6 Questions with Whitney Ward Birenbaum, Cofounder of CHARM Lit Mag

This interview was conducted by Madisyn Parisi and has been edited for clarity and length.

CHARM Lit Mag is a project of CHARM: Voices of Baltimore Youth, a literary arts organization founded on the idea, according to the organization, that “kids’ voices matter.” The journal’s mission is  “to help young people develop as writers and create opportunities to amplify their voices through publication.”

The organization recently moved into a new work space in Baltimore.

 

MP: You’re one of CHARM’s cofounders. Can you tell me how this all started, where this idea came from, and how you went about it?

WWB: I was a middle school teacher for 13 years in Baltimore City schools, and around 2013, a group of teachers around the city, along with our students, got together and wanted to have this one-time, city-wide literary magazine that kids could submit to. We hoped it would grow, but we didn’t have intentions of that at that time, so in 2014, we published our first magazine. It had 44 pieces of writing and art from six schools. We had this great publication party, and we were just like, “Huh, this is really amazing.” So over time we started to publish a yearly anthology and also started to offer workshops for students in Baltimore. In 2018, I decided to make the leap into doing this for my full-time job. It’s just been such a joy. We still do that yearly anthology–that’s the core of what we do. We still have a student editorial board who produces all our publications, but we’re also growing our programming. It’s really in service of the mission: supporting young writers and amplifying their voices.

MP: So it’s been ten years? Wow. You were all hoping CHARM would grow, but was there anything that caught you off guard in this process?

WWB: Well, one thing is that we live in such a digital world, but the power of young people seeing CHARM in print and how transformative that can be. I remember the first year, talking to my own middle school students and saying, “You should submit your own writing. This is a really cool opportunity!” and they were like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah… ” and then the day that I brought the publication in, they were all like, “Why didn’t you tell us about this? This is so cool!” Seeing your own writing in print is just so empowering, and I love that. That’s still very much a core piece of who we are. Part of the lesson [we’ve learned] is that a lot of people don’t just submit on their own. It takes this personal relationship building of “I know this really great writer. I’m going to invite them. I’m going to encourage them to submit.”

MP: You mentioned the student editorial board. How student-run is all of this? How hands-on are you as a director? Are there times when you really step in?

WWB: I think I fall back on my experience as a teacher: How much of this is guided practice? How much of this is instructing by doing versus just letting students have at it, conceptualize, and create? We tend to fall more on the side of guided the first semester, and the second-semester students have a little more free rein. Part of that just works out nicely with the way the school year falls. We do a smaller project in the fall, then the annual anthology in the spring. But we also have students who have been with us for a long time, and that’s really nice because they take the lead. We have a student right now who is a senior at Baltimore City College (a high school), and she’s our publications team leader. She really leads and prepares the meetings, and sometimes I chime in, but once a student has been with CHARM for a couple years, they really know all there is to know about helping bring the publication to life.

Charm’s most recent publication, CHARM: Love

MP: Do you and the students see any trends in the submissions to the anthologies lately? I saw “This is Not a Snow Day,” which documented quarantine life, on the site, and I thought that was interesting.

WWB: That actually morphed into our first hardcover book. So we came out with a book called Unmasked, and the students coordinated that throughout the seasons of Covid. Spring 2020, Spring 2021. It’s such a great documentation of not only living through that time period, but being a young person during that time period. The summer of 2020 is filled with lots focused around Black Lives Matter and things motivated by the George Floyd killing and protests happening around the country, so you can really feel the progression of that year. Back to your question, we have noticed a lot of writing that deals with the current world and what it’s like to live in this time. Two years ago, there were definitely some students who were like, “We really want to make sure we’re focusing on joy and fun because everything is so heavy. We want to counteract that. It doesn’t all have to be Covid and negativity.” And those particular students felt strongly that it was important to also be highlighting joy, and I think that’s important.

MP: Speaking of the political times we’re in, where do you see CHARM Lit Mag fitting in as a Baltimore publication? Grub Street’s also a Baltimore publication, so we know people always have a lot to say about Baltimore. I think a few years ago [Baltimore] got called rodent-infested. So where do you see CHARM Lit Mag in that Baltimore identity?

WWB: So, I’m from North Carolina, and I’ve been here now for almost 20 years, since 2005, and I think there’s something about Baltimore that people who live here are very fiercely protective of the city and its reputation. That idea that there is this narrative of Baltimore that isn’t true needs to be subverted, and the people who live here really know all the amazing and incredible things that are happening here. And I feel that very much with our students. I don’t know if there are other cities or towns where people feel that way. I think it’s kind of a unique thing for Baltimore. A lot of the work we publish is–whether intentionally or just sort of imbued with things about Baltimore–about the city and its challenges but also its beauty. That’s in its writing. 

One other thought I have about that is that during the pandemic, some of our students wanted to create a journalism arm of CHARM. So we actually have, in addition to our literary publications, The Charm Report. We have some local journalists who support our students learning about reporting. That’s newer, but it follows that model of instruction and supporting them as learning to become reporters, but also having the students really own [it]. What are the topics that you care about, what do you want to write about, what story needs to be told?

MP: Going off of that, are there any upcoming opportunities at CHARM you want to talk about?

WWB: Yes! So we have an open call for submissions for students K-12 about chaos. That closes in March and will be out this spring. We are gearing up for our summer publishing internship which will place 20 teenagers at local publishing and media sites all around Baltimore. Last year, we had students at The Baltimore Banner and The Afro, several local bookstores, and Hopkins Press. We’re really excited to be bringing that back. We also just moved into our new space at Baltimore Unity Hall, and we’re co-located with a bunch of other community arts and education organizations like Arts Every Day, No Boundaries Coalition, Community Builders. Now that we’re here, we have so many more opportunities for volunteers and workshops.

 

To learn more about CHARM, visit charmlitmag.org, find the organization on social media via @charmlitmag. 

Interview with Professor Jeannie Vanasco

This interview was conducted by Matti Ben-Lev and has been edited for clarity and length.

Prof. Jeannie Vanasco was the Grub Street advisor for four years. I thought she could provide some valuable insights and stories from her time working on Grub Street.

MBL: What was your favorite thing about working on Grub Street?

