The Orange Spotlight: Laura Yes Yes

Laura Yes Yes "How To Seduce A White Boy in Ten Easy Step" (Write Bloody, March 15th)

What happens to a performance poet when you pin her to the page and perfect bound her typically flowing and free thoughts? In the debut collection from Laura Yes Yes, How To Seduce A White Boy In Ten Easy Steps, performance and print blend together perfectly on the printed page. Laura opens the collection with a preface clarifying the meaning of her attention getting title. The phrase "White Boy" stretches beyond a race and gender and encapsulates "the normative or ordinary force whose dominant presence renders other groups extraordinary". So how do you seduce a normative force? Laura seems to use a mixture fierce power and subtle sensitivity to attempt to show the many multitudes of an intelligent and sexual and angry woman to seduce not just this white boy, but any reader.

Yes, these pages serve as admirable little platforms for her forceful messages, but she is a big presence live. Last month she read at The Orange Alert Reading Series and controlled the crowd with a mixture of Alanis Morissette, spoken word (with out notes) and pieces from this collection. She was forceful and witty, and like nothing I've ever had on The Whistler's stage before. She performed the titled poem from this collection which mixes a clever how-to with harsh words to show the dangers and conflict still deeply routed in race and gender relations.

"Verify the the boy is white. Surreptitiously pass a finger along his forearm. glock."

How To Seduce A White Boy In Ten Easy Steps will be released by Write Bloody Publishing on March 15th.