in a society built on oppression.
America: hypocrites proudly wave
gleaming red white and blue shades,
o’er the land of the free
and the home of the brave.
We Can Do Better
LIVIA NELSON
I was so inspired by Daleelah’s poem that I decided to write a poem to support it. I usually write prose, and I was scared to address this topic, but Daleelah gave me the courage!
And let me also add: I am the “right” shade
But when I look at my race, I feel so ashamed.
How can we claim any national pride
With our history of slavery, internment, genocide
We say “My ancestors weren’t part of all that, so I’m good”
But just because we didn’t cut down the trees doesn’t mean we live in the woods.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.
Our National Anthem still dares have these words
But maybe it makes sense—past and present are blurred.
Stop pretending, dear white people, that this isn’t our problem
Or that injustice can be viewed in a present-day vacuum
Racial inequality goes back to our country’s roots
To pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you have to have boots.
And I’m not just calling out southern whites
Neo-Nazis, the KKK, or the alt-right
I’m talking about white people who claim to be on the left
Then turn our backs on our fellow citizens and all the ways they are oppressed
While we sit comfortably in our Connecticut homes
In our downtown offices, on our unearned thrones
In Silicon Valley and our Ivy League halls
Pretending there isn’t blood on our hands, in the walls
And using our privilege to take the cowardly route
Saying “This is just how things are,” shrugging, opting out
Hiding in our bubble, that lily-white cocoon
That allows us to ignore all the elephants in the room.
But if we can be neutral in situations of injustice
If we can justify our ignorance because it’s just bliss
Then we are just as bad as our white predecessors,
And have chosen the side of the future’s oppressors.
We need to be allies as a means to atone
Because Daleelah shouldn’t have to fight this fight alone.
MARIFER SANTOS
YEARS AS MENTEE: 2
GRADE: Senior
HIGH SCHOOL: Inwood Academy for Leadership
BORN: San Francisco de Macorís, Dominican Republic
LIVES: New York, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: Gold Key and Silver Key
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: My mentor and I live in the same neighborhood, Inwood. For one of our first writing meetings, we went to our local park. We saw and wrote about so many hidden gems in the park, from the culture to the beautiful view. Linda Kay Klein has taught me how to write from my own perspective about truth, about things that to the naked eye might not be poetic, and how even simple surroundings can speak to my own truth.
LINDA KAY KLEIN
YEARS AS MENTOR: 1
OCCUPATION: Storyteller and Social Innovator
LIVES: New York, NY
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Marifer has welcomed me into her world through her stories. Stories of her family, her friends, her heartache, and her frustration. And so, though we’ve gone on all kinds of exciting field trips together—visiting book publishing and magazine houses, nonprofits that use writing to help people heal, and more—when I think of Marifer, the moments that stand out most to me are the small ones. Sitting in a coffee shop reading an intimate story I feel honored to have shared with me, or helping her think through how to address a friend’s tragedy. It’s those moments I’m most grateful for.
Between Worlds
MARIFER SANTOS
This is a piece about my place in the world and how, as a member of Generation F, I do (and don’t) fit in. The piece is based on my family’s home daycare and my grandfather’s illness.
Home smells like cherry lip gloss
Lip gloss for the impressionable elementary school girls
Diapers for the babies and bubblegum lollipops for the toddlers
Here is the place of alternatives
But cherry lip gloss is how they try to impress me
Home smells like menthol
Menthol like the witches’ medicinal vapor rub to dress the sick
Diffused camphor and eucalyptus
Here is the place where there are no alternatives
but menthol is impressed upon his chest
Home sounds like tantrums
Tantrums like screams of frustration and crying outburst
Sometimes the bursts of laughter
Sometimes screeching claims and blames
Sometimes a scuffle of discoordinated jumping
Following, the downstairs neighbor’s thumping on his ceiling/my floors
Home sounds like an oxygen concentrator
Oxygen concentration like the wheezing and coughing of a grown man
Sometimes like the outburst of gasping for air
Sometimes the faded tantrums
Sometimes the sound of the repeated mariachi song
Sometimes the loud shuffling of dominoes and his victory chant
Home tastes like movie popcorn
Movie popcorn, cheerios or oreos
Cafeteria trays with veggies, proteins and sweets
And here the food ends in crumbs and cups spill
These children use my home as a movie set production
At least there are snacks in this little home of mine
Home tastes like Caribbean cuisine Caribbean cuisine
like mondongo, mofongo or sancocho
Mountains of rice and protein and sweets
His own unshared cookies, cakes and candies
And here in the wheelchair his tastes are childlike
Replacing the cigarettes he smoked as a child
Home looks like scattered toys
Scattered toys like blocks, books and teddy bears
And here is the place of colorful alphabet mats and checkered patterns
The ethnic dolls and the frugal child merchant with plastic foods
And this framed holiday card of the previous and current nursery kids
Home looks like a living room
A living room with a dying man
And here is the place of his faded alphabet and checked memories
The native prayers to the children he surpassed in livelihood
And this holiday card from his now-adult kids
Home feels like ooey gooey slime
Ooey gooey slime like sticky, indestructible furniture
The feeling of the kids’ confusion in a hanged-man game
Shatterproof vases and untied laces
Untangled manes and the sticky glue-dot remains
Home feels like living in asphyxiation
I am forbidden to see him choking out a cough of help
I do not find the hanged man pitiful or sick or weak
He is merely trying to grasp a few more breaths
with no fear of death
Where am I in this home?
