Ep 55: All Day with Liza Jessie Peterson
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All Day
Episode 55: Show Notes.
Today's guest on At the End of the Tunnel is a self-described ‘artivist'. Her name is Liza Jessie Peterson, a gifted actress, spoken word poet, playwright, author, and youth advocate. Liza grew up in West Philadelphia, graduated from Georgetown, and worked as a model in Paris before getting introduced to the New York poetry scene, where she became one of the stars of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
Following her passion as a poet and an artist led her to accept a side gig; teaching poetry to kids in New York City schools. Her first assignment was at a school called Island Academy, which she ultimately discovered was the school at Rikers Island jail.
That assignment, which was only meant to last three weeks, evolved into an 18-year career of working with inmates and developing a deep understanding of the prison industrial complex. Liza’s experiences with students at Island Academy led her to write a book, titled All Day: A Year of Love and Survival Teaching Incarcerated Kids at Rikers Island, and an award-winning one woman show called The Peculiar Patriot, which she has since performed at over 35 penitentiaries across the country.
In this conversation, Liza shares the extraordinary series of events that led her to work at Island Academy. In particular, she talks about the kids she has worked with, how they benefited from her program and, perhaps most importantly, the invaluable lessons she learned from them. Liza’s story reveals a fascinating behind-the-veil analysis of mass incarceration in America, and she also shares some of her own career struggles, insecurities, and the leaps of faith she had to make in her own creative journey while she was amplifying the voices of others.
Tune in today for an in-depth and inspiring conversation about the power of artivism and using your art to rebel against the status quo with the incomparable Liza Jessie Peterson!
Key Points From This Episode:
Liza reflects on her favorite toy as a kid: Rock ‘em Sock ‘em.
Hear about her family growing up and how they influenced her political awareness.
The sense of pride that Liza’s father instilled in her at a young age.
How The Autobiography of Malcolm X introduced her to revolutionary Black consciousness.
Viewing success through the lens of what her older sister was doing at the time.
How the incentive to “change the white man’s game from the inside” led her to Georgetown.
What Liza learned about kindness, compassion, and humility from her late mother.
Why she says working as a model in Paris was the gateway drug to realizing the viability of using her creativity to make a living.
How acting allowed Liza to process the pain of her mother’s loss through storytelling.
Hear about the inadvertent poem that brought Liza to the Nuyorican for the first time.
Laying the groundwork for the artists of today by being part of the Nuyorican movement.
Learn about Liza’s process of writing a poem, which always starts with a journal entry.
Liza speaks about her first one woman show, which was inspired by Ntozake Shange.
Find out how she came to teach her first poetry class at Island Academy on Rikers Island.
Why she says teaching at Rikers wasn’t a mission or a purpose; until she got there.
She describes her first time arriving at Rikers, including her shock at seeing so many Black, Puerto Rican, and Latino faces there.
How this first-hand introduction to the prison industrial complex turned a three-week assignment into a three-year mission.
What it was like teaching poetry to juveniles and the importance of validating their voices.
Teaching these young men that their slang was valuable; they were already speaking poetry.
The importance of showing up honestly, authentically, and without judgment.
Planting the language of referring to one another as family in subtle, subconscious ways.
What Liza learned about the power of transference from Miss Barron, who stood in for the incarcerated boys’ mothers.
Why she was angry at God and how writing in her journal became prayer and meditation.
Planting seeds of awareness to unlock the great potential of the men she was working with.
Find out what many of her students had been jailed for, from loitering to armed robbery.
Liza’s passion began to conflict with her purpose and led her to write The Peculiar Patriot.
She shares her vision for The Peculiar Patriot and why she performed it at penitentiaries.
How the play initiated conversation and created dialogue at the prisons she performed it in.
Liza explains why she doesn’t believe in prison reform; she believes in prison abolition.
What Liza has learned about her purpose and herself after 20 years of doing this work.
How she defines success now: having her art sustain her financially.
The compassion she learned from her mother that kept her going back to Rikers; ultimately, it was the kids that kept her going back.
Discover how you can help Liza on her mission to amplify her art and make an impact.
Tweetables:
“[My father] instilled in me at a young age a sense of pride, of not being ashamed of my history or the part of history that included slavery, but to embrace it as a badge of warrior strength.” — @LizaJessieP [0:12:25]
“If you want to make change, you have got to get inside, you have got to sneak inside. You have to use your wit to get on the inside to move things and change things.” — @LizaJessieP [0:17:07]
“I was able to tap into that pain from losing my mom and it was something cathartic that happened. I don't know. I felt like I was reborn. I was able to process what was stuffed down in me, giving me so much heartache, through character, through story.” — @LizaJessieP [0:33:58]
“We were just some wild poets with fire on our tongue, and had no idea that we were part of a movement that laid the groundwork for a lot of mainstream artists and artistry that's out today.” — @LizaJessieP [0:38:08]
“They call it transference in psychology, they say you're not supposed to do that. Psychology is supposed to have separation, but we don't do that as Black people. We don't separate, we connect, because we've already been separated.” — @LizaJessieP [0:55:22]
“Because I was influenced by Malcolm X, I knew that I was potentially in the presence of great men who did not know that they were great. It was my responsibility to plant seeds of awareness and consciousness, to unlock that awareness in them.” — @LizaJessieP [1:00:21]
“The theater world turned their back on me and rendered me invisible. The men and women who were in prison validated me. They saw me and my play and, by virtue of what it's about, validated that ‘I see you.’” — @LizaJessieP [1:11:45]
“You don't reform slavery. You abolish it. You find new ways of dealing with the communities that are suffering from poverty and trauma that creates the conditions where people commit crimes. You don't reform a system that is designed to oppress.” — @LizaJessieP [1:18:11]
“It was the healer in me, the medicine woman in me, and the compassion in me that wanted to help people and plant seeds of wellness that kept me coming back [to Rikers Island].” — @LizaJessieP [1:25:01]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Liza Jessie Peterson on Twitter