JV: My favorite thing was also the hardest: advising an entirely new staff each year. I enjoyed seeing how the different personalities and aesthetic styles of each staff shaped each issue. Some of the staff would change halfway through the academic year, and that challenged me as an instructor and an adviser. I was trying to teach my students developmental editing, copy editing, proofreading, and the history of the literary magazine, all while helping them assemble an issue. Not to mention I’m a terrible copy editor.

 MBL: Yeah, I had no idea what I was doing or what copy editing actually meant when I walked into class on the first day. I was placed in the poetry group and given five poems, and I just started editing them as if I had written them, which I quickly learned is not the goal whatsoever. I have learned so much about copy editing in just a few weeks, namely, what copy editing is

JV: As a writer, I feel deeply embarrassed whenever copy editors come back with corrections—like, I should know this stuff! But different publications have different house styles. The New Yorker, for example, puts a dieresis, which armchair grammarians mistake for an umlaut, over the second vowel in words such as cooperate, and I don’t have the mental equipment to fuss over stuff like that. Commas, sure. But a diaresis? Advising Grub Street, when I knew I was lacking in an area of experience, such as copy editing or publicity, I brought in experts. I got my start in editorial at The Paris Review, TriQuarterly back when it was a print-only publication, and the Poetry Foundation, but that was in 2006. When I was an assistant editor at Lapham’s Quarterly in 2008, someone suggested hiring a social media person, and we all laughed. So in doing Grub Street, I needed to lean more on the expertise of those currently working in the field. And maybe that was the most rewarding part of Grub Street:

Photo courtesy of Towson University.

introducing students to professionals. Some students even went on to work or intern at Graywolf Press, The Believer, CLMP [Community of Literary Magazines and Presses], and Simon & Schuster. A lot of students went on to fully funded MFA programs where they edited those schools’ journals such as George Mason’s So to Speak. I often encounter students who reject themselves before they even get the chance to be rejected. Seeing my students gain confidence is exciting. One of the best parts of teaching is when my students realize, “This is something I can do.” 

MBL: What does Grub Street mean to you? 

JV: What does it mean to you? 

MBL: Well, I think walking in, I started to realize that there is a true sense of agency. That students’ decisions actually hold weight. I haven’t experienced that level of agency in a class before. 

JV: That’s a great way of putting it. Grub Street is meaningful to me when students find it meaningful. I enjoyed it, but it was a lot of work. I’m still recovering. 

MBL: Do you plan to advise Grub Street again?

JV: Prof. Downs will do it for three years, then Professor Harrison, then maybe me again. But if somebody else wants to take it, I won’t fight them. If TU considered Grub Street the equivalent of two courses rather than one each semester (for students and the adviser), I’d love to advise it again. But maybe I took it too seriously. I remember handing out Grub Street tote bags to everyone on staff, and then, after some of the students didn’t carry them, I said: “I’m not saying you have to carry the tote bag—” As I was speaking, I was annoying myself. But I wanted students to think of Grub Street as a close community. That was what made the staff change midyear so difficult. I didn’t want the second-semester students to feel left out.

MBL: How was the first semester different from the second? 

Volume 71 of Grub Street, the most recent volume Vanasco has advised.

JV: The semester assignments differed on a practical level. Because Grub Street is a print annual, I believe the staff needs to accept some writing and art before the spring semester starts. Otherwise, you’re scrambling on editorial when you should be focused on production. So I asked students to make a list of dream authors, and emerging writers whose work the students loved in an online lit mag, such as G*Mob and Muzzle. The students wrote short explanations of what excited them about the work, and then they invited some of those writers to submit. The students needed to be very strategic about how many authors they emailed. It’s not a good look to ask a writer for work—especially if you’re not with an established journal—only to then reject it. So the genre editors kept track of solicitations. Some amazing writing came out of that assignment. Because the students personalized their emails to writers, almost all the writers replied. Some gave us a soft no, as in: “If I can get something to you before the deadline, I will.” Most, however, gave us an enthusiastic yes: “Oh my gosh, I’m living out of my car right now, but I’ll send you a batch of poems in a month when I have access to my computer again.” Having worked at different lit mags in my twenties, I didn’t want to rely on the slush pile.

Sometimes you miss out on great work because not all writers feel confident enough to submit in the first place, or they haven’t heard of Grub Street. I never want to dismiss the slush pile. The slush pile is crucial to the life of literary magazines. I believe that literary magazines have a responsibility to at least try to discover new writers. The first semester also involved studying the history of American literary magazines and presenting on contemporary ones. I also asked students to research defunct literary magazines. Just because a magazine ends does not mean it failed. Everything has a lifespan. A literary magazine doesn’t have to exist for fifty-some years. Maybe it will exist for one issue, and that’s okay. Oh, and something else we talked about first semester: you are not going to love or even like everything we accept for the issue. But that’s what I love about literary magazines in general. They’re much humbler than, say, a Norton anthology. An anthology seems to say: “You must love this.” A lit mag seems to say: “Here’s a bunch of stuff we liked.” 

 

MBL: Yeah, personally I walked into Grub Street’s second semester and saw some poems (one in particular) and thought, “You really accepted these?” 

JV: I definitely get that. When my students loved something from the slush pile that I didn’t, I’d suggest they hold off until more submissions arrived. I tried to resist that urge, but sometimes I couldn’t—partly because we had only so much space in the print edition. I’d suggest they save that work in case another writer pulled their work after it’d been accepted. 

MBL: That actually happened in our class! Two poems were pulled by the writer, and we can’t replace them with other submissions because those writers have already been informed that their submissions didn’t make it in. 

JV: That’s stressful. When I interned at The Paris Review, the editors accepted a short story that would have been the writer’s first publication, but in the meantime the writer had already given the story to a very small lit mag in Texas. I say given because the Texas journal couldn’t pay, whereas The Paris Review would have paid hundreds of dollars. Maybe more than a thousand. After the Paris Review editors informed the writer of the acceptance, the writer apologized for the simultaneous submission. Everybody at The Paris Review felt deep respect for that writer. After all, a Paris Review publication for a debut writer can be life-changing. It can lead to an agent or a book deal. Plenty of other writers would have pulled their story from the Texas mag, but this writer didn’t. We all have to live under capitalism, so I get why well-meaning writers might pull work from journals that don’t pay. And I of course understand why writers often submit to many journals at once. A journal’s editors can take months and months to get back to you. Sometimes the editors never reply. But when you’re on the editorial side, you often forget what it’s like for the writers. 

