What is a citizenship potluck? A citizenship potluck is a dinner gathering of friends or community members. After a shared reading of a poem, participants explore personal experiences of citizenship, community, freedom, family, and place.

 Where did the idea come from? Sekou Sundiata—a theater artist, poet, and professor—uses these small group dialogues to explore what it means to be a citizen after 9/11. His performance work, the 51st (dream) state, is an artistic response to conversations with poets, students, and community members around the country.

Why poetry? Reading a poem together opens "the doors of perception." It encourages fluid thinking and adventurous speech. Responding to a poem sheds light on people's different relationships to language, history, culture. It puts the past and the future in motion.

 

Opening Script:

As people finish their food, welcome everyone into the space as equal learners. Below is an example of a welcoming statement. Feel free to adapt it to suit the needs of your group.

 

Welcome to our citizenship potluck. Many of you may be wondering what we are doing here. The answer is up to us. Our goal tonight is to explore the question of what it means to be a citizen and our personal relationship to that meaning. Artist/poet Sekou Sundiata puts it this way:

Living in the aftermath of 9/11, I feel an urgent and renewed engagement with what it means to be an American.  But that engagement is a troubling one because of a longstanding estrangement between American civic ideals and American civic practice.  When it comes to a vision of me as an artist and as an American, I am caught in a blind spot. I don't think I am alone. I sense there are many Americans in the same spot.... I take it as a civic responsibility to think about these things out loud, in the ritualized forum of theater and public dialogue.

This is our public dialogue. We hope to create a space of caring that holds many of our ideas about America. Each of us is a learner and a teacher around this table. We come together to ask questions about what it means to be a citizen—of a community, of a country, of a world. Finding the answers may be impossible tonight, but we can start to discover the right questions.

 

Where to Start?

Read the poem aloud. Invite reactions. Allow silence. After some discussion, switch away from the poem and into the personal. If you get stalled, look at the prompt questions.

 

Prompt Questions:

• What is your first citizenship memory?
• Who are the parents of your American identity?
• If every person who called themselves American was in one room, what would they have in common?
• How do your other identities interact with your American identity?
• When and where are your citizen feelings at their strongest? In a polling booth? At a place of worship? At a desk? In a mall? During the Super Bowl? On a bus?

 

Are We Getting Stuck?

• Are we talking a lot about "what makes me mad"?
• Are we generalizing our feelings about these issues?
• Are we saying "they/them" instead of "I" or "we"?
• Are we obsessing over vocabulary to the point that we are avoiding deeper questions?
• Are we all talking?
• Are we getting so personal that we are missing the larger issues?
• Are we over-intellectualizing?

 

How to Get Unstuck

Try to move into the realm of the personal. Start telling your own stories. Change key words. Perhaps a particular idea or concept does not work for you. Think about citizenship moments in elementary school.

Invite those who have not spoken into the discussion. Think aloud. Listen closely. Seek fresh language.

Look at the prompt questions. In Closing Read the poem aloud again. See if anything has changed. Reflect.

Thank everyone for his or her participation.

 

After your potluck, you might feel inspired to continue the important conversations it generated. A significant element of these potlucks is their function as continuing dialogues. We suggest that you repeat, deepen, and extend the process.

 

Resources

Additional Potluck Readings:

"I Am Waiting" Lawrence Ferlinghetti (www.worldofpoetry.org)

"First Writing Since" Suheir Hammad (www.teachingforchange.org)

"Steps" Naomi Shihab Nye in Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream

"Prospective Immigrants, Please Note" Adrienne Rich (www.americanpoems.com)

"Personal Letter No. 3" Sonia Sanchez (www.poemhunter.com)

 

Further Explorations

Melba Joyce Boyd and M. L. Liebler, Eds. Abandon Automobile: Detroit City Poetry 2001 (Wayne State)

Harry Boyte, Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life (Pennsylvania)

Sondra Myers, Ed. The Democracy Reader (International Debate Education Association)

Jacob Needleman, The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders (Penguin/Tarcher)

Martha Nussbaum, Ed. For Love of Country? A New Democracy Forum on the Limits of Patriotism (Beacon)

Anna Deavere Smith, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (Anchor)

Resources for Civic Dialogue and Public Work

Internet Public Library: www.ipl.org

Project on Public Spaces: www.pps.org

Public Achievement "Young people shaping the world": www.publicachievement.org

NPR's "Extraordinary Stories from Ordinary People": www.storycorps.net

"Work Together for Creative Community Change": www.studycircles.org

 

Acknowledgements

Sponsors include: ACCESS and the Arab American National Museum, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life and the following University of Michigan offices and programs: American Culture Program, Arts at Michigan, Arts of Citizenship Program, Duderstadt Center, Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning, Office of the Provost, and the Office of the Vice President for Research. Special thanks to Wayne State University Africana Studies Department and Melba Joyce Boyd for their support; to World Voice Cultural Arts, Inc. for their hospitality; and to Edward Bagale and Gregory Taylor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

 This resource was prepared by a team of University of Michigan students working with Professor Julie Ellison: Brent Fogt, V. Robin Grice, Cornelius Delro Harris, Jesse Kropf, Laura Meili, Molly Raynor, Emily Squires.

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