I Want to be Good!

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Authors

Ekoko-Kay, Evelyna

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University of Guelph

Abstract

In the face of climate catastrophe, economic injustice, and the rise of white supremacy and fascism on a global scale, I Want to be Good! grapples with what it means to be and do good in a profoundly unjust world. Divided into four sections with a keyword “interlude,” Ekoko-Kay’s text documents the despair experienced by her generation in the face of impending apocalypse, before delving into her roots as the child of activists, her development into an activist, and concluding with a call to collective action against systemic violence and oppression. Combining elegy, lyric poetry, protest songs, and chants, Ekoko-Kay asks what constitutes “goodness” in both a personal and political context, ultimately putting forward the answer that “goodness” is not a state of being, but the collective, ongoing act of building a new world from the rubble of the old.

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Keywords

Poetry, Environmentalism, Climate change, Black identity, Communism, Capitalism, Goodness, Good, Activism, Apocalypse, Elegy

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