I have always loved poetry, especially spoken word, because there is something powerful about hearing someone put their most honest thoughts into words without apologizing for them. When I feel alone in the world, I still turn to poetry and my trusty notebook, filling its pages with whatever I often cannot say out loud. I find myself watching poets online, listening to strangers share their grief, anger, joy, confusion, and truths with thousands of people without worrying about what anyone might think. To me, there is power in that kind of honesty where poets take something deeply personal in order to give it a voice and in turn refusing to make it their stories smaller just because someone else might not understand.
Year: 2017
Artist: Lady Vanessa Cardona
Genre: Spoken Word
Favorite line: “they call as dirty immigrants because we're innovative enough to pick up the dirt they throw at us and mold it into masterpieces have they walked through"
“Illegal” confronts the contradictions and dehumanization faced by undocumented immigrants, from being called “dirty” and told to “go back to your country” to working long hours in the jobs that keep a country running. Cardona draws from the experiences of her own immigrant parents whose works and sacrifices remain invisible while contributing to the society that excludes them. The poem turns that invisibility into defiance, insisting that immigrants are not disposable or nameless, but people whose labor and love are put into the places they call home.
Illegal
Year: 2019
Artist: Muna Abdulahi
Genre: Spoken Word
Prominent line: “The way I got here wasn't learning about me and my culture. The way I got here was learning about you and your culture.”
“Pronounce Us Correctly” follows Muna Abdulahi from childhood into adulthood, exploring what it means to grow up Somali American while constantly being asked to explain her identity. She reflects on racism, cultural erasure, language, and the pressure to understand the dominant culture before others make an effort to understand hers. Her powerful performance reflects on the feeling that belonging meant learning how to make themselves understandable to others before being allowed to simply exist as themselves.
Pronounce Us Correctly
At The Wall, US/Mexican Border, Texas, 2020
Year: 2016
Artists: Paola Gonzalez & Karla Gutierrez
Genre: Spoken Word
Prominent line: “The legend of the wall begins with those who arrived with silver skin.”
Written and performed as a response to the history and politics surrounding the U.S.-Mexico border, the poem traces the violence and loss embedded in the idea of a border wall. Gonzalez and Gutierrez connect present-day immigration debates with the histories of Mexican and Indigenous communities, asking who gets to define a place as theirs. Its message is significant because a wall is never simply concrete as it represents the invisible lines between people, countries, cultures, and those who are considered to belong.
An Identity CV
Year: 2004
Artist: Ouyang Yu
Genre: Free Verse
Favorite line: “a stateless and statusless poet”
“An Identity CV” turns the traditional résumé into a catalogue of contradictions, asking the reader to define the speaker by blood, birthplace, nationality, language, race, and occupation. Ouyang Yu describes himself as Chinese and Australian while simultaneously struggling with both identities, exposing how inadequate official categories can be for people who exist between cultures. The poem resonates with anyone who has ever been asked to choose one box, one nationality, or one version of themselves when their identity is far more complicated than a form can accommodate.
Chinatown Diptych
Year: 2018
Artist: Jenny Xie
Genre: Contemporary / Free Verse
Favorite line: “There’s nothing I can’t trace back to my coarse immigrant blood.”
“Chinatown Diptych” observes everyday life in Manhattan’s Chinatown through food, family, language, and the people who make these neighborhoods their home. Xie transforms ordinary details such as noodle shops and crowded streets into a portrait of a community shaped by generations of movement. The poem shows how belonging can be seen in seemingly insignificant things --- from a familiar smell, a neighborhood street, a shared language, or a meal that reminds you where you came from.
En Route
Year: 2008
Artist: Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh
Genre: Free Verse
Favorite line: “To travel without baggage, sleep in the train / on a hard wooden bench, forget your native land.”
There is something deliberately restless about En Route as the speaker is always moving, passing through trains, cities, landscapes, and unfamiliar places without ever arriving. The poem makes travel feel less like an adventure and more like a state of suspension as departure has happened but arrival remains uncertain. It captures a strange of freedom and loneliness of being in between places, and questions what happens to “home” when you are constantly leaving it behind.
My Tongue Is Divided Into Two
Year: 2004
Artist: Quique Avilés
Genre: Free Verse
Favorite line: “a border patrol runs through the middle, frisking words”
In Avilés’ poem, language itself becomes a border. His divided tongue represents the experience of speaking across cultures, where words can carry an accent, a history, and the fear of being misunderstood. The image of a “border patrol” searching through his words is especially powerful because it turns something as ordinary as speaking into an act of negotiation. For anyone who has ever changed the way they speak depending on who is listening, the poem asks whether belonging should depend on having the “right” voice.
Grandfather
Year: 2003
Artist: Andrei Guruianu
Genre: Free Verse / Personal Poetry
Favorite line: “I carry your name, yet I've never met you.”
Rather than focusing on the act of migration itself, Grandfather looks backward, at the people and histories we inherit without ever knowing them firsthand. Guruianu considers what it means to be connected to someone through a name and family stories despite never having met them. There is a tension between knowing someone through what has been passed down and knowing that parts of their story are forever unreachable. The poem makes us think about the invisible histories we carry, and how much of who we are was shaped by people who came before us