by Jennine DOC Krueger
Brown Girl at a Writing Retreat: A Case Study
At the Whiting retreat . . . Freudian slip, writing retreat; I’m sure the White people meant well, right? I mean random conversations in which I'm told about a woman having a foster child that is mexican instead of she's nine or she likes art. Or how her son loves black basketball. I ask what is black basketball? She says they are aggressive and get in your face and play to win. You know, street ball. Says her son was the only White boy on the team so he was the minority. Says he was easy to find on the court with those White legs. Or the woman at lunch that nudged me and said ooh they have watermelon it's so good right? Or the guy that says you do the slam poetry right? He says, Uhh, how do I ask this, and ponders. He asks, “are there White slammers?” After I say yes, of course there are, he says oh ok. I guess I'll give it a try one day then. I heard him at the open mic. He shouldn't. Or how about the women that were sure they met me at this or that conference. Said I look just like a black poet they saw once before. Or the preface a woman gave to her poem that she was intimidated because her poem rhymed and because she voted for Trump. Or the White woman who did a poem about the scent of black girls she smelled while hiding in a bathroom stall. Or those that never thought of poetry connected to me. The people who tried to hand me their lunch tickets and said aren't you a volunteer. I'm sure they meant well though right? Who is the White people's spokesperson so I can ask what they meant? At the writers retreat I had to compose myself so many times that I have become a collection of poetry.
Jennine “DOC” Krueger is a mother, writer, artivist, public speaker, and educator in Austin, Texas. She has competed in world, national, and local slam poetry competitions. She holds four national titles and has now coached several national teams for Austin Poetry Slam and Austin Neo Soul. Her poetry and dramatic works have been published in Santa Fe Literary Review and the Sierra Nevada Review as a winner in the Brian Turner Literary Arts Prize, and her dramatic work has won best of fest five times in Austin’s Frontera Festival. She has earned an M.Ed. from Concordia University and an MFA in poetry from Spalding University, and she is also an Emerging Teaching Artist Fellow through Mindpop and the City of Austin. She has over twenty years of teaching experience at both secondary and undergraduate levels as well as twenty plus years of public and motivational speaking around identity, positive thinking and mental health.
Her scholarship has led her to discuss culture and comics and creativity nationally. Her writing has a vast range across politics, race and identity as well as across genres with children’s literature and a hip-hop musical retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (currently in development through Theatre Now New York’s National Musical Lab). Her research interests are in spoken word performance, medieval literature translations into hip-hop, social and restorative justice, and marginalized heroes in comic books and graphic novels. She is represented by Tobias Literary Management and is currently shopping an anime screenplay pilot, Ars Poetica, that will focus on poetry and mental health. She is also developing a new musical about Doris Miller, a Black WWII hero, and beginning a third musical, retelling the Salem witch trials with an emphasis on the narrative from Tituba.