MADELINE LITTLE
Special to The Leader
Where you come from shapes who you are, whether you like it or not.
On Sept. 21 at Dod’s Grove, Nia Morse will be reciting her poem “My Mother Calls Me A Champion” at the “Brother Versus Sister” cookout hosted by Fredonia clubs Sister Circle and Brother to Brother.
This poem tells a story that is unique, not just to Morse but to all African American people.
It’s a story her mother told her growing up.
Morse believes almost everyone going to the cookout has experienced or known someone who is involved with gang violence.
Sarah Hutchinson, Sister Circle’s vice president said, “I think Nia’s poem is going to open a lot of our eyes on campus. I am happy she is choosing to recite it.”
According to Morse, African American men find different ways of coping with the America they live in, and sometimes it creates fatal or unfortunate results.
The title of this poem came from Morse losing her father due to gang violence.
“Usually in literature when people say ‘championing something,’ you’re carrying on a legacy of someone else. I am carrying on my fathers,” she said.
Morse comes from a place where predominates gang violence, which often leads to death. But you don’t get the full back story.
The purpose of Morse’s poem is to encourage people living in urban areas — and people on the outside looking in — to think about victims of violence, and separate them from the ones who committed the violence.
A powerful line in the poem is, “My father fell asleep to gun shots, singing him lullabies.”
When you think of lullabies, you think of something sweet and familiar — something everyone knows.
But for her father, his lullabies weren’t sweet, and everyone didn’t know them, but they were familiar.
Throughout the poem, Morse uses different lines from the “Star Spangled Banner” to fit in parts of the story.
For example, one of Morse’s lines says, “Talk about bombs bursting in air.”
Another line reads, “…he lifted his eyes o’er his head and fell asunder to the music one, last, brutal, time.”
Morse does this to emphasize the fact that this is the America that black men know.
She ends her poem off with a soft closing saying, “My father looks at me from a photograph, for a funeral, I did not attend.”
Morse never got to meet her father, because he was killed while her mother was pregnant.
Morse will recite her poem live at the Bro vs. Sis cookout this Saturday, from 4 p.m to 8 p.m in Dod’s Grove.