“What would it take for you to consent to live in a cage?” When thinking about the involvement of prison in our society and government, we rarely consider ourselves as being part of that system. Felice Blake discusses how our binary and segregationist view of prison systems inform our opinions on those involved in them. Then, she examines how poetry can be a powerful tool in revealing the reality of the situation and shattering our notions and the bars that separate us.
Dr. Felice Blake is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has published work on contemporary racism, culture, and resistance in Al Jazeera, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society. Dr. Blake’s book, Black Love, Black Hate: Intimate Antagonisms in African American literature (Ohio State University Press), is a study of Black aesthetics, Black consciousness, and the Black Radical Imagination through depictions of intimate, intraracial conflict in Black literature. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
