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Shumate Spotlight: Prince Shakur on resilience

Prince Shakur

May 04, 2021

Mixed paper collage with "We need change" handwritten on a piece of paper at the center

New from the Wexner Center for the Arts Shumate Council blog, contributor Prince Shakur reflects on how anti-Blackness has had a role in shaping their life and their career as a writer—how it has driven Shakur to respond to the injustice afflicting their communities with words as well as actions.

Shakur has contributed to outlets such as Teen Vogue, AFROPUNK, and Vice, and in 2017 they were awarded a Rising Star Grant from GLAAD for their YouTube Series Two Woke Minds.

"By the time I graduated from college in the spring of 2015, I had no clue where or how writing could fit into my new life. After four years of English classes, reading countless texts by white writers, and then grappling with Black death upon news of the murder of Michael Brown only a week before my senior year, I was in an existential tailspin."

Read the full essay.

Top of page: Collage art created and hung as part of the Wex's Fall 2020 community resource project Free Space; image courtesy of the Shumate Council.