Spoken word

THERE'S A SCENE in Aya de León's latest one-woman show, Aya de León Is Running for President, in which she becomes the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. "My name is Vieques," the poem begins (almost all of de León's scenes double as poems), as she – shoulders slumped, eyes downcast, arms wrapped tightly round her chest – plays Vieques as a sexually abused child, a "Puerto Rican girl [whose] stepfather is the United States," who enters her room every night "to do his business." As the piece progresses, de León's posture and tone shift, her spine straightening, voice steeling, until at scene's end, her Vieques categorically rejects U.S. occupation of her body, barring her doors and burning the "itchy, clingy dress" her stepfather has made her wear for so many years. "My name is Vieques," de León bellows, chin jutting skyward, "and I will be free."

It's an amazing moment, one in which de León collapses boundaries between women's bodies and the fate of nation-states, individual abuse and systemic oppression, stage monologue and protest speech, all the while linking patriarchy to militarism and empire building in a startlingly innovative fashion. By playing U.S. imperialism as a raging pervert who slinks away when his victim fights back, the 37-year-old, half-Puerto Rican, half-black, longtime East Bay resident exposes the powers that be for precisely what they are – fucked-up, fearful, and fallible – a much needed reminder in such stifling times.

The scene also reflects de León's approach toward art and activism, tackling sacred cows by grabbing them by the horns and wrestling for her life. In her last one-woman show, Thieves in the Temple: The Reclaiming of Hip Hop, she took on hip-hop's extreme misogyny the only way she could – by becoming the genre's denizens, playing everyone from a gangsta ho named Lady Triple X-Rated to a sensitive rapper with Tourette's syndrome. The response was overwhelmingly positive, she says, "like selling ice water in hell. Everyone was so thirsty to hear this." And while many critics and activists complain of hip-hop's extreme commodification these days, de León believes the genre "still has a lot of potential. The key is not to get caught up in the grief of how hip-hop's been hijacked."

Such intelligent optimism runs through all her work, an impressive corpus that includes her one-woman shows, various poetry chapbooks (Love 2K: Sober Love Poems, Prayer Warrior: Poems of Struggle), slam poetry (in 2000 she was a member of San Francisco's prodigious slam team), fiction (she hopes to complete a novel by next year), and teaching and speaking engagements across the country (including a Stanford University residence and a California Arts Council fellowship).

Speaking from her home in Berkeley, where she was raised by her artist-activist mom, Anna de León, de León says she decided to situate Running for President around this year's election to "inspire folks, particularly young folks, to participate in the political process." Asked if she'll ever run for office, she laughs and says, "Never. It would so compromise my ability to be an artist. Because being an elected official is such an unpleasant life. But as an artist, I get to say the things people are feeling in their heart of hearts, and they actually appreciate you for it." (Sylvia W. Chan)