MBL: I think many of us come at it from the same angle as applying to universities. You apply to a bunch, and you have your dream school, safety school, etc. Did working on Grub Street change your writing in any way? 

JV: I’m a slightly better copy editor. Then again, I’m not sure if it’s one word or two. I don’t know if copy editors have collectively decided.

MBL: Thanks so much for your time! 

 

Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl—which was named a ​New York Times Editors’ Choice and a best book of 2019 by TIME, Esquire, Kirkus, among others—and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017. Her third book, A Silent Treatment, is forthcoming. Her work can be found at https://www.jeannievanasco.com/ 

Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University. 

A Conversation with Ashley Hajimirsadeghi

This interview was conducted by Madisyn Parisi, Chief Copyeditor of Grub Street, and has been edited for clarity and length.

 

Ashley and I met up on a chilly October afternoon. She had come straight from her job at Towson’s career center, and we trudged up three flights of stairs in Towson’s commons to find a quiet place to talk about her writing. I was excited to dive into her vast collection of work, and before we even found a table, we had struck up a conversation about multimedia work, men who get mad at her on the internet, and The Dropout on Hulu.

MP: So I guess just starting off, when you sit down to write a poem, where do you start developing that idea? Do you usually have a line or a concept?

AH: For me, I get obsessed with a very singular image or word, and then I build the entire poem or piece around that. Like I was writing this flash fiction piece the other day, and I was really thinking about the Iranian women’s movement and burning film reels, so then I combined those two to create a flash fiction/poetry piece that was based completely around that image. Going back to edit, I wanted to keep that central. I don’t cut that out.

MP: Do you feel like you ever take a different turn from that initial image or realize something’s not about what you thought it was about?

AH: It depends on the way the story and narrative turns out, but I’ll go back and edit and see how the story grows. Sometimes our children grow up, and they don’t become what you expect them to be, and we have to adapt to that.

MP: You have to love them anyway?

AH: Yeah.

MP: Most of your poetry is in the first-person. When you write, is that speaker generally you, a character, a combination of both?

AH: It’s not me. I like to use “I”, and I’ve been switching more to “you” lately because it’s more interrogative — like, you, look at yourself. But I tend to use “I” because I feel like that drops the reader into the narrative. “I” is someone who’s real because if you say “she” or “they”, anything, they’re not a real person to the reader. Also, I tend to use very fictionalized versions of my own life. I’ll take pockets of things that I’ve experienced, then blow it into something fictionally-spun.

MP: So you’ve published two chapbooks now, cinephile and cartography of trauma. Did your process change a lot between the two of them? Do you feel like they taught you different lessons?

AH: I think for me, especially because I’m in grad school studying the world a bit more — cartography of trauma, a lot of it was poems from high school. That’s the interesting part. Poems from cinephile were like sophomore year of college, so just growing up and being like… I wanted to sell some stuff because I did a lot of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton confessional-style poetry when I was in high school. Then I was like, “I want to see beyond myself, see how I interconnect in a broader way. Like, what does it mean to be a woman in the US? What does it mean to be an Iranian-American woman? What does it mean to be a woman in the world?” Seeing how to use poems. And that adjusted my style because then I realized, hey, a lot of the time in writing classrooms we’re taught a very Western-specific way of writing. So I started reading poems from traditional Chinese, Afghan, and Persian poetry, trying to break free from the conventional western mode of storytelling. Because even in a novel, the way we think of the three-act structure, that’s only in the West, that’s a Greek thing. In China and East Asian literature, it’s just a rise and fall. A rise and fall. So my technique has been more informed by being a quote-unquote “global citizen”.

MP: Do you travel a lot?

AH: Yeah, I lived in Korea for a bit. I was posted in India last summer. I went to the Caribbean a lot growing up, and I’m a global humanities student now, so I study the world and world literature. But I hope to travel more. I grew up low-income, so we never really got the opportunity to travel, and I got these state scholarships to go other places and learn about other people, and that changed my life. 

MP: Being Iranian-American is a pretty central part of your identity and your voice. Are there specific parts of your writing that you trace back to that identity?

AH: I feel like there’s this inherent sadness that comes with being Iranian-American because you see what’s happening in Iran right now to women and even growing up in the diaspora, a lot of the men treated women horribly. Especially in the community I grew up in, abuse was normal. So I really decided in my work that even though I’ll acknowledge the male perspective, I want to ground myself in women’s voices because they’re not allowed the chance to speak often.

MP: I get the impression cartography of trauma is about all that, right?

AH: Kind of. But also just thinking about…women’s history is so messed up.

MP: A lot has happened. So when you write, you want to give voice to that female perspective. Do you want that same thing for your audience? Is your audience young women, Iranian-American women?

AH: I think it would be women in general. I hope men can read this and be like, “Wow, this sucks”, but I also give a lot of people too much credit. Yeah, no, they’re not going to. But I am thinking a lot right now about how niche certain genres are. Like poetry. People say, “Oh, it’s too hard to understand.” So, I’ve been thinking about accessibility in poetry and writing in general. People are like, “Yeah, I don’t read. I just watch Tiktok.” So just thinking about how to make it more accessible in a way that people will see it. Social media’s playing a big role. But also using big words and stuff, people won’t understand.

MP: I was going to say, your work isn’t very lofty like something you might expect from someone with your degrees and writing history. It’s very easy to understand.

AH: Well, I came from working-class parents. I wasn’t exposed to theater or art or poetry growing up. I never even took a writing class until I went to Carver down the street. So, just growing up working-class, and also not taking writing classes in undergrad. That shapes you. When you take a lot of writing classes, and you’re taught, “This is how you should write.”

MP: You don’t become a workshop writer or an MFA writer. You become something else.

AH: Yeah. So it’s about self-education but also this idea of — I think this about academia too — PhDs and all that, a lot of that stuff isn’t accessible. It’s written in a way you can’t understand it. It’s only for academics.

MP: So do you like that you’ve found yourself in a different space than that?

AH: Yeah, even though it’s hard. It’s unconventional. A bit of a rough way to get published. Because you see people younger than you getting published because they subscribe to the model. For me, it’s realizing it’s a process. Like Toni Morrison wasn’t automatically famous, she was  like 38 [39]. 

MP: But you’re also in this Instagram space. I feel like the poetry community at large hates “Instagram poetry.” Rupi Kaur, those sorts. Do you consider yourself in line with those poets, do you think you’re doing something else?

