Songs My Mother Taught Me (Why the Artist Must Take Sides)

Award-winning poet and performer Saul Williams explores how artists today must respond to systemic violence and injustice—in the words of Paul Robeson, by choosing sides.

Songs My Mother Taught Me is Williams’ clear-eyed exploration of the role of the artist in these times by answering the question: what radicalized you? He answers by examining how his role models—writers and artists, from Amiri Baraka to local musicians in Brazilian bars to Palestinian hip-hop heads—have responded to imperialist violence, oppression, and genocide. Riffing on Paul Robeson’s famous declaration, Williams builds a provocative case for why today’s artists cannot remain neutral in the face of injustice. “We need songs that crumble empires,” he writes, “films that teach, remind, and inspire, poems that would make a despot revoke your citizenship.”

The radical artists of the Vanguard Series offer new poetry and prose to answer the question, What does poetry have to do with politics?