Production Dates & Times
Thursday, July 17th at 7:30 pm
Friday, July 18th at 7:30 pm
Saturday, July 19th at 7:30 pm

Location
20 Putnam Avenue in Brooklyn, C or G train to Clinton-Washington. Accessible station at Franklin Avenue C/Shuttle train.

¡Oye! Group—
Ghetto Hors D’oeuvres:
Baldwin 101

Ghetto Hors D’oeuvres: Baldwin 101
An Intro to Black Queer Literary Legacy—Live & Unfiltered

Part lecture, part live lit, part celebration—Baldwin 101 is a poetic syllabus come to life. Following the Baldwin Centennial of 2024 and in response to rising cultural backlash against DEI and critical race theory, this new edition of Ghetto HD steps boldly into Baldwin’s 101st year with a night that blends performance, pedagogy, and protest.

Inspired by the viral HilmanTok movement—where Black creators reimagined culture as course content—Baldwin 101 invites audiences to experience what an Intro to Queer Black Literary Theory class might look like in a world that needs it more than ever. Through poetry, spoken word, and staged excerpts, a cast of mostly queer Black and brown writers embody and expand the legacy of James Baldwin, asking: What does it mean to study Baldwin out loud?

Come for the syllabus. Stay for the revolution.

Featuring:
Joel Leon
Roya Marsh
Brad Walrond
Kearah Armonie
Joel Francois
Kai Diata Giovanni
Dr. Darius Phelps
Gabriel Ramirez
J Rose
Sumbodies Mama
UGBA

Creative Team
Emily Rondon, Production Manager
Joel Francois, Co-curator
Flako Jimenez, Co-curator / director
Finn Meyercord, Lightning Director
Justin Allen, Stage Manager
Kameron Neal, Video Designer
Lateef Dameer, Sound Designer
James Martinez, OYE Group Intern
Kimberly Collado, OYE Group Operations Manager
Lluridia Jimenez, OYE Group Marketing Associate

About ¡OYE! Group
¡Oye! Group is a Bushwick-based creative incubator for artists, students, and community members of all ages, both local and immigrant to New York City. Our work is grounded in the act of listening that gave us our company name: we curate art that sparks a dialogue over the political and social issues that our community tells us are critical to them. We present an eclectic mix of theater, dance, poetry, music, video installations, and film through festivals and productions. We work with emerging artists to create, play, and grow in an environment that challenges and supports them, and we engage youth and adults alike through high-quality arts education that provides them with the tools to generate forward-thinking art that complements the work on our stages.

About the Artists

Joél Leon, author of the 2025 Gotham Book Prize-nominated “Everything and Nothing At Once: A Black Man's Reimagined Soundtrack For the Future” is a Bronx-born girl dad, poet, performer and cultural critic who writes and tells stories for Black people. His TED talk on co-parenting has over 1.6M views, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, ABC NEWS,  EBONY, Newsweek, Forbes and others. He is a Creative Collective NYC Creative Class alumni, winner of the BCA Bronx Recognizes Its Own Award in Poetry, member of the Top 50 Waymaker Class of 2025 and author "Things I Will Tell My Daughter", and "God Wears Durags, Too" (Bottlecap Press). He is currently a Creative Director at the New York Times' T Brand Studios. Joél is currently repped by Folio Literary.

Bronx, New York native, Roya Marsh is a poet, performer, educator and activist. She is the author of dayliGht, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry and SAVINGS TIME (MCDXFSG). Roya works feverishly toward Queer liberation and dismantling white supremacy. She is the co-founder of the Bronx Poet Laureate, and leads creative writing workshops with NYC DOE, PEN America Emerging Voices,  Lambda Literary’s LGBTQ Writers in Schools and Poets & Writers. Roya is the awardee of the Lotos Foundation Prize for Poetry and 2024 Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) Award from Bronx Council on the Arts.

Brad Walrond is a poet, author, performance artist, and one of the foremost writers and performers of the 1990s Black Arts Movement centered in New York City. Walrond’s debut collection, Every Where Alien, (2024) Moore Black Press | Amistad / HarperCollins, chronicles the author’s own Black queer exploration of the world, amidst the discovery of 1990s-early 2000s New York City  underground art and resistance movements. Brad’s poems have been published in: The Atlantic, Poem-A-Day | Academy of American Poets, African Voices Magazine, and elsewhere. Brad released his debut spoken word album Alien Day August (2024). Walrond holds a B.A. from The City College of New York and an M.A. from Columbia University.

