Mwende Katwiwa, who performs under the name FreeQuency, is a Kenyan-American slam poet, community organizer, and activist. [1] [2] Their poems address issues of identity, emotion, racism, colonialism, and police brutality in the United States. They live in New Orleans. [3]
Katwiwa graduated from Tulane University in 2014. [4] [5] They self-published a book of poetry, Becoming//Black, in 2015. They have also been touring the U.S. to perform spoken word poems since 2011. [3] They gave a TED Talk in 2017 called "Black life at the intersection of birth and death." [1] They work for Women with a Vision, a nonprofit based in New Orleans. [5] They also work with slam poetry and open mic organizations in New Orleans. [3]
They won the 2018 Women of the World Poetry Slam. [6] At the poetry slam, Katwiwa performed "Dear White People" and "The Gospel of Colonization." [7] Katwiwa also placed at both the 2015 and 2016 Individual World Poetry Slam. [3]
Mwende Katwiwa is active in the Black Lives Matter movement, reproductive rights and abortion rights activism, and LGBTQ+ advocacy. [8] Katwiwa is part of the New Orleans chapter of BYP100 and is involved with youth organizing. [9] [10] For example, they helped organize a protest march in 2014 regarding the killing of Michael Brown by police. [11] Although they were primarily involved with in-person organizing, they also used the social media site Tumblr to promote the protest. [12]
Katwiwa is genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns. [5]
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