Jasmine Mans’ poem wall text installation view. Activate: Market Street II, Lawless Innovation by a Timeless Generation, 2017. Image courtesy of Gallery Aferro, Newark.
Artist
About
Wake: grief, celebration, memory, and those among the living who, through ritual, mourn their passing and celebrate their life in particular the watching of relatives and friends beside the body of the dead person from death to burial and the drinking, feasting, and other observances incidental to this.
“…we, Black people everywhere and anywhere we are, still produce in, into, and through the wake an insistence on existing: we insist Black being into the wake.”
– In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
Christina Sharpe
Inspired by scholar Christina Sharpe’s seminal text In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, this poetry reading is intended to honor the Black lives lost at the hands of the police. This reading will begin with a performance from Newark based poet and performance artist, Jasmine Mans. In the end, community members will be invited to share their own poems or read a passage from their favorite text.
RSVP required. Zoom details will be sent via email 24 hours before the program.
Jasmine Mans is an author with Berkley Penguin Random House (Black Girl, Call Home 2021). Mans was a “Future of Storytelling” Fellow. Her visual art work has been featured in gallery exhibitions such as, Gallery Aferro Newark Riots and By Way of Los Angeles. Jasmine has performed original poetry on stages such as Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theater and the Kennedy Center. Her song writing has supported artists like Kelly Rowland and Jon Bellion. Mans has curated and ideated art-based initiatives for the Newark Public School District, City of Newark & Mayor Ras J. Baraka, and the Newark Public Library. The contributed work of Jasmine Mans sit in archives such as The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Free Black Women’s Library, The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Jasmine received her BA in African-American Studies ( Literature) and is the recipient of the Star Ledger – NJPAC; and Arts Millennia Scholaraship.