AH: I don’t really like Instagram poetry because it’s bite-sized, and a lot of it doesn’t have depth. And also Rupi Kaur was accused of plagiarizing a lot of her work. So, it’s good to share information that way, but it’s also dangerous, too. It’s kind of like seeing Facebook news and believing it’s all true.

MP: So a lot of your life right now is about writing — you’ve got Mud Season, your poetry, reviews — what do you do right now when you’re not writing, to refill the well or just take a break? … Do you take breaks? You’re looking at me like you don’t.

AH: I do like to read, but at the same time it is kind of studying. So I guess you could consider it not work, but I do genuinely enjoy it. 

MP: Is that about the furthest you ever get from writing?

AH: I used to watch movies, but now it’s my job… it’s not as enjoyable anymore. I garden, too. I like to grow our own food. It’s very serene. There’s one writer in the Caribbean, Jamaica Kincaid, who writes a lot about gardening.

MP: I feel like there’s a lot of metaphor you could get out of that. 

AH: Yeah, definitely. There’s this book called Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit. She wrote about George Orwell. He had an obsession with his rose garden. He saw it as an allegory for the end of the world. It’s very fascinating how people get attached to their gardens.

MP: Talking about that Orwellian idea, I think a lot of people in the world right now, especially writers, feel that sense of doom about the world and their work. Do you feel that way, or do you think you write with optimism?

AH: People tend to think my work is very pessimistic and sad, but I tend to look at it as progress and optimism. I work part-time at New Perspectives Theatre Company. I spent this whole two years building a database of women playwrights. A lot of these women were forgotten. Their stories never had the chance to be told. If they did write plays, they were considered dainty, feminine, docile. Seeing all these playwrights across the world made me realize that a lot of them were writing about women’s issues at the time, so the fact that I can have a platform to put my work on, or even write it, feels like hope to me. Because if that’s ever taken away from us, then what’s the point?

Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is an Iranian-American multimedia artist, writer, and journalist. Her writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Moon City Review, The Cortland Review, DIALOGIST, RHINO, Salt Hill, and The Shore, among others. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief at Mud Season Review and a contributing writer and critic at MovieWeb. Her work can be found at ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com

Small Press Highlight: Poet Lore

Reviewing America’s Oldest Poetry Journal

  Poet Lore serves as a solid pillar of both historical and contemporary literary journals by being the oldest poetry-based publication in the United States. Now located out of our very own Bethesda, Maryland and backed by The Writers’ Center, a nonprofit, this journal has been published out of a handful of different cities for nearly 140 years. Founded in Philadelphia, the journal in its formative years was a comparative literature project of Shakespearean scholars and life partners, Helen Clarke and Charlotte Porter; though the two quickly shifted their focus to that of living writers. The women moved to Boston after two years where the journal remained until it was bought by Washington D.C.’s Heldref Publications in 1976. Eventually, it shifted to The Writer’s Center where it has been published biannually for the last 25 years.  In its longevity, the journal has had the opportunity to publish the early works of renowned poets like David Baker and Mary Oliver. 

It is clear that Poet Lore’s staff is proud of its long and inclusive history. The website declares that “poetry provides a record of human experience as valuable as history”, emphasizing not only the importance of history but the inherent value of the written word. The journal publishes content that is both urgent and intimate, offering its audience “poems built to last” with an emphasis on quality. In an interview with Frontier Poetry, Poet Lore editor Emily Holland said, “we love featuring poems that broaden the spectrum of what poetry is – and can be – on the page.” In fact, the editors are so dedicated to the vast possibilities of poetry that in their newly redesigned issue, the editors opted for a larger trim size to publish poems that might not format well on a standard book-size page. They also printed multiple poems to a page to show connections between pieces. This sizing detail is one example of how the team emphasizes voices that lack widespread renown, reconfiguring the journal itself to better accommodate its contributors. In doing so, Poet Lore remains true to the vision of its founders by maintaining its progressive and inclusive legacy. 

-Review by Chloe Ziegler, Grub Street poetry editor

Grub Street featured in Poets & Writers!

Last month, Poets & Writers released a spotlight on poet Abigail Chabitnoy, who was published in Volume 71 of Grub Street!

In their monthly Literary MagNet series, Abigail and writer Dana Isokawa discuss her writing process, Indigenous background, and all of the journals she has work published in, including our very own Grub Street!

We are proud to be a part of Chabitnoy’s publishing journey.

Read Abigail Chabitnoy’s work In Grub Street here.

Essential or Sacrificial?

By: Marissa Hawkins, Assistant Fiction Editor

It’s hard to think about a time before all of this: when we could go outside without wearing a mask and gloves, when we could hug without fearing sickness, when we could see our family in person and not through a zoom call. While some of us are getting used to this new norm, for however long we have to, some of us can’t stay at home. 

Consider the cashier you saw at the grocery store before this all happened. Or maybe the mail person who comes to your door almost every day. What about the drivers of Amazon, FedEx, and UPS trucks? There are so many essential employees, and it’s horrible that only now are they being recognized as crucial. Before, I’m sure you saw a “Karen” in the wild, screaming for a manager. You thought it was normal, and it was. But after this pandemic started, did you start thanking the employees at those grocery stores? Did you start noticing them?

It’s not hard to pinpoint when the world decided to go to shit. It had started the week before spring break. That Monday, everything was fine. The world was as peaceful as it usually was, which wasn’t that peaceful. But toilet paper and hand sanitizer hadn’t yet became the new money system. That Monday, I had left the grocery store where I work to head to Urgent Care. Why? My sciatic nerve decided to be fucked up, and while waiting for a doctor, I noticed signs about COVID-19 posted everywhere. The novel coronavirus had taken over the medical world by this point, but it didn’t seem that bad. A guy had jokingly asked me if I believe this shit was real and if it would be bad. I looked him straight in the eye and told him I didn’t think it would last, that it would be just like the Swine Flu, that it would come and go as quickly as it appeared. I wish I had been right. He laughed, nodded his head, and said he hoped the same, before he was called back for whatever he came in for. I think about that moment, sometimes, wanting nothing more than to go back and change my answer. To tell him I wasn’t sure. Or even to tell him I believed it would only get worse. I know at the time I didn’t lie, because at the time I was still laughing about COVID-19 memes. Now, I scroll through Facebook and see nothing but death and destruction as the virus destroys our world.