I feel guilty for even asking that
But sometimes I feel lost between worlds
The Middle of Nowhere
LINDA KAY KLEIN
Working with Marifer on her piece, “Between Worlds,” we explored questions such as “What is home?” and “Where do I belong?” together. T
he following personal piece was inspired by Marifer’s beautifully structured response to these questions.
The road smells like hot dry dirt when you throw a pail of water on it.
Musky. It gets up in your nose. Then it dries up again quick.
The road smells sweet, like wildflowers candied in the sun.
Foul like manure. Fetid like the carcass of a deer. Clean like crisp, brown fields of wheat.
The road sounds like a hum, a long note sung on and on.
It sounds like quiet, like a hush, and yet, so loud you can’t hear anything over it.
It sounds like rock-and-roll, country, and the oldies station.
Be-bop-a-doo-wop-a-doo-wop-wow.
The road tastes dry, like drinking from an empty canteen.
A few grains of sand you smack and smack.
It tastes like saliva rolling around in your mouth while you scan the passing signs for a gas station, a weigh station, a truck stop, a rest stop, a rest already, a stop.
The road looks like a scar. A hardened wound in the tender side of the land.
A man-made cut through her—patched, packed, padded, and ready to ride.
It looks like a snake. Wiley and prepared to pounce but settled by your steady hand.
It looks like restlessness. Like wild dogs. Bears. Moose. And you.
The road feels like freedom, like wind and feather and yes, whole bird even.
Like being stripped of the world’s expectations in just a minute.
Like forgetting all the things they think you are and say you are and believe you are,
and that you, deep down, believe, too.
My mother grew up in a little town called Scobey, Montana. In high school, she moved across the state to Glasgow. And this afternoon in New York City, I read in the paper that these two towns had just been named the first and second “most remote” in the country.*
And finally I understand it: I am a child of nowhere. And not just any kind of nowhere, but the middle of it. No wonder I have never felt comfortable in the suburbs, or the country, or the city. No wonder, then, of course (!), my home has always been the road.
* Andrew Van Dam, “Using the Best Data Possible, We Set Out to Find the Middle of Nowhere,” The Washington Post (February 20, 2018).
CAROLYN SCHMIT
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Sophomore
HIGH SCHOOL: Columbia Secondary School
BORN: Detroit, MI
LIVES: New York, NY
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: In a meeting when Amanda and I met to work on a piece, I remember having all these ideas in my head, but when I was to write them, I couldn’t figure out where to start or what to say. I voiced this, and Amanda suggested using a page to write down ideas, details, questions, and connections I had. With my scrambled ideas written out, we were able to work and put them into a piece. While writing, Amanda balances her brain and her heart, and I am constantly learning new ways from her to approach my writing.
AMANDA OTTAWAY
YEARS AS MENTOR: 1
OCCUPATION: Journalist, Courthouse News
BORN: Morgantown, WV
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: The Rebounders: A Division I Basketball Journey (University of Nebraska Press); The Christian Science Monitor; VICE
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Carolyn has lived all over the world already in her sixteen years, whereas I didn’t even board my first airplane until I was seventeen. I’m fascinated by her thoughtfulness and her view of the world, and I love learning from her about all the places she has called home, including Amsterdam, Switzerland, Israel, and now New York City.
TO honour your roots
CAROLYN SCHMIT
This piece was written for the Generations workshop, as an appreciation of my grandfather, but it became a much bigger project over the past months as Amanda and I researched, wrote, and edited it together.
You came here by sea. You stood on the railing of the SS Himalaya, looking down at all who came to bid you farewell. At least fifty of them came, all of your cousins and your aunts and your uncles and even the little boys down the street you’d played cricket with. You left your whole world behind you that night. You watched as the Taj Mahal hotel got smaller and smaller, and then you watched it disappear. Your grandma was there; you never saw her again. You used to be so close.
