“I would say I do a mad dance between the kind of poetry that attempts to clarify detail and the kind of hurricane that is necessary for performance,” says Staceyann Chin, a 34-year-old, New York-based poet, writer and performance artist of Jamaican and Chinese heritage. “Mad dance” and “hurricane” are appropriately intense words to describe the work of this outspoken woman.
In 2002, Chin spent eight months on Broadway as part of the cast of Def Poetry Jam. The Broadway role certainly boosted her career, but Chin had already made a name for herself with HBO’s Def Poetry Jam series, solo performances across the country and abroad, and one-woman shows with the acclaimed Culture Project and other theaters in downtown Manhattan.
Her poetry addresses a host of potentially controversial topics, from war to feminism to race and religion, and she delivers her words in performances pregnant with an intense, often revolutionary spirit.
Regarding her Broadway turn and her wide recognition, Chin says: “I think I gained a lot of respect in the performance theater world, but it wasn’t a straight trajectory. People think that you go to Broadway and then your career is made, but we were poets, and we were playing ourselves on Broadway. So I didn’t play a role and then [do] a great job and then people would offer me a different job. It was more, ‘Oh, we like Staceyann Chin and what she says on stage … so let’s put her on Broadway.’ But Staceyann Chin is still a product.”
Chin adds: “The more things you do, the more you get exposed. And the more you get exposed, the more America can sell you as a product. And the more America can sell you as a product, the more you’re able to pay your rent and buy shoes and panties and tampons and so on.”
Before she became a cultural product, Chin grew up in Jamaica. After what she describes as “violent, negative experiences” related to her coming-out while in college there, she resolved to move to the United States. She wanted to be able to be in a relationship and not have to hide it, and recalls deciding, “I will not remain in this country [Jamaica] as long as the homophobia is like this.”
But Chin says she has a hard time talking about homophobia in Jamaica without feeling as if she is betraying Jamaicans. “I know that kind of painting of my country makes people look at Jamaicans in a different way, and it shows us as people who are violent,” she says. “It’s like when something wrong is going on in your house, and it’s difficult to talk about it because you carry a bit of shame about it too.
“So I get over it by trying to explain it in sociopolitical terms. Because very rich people don’t care if you want to put your panties on your head to the tune of ‘God Bless America,’ but it’s the poor people who are very concerned that Mexicans are calling themselves Americans but are flying the Mexican flag above the American one in their homes. … It’s the poor who need something to hold onto, and sometimes that something turns ugly when there’s obviously nothing to hold onto.”
Chin has performed in a wide array of venues and formats, which has brought her in touch with a broad audience, including college students and the so-called underground crowd, mainstream television viewers, downtown theater-goers, as well as what she refers to as the more mature kind of people who can afford Broadway tickets.
She is about to bring her act before a group of high school students, a crowd that gets a toned-down version of her typically blunt performances. She thinks it’s important to reach this young audience and recognizes she can’t do that if she can’t get past the school board.
“High school students need to be exposed to the politics, but at the same time, it needs to be in a way that they can understand it and I can get to say it,” Chin says. “Because if I’m censored off the stage, then they will never hear anyone talk about race and sexuality in that kind of provocative way.” She adds that she has never made any kind of concession for an adult audience.
Chin’s public persona doesn’t shy away from deeply personal material, and she declared no topic off-limits for our interview. When asked whether she was destined for such unfettered expression of what some people consider private matters, she says she would’ve answered “absolutely not” in the past. But she is just now realizing otherwise, as she is in the midst of writing a memoir commissioned by Scribner.
“Right now I have to access the details and track where I was at four and five and nine and 10,” she says, “and it seems apparent from the little girl that I’m writing that I was always going to be some kind of vocal provocateur. In high school they called me the class lawyer, which is a different kind of advocacy than I’m into just now.
She continues: “It seems that I’ve always had the making of being a voice that would, one, go against the grain or status quo, and two, it would always be a very loud voice, and three, it would remain true to myself. I always saw myself standing up and talking to people who were listening.”
Chin once thought she might become a teacher, but now she has an even larger, attentive audience – as well as a lot to say. She employs humor and thoughtful verse to address serious matters, and issues of social justice always run throughout her work.
She seems just as dedicated to raising consciousness as she is to entertaining, an activist who frequently enjoys exploring the lighter side.
The day of our interview, despite nursing a flu, she especially had a lot to say about lesbians and their tendency to commit to each other prematurely. And she doesn’t except herself from her admonitions.
“Working on one’s commitment issue isn’t only about working on being able to live together, but working on being able to be together in a healthy way,” she says. “To track a path, a pace and a direction that is supportive of you being a healthy person in the world, so six months in, you don’t turn over in the bed and go ‘Who the f— is this? It’s definitely not the person I fell in love with six months ago.’ That’s because you made up the person you fell in love with! So by the time you get to know this person you think, ‘Oh my God, you don’t match up.'”
Chin is even more eager to advise against overlapping work and dating circles.
“You can work with someone that you’re in a relationship with, but it’s not a good idea to have something of a tryst with someone that you’re working with unless you have absolutely no choice, and the inclination is so fantastic,” she warns, clearly speaking from experience. “Don’t sleep with somebody in your office. And if you’re an artist, your office is just bigger.”
She explains that she had a difficult experience dating someone who wasn’t open about their involvement and asked Chin not to say anything about it publicly – a tall order for someone who makes a career of speaking openly about her personal and emotional life.
“That was the most detrimental experience of my entire career,” Chin reflects. “I learned what it was like to seriously compromise oneself. I couldn’t say so much of what I was feeling, and I will never do it again. If I can’t say [what I feel], then we can’t be together, because the premise upon which we are together is that I am this creature who talks about my life. I’m a writer and a poet, and if that really bothers you, maybe we should reconsider it before we get close.”
When she speaks of her future goals, Chin says she wants to finish her memoir so she can work on someone else’s story. She also wants to commit to a film project and see it through, and she wants to write a book of essays.
She quickly adds: “And I want to be in a relationship long enough to be able to say that this is my partner, and we’re going to partner for a really long time so we can have a little baby that we can call Olivia, in homage to Mariska Hargitay on SVU. I wish they would put her on The L Word.”
But that’s a whole other conversation.
For more on Staceyann Chin, visit her official website, and read her new memoir The Other Side of Paradise (2009).
