TheGrio's 100: Jessica Care Moore, a revolutionary writer to represent black youth
TheGrio's 100 - Jessica Care Moore's fans call her the spoken word laureate of the hip-hop generation...
Jessica Care Moore’s fans call her the spoken word laureate of the hip-hop generation. This Detroit-born, self-proclaimed “revolutionary writer” has invested her life and energy into preserving the spoken and written word of young black artists.
Moore first came to prominence in 1995 as the first poet to win the Showtime at the Apollo competition five times, an accomplishment that was followed by a stream of other high-profile poetry slams nationwide. Many of her poems are about black empowerment and womanhood.
“I’m a symbol of freedom, but I am still not free – I am America’s true Statue of Liberty,” Moore said in her now famed poem, Black Statute of Liberty.
Moore started out as a journalist in Detroit before finding her way to New York in a pickup truck with $700 in her pocket, in pursuit of a full-time poetry career. After appearances on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam and in the film Slam, everyone from Mos Def to Gil Scott-Heron began to collaborate with her. She attributes many people for inspiring her work.
“I’m a writer just like T.S. Eliot was a writer,” she told the Village Voice. “I come from Sonia [Sanchez], from Ntozake [Shange], Nikki [Giovanni]. But I also come from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.”
In 1997, Moore started her own publishing company, Moore Black Press, to preserve work of other black poets and writers, and to satisfy a growing demand in the marketplace for socially-conscious writing. Her first book published by her company, “The Words Don’t Fit in My Mouth,” impressed critics by selling more than 15,000 copies in three months.
The company has gone on to publish the works of other established poets of color, including Saul Williams and Asha Bandele. These days, Moore’s company primarily focuses its attention on mentoring the next generation of revolutionary writers.
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