- I know it sounds insane, but if I hear, "You're so exotic" or... "You're Indian, but you don't look it at all," or...

The fire from my poetry comes from this knowledge of my history, and I want to not only tell my story, but to try to do my best to tell all the other stories that are being erased and forgotten.

Brown men and women are being hunted down and killed!

I'm Asha.

I'm a spoken word poet.

I'm also an artist, educator, and revolutionary.

I'm a very introspective person, pretty introverted, but if someone's giving me the opportunity to be on the mic and take up space, I'm gonna take up space.

I grew up ashamed of my culture, masking curry smells with hamburger on the grill until I realized the hypocrisy and got to know my family ethnicity history.

Oftentimes, what I'm trying to say is much bigger than me.

She walked, knowing her body, her very existence is perceived as a threat, knowing that her indigenous skin has had to justify its claim to be deserving of home.

This is in London.

I'm just, like, all snuggled up to my mom.

This is me and my great-grandmother.

My family is from West India.

Because of British Imperialism, my mother, her parents, and their parents were all born in East Africa.

British Imperialists used low-caste Indians to build the East African railroad.

Idi Amin came into power and started the Africa for Africans campaign, so my mother and her family were then forced into refugee camps in England, and then my mom, when she was 17, she was told, "You are gonna be sent to America."

In sixth grade, this is like little Asha flipping through the textbook, and all of a sudden, I see this image, and my family name is there, Sudra.

I actually had no idea that that's where our name came from, our caste.

The textbook literally had two paragraphs.

My family's story is so much more rich than that.

Colonized, displaced but still rooted in ancestral soil.

She spoke, knowing others would have to stop speaking for her.

Writing poetry, I'm taking these things that have hurt or harmed us from the past and learning from them.

Okay, so here's part of it.

My great-grandmother, she had tattoos all over her body.

The last thing I need to do is the chest piece, which is considered in this art form to be the most sacred of the pieces that you get for this full body suit.

- You ready?

- Yeah.

When I'm getting the tattoos, it's this connection with my ancestors.

We're having a conversation.

I strongly believe that generational trauma is passed down until someone in the family has the privilege to have the space and capacity to feel and heal from it.

I think I'm that person in my family.

Let's talk about white supremacy.

What does that mean or what was that philosophy?

I wanted to become an educator to legitimize the identities of my students, enabling specifically my students of color to have space and access to learn about themselves, their family, their diaspora, where their name comes from.

So are you all gonna get knocked down by this?

- [Students] No.

- We are resilient.

We keep going, right?

Artists in society have always been the ones that challenge societal norms.

I'm not a different person when I'm performing a poem than when I'm in the classroom with kids or when I'm creating a piece of art.

But the revolution starts today.

What are you gonna do?

I'm calling on you to speak it.

We have to.

Find your story, find your history.

No one will speak for us.

What the ignorant always fail to recognize is that the most romantic are always the most revolutionary.

Thanks, y'all.

I love you.