“Black Human” and “Remember”: Excerpts from The MenStroll Cycles

The MenStroll Cycles is a dramatic poemplay examining the sociopolitical state of Black men in America. Written, produced, and curated by Rachel N. Hastings, The MenStroll Cycles uses literary, performance, and digital art to interrogate antiBlack social conditions and to educate audiences about the historical and cultural cycles leading to criminalization. As a fast-paced, rhythmic journey through Black intelligencia, Hastings's performance is inspired by the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, and movements like Black Lives Matter, which highlight a pattern of racial crises emerging around issues of police and community relations, institutional and systemic exclusion, and the disproportionate number of Black men in prison. Rarely are Black men and women represented as allies against a common foe. Hastings counters the notion that Black people cannot advocate and critique one another, while offering a critical Blackademik narrative about the use of performance as an artistic act of political resistance.