On Monday, November 14, I attended a poetry reading by Dr. Akhil Katyal of India, Stockton’s International Writer-in-Residence. At 7 PM, I took a seat. However, the seat I took was not in the correct location. Apparently, the reading was in the Board Room, even though countless emails had told me it was in the Event Room. So at 7:15 I took a seat in the correct room.
Luckily, I was not too late. He had only just started speaking, and not even reading the poetry, by the time I got there. I am not going to lie, Dr. Katyal had a bit of an accent. His accent made it a tad hard to understand, but I still understood most of what he was saying. Since it had only been a few days since the election, everyone was still pretty sensitive about the results. It was all so raw. He wrote a poem about how he felt when he saw the results. In another one of his poems, he slipped in that he had a boyfriend, which made me understand even more why the election results had such an impact on him and his psyche. Between being a person of color and being gay, there is a lot at stake for him when it comes to the social justice area of politics. His thoughts and poetry were profound. He wrote about his identity and his travels, from India to Chicago to New York to Stockton. Listening to his poetry was a great experience.