GENERATOR

Empowerment Through Poetry:
Gabriela Garcia Medina By Olivia McMahon
Spoken word is an art that becomes more
well-known with each year that passes. It’s
also referred to as “Slam poetry” and those
who perform such an art are called “slammers”.
A very popular slam poet is none other
than Gabriela Garcia Medina, who visited
our school only a few weeks ago, September
15th, to share her gift with us.
Originally from Cuba, this spunky young
woman delivers powerful performances
that engage entire audiences with her spoken
word pieces covering every topic from
love to revolution. Miss Medina is quite talented
in all areas (except singing, she will
tell you) and has already done much with
her twenty-seven years of life. She graduated
from UCLA’s School of Theatre, Film
and Television with a major in Acting and a
double minor in Chicano/a Studies and African
American Studies. Already, she has two
books of her poetry in print, with a third in
the process.
In addition to being featured in a few
films and TV shows, she also uses her gift
for the extreme good. Medina has volunteered
her services for several non-profit organization
galas, fundraisers and events and
has even facilitated workshops with at-risk
youth in both Los Angeles and New York.
She takes activism very seriously and when
not on tour, she volunteers at women group
homes using writing and poetry to help present
the residents with a feeling of empowerment.
Medina has also been honored for
House Rules Review
By Abbey Scalia
As a devout Jodi Picoult fan, I feel guilty
to write that I found that her latest novel,
House Rules fell short from the high standard
that I associate with her writing. The book
has all of the trademarks for a typical Jodi
Picoult masterpiece: a controversial topic,
intelligent and hunky detective, hard line
prosecutor, and of course a blossoming love.
Picoult also stays true to her past novels
in dedicating each chapter to a different
character’s point of view. Maybe all of these
factors caused me to place the book on hold
at my local library, or simply the fact that
anything Jodi Picoult puts her name to, I
must read. Either way, upon finishing the
book I found it disappointing, and talked
with other readers who also felt as though
the great author had let them down.
her fantastic spoken word when she won
the Spoken Word Artist of the Year Award in
2009, after eight years of gracing the stage
with her presence.
So when Medina came to Marist College
a couple weeks ago, (thanks to SPC, ARCO
and LAS), this small framed woman rocked
the stage with her larger than life presence.
Before starting any of her poems, she invited
us to make any noise of general enjoyment
if we heard something in her writing that we
liked: a whoop, a clap, a shout of agreement.
She gave a brief background before starting
each piece, so that we could get a better
feel of the deeper meaning. Unselfish as she
has been throughout her life, Medina also
opened the stage to a few audience members
during the show, only performing six poems
total. The length and depth of her poems,
however, made up for the short amount of
time we were granted with her. The first
poem that she started off with was “The
World’s Greatest Magician”: an ode to her
parents and grandparents somehow making
ends meet during her childhood.
Medina was met by an enthusiastic
crowd, some of her poems coaxing cat-calls
and cheers of appreciation. She followed the
first poem by a second, titled, “Self-Empowered
Love Poem”, a poem that rejected the
unhealthy ideas that popular music gives us
about love. She then delved into more serious
subject matter, a poem called “Four
Women” that talked about four women’s
House Rules begins with the
introduction of the Hunt family.
As in any Picoult novel, there is of
course a twist. One of the novel’s
main characters, Jacob, who is 18, has
Asperger’s Syndrome, a high functioning
form of autism. His single mother, Emma,
is attempting to raise him on her own, while
still retaining a sense of family normalcy
for her second son Theo, who does not
have Asperger’s. The family appears to
have a routine in place, until Picoult throws
a wrench into the story when Jacob is
convicted of murder.
This is where the novel started to go
downhill in my opinion. In past Jodi
Picoult books, the readers are omniscient,
or all knowing. In House Rules one of
the biggest components to the story is not
revealed until the very end. While this may
seem intriguing and mysterious, I found
it to be quite annoying. It was as if I were
stories of hardship and abuse suffered at the
hands of men. A constant whirlwind of energy,
Medina switched it up and spice things
up with her poem about her lingerie addiction,
entitled “My Intimate Revolution”.
But don’t let her frilly subject fool you; she
speaks of her affinity for “trashy lingerie” as
a gift that she gives to herself. She believes
in feminism, but also in feeling good about
oneself: a message she lives by.
The miniature slammer prefaced her second
to last poem with a short anecdote. In
addition to being part of many volunteer
projects, Medina also participated in the
7-day AIDS Life Cycle from San Francisco
to Los Angeles in 2008 and her boyfriend
at the time sponsored her. To show appreciation,
she attempted to cook an authentic
Cuban, vegan meal for him, and upon her
failure, she wrote the poem, “At Least I’m
a Good Poet”. Her last poem was a confession
of sorts, a poem that shows that she is
human, titled, “Extentions of my Poetry”,
in which she explicitly states: “I am not an
extension of my poetry; my poetry is an extension
of me.” Medina shows humor and
her own faults in this poem to reassure the
audience that she isn’t just an activist, just a
poet, just a feminist, just an artist: she is human
and she puts her humanity into her poetry.
And it is in this way that we are floored
and enthralled by Gabriela Garcia Medina’s
writing and her performances.
actually solving the mystery along with the
detectives. While this is probably the feeling
that Picoult wished to elicit, I thought that
for holding out on her readers for so long,
the final ending fell flat. In an attempt to not
give away the ending for future readers, I
will simply state that I expected something
jaw dropping (think My Sister’s Keeper),
especially since she had held out on this
secret for so long throughout the entire story.
While House Rules is disappointing I still
claim myself to be a Jodi Picoult fan. Her
continued writing on controversial topics
must be commended, even though she often
gets a lot of criticism for the topics she
chooses. According to her Twitter, four of
her books have been individually banned
by schools. Will House Rules be the fifth?
Maybe, but I still believe that fans will not
find it as one of Picoult’s best.
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