A young woman by the name of Jinahie performed poetry on March 10 during last week´s Happy Hour in Kessel’s Multipurpose room to enlighten the audience about domestic violence.

Jinahie introduced herself and made the event a space with no boundaries. This created an intimate setting for the full house. Throughout the night her spoken word touched the crowd creating a variety of emotions.

Jinahie touched upon a variety of topics including violence against women, female circumcision, self-esteem, and her absent father.

Jinahie interacted with the audience by making them do certain things before she performed her poems, such as asking the audience to close their eyes and raise their hand high if they experienced as a woman abuse or knew a woman that endured abuse.

She then instructed the audience to open their eyes, and everyone in the room had their hand raised.

This made the crowd aware of the commonness of attacks against the female population. This sparked an interesting conversation for the predominately female audience.

Jinahie continued with another activity in which she had four audience members; two females and two males stand in the front and say their biggest insecurity.

“My biggest insecurity is when people see me, they will only see my weight,” freshman field hockey player Courtney Johnson said.

After being seated, the audience talked about the stated insecurities in which many of them were shared, some of the insecurities included not feeling good enough or being bound for failure.

Throughout the event, a piece of paper went around the room for the audience to create their own poem. Each attendee was responsible for one line in what Jinahie called a “pot luck” poem.

Prior to the ending of the event Jinahie recited a poem that explored the root for success in life along with the many obstacles that people face, including people looking down on you.

Jinahie’s poetry about her struggles was motivational and even helped some attendees.

“Jinahie’s poetry was very powerful and resonated with me, I really could relate to her poem about her father leaving,” freshman nursing student Luzmary Ordornez said.

After the end of Jinahie’s performance she opened the floor for any itching questions. She explained how her talent fostered in high school when she wrote her first poem, which enabled her to continue in which developed her to gain confidence and begin performing at poetry slams.

She now tours a variety of colleges and universities. She does admit to having social anxiety and being nervous before a performance, but she knows the importance of telling her stories

“Talking and listening to one another would result into a world ‘that looks just like what we created in this room’,” Jinahie said.