Kearah-Armonie (aka Kearmonie) is an Afro-Caribbean multidisciplinary artist specializing in Filmmaking, Poetry/Spoken Word, and Education. Having begun their journey as a spoken word poet and writer in 2011, Kearah-Armonie is now a mentor and teaching artist. Over the past decade, they’ve worked with organizations such as The Shed, LAMBDA Literary, and Urban Word NYC, offering poetry workshops that encourage voice and explore creative activism through writing, storytelling, and performance- for students as young as elementary schoolers across NYC. They’ve performed in spaces and at events including the New York City Poetry Festival, The People’s Forum, Bowery Poetry Club, the Nuyorican Poets Café, Busboys and Poets, and more. Their poetry appears in various publications, including Genre: Urban Arts, No Dear Magazine, and Great Weather for Media’s anthology The Other Side of Violet. Learn more at kearmonie.com

Joel Francois is a Haitian-born, Brooklyn-raised storyteller, who wishes to share his vista as a black writer and tell stories of love, family, and race through that lens. He believes that the artist is the architect of humanity and writes in search of God, love, and community. Joel's writing is an act of personal healing as his ultimate goal is to do good work with little harm. He is the 2015 Nuyorican Grand Slam Champion, the 2016 and 2017 Bowery Grand Slam Champion, was listed as one of New York City’s top poets by Culture Trip, earned a top 20 ranking in the 2016 Individual World Poetry Slam, and earned an MFA in poetry at Syracuse University. Joel has dedicated the past three years to traveling the country and sharing his work.

Kai Diata Giovanni is a Brooklyn-based poet and performer who holds the title of 2024-2025 NYC Youth Poet Laureate. Kai has organized and performed as an artivist (artist-activist) for many years. Their work routinely explores race, rage, radical justice, and belonging. Kai has performed at the Brooklyn Museum, the Blue Note Jazz Club, the Guggenheim, Lincoln Center and more. They currently co-curate and co-host New Age, an intergenerational open mic. Kai will be attending Howard University in the fall.

Dr. Darius Phelps (he/him) is a poet, writer, and scholar whose work centers the liberatory possibilities of poetic inquiry, culturally responsive pedagogy, and critical literacy. A former elementary school teacher and now professor, he mentors pre-service educators in reimagining classrooms as spaces of resistance, restoration, and radical love. His scholarship amplifies the voices of historically marginalized students, exploring how poetry can serve as both pedagogy and prophecy.

Gabriel Ramirez, author of the chapbook IF PIT BULLS HAD A GOD, IT’D BE A PIT BULL (The Head & The Hand Press) and the children’s book “We’re Community” is a Queer Afro-Caribbean writer, performer and educator. A 2023 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry at Adroit Journal and the 2024-2025 CantoMundo Poetry Coalition Fellow. Gabriel has received fellowships from the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Conversation Literary Arts Festival, CantoMundo, Miami Book Fair, a graduate fellow at The Watering Hole, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. Gabriel has performed on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre, United Nations, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theatre, The National Museum of Romanian Literature, and other venues & universities around the nation. Gabriel was featured in Hungton Post, VIBE Magazine, Blavity, Upworthy, The Flama, and Remezcla. You can nd their work in various spaces, including YouTube, and in publications like Poetry Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Adroit Journal, Split This Rock’s The Quarry, BOMB, and others as well as Bettering American Poetry Anthology (Bettering Books 2017) What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (Northwestern University Press 2019), The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Press 2020), and Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (Library of America 2024). Learn more about Gabriel Ramirez @RamirezPoet. and RamirezPoet.com

JRose, is a powerhouse Spoken Word Artist from Queens, NY. As the founder of The Rose Garden Events, she has cultivated a thriving creative space since 2018, providing a stage for poets, storytellers, and artists to share their voices. Her talent has earned her numerous slam titles across the U.S., and in 2023, she was crowned the BRIC Brooklyn Grand Slam Finals champion. Now, she stands in a full-circle moment as the host of the iconic Nuyorican Poets Cafe Poetry Slam. JRose has performed on renowned stages like Lincoln Center, Write About Now (WAN), Busboys and Poets, and many more. Beyond the stage, she is a dedicated teaching artist, sharing the transformative power of poetry with youth in schools, libraries, and at Rikers Island, where she helps incarcerated women and young people find healing through words. In 2024, she made history as the first poet signed to First Generation Rich, owned by Hip-Hop artist Skyzoo, releasing her debut album and book, Pieces of My Crumbled Thoughts. JRose’s mission is clear: to write, perform, and teach as a way to empower others to #KeepGrowing.

UGBA (‘oog ba’) Ungrateful Black Artist (pronoun inclusive) is a queer poet, rapper, playwright, actor, and activist based out of Brooklyn, NY. UGBA is the founder/host of CEREMONIES—a Brooklyn based monthly Black-Queer artist showcase held in honor of Essex Hemphill. UGBA is also the founder of “Dark-Skin Support Group" a virtual support network for dark-skin Black Americans in need of a space to discuss the realities of colorism. In 2020, UGBA was named a “Black LGBTQ+ playwright you need to know '' by Time Out NY. UGBA is the former script assistant for the Pulitzer Prize winning and 5 time TONY nominated Broadway show “Fat Ham." He is an alumnus of the Public Theater’s #BARS program and Emerging Writers Group 2020-2023 cohort. He is a 2023 Artivism Fellow through Broadway Advocacy Coalition, a 2022 MAP Grant recipient, a 2020-2021 BAM Resident,a New York Stage & Film 2023 Founders’ award recipient, former Artistic Director at NY Writers Coalition and 2024/2025 Nuyorican Poetry Slam Team Member.