‘Poetry saved my life.’ How Kondwani Fidel found his calling.
Kondwani Fidel vividly remembers when he knew he was destined to share his life through poetry.
It was Feb. 10, 2013, during his sophomore year at Virginia State University.
Fidel had been writing poetry for a year and sharing it with close friends and family members but never with the public. Poetry was therapeutic; it helped him to express the pain of seeing so many friends claimed by violence in his hometown of Baltimore.
Fidel was part of a mentoring organization putting on a talent show at Virginia State, and one of the dance groups
scheduled to perform backed out.
“I told them that I did spoken word, but my poems were on the dark side,” he said. The organizers told Fidel he would be a perfect fill-in. But, “I had never performed before a crowd before, so I started getting nervous.”
As a crowd of 200 eagerly awaited the young poet, Fidel recalled feeling like the rapper Eminem from the movie “8 Mile,” who puked ahead of his first rap battle. Fidel was about to tell the DJ he wasn’t going to perform then he caught himself.
“I just said to myself ‘I have to do it, so I can see if I can do it,’ ” Fidel said.
He did it. He walked on stage and shared his poem. And as he finished his final word, the crowd erupted in applause.
Just a few days later, Fidel changed his major from sports management to English. Today, he is the author of “The Antiracist: How to Start the conversation about Race and Take Action” and is considered a rising literary talent.
Fidel will be the featured guest at “Unlearning Racism,” a free Listen MKE Live virtual event at 7 p.m. Feb. 24. The poet will discuss his book and talk about how we can work together to end racism in our community.
Fidel lost many of his friends to the streets
Fidel, 27, was raised from infancy by his grandmother on Baltimore’s east side.
With his parents dealing with what he called “systemic oppression” of incarceration and drug abuse, his grandmother provided Fidel with stability.
She enrolled him in a private school and he was a straight-A student, in part because an aunt would give him $20 for every A. She ended the cash reward when he got older because, she told him, he was doing what he was supposed to do.
“She was right, but school didn’t hold interest with me after that,” Fidel admitted.
As a teen, the ugly parts of life in his community made a deep impression. He lost friends to gun violence. Family members to incarceration.
“Over the years, I lost so many friends to the streets I can’t even count, and I know that’s not normal but that’s my reality and the reality of many young Black men my age. I can’t even tell you how many funerals I have been to, but it’s been too many to count.”
It wasn’t until he got to college that Fidel developed a love for reading. He didn’t hate reading before, he just didn’t like the types of books his teachers assigned him to read.
At Virginia State, he found authors such as Langston Hughes — who introduced readers to language, themes, attitudes and ideas they could relate to. He read James Baldwin, who shared the pain and the struggle of Black Americans, and Amiri Baraka, who used his writing to battle racism.
All that reading kindled a love of spoken word.
Fidel’s own writing began to focus on the pain and struggle African Americans faced as he was growing up in Baltimore, a city that reported more than 330 homicides in 2020, marking the sixth year in a row it topped 300 killings.
“What do you expect when you have a high concentration of poverty in one area,” Fidel said.
Gun violence is a form of systemic oppression. It can erupt anywhere, anytime. You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time and become a victim. Sometimes it stems from the generational baggage that people inherit and carry around. Sometimes people don’t even know why they hate each other, and that’s part of the problem.
Milwaukee is, in that way, no different from Baltimore. Milwaukee reported a record number of killings and shootings last year.
“Our poor urban areas are underfunded and heavily policed, and our people often get locked up for small s---, so our negative interactions with police occur all the time and we normalize it — but it’s not normal,” Fidel said.
Hard to see in the ‘eye of the hurricane’ of racism
College opened Fidel’s eyes to the daily trauma he had experienced.
He assumed everyone lived like he did growing up in Baltimore, but he soon learned how dysfunctional his experiences had been.
People would tell stories about how they grew up; many of them didn’t know anyone who had gotten shot or lost someone close to them. Some of his classmates had not even lost anyone to natural causes.
“When I would share stories about my upbringing and the things I saw and heard, they would look at me like I was crazy. They didn’t know how I was still making it,’ he said.
It was then that Fidel recognized how abnormal it was to know a dozen people who had been murdered. To have attended countless candlelight vigils and worn R.I.P. shirts. To have run from police. To have been beaten by them.
“We have normalized that kind of behavior, and I used to think even though some of these things happened to me that it was normal. It’s hard to see when you are in the eye of the hurricane,” he said.
Imagine how hard it is for others to see.
“I don’t expect it to be easy for a 55year-old white man living in Wisconsin to understand why Black kids suffer in Milwaukee or Baltimore, when it took time for me to truly understand and to be able to verbalize it myself,” he said.
But Fidel’s poetry and spoken word have helped him express his feelings and thoughts. He knows how much that means personally.
“Poetry saved my life,” he said.
A book in two weeks: How Fidel wrote ‘The Antiracist’
Fidel’s poetry and writing have propelled him to lecture classes as far away as the University of East London and gain recognition all over the East Coast. But what he cherishes most is working with youth and educating adults.
“I love giving back to young people and getting them to express through writing because I know what it did for me,” he said.
His viral essay, “How a Young Boy has Been Decaying in Baltimore Since Age 10: A Death Note,” won “Best of Baltimore” from The Baltimore Sun in 2018.
“Man killed in Greenmount Avenue shooting becomes city’s 200th homicide victim. I stared at the ceiling as cold tears slid down my cheek, chilling the back of my neck. I started to reminisce about all of my family and friends who expired on the streets of Baltimore. Depression crept down on me, hope seemed futile, and I wanted to fade out like Robin Williams. I called on God, but his phone was on do not disturb; it seems as though he always ignores me when I need him the most. Every time a body drops in my city, no matter if it’s a loved one or not, a piece of my sanity is chipped away.”
Fidel’s gritty prose led to a book deal for “The Antiracist.” His goal: to write about race and the times we’re living with his own poetic spin.
But the book almost never happened because the deal had a short, two-week deadline. He hit his deadline, and the experience was one of the most frustrating and satisfying things he’s ever done.
“I really wanted people to understand the heart of what people who live in these conditions feel,” he said.
In the book, Fidel addresses why oppression continues, the impact of mass incarceration on families and neighborhoods, and what can be done about racism.
That last part — what can be done about racism — is a question he often gets from white people.
His response: Figure out what you are good at and offer those services to the people who need them.
“If you are good at résumé writing and you want to help, do you realize how many people could use help in putting together a résumé, especially now?” he said. “Everything doesn’t have to be big to be impactful.”
That’s such good advice, no matter where you live.