The Diatribe’s Marcel ‘Fable’ Price
Marcel Price, otherwise known as Fable The Poet, in 2016-2019 became the first Poet Laureate of color, the first under 40 years old, and the first without a college degree. However, this is not where his story begins…
His home life growing up was rooted in substance, mental, and physical abuse as well as sexual abuse from his stepfather for much of his childhood. He was diagnosed with anxiety, bipolar disorder, and depression at the age of fourteen.
Fable became a reflection of his violent upbringing in his urban city of Ypsilanti; he enjoyed the fights he would get in, and the satisfaction of hitting a man his own size. These lashings out got him into a lot of trouble as you can probably imagine,
But everything changed for him in the eleventh grade when his English teacher (whose class he was utterly failing) gave him a unique ultimatum. She said “Marcel if you turn in a piece of creative writing EVERY day, I will pass you”.
In order to save himself from a failure, he abided. He’d turn in short stories, lyrics to songs and raps, and even essays, every single day.
After several weeks of this, his teacher took notice of his fondness for rap and informed him, “You know, Tupac is a poet.”
Fable didn’t believe this, of course, “Tupac’s a rapper, duh!”
He was then astounded to receive Tupac’s book of poetry, “The Rose That Grew From the Concrete.”
His perspective was changed forever and soon he began turning in poems relentlessly.
He found that poetry gave him power over his own story and allowed him to vocalize the hardships he endured without furthering the violence he grew up with, and allowed him to spread this kind of message to anyone enduring or have endured similar struggles as well as spread awareness to those who haven’t.
And this is how Marcel Price became Fable the Poet!
Comic By
Danielle Cowell