Emi Mahmoud: From World Poetry Slam Champion to UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador
Emtithal "Emi" Mahmoud is a Sudanese-American poet and activist who won the Individual World Poetry Slam title in 2015. In 2018, she was appointed UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, and in that role, she visited refugee camps in Kenya, Greece, and Jordan, drawing attention to the plight of refugees.
Early Life and Education
Emtithal was born in Darfur, Sudan, and relocated to Yemen with her family as a baby. In 1998, she relocated to the United States. She returned to Sudan when she was seven, where her parents took part in a demonstration after the government stopped paying teachers. She and her pals hid beneath the bed out of fear, and the incident taught her the need for knowledge. She is siblings with Afaq "Foo Foo" Emtithal, a poet and activist.
Emtithal attended Julia R. Masterman High School in Philadelphia and received a Leonore Annenberg scholarship, which paid for four years of education in the United States. She subsequently went to Yale University, majoring in anthropology and Molecular Biology, graduating in 2016.
Poetry
As an undergraduate at Yale University, Emtithal first discovered spoken word poetry. She joined the Yale Slam Team after joining oyé!, a spoken-word group linked with the Latino Cultural Center on campus. She also appeared as a poem reader in the 2013 short film Haleema.
Mama was Emtithal's award-winning poem in 2015. This was a memorial to Emtithal's mother, who could not attend and Emtithal's grandmother, who died the day before the competition began. Emtithal also dedicated a poem called Boy in the Sand to Alan Kurdi. - Sisters' Entrance, a collection of poems, was published in 2018.
Activism
Emtithal has also been an activist since high school, calling attention to the ongoing tragedy in Darfur. In 2015, she was named to the BBC's 100 Women list of "The Most Inspiring Women in the World," and she was invited to a roundtable discussion with President Obama in 2016 when he visited the Islamic Society of Baltimore.
Emtithal participated in the How to Do Good speaker tour in 2017 and 2018, reciting poetry and addressing her advocacy work in New York, Oslo, Stockholm, The Hague, Brussels, Paris, London, and York. Emtithal has also been working for the rights of sickle cell disease patients in Nepal since 2014. She was invited to read one of her poems before the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2016. She also began a campaign in 2016 at the 'Laureates and Leaders Summit' in New Delhi. The same year, she spoke at the TEDMED conference and opened a TEDxTalk at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya in 2018.
Recognition and Awards
In 2015, Emtithal was named one of BBC's 100 Women list of "The Most Inspiring Women in the World."Her dedication to human rights has earned her numerous accolades and awards.