In My Shoes

Payless
Famous Footwear
Footlocker
Skechers
Steve Madden
Nine West
Puma
Clarks
Cole Haan
Ugg
Prada
Manolo Blahnik 
 

If you recognize the order of this list, then you already know that shoes are class. Shoes are culture. 

Walking a mile in someone else’s Reeboks ain’t the same as walking a mile in her Pradas. 

The composers of the pieces here all swapped shoes, and this is what they learned, about class, race, culture, geography, and dawning awareness. The pieces were composed in a writing class at CU-Boulder, a class based in part on the belief that knowledge is created from the stories we tell, about our lives, our theories, and the ways of the world. 

In the first round of recording, the composers told stories of their own experiences and understandings. These essays are from round two, where they untied their laces, pulled open the Velcro, slipped off their loafers and stomped around in each other’s  Tony Lamas.