MARQUESHA BABERS
After growing up homeless and channeling her pain into power, Marquesha has become a mentor for Get Lit and an ambassador for the film Girl Rising, which stresses the importance of education for girls in developing countries. With Get Lit, she has performed at the MUSE Conference in Oregon, at the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center (alongside Angelina Jolie and Hillary Clinton), at Cadogan Hall in London, and at colleges and universities throughout the nation. She has also appeared on the series Verses and Flow, and she is a blogger for ONE.org. Look out for her poetry anthology and memoir, coming soon to a bookstore near you! She is also featured in the upcoming 2020 film "Summertime", directed by Carlos López Estrada, who's first feature film "Blindspotting" (starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal) was nominated for the 2018 Sundance Grand Jury Prize, with Estrada nominated by the DGA for Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First-Time Feature Film Director. “Summertime” premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and will be distributed by Good Deed Entertainment in the Spring of 2021.
“Truly, everyone in Summertime delivers excellent work and greatly contributes to the desire to just hang out with these characters forever, but there’s one downright remarkable performer that every viewer will be talking about, Marquesha Babers… Perhaps it’s a bit early to make a declaration like this, but I’d be shocked if that moment doesn’t wind up becoming one of the most memorable scenes of the entire year.”
— Collider “Summertime Review”
Press Photos
Performance Links
Women in the World
PopSugar
Performance for Empowerment Congress
Poetry for Southwest Airlines
Press for “Summertime”
“Truly, everyone in Summertime delivers excellent work and greatly contributes to the desire to just hang out with these characters forever, but there’s one downright remarkable performer that every viewer will be talking about, Marquesha Babers… Perhaps it’s a bit early to make a declaration like this, but I’d be shocked if that moment doesn’t wind up becoming one of the most memorable scenes of the entire year.”
— Collider
"Influenced by her therapist’s book “How to Rap Battle Your Demons,” another standout among a brilliant crowd is Marquesha (Marquesha Babers), an African American girl who’s suppressed her inner wounds who confronts an ex-romantic interest that body-shamed her. Every word a dagger for the offender and a breath of newly found confidence for her, Babers’ showstopper is the kind of unforgettable appearance that makes audiences stand up and clap mid-screening."
— The Wrap
“…I was really sold on the brutal, raw honesty of Marquesha Babers…”
— Slug Mag
“Marquesha Babers gets arguably the most climactic scene, eviscerating an ex-crush on his doorstep while his new girlfriend looks on in disbelief. Some of the spoken word makes you laugh, while this particular scene is sure to make you tear up.”
“One of the very best [is]…Marquehsa Babers. She delivers the monologue with such fervor that she too seems caught off guard when the tears start to burst in between her verses of emotional reawakening. Such a mix of poetry's massive emotions with Estrada's loving camera prove why it’s good that Estrada’s experiment exists.”
“But the true standout…involves Marquesha Babers as an overweight woman hiding her pain behind a bright smile and upbeat demeanor…. It's a killer moment…”
“[Summertime] also boasts great work from Marquesha Babers…”
“Get Lit is a youth poetry organization that goes around California and the country and teaches poetry to students in schools to inspire them to read and write and have a newfound love for the English language. We show them that poetry can be from anyone. It doesn’t just have to be a 300-year-old white guy who is not around, it comes from anyone, and you can connect with stories from 50 years ago or yesterday.”