While growing up in India, you always wanted to leave your little suburban neighbourhood, which was too small and slow, too mundane. You wanted to leave when you, who taught yourself English, had ranked amongst the top English-speaking students in the Bombay state. When you’d work work work in the fields like all the other boys and girls but all you could think about was a world where you’d work work work, but not like this. No more riding your metal bike to that same dirt field, every morning, working under the same sun until evening. Instead you’d get into the subway each morning, amongst all the other men and women in black and white suits, and then you’d take a deep breath and stride into that tall building. Onto greater things you’d always wanted to go.
You rode the SS Himalaya to London. Oh how your father would laugh if he saw you here amongst the English, them greeting you and attending to your bags. Only thirty years ago, he was temporarily jailed by the British for marching alongside Gandhi. Your father had always had stories to tell, and when he did, it was as if the winds would quiet down and the babies would stop crying and, for a while, everyone would just listen.
After departing the boat in London, you flew to New York City. In this “new world” of opportunities, New York was a world all on its own. Alone, you took a cab to the YMCA, and for three dollars a night, you stayed there. That first night, you had entered the Empire State Building and the elevator you rode up was filled with you, a Chinese couple, and a middle-aged Frenchman and it was humming with freedom so as soon as the doors opened you flung yourself out and you rushed to the edge and as you stood and looked out, it felt like you were still flying.
On your second day in this new esteemed world, it was raining, and when you smiled at a lady on the train, she clutched her handbag closer to her chest. Did she not know of the work your family back in India had done to earn their wealth? When people made fun of your accent you wondered, do they not realize you taught yourself English at the age of fourteen? “My elite status in India did not apply here in the United States,” you wrote in your diary.
When I came to New York City, I came by car. I was fourteen, and I had my mom, my dad, my sisters. I had my cousins, a couple hours away. I had you, a couple hours away. My dad and I walked the streets that first night and I looked at all the different people. All the stories they must have to tell and cultures they must bring. People like you.
When you flew into your new life, you had no idea what it would bring. You had no idea the prices you’d have to pay. Would you have left if you’d known? Your grandmother, your beloved grandmother who’d made you warm milk with honey under grey growling skies. Your grandma who made you listen to Bollywood music (you always have it playing in your home today). Your grandma who’d picked you up and tended to your scabbed knees and kissed them and then sent you back out to play. You never saw her again after boarding that ship. She sang to you a song that day. A prayer. She told you to sing it if you ever felt lonely, homesick. You scratched the lyrics onto a piece of paper and you sang that song to yourself over and over on that boat, till it was buried deep in your mind.
When you talk about moving here, you say you did it for us. I used to wonder if there really was that connection, because it was you who left your home and your family, in their house of brick and mud, on a boat that night. Now I realize that you exist as a bridge between two lands. That this story starts with you. That maybe, in a way, all of my stories begin with you.
To the Catcaller
AMANDA OTTAWAY
This piece isn’t directly related to Carolyn’s, but she and I—like so many women and girls—have spent a lot of time talki
ng and thinking about harassment this year.
You wanted to know where I was going.
Well,
I’m feeling generous.
Last week when you whistled at me from behind
I was on my way to poop
in the Starbucks public bathroom.
Three days ago when you hollered
at my hips I was going to borrow some tampons
for the blood in my grungy underwear.
Yesterday when you told me
I wouldn’t be able to run away I was en route to a wart-removal kit
and some toenail clippers.
Today it’s my turn to talk.
Tugged skyward by moontides
pinned earthside by gravity
women stride, shift, stomp, eat
space. We are a flesh requiem,
we are ancient torchbearers and eternal life-breathers
and we are all of these things bound up in skin and blood and bone,
like yours.
I am in a carnal orbit of my mother’s creation,
like you.
I am skin and phlegm and sinew
like you.
I am a bloody, belching, hungry, lusty, defecating, ephemeral lump
of flesh and stardust,
like you.
MAEVE SLON
YEARS AS MENTEE: 3
GRADE: Junior
HIGH SCHOOL: Harvest Collegiate High School
BORN: New York, NY
LIVES: New York, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Moth GrandSLAM
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: I spent all of last spring to early fall in a creativeless headspace. I was distracted by school and friend drama and found it impossible to write. At our meetings, Vivian and I were able to find a way to write through games and strange prompts. And even though they were silly, it was something more than a blank page. Vivian is always there to help with a yummy cup of hot chocolate and the motivation to never stop writing.
VIVIAN CONAN
YEARS AS MENTOR: 6
OCCUPATION: Librarian, Westchester Library System