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WORD!

When lovers of classic poetry arrived on a South L.A.  high school campus, they found willing vessels for mode of expression rarely associated with the inner city.

In ways that many people his age do not yet grasp, Davion Marshall is well-acquainted with the life-and-death power of words.

After all, if those spoken by a doctor 17 years ago were to be believed, the Dorsey High School senior might not be alive today. He’s an albino — a fact he prefers to acknowledge immediately when speaking with strangers — and his family was warned on his birth that the lack of pigmentation in his skin meant he would likely suffer many serious health challenges, fortunate to live beyond 20 years.

But to Marshall, those words “meant something different to me.” What was spoken as a death sentence brought him uncommon strength, not sorrow or self-pity.

“I’m not even supposed to be alive right now,” he said in an interview last month. “But I am. That was just the doctor’s opinion — but look at me. I’m not supposed to be here right now, I’m not even supposed to be outside in the sun, and I’m always supposed to wear a cap on my head, and sunblock. But I wasn’t going to let the doctor’s words stop me from being me, and enjoying my life.”

Marshall spoke about his perspective on life during a break in Feb. 27 auditions for Get Lit-Words Ignite, a non-profit literacy organization that came to Dorsey looking for students like him, who possess a way with words and are determined to express themselves on their own terms. He was one of four Dorsey students seeking a spot in the organization founded by onetime fashion model Diane Luby Lane, which holds fast to a mission of helping high school students discover their own voices, by exposing them to classical literature, writing and performance poetry.

“As educators, we cannot possibly reach every student that needs us,” said Lane. “But we can impart in them a desire, thirst [and] demand for knowledge any way they can get it. It has been created for them, and it is waiting. It will not come to them. They have to reach for it.”

Her program helps them does just that, attracting new participants by staging on-campus performances by its own Get-Lit Players troupe, and encouraging would-be poets to produce their own original work and develop a new appreciation for renowned wordsmiths like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe and Maya Angelou. In a necessary nod to the sensibilities of the generation it is trying to reach, lyrics by hip-hop artists such as Talib Kweli are treated with equal reverence.

The strategy — connecting prospective participants to the process by exposing them to peers who are already involved — appears to work. Marshall’s ears perked up when Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies student and Get-Lit veteran Ryan Jafar recited his original poem, “Space Travel.” In the performance, he urges listeners to not “be scared to be called different,” a message that holds particular resonance in a setting where conformity is often seen a virtue.

The pair later retreated outside the auditorium for an impromptu hip-hop cipher session — right after another Get Lit player, Dario Serrano, concluded his own poem with the charge to “find who you are in yourself.”

For 16-year-old Lawanni Johnson, her love for classical is welcome defiance of a stereotype. “Shakespeare and Ezra Pound invented words,” she said. “I’m offended when people say inner-city kids can’t know Shakespeare … Shakespeare is one of my biggest heroes — ever. Some people don’t think I should love Shakespeare because of my color, and my age … but that’s just their words.”

As Get Lit artistic director Azure Antoinette sees it, the students’ obvious passion for wordplay is evidence that, even in an inner-city environment where an exchange of words can too often lead to violent conflict, there remains a place for classic means of expression.

“Words are your arsenal,” she said. “Right now, we’re even getting away from writing — we are no longer writing laugh out loud, we write ‘LOL.’ We’re even talking in text. I meet kids who tell me they are so angry … that they are so downtrodden. ‘Oh yeah,’ I tell them, ‘read this.’ And I hand them some Shakespeare. Yeah, it was written in the 1600s, but he was going through the same thing you’re going through, now that’s tragedy. … I always tell kids that they need to know something other than themselves before they can know themselves.”

Jazmine Williams, a a 15-year-old Hamilton High School sophomore, agreed:
“Before I got involved in the program, I was in my own little bubble, thinking I was in my own little world. But I’ve realized there’s a whole world out there, and I’ve met so many different people. This program has opened my mind to the world, and to classical poetry and how powerful it can be.”
Marshall, who Lane said “lights up a room,” asked, “If we can’t express ourselves through the arts, then how should we? If I couldn’t do all these things, then I’d just be sitting around, and probably be bad or something. … There’s a lot of kids out here that you wouldn’t believe have talent, that have talent. … If it’s hidden, it’s because they don’t have a place to show it.”

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