Sister Outsider, the spoken-word poetry duo of Dominique Christina and Denice Frohman, took to the stage of Rudder Theatre Tuesday night to discuss identity, gender and racism.
The duo, both award-winning slam poets, used their platform to address social issues that still plague society today.
Frohman, who focuses more on the “in-between-ness” that exists in everyone, discussed how the tour came to be.
“Dominique and I met at a competition and really had a mutual respect for each other’s work,” Frohman said. “I guess our intentions and what we were trying to do, we found some similarities, and we thought it would be very special to come together. It was really good timing. We tried to bring our audiences together and reach a broader audience to have these conversations and we were really fortunate to make it happen.”
Frohman said becoming a poet was the furthest thing from her mind when she got into slam poetry.
“But I started to get interested in it, I really started to love language and love storytelling and the power of storytelling, the ability to be yourself and sound like yourself was really important for me,” Frohman said. “So it took a couple years after I started writing to be like ‘Ok, I’m a poet’. I think that if you write and you think you’re a poet… it’s up to you.”
Frohman said this is their second national tour and once it’s over, plans for next year will then be discussed.
“Taking the tour international is a really big goal for us,” Frohman said. “Getting in front of audiences across the world and expanding these conversations to a global context. More writing, more poems… Finishing my manuscript by the end of the summer is a goal of mine, and Dominique is pushing out her second book, which is gonna be due out in October on Sounds True Publishing.”
Madison Parker, Class of 2014, helps run Mic Check Poetry in Bryan and said she was surprised to see the duo come to A&M.
“I’ve seen Dominique and Denice perform before, and I was excited when I found out they would be at A&M,” Parker said. “I was actually really surprised see them come here…. it’s something you don’t often see affiliated with A&M.“
Parker felt that the duo accurately represented the “others” that exist in the community.
“They have stories that I can’t tell, because they’re not my stories, but they’re stories that are very important and need to be told and need to be heard, and that’s what’s so great about poetry and the spoken word,” Parker said. “You’re reminded that for every story that is told, hundreds aren’t.”
Saad Dawoodi, president of Shades of Queer, an LGBT organization that focuses on diversity and intersectionality, said the duo did well to explain “outside-ness”.
“I think they articulated it well, the feeling, because the thing about outside-ness is, you can feel it, but it’s hard to share that with other people,” Dawoodi said.
Dawoodi said the medium of spoken word was crucial to the creation of the duo’s message.
“I think the art of spoken poetry is very honest,” Dawoodi said. “There are a lot of times where we are not allowed to say certain things, or we aren’t allowed to be ourselves. There’s so much masquerading that goes on regardless of who you are. So the honesty there, in spoken word, was beautiful. And then the message was great as well, because articulating otherness is not easy.“