GREENSBORO — These Bennett Belles paint word pictures about their culture, history and sexuality that are as revealing as any diary and as defiant as any verse from Langston Hughes.
They long for conversations that make, as Bennett College freshman JaNee Fair says, "your body weak and your words slur.''
They call their 15-track CD "Conversations,'' and it's Bennett's second recording of spoken word performances.
The title fits.
"Conversations'' feeds into the long-standing literary tradition of Greensboro that gained steam a century ago with O. Henry.
Today, you'd think we have a writer and poet behind every oak and every keyboard, with our city's many publications, its 37,000 college students, its hyperactive blogosphere and one of the country's oldest creative writing programs at UNCG.
Yet, "Conversations'' separates itself from the many wordsmiths within our borders. These poems, written by women barely old enough to vote, unveil an honesty and a courage that speaks to the strong sisterhood at Bennett.
The titles say everything: Tarshai Peterson's "Secret Motivation,'' Dezerae Moore's "Misconceived Conceptions,'' Jasmine's Faison's "History.''
"Spoken word unlocks who they are,'' says Steve Willis, a Bennett theater professor who produced the CD with local poet Josephus Thompson III.
Tarshai, a freshman from Landover, Md., majoring in theater, wrote her spoken word poem last year while still in high school. She was struggling to remain celibate as her friends were having sex, and she kept hearing, "There is no way you can wait.''
A conversation with a close friend — a close male friend — helped. He told her, "Believe in yourself.'' She did. And still does.
Dezerae, a junior from Stockton, Calif., majoring in chemistry, was working toward her pharmacy technician certificate nearly three years ago when she wondered, "How do you know what is right?''
She turned over a page from her homework — calculating how much medication to put in an IV bag — and put down her thoughts about God and a judgmental religion that claimed all gay people were hell-bound.
Dezerae knows of what she writes. She's a lesbian.
Jasmine, a junior from Columbia, Md., majoring in theater, was watching MTV two years ago when she caught a video featuring half-naked girls and a bejeweled hip-hop star, surrounded by cars, spouting out verse in which every other word was "BLEEP!''
Those images ticked her off. She picked up her composition notebook and began to write — from the back page to the front page, her style. She riffed on what her generation had become: a culture driven by money, with no concept of their ancestors' historical struggle.
"We have to realize certain behaviors are not acceptable,'' she says. "I mean, what are we going to do about it?''
The CD, paid for by a $5,000 grant from the Johnnetta B. Cole Institute, will raise money for the Bennett Players and recruit students to Guilford County's smallest college. You have to think the students will come.
The on-campus popularity of spoken word has helped quadruple Bennett's theater program — from five to 20 theater majors — lead to two CDs, set the college apart from its peers and helped pave the way for student performances from here to South Africa.
Last week, during an on-campus CD release party for "Conversations,'' a few performers gave verse to emotions they once hid from the world.
Among them were Jasmine, in her gold loop earrings; Dezerae, in her black sneakers; Jasmine, in her blue Polo shirt, with rolled-up sleeves and a cell phone in her back pocket.
They stepped onto a maroon carpet, spoke in staccato rhythms and let the words fly.
Some strong stuff.
But some necessary stuff, too.
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