Spoken Word Poetry As Critical Narrative Pedagogy

Moving image description: A brown woman with long brown curly hair wearing a beige turtleneck bodysuit, blue jeans, and a gold necklace that reads ‘Sabrina’ in Arabic sits on a stool holding her phone while performing a short excerpt of a spoken word poem. Audio description: The speaker’s tone of voice is loud and angry. Drawing from Disability Justice and Critical Pedagogy, this interdisciplinary health humanities research explores spoken word poetry as transformative critical narrative pedagogy in nursing to educate nursing students about disability, ableism, and disability justice. Spoken word poetry is embodied performance poetry that often centers the stories, voices, and narrative-based lived experiences of multiply marginalized people through justice-oriented anti-oppression processes of critical education and liberation. This is a very short excerpt from a spoken word poem entitled “I Wish I Knew How It would Feel To Be Free” which delves into one of Sabrina’s experiences with ableism related to her acquired non-apparent physical disability. This serves as a point of dialogue for discussing mis/trust of disabled folks, non-apparent disability, pathologizing of assistive devices, and ethical breaches that allow for medical malpractice. This (incomplete) except was written and performed by Sabrina Jamal-Eddine and recorded by Ja’van Carr.​
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