet, hang me with all their other skeletons, I will be the best attraction. Can you see how easy it is to talk people into coffins,

to misspell their names on gravestones, and people still wonder, while they are boys rotting, they go away in high school hallways. They're afraid of becoming another hashtag in a second, afraid of classroom distinctions becoming like judgment day. And now, oncoming traffic is embracing more transgender children than parents. I wonder how long it will be before the trans-suicide notes start to feel redundant before we realize that our bodies become lessons about sin

way before we learn how to love them. Like God didn't save them. all this breath and mercy, like my blood is not the wine that washed over Jesus' feet. My prayers are now getting stuck in my throat. Maybe I am finally fixed. Maybe I just don't care. Maybe God finally listened to my prayers. Thank you.

That's Lee McCobay. They're a slam poet and the co-founder of the Youth Arts Education Group, Vocal Revolutionaries. You can see Lee's full poem at TED.com. Thank you so much for joining us for this hour on the artist's voice. To learn more about the talks on today's show, go to ted.npr.org. And to see hundreds more TED talks, check out TED.com or the TED app. Our TED Radio production staff at NPR includes Jeff Rogers, Sanaz Meshkenpore, Rachel Faulkner,

Diba Motisham, James Delahousie, J.C. Howard, Katie Montefi. Leone, Christina Kala, Matthew Cloutier, Janet Ujong Lee, and Fiona Gehrin, with help from Daniel Schuchin. Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablewee. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Feelin, and Michelle Quint. I'm Manus Zameroody, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.