Reality set in a few days later, on that Friday after classes had been canceled until spring break was over. I went to work at 4 a.m., like I always do—and it was packed. Like, usually a few people were shopping here and there, the normal people. But no, the parking lot was packed… at 4 a.m.! I could barely even find a parking spot. It was like when people learn about a snowstorm and stock up—but worse. It was as if people were told they would never be able to leave their house ever again. They took everything; the shelves were bare. Nothing but the things people would never dare to eat, like jars of pig feet. YES! Pig’s feet. I know, gross. But it was left there, surrounded by nothing but settled dust. The one gross reality of this pandemic is how much dust can be found on the shelves and how much mold can be found in the fridges that keep the eggs. I know you likely didn’t want to read that, but that’s the reality. I didn’t want to see it; you didn’t want to read it—well tough… if I’m going down, so are you.

Customers started turning into demons in desperate need of TP, and the employees started to see that the world was just a place and they were objects. And then, suddenly, the news showed that we were more than only slaves to the system. We were “essential.” Each week my boss sent out new changes to the policy, something that our union had worked so hard to get passed. Slowly, things in the store started to change. Now we couldn’t take returns or exchange, couldn’t offer rainchecks, weren’t allowed to bag groceries in any bags that customers brought in. There were so many more rules, until eventually they put up plexiglass barriers and gave us masks and gloves. Why did it take so long? Well, they waited for an employee at one of its stores to die until they’d protect us. I was reading the article about the employee who died. Her immune system was compromised, but she loved her job—and her death triggered the debate: are we essential or sacrificial? And if I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure I know that answer. But I’m starting to lean toward sacrificial, especially since people getting unemployment are getting paid more than essential employees are right now.

Most people already knew that they were getting fucked over by the minimum wage. Why else would I be striving to get out of that shit job? I was supposed to graduate from Towson University, find a job (where I didn’t have to work on weekends), and quit working at the shitty grocery store before Thanksgiving. But as time slowly trickles away, the world remaining in never-ending panic, a part of me fears that I will be trapped at a job I hate for longer than I intended. What if we stay this way until 2021? Or even in 2022? This is what doctors are predicting because some Americans are so fucking stupid and don’t want to listen. Instead, they protest about opening the world back up. They believe this is some sort of thing to push Trump up the polls. Or even that it’s all fake. I don’t know about you, but this feels real. Too real for comfort. And I just want it to end. I want to go back to the time when the world was peaceful, but I also hope that we change the world. I want to see a world where everyone realizes that we have fucked up, that we need to fix how we act, how we treat others. Because if working during this pandemic has taught me anything, it is that a lot of people are assholes. 

My boyfriend, right now, works as a counter outside of our store. The limit of people allowed inside is 20% of capacity. Guess what that is? 117 people! That is still too many people, and they don’t even follow the directional signs (so that they flow correctly) and they don’t remain 6-feet apart. What’s funny about that, though, is they don’t care in the aisle, but once they get to the register, they scream if someone is too close to them. But that is a story for another time. Back to what I was really about to say. My boyfriend told me that the other day, he was telling people that they were only allowed inside if they wore a mask or somehow covered their face, either with their jacket or shirt. Simple, right? It makes sense, right? Well, some fucker told him, “I don’t have a mask,” and simply ran inside the store, not caring about them or anyone else for that matter. What’s funny is security couldn’t do anything. They can’t do anything. My boyfriend can’t stop customers from entering. The employees can’t ask customers to leave if they don’t have their mouth and nose covered. It’s just a front to show that we are doing our part. But once you get inside, we can’t do anything. We can’t force anyone to follow the signs, to cover their faces. We can only make suggestions. Funny enough, though, when the same guy exited, the security guard stopped him and told him next time he came, he needed a mask and then sent him on his way with a fake retail smile. 

The grocery store chain’s executives may seem to pretend they care on the outside, and the union may say they are trying everything in their power to protect us. But they don’t. We are nothing but sacrificial lambs to them. They pretend to give us protection, they gave us a raise of 10% until this is all over, gave us a coupon for $20 off our next order. But they don’t care. I was talking to the manager, and all he got was an extra day off for that week. He got nothing else. They don’t care. They only care about the money this pandemic has brought in, even with the lack of product. AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE LACK OF PRODUCT! We still don’t have toilet paper or paper towels, the Lysol section is empty, as is the hand sanitizer. And the entire frozen section is bare because they keep canceling the trailer. Because of the pandemic, we can’t even order what we need. They just send us a truck of rationed supplies that they sent to other stores, in our chain, in Maryland. So, if a customer asks when we’ll get something in, the answer is “who the fuck knows” or a shrug. And then they get pissed at us because we don’t know. I heard the store manager saying that she has gotten blamed for our store not having products; the front-end manager even got yelled at and accused that we weren’t allowed to take returns that have left the store. And if you thought grocery store employees were abused before, you have not seen it during this last month. We have been screamed at, berated, and drained of all our energy. Even when I work four hours at work, I feel as if I had been there all day. I’m exhausted, I don’t have the energy, and it’s worse than it was before.

This past week, I took a vacation. I had planned to take it before this shit happened only to have to deal with school and be able to sleep in. Because of this pandemic, I used it to clean my room. From the 15th until the 22nd of April, I deep cleaned my room from top to bottom. I dusted, I swept/vacuumed, and placed some things into storage. I couldn’t be prouder. But now, as I sit here typing, I realize my impending doom. I go back to work tomorrow. I must go back to Hell and deal with trash. I must go back to wearing a mask on my face and fogging up my glasses. I must go back to being yelled at by customers for not having the golden TP. I don’t know how much of this I’ll be able to take before I snap, especially after being at home for a week. Going back to the flow of things will not too easy, especially with no flow to be had.

When it All Became Real

By: Kaitlin Marks, Managing Editor

 

Before this whole thing became real, a tangible threat that sent us home and closed down Disney World and stole breath and lives, people made jokes about buying plane tickets and being invincible.

In my Monday night class, a girl scrolled through flights on her laptop. “If it’s only going to hurt old people and kids with weak immune systems, I’m buying a cheap flight.”

Another kid joined in. “Yeah, it sucks for them, but this is just going to take out those people, so I don’t really care that much. I’m still going to go to California for spring break.” 

