SARAHKAYSARAHKAYSARAHKAY (+ storytelling)

BUY IT.

Sarah Kay: “If I Should Have a Daughter”: https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter

A disclaimer: I have never been more thrilled than when I realized that Sarah Kay’s TED talk (one of TED’s most famous) was tagged with “storytelling”. I. Love. Sarah. Kay. Every year since I transferred to Millbrook I’ve petitioned DK as well as requested Project VOICE to come to MHS (to no avail). Last August I performed Sarah Kay’s “The Type” at the regional poetry out loud competition, and a couple months ago I recited “Ghost Ship” at the club where I perform on poetry night. I have all her books. I have her partner Phil Kaye’s books, too. I love her. Beautiful. Iconic. God is truly a woman.

Anyways.

In lieu of its “storytelling” label, Sarah Kay essentially details the terrifying journey of growing into herself. She hits on courage and vulnerability and what it means to suffer and error and risk and lose in order to love and find beauty. And she exemplifies these points by citing hallmark instances in her own life; discovering the Manhattan Bowery Poetry Club at 14, entering Brown University with Phil Kaye and reinventing Project VOICE into an international organization, continuing down the thorn-littered path of self-growth via active, manual attempts to identify new stories and fresh inspiration. While she basically just vocalizes her timeline, she reinvigorates her history with introspection and hindsight on what it has all meant. Her story is that of one woman, but in a broader sense, is indicative of all of our desires for personal fulfillment.

Kay’s talk does not explicitly concern storytelling. Rather, it is a story itself, complete with a beginning, middle, and end, interwoven with themes of hope and sorrow and change; in essence, a coming-of-age tale just as Never Let Me Go is. Kay starts with how she discovered spoken word as an indignant feminist theater-kid as a teen. She speaks to how the early exposure to the potential impact of her artistry encouraged her to pursue literature in college. From there, she travelled alongside other English-driven souls to further discover the power of words, returning to the USA to recycle the casual VOICE club she’d started in high school as a simple vehicle to share poetical passiona into a global educational program with Phil Kaye. Since then, she’s been pursuing life as a teacher, woman, partner, friend, and leader, and while she doesn’t next know where she’s headed, she’s confident that things will inevitably fall into place.

If I’m to address all three, I’ll start with ethos. One of the most compelling facets of Kay’s TED talk is her lack of an outright demonstration of ethos. She doesn’t state any of her awards or accolades, let alone her Ivy League diploma. Nevertheless, it is understood that a TED speaker is an exceptionally impactful individual. It is this intersection between the relative unknown of Kay’s accomplishments and the implied suggestion of her influence that establishes Kay’s credibility; not as someone of incredible prestige or bulleted accomplishments, but as a humble, loved, respected, and successful individual. Given the essential content of Kay’s presentation- that life will pull you in 5,000 different directions, and you’ve just got to paddle with the current as best you can- Kay’s ethos is an argument itself, disputing conventional notions of success and happiness.

Kay’s use of logos is also pretty rock-solid. The backbone of her argument is her own life, which is a sound foundation for someone who gets to cater their own presentation. At one point in her talk, Kay states, “Now I can divide my spoken-word journey into three steps. Step one was the moment I said, ‘I can. I can do this.’ And that was thanks to a girl in a hoodie. Step two was the moment I said, ‘I will. I will continue. I love spoken word. I will keep coming back after next week.’ And step three was when I realized I didn’t have to write indignant poems, if that’s not what I was. There were things that were specific to me, and the more that I focused on those things, the weirder my poetry got, but the more it felt like mine.” This is an excellent illustration of Kay’s logos. She breaks down the complexity of her experiences into three straightforward steps (if not easy, at least she makes it seem that way) and cites selective evidence from the aforementioned experiences as her justification. Plus, from a bigger picture, she scatters logos across her discussion, best highlighted with the fact that she begins and ends her talk with equally beautiful poems. The first-hand exposure to Kay’s poetry, as well as her inclusion of artistically-oriented excerpts, gives her talk a pleasant cadence of logic and art. At one point, she states, “You protect yourself from all the unexpected miseries or hurt that might show up. But I walk through life like this. And yes, that means catching all those miseries and hurt, but it also means that when beautiful, amazing things just fall from the sky, I’m ready to catch them.” It’s almost formulaic: she presents an idea (in this case, a perceived philosophy), and then follows it up with a demonstration of her poeticism. Not only does this grant her argument a degree of logos, but it simultaneously provides a nuanced depiction of her faculties (ethos)!

At the end of the day, though, Kay’s pathos is what carries her talk. In leading into her speech with her poem, “If I should have a daughter”, the audience is immediately exposed to deeply emotional ideas like heartbreak, family, failure, and partnership. The painstaking imagery with which Kay describes her experience as a terrified spoken-word performer is heart-gripping, as is  Kay’s final poem, when she gently presents the bombing of Hiroshima and its impact on her identity and origins. Kay doles out a well-rounded dosage of heavy stuff, and it puts forward a resonating impact.

There’s something about the vulnerability of Sarah Kay’s talk that pulls me in, and I believe it’s the rawness with which she approaches the coming-of-age process. I’d watched the talk before, so choosing it was instinctual. I was already of the opinion that everyone needs some Sarah Kay in their life. I do think NLMG’s Kathy echoes the voice of Kay as Kathy reflects on her memories; her tone and outlook are similar in that she’s more nostalgic and retrospective about her past than anything else. I’m a bit biased because I’ve already read the book, but I think that the parallels I see between Kathy and Kay now will strengthen as I continue to read more critically. Furthermore, I think this ties into the incessantly-communicated theme of appearance vs. reality we’ve been talking about for the past 1093250913 years. Adolescence is a pretty volatile time, and I think we’re all somewhat caught up in attempting to meet society’s expectations as well as staying true to ourselves (made all the more difficult because we don’t really know what “ourselves” yet look like). I don’t have social media, but I’d posit that Instagram and Snapchat and all their FOMO consequences only compound it. Amidst all this, Sarah Kay is refreshingly candid and a breath of fresh air. I aspire to exude her aura of confidence and poise, and I think we could honestly all benefit from borrowing some of her characteristics.