Heritage 365 Speaker Series sponsored by Black Heritage Celebration: Crystal Valentine

Description

The Heritage 365 Black Heritage Celebration featured keynote speaker is Crystal Valentine, a former New York City youth poet laureate. She is a two-time winner of the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational who has been offered fellowships from Callaloo, Tin House, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

Valentine is a generator and fierce projector of Black joy, and strongly believes that intersectionality is a key factor in liberation. As a queer, Black, woman, a lot of her work revolves around bridging the ever-present gap between her identities. Her goal is to provide a sanctuary with her poems that can be accessible to all Black people: queer, trans, women, gender non-conforming, poor, loud, angry, ghetto, for it is when all of these voices are present and accounted for that we can really begin the gruesome work of understanding and breaking down systematic oppression.

The Heritage 365 Initiative from Multicultural Affairs observes the cultural heritage and history beyond the month and recognizes such heritage month from a year-long format.

All in-person events at Johns Hopkins must follow university COVID-19 policies. See current guidelines online. This is a hybrid event; please attend the event virtually by joining the YouTube livestream on the Multicultural Affairs channel.