I looked down at my highlighted notes on family resources and almost imperceptibly shook my head. The words “only” and “just” suggested that those lives don’t matter. I had a sinking feeling that as bad as that outcome clearly would be, this wouldn’t end with the old or immunocompromised.

When school shut down, I thought about how this invisible thing could reach everyone. 

When the university announced that the rest of the semester would be spent at home, I knew I wouldn’t mind the actual being at home, but I definitely have minded the way my thoughts start whirling. 

It almost reminds me of waves. Whenever I’m stressed, the ocean always calms me down. But now, waves of stress, doubt, fear, anxiety, sadness, grief roll over and threaten to upheave everything I hold close. I watch the news and have to cut myself off because it all becomes too much. 

I go to the grocery store with my mom and sister. We assign roles so nothing gets cross-contaminated: I hold the phone we use to scan items and avoid checkout lines or interactions; Lindsay, who wears gloves, picks up the items for me to scan and places them in the cart; my mom, who also wears gloves, pushes the cart. We don’t cross lines. We follow the rules we’ve set for ourselves. We fear every breath, every passing shopper who steps too close. At this point, the state is under a stay-at-home order. There have been deaths, cases are practically doubling each day, and things are rapidly looking apocalyptic. And yet, as my sister and I sidestep to avoid the older couple in the meat aisle, we hear them scoff. They say things like “Idiots believing in this whole hoax” and “I would never be stupid enough to get that disease.” I watch them touch their faces, touch the cart, pick up and put down items, wander much closer than six feet. My sister and I slowly get angry. We walk away. We know this is going to last because people aren’t listening. We fear how long it might last. We try to make the best of it. 

Days themselves feel normal by now. 

 

____________________

 

{April 8th} 

Donald Trump talked about reopening the country “with a bang.” Last week, he described his goal of “packed churches” on Easter. Someone on the news today said we shouldn’t politicize the virus. I think it’s impossible not to pick apart politics when lives are being thrown away, when people are suffocating when that fate is avoidable, when we’re focusing on economics and political candidacies instead of the rising numbers daily. 

Today was the day with the highest death toll yet. Almost 2,000 American people died from COVID-19.

Tonight, now alone in my room, I find myself thumbing through my old journal, the one I wrote in during my freshman year and sporadically since, but not in a long while, the one with the rose gold cover and lettering that’s about half full (notice the half full—there by intention). I don’t write in my journal about the death toll, or about COVID-19 at all, really, even though I can. Instead, I fill a page with one of my “happy lists,” the giant lists I love to write of every single thing—big and tiny—that made me feel joy, even for an instant. It feels familiar to write this list. It feels out of place to do so in spite of the world collapsing outside. It’s hard to see that reality when I spend a whole day out in the sun with the dogs, reading and studying and sunbathing, and then cook a meal my family loves, and then go outside and have a bonfire, smoke trailing up to the stars. When I look up at the stars, it’s easy to forget about the previous day’s worries, anger, and fear. I feel weightless. I feel boneless. I feel like myself, even if only for an instant. 

 

____________________

 

{April 12}  

On the day before Easter, I spend the evening stress-baking away the week’s news announcements and anxieties and worrisome predictions. My mixer whirls ingredients into yellow cupcakes—I create DIY cake flour with the regular kind and some cornstarch, and add in sour cream to make them tender and fluffy—and before I divide the batter into the yellow and pink pastel liners in the tin, I toss a few handfuls of pastel sprinkles into the batter on a whim. Later in the afternoon, when my parents and sister come in from splitting wood in the backyard, my mom gasps: “you made funfetti?” I tuck the moment away.

After dinner, around 9:30 p.m., I tell my dad about the plan for the cupcakes as he joins me in the kitchen, eager to help. I also make homemade Oreos, and he rolls the dough into a log for me, checking every few seconds to make sure he’s doing it right. I whip up chocolate icing. He does the dishes. We both taste leftover bits of dough and swipes of frosting from the bowl. I frost the first cupcake with a plastic piping bag and a tip that makes little lines, creating a little chocolate bird nest. Dad does the rest, swirling the frosting as I nestle three little pastel-colored Cadbury chocolate eggs in the center of each. I focus on getting the placement just right. I focus on how it feels to finish the last one and lean back on my heels, neat rows of cupcakes on the tray reminding me that some things are normal, after all (note: my hands are covered in chocolate icing, my dad is covered in icing, my sister asks me to squeeze icing from the piping bag into her mouth for a laugh, all is messy and well). I focus on planning for tomorrow, on trying to create joy for someone, for myself. 

 

____________________

 

{April 13}

Easter Sunday—a day of light, a day of hope. People across the country wake up and try to create magic for their little ones as they scatter colorful, treasure-filled eggs through living rooms and playrooms and backyards. 

Today, at breakfast—we have French toast—my dad explains that he’s sad about what’s going on in the world, and hates that people are sick with this, but that he’s grateful for the time with us and the memories we are making. I feel the same. 

I have little prizes from when I was in charge of my after-school mentorship program at the elementary school—tiny squishy chicks and bunnies, candy, fluffy little duck figures from the craft store, pencils with fun animal and food erasers—but we donated our plastic eggs a few years ago. Our neighbor does what I asked in my late-night message from the night before: traipses up the hill to our house, dog on his leash in hand, and deposits two (unopened) packs of plastic Easter eggs in a planter on our front step.  

My mom and sister and I stand around our kitchen table filling the eggs with little treats, making colored construction paper signs to hang on our fence posts with sayings like “hop this way” and “eggs ahead!” (Note: I just mistyped “hop this way” as “hope this way,” and now I’m thinking about how that is just what today felt like.)

We get on the golf cart to make things go faster—me on the backseat with a pink basket filled with eggs, tape in hand, mom and Lindsay in the front pointing to spots that would be perfect for hiding—and start creating the trail of eggs. We tape the signs we made to fence posts surrounding the field. 

We’re deciding how many eggs to drop along the outside of the fence when neighbors who don’t speak to us approach. 

We say hello. 

They do, too. 

This sounds normal, but for these people who have so much hate for anything outside of their bubble, it’s not. When we were really little, the parents suddenly decided that my younger sister and I were a “bad influence” on their three children. For a while, their kids would sneak out to the corner where our yards met, where they could chat with us, shaded by the trees. Eventually, they got caught, we stopped meeting, and I haven’t spoken to them since. I often wonder about how they’ve grown up. I wonder if they wish things had been different. I wonder who they are now. 

Anyways, the present-day neighbor-parents and my mom and sister and I are standing in my driveway conversing. We tell them what we’re doing, how we’re creating an Easter event for our (favorite) neighbors who have Charlie (who is 5) and Sophia (who is 2), and they actually smile, exclaim how wonderful it is, reminisce about the good old days when their kids were little and they would hide eggs. That moment shines for me as a highlight of this whole mess. They walk away, and stunned a little by that simple, kind, human encounter, we turn back toward creating Easter magic for our favorite little kids next door. 

 

____________________

 

{April 14} 

Every summer, for three years now, I spend a week volunteering as a counselor with PALS, a nonprofit that creates immersive experiences for young adults with Down Syndrome and their peers to create transformative friendships and build a more inclusive world. In short, it’s the most magical period of time I get to experience every year—it’s the thing that brings me more joy than anything else in the world. This summer, I was supposed to be roommates with one of my favorite friends from camp, Alana. I was making plans for matching outfits and playlists for getting ready early in the morning at camp. Today, the directors sent out an email saying that all of the camps scheduled throughout the summer are canceled.

My counselor friends and I text as we cry. There’s a pain—in knowing you won’t get a week where everyone is included, accepted, and celebrated—that I can’t describe. 

Prior to this day, I’ve handled all of the things I’ve learned would be canceled with acceptance. Losing the rest of an in-person school semester, visits with friends, visits with family, the launch party for Grub Street, knowing that my 21st birthday will most likely take place in quarantine, losing planned beach trips and business trips my mom and I were supposed to take—none of it stung like losing PALS. 

But I understand why they had to do it. 

Beyond the logistics surrounding camps that normally take place on college campuses, and volunteers flying from around the country, there is a heavy layer of fear surrounding the entire disability community. 

People with Down Syndrome sometimes have heart problems. They sometimes have diabetes, and they get leukemia at much higher rates. Some people with Down Syndrome are in perfect health, and some have to fight underlying problems. 

Before the virus started, I had already learned the horrific truth that individuals with DS or other disabilities in some states in the United States can be denied life-saving organ transplants (even as babies and children) because those governments don’t see their lives as worth living. 

Every single individual with Down Syndrome that I have met has—and deserves—a valued, worthy, amazing and joyful life. People with DS and other intellectual differences have jobs. They go to college. They have friends. They participate in sports, bake for their communities, run businesses, and achieve their dreams. They are the most wonderful people you could possibly be privileged enough to know. 

And yet. 

And yet. I can barely fathom having to write about this, but I need to talk about it. 

And yet, people with Down Syndrome and other disabilities can (legally, in some states) be denied life-saving care if they contract COVID-19, even if they have a perfectly fulfilled life. 

Every time I read about this, my eyes burn, my spine tenses, and my hands start to tremble. I have a physical and visceral reaction to the level of injustice this harbors. 

Amy Silverman of The Arizona Star reports on early state COVID-19 response preparedness plans. She writes: 

Some state plans make clear that people with cognitive issues are a lower priority for lifesaving treatment. For instance, Alabama’s plan says that ‘persons with severe mental retardation, advanced dementia or severe traumatic brain injury may be poor candidates for ventilator support.’ Another part says that ‘persons with severe or profound mental retardation, moderate to severe dementia, or catastrophic neurological complications such as persistent vegetative state are unlikely candidates for ventilator support.

In a world where the word “retard” should never even be used, let alone applied to the rationing of medical equipment, this took my breath away. I thought it would be the worst thing I’d read. 

I was wrong. 

Silverman goes on to describe the ambiguous, and thus even more frightening, plans in other states. She writes: 

Other plans include vague provisions, which advocates fear will be interpreted to the detriment of the intellectually disabled community. For instance, Arizona’s emergency preparedness plan advises medical officials to “allocate resources to patients whose need is greater or whose prognosis is more likely to result in a positive outcome with limited resources.” Between a person with cognitive difficulties and a person without them, who decides whose needs come first?

When lives aren’t seen as valuable, we risk throwing away people who have strengths and opinions and dreams, the same as everyone else. We risk ignoring capability, choosing the obvious solution, refusing to see the truth about what a fulfilled life looks like. We risk creating a section of history that someday, people will look back on with horror. When we decide that someone isn’t worth saving because they might be a little different, we become something unimaginably cruel. We tighten the confines of what it means to be a human by drawing a line between a valuable and worthless person. We cannot allow discrimination like this to take away people who have capabilities beyond what we see when looking in from the outside. People with disabilities are not broken. Our society is broken for seeing them as such. 

My throat is tight as I write this. 

I cry as I write this. 

____________________

 

I wonder. I look up. I tilt my head back until my ears almost touch the surface of the water, until all I can hear is the bubbles, until all I can see are the stars and the moon and the smoke rising from the embers of the fire up on the hill. At this moment, the turning stops. Everything shudders to a quiet, restorative lull. I’m not thinking about ifs or whens, but I’m thinking about writing, something I haven’t been able to touch since the whole thing began. I spent the whole day baking, coaxing butter and brown sugar and vanilla and flour into something that makes my family smile. I tell my mom it’s therapeutic. I think that it’s because it demands attention. You can’t create a perfect pastry dough if you’re worried about statistics running across a screen. You can’t whip frosting into smoothness when your mind is filling your body with dread. You can’t write words when you can’t stop thinking, what if this is it? How does this end? 

After my morning shower, as I smooth body butter over my skin and pull a cream-colored sweater over my head, wet hair dripping onto my shoulders, I notice that the twitch in my eye that’s been happening for a week now is back, and worse yet, it’s the whole side of my face. Google tells me that it could be sleep deprivation, eye strain from being on screens too much, an overload of stress, seasonal allergies. I have all four of the options going on, so I don’t know what the cause is, but does it matter? Clearly it’s a product of circumstance. Maybe we’re all just a product of circumstance. 

A girl I know writes an Instagram caption about this being a trauma, about our bodies responding in unpredictable, unfortunate ways, about grief and our right to feel the pain of the things we’ve lost. I think about balance, about how I can be so productive some days and so fixated on darkness the rest. How can I feel happy, content, relaxed on nights like tonight, sitting under the moon with the ones I love most, sipping cold water as sparks crackle off the logs in front of us, but other times, feel on the brink of something—the pit in the stomach, the eye twitch, the feeling of tears ready to spill at a moment’s notice, the shaking hands? 

I think about the trauma caption, and I try to focus on ways that I feel lucky. I’m lucky to have a family I love, that provides and takes care of me and is cautious. I’m lucky we have a yard that’s huge and green and we can go outside and breathe without fear. We have groceries and I cook almost every night and challenge myself to new recipes. We have game nights and Netflix binges, golf cart rides and bonfire nights. This new normal is like a reflection of our past normal, the normal of summers and Sundays where things felt perfect. The difference, I guess, is that undercurrent of electric worry humming beneath the air, lingering in every happy moment. The anxiety I feel creates knots I can feel. 

Tonight, at least, I feel melted, boneless, weightless. I slide under the covers smelling like fire and chlorine, my hair still tied in a bun and wet against the pillow, and my little black rescue puppy curls up against my stomach, and I’m writing this while the noise machine on my nightstand plays storm sounds, and all feels okay. Writing makes me feel whole. I’ve been terrified to write creatively, focusing instead on checking off assignments and articles to be published and job applications and internship applications instead of letting my mind wander, for fear that the wandering would lead to the darkness. I think—I hope—that the wondering, the wandering, is leading me to something else. Something like hope, an open window, a breeze. 

Seeking solace in art

By: Maria Asimopoulos, Fiction Editor

A few days ago, my best friend Krupa texted me to tell me she was taking a break from her usual streaming routine to revisit Divergent, a book and film that were huge when we were teenagers. I told her it was an excellent choice and that I’d been itching to rewatch The Hunger Games. “I just did that too,” she said. “It hits a little harder in these times.”

Years ago, at the start of my undergraduate English program, I sat at a cheap desk in my dorm studying for Spring semester finals. I had been at it for hours, flipping through PowerPoints and crafting notecards instead of sleeping (which is arguably what I should have been doing at 5 a.m.). I’m now a senior, but this moment came back to me today, April 19, at the start of my fifth week under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. The contents of the notecards are the reason why.

In my hands were American literary movements from realism through postmodernism: time, space, history, and people, bundled up nicely into abbreviated bullet points and blue ink for me to study. I held literature’s reflection of the human condition in my hands, and I wondered what it looked like now, on that May morning in 2017. So I googled it.

Dystopian literature. A movement hadn’t been defined yet; critics went back and forth arguing whether we had moved beyond postmodernism to begin with, but a brave few suggested that dystopian fiction was our next stop on the literary wagon. Indeed, with booming franchises like Divergent and The Hunger Games so fresh in my memory, 18-year-old me could believe it. Authors were telling stories of environmental destruction, economic despair, and the collapse of society. With climate change and wealth inequality looming in the back of our collective consciousness (of course, these days I would argue that it’s more at the forefront), it is no wonder we had such a need for these stories.

And it’s no wonder that we feel such a powerful need to return to them now. Our economy is crumbling and, for many of us, the thought of participating in society makes us paranoid. We’ve become increasingly conscious of our bodies in relation to the world: the ways they function, their positioning around other people, the way we hold ourselves in grocery stores. We’re not being sorted into personality categories like characters in Divergent, nor are our children being rounded up to fight to the death as they are in The Hunger Games. But we are getting a front row seat to the exposure of vulnerabilities in our medical and financial infrastructures. We’re bearing witness to politicians’ blatant disregard for human life while we burn through our savings and apply desperately for unemployment that many will not receive. We’re video chatting with loved ones to express our condolences during funerals that have a mandated limit on how many people can mourn together. Dystopian.

In all the time we spend at home, art is more critical in our modern lives than ever. Movies and TV can distract us from endless hours spent indoors. Never before have I seen quite so many people posting music recommendations on their social media. We can finally find moments to get to the endless reading list, books that have been glaring at us from our shelves for weeks, begging us to take a break from our busy schedules and open them. We can spend this strange time panicking, or we can spend it immersed in other worlds and stories. Many of us are choosing the latter. 

If dystopian literature wasn’t where the bulk of critics thought we were moving a few years ago, perhaps it will be now. Brave New World has just re-entered my “to read” list on Goodreads. I’m going to keep on my vow to rewatch The Hunger Games—more than that, I’ve been itching to reread it, too, and I haven’t felt that urge about a YA novel since my mid-teens. 

These are unprecedented times. It often feels as though we have more to worry about than we ever thought we could handle. But when a virus cracks the world wide open, maybe literature is just the thing we need to begin to fill in the gaps.

A Reflection on Luis Alberto Urrea’s visit to Towson University

By: Gel Derossi, Online Creative Nonfiction Editor

When Luis Alberto Urrea visited Towson University, his vivid presence as a storyteller blurred lines of performance and identity. It is absolutely no wonder that the first thing you’ll find on Mr. Urrea’s “About” page on his website is NPR’s designation of him as a “master storyteller with a rock and roll heart.”

In his books, Mr. Urrea unearths lives that have been buried. His writing is what he calls “bearing witness.” In the masterclass he held at Towson, he told us about—or, more accurately, performed—his own experiences that culminated into his identity as a storyteller. As he came to understandings he had not had before, he recognized the truths that his unique background uncovered and their need to be told. Sitting among students in a tightly-packed classroom, Mr. Urrea brought us with him into his past. He expressed intimately the story of his father’s unjust and tragic death. He confided in us. He trusted us with the responsibility of knowing the importance of his brother’s influence in The House Of Broken Angels, a novel written after his brother’s death. Mr. Urrea’s way of storytelling draws listeners into a lifelong promise.

He expertly weaves emotion and surprising humor in stories that sing of the lives of immigrants, Native people, women, and other folks who have been too often overshadowed by the dominant minority. The drive of Mr. Urrea’s life, as he made clear to us, is amplifying the voices of the influencers, the voices of the people who gave their love and passion and received nothing in return. That rock and roll heart beats for the lives of the oppressed, just like the music genre of the same name.

Luis Urrea brought to my attention the importance of your own story. It is already weaved intimately in the oppressed voices that call to writers. In class, one student asked about writing someone else’s story as a person who has not experienced what they have. Mr. Urrea asked us to do our due diligence in getting another’s story right. He handed the words to us like bricks we could use to build ourselves. Chuckling