Her story:
Hannah Flores is a 17-year-old high school student from Toronto, Ontario Canada, and is an award-winning spoken word artist and filmmaker. She has received international recognition for her impactful work in youth, equity and social justice advocacy through the arts from the likes of CBC Canada Television and Radio, the Lift-Off International Film Festival and the Federal House of Commons of Canada. She has started a YouTube and a podcast: Punchline! with hannahfloresthepoet, where she features students from around the world to share their voices.
How has English or language served as an empowerment tool for you?
"As a young, mixed-race woman of colour, poetry and spoken word have played a pivotal role for many years of my life. I was once very shy when I was much younger, hesitant to speak up for myself. This was partially a product of the indirect messages that our world continues to feed young women like myself: that you should be seen and not heard. I would write, practice and refine my craft without feeling confident enough to share it. I soon realized that poetry and spoken word were the best outlets for me to express what I felt and it became an act of service that I enjoyed. Issues that oppress my gender, my skin colour and my heritage will never even approach any concrete solutions if they are not talked about, if people are not exposed to new ways of thinking and if they are not encouraged to spark conversations about those subjects. It is empowering for me to make my audiences think for themselves, but also outside of themselves simultaneously, and I will always continue to do this through any of my endeavors. Poetry is a universal agent of healing that must be shared in order for people from all walks of life to find a common ground. It is my mission to assist other young woman of colour to find their voices as I have found my own. We will be seen. We will be heard. We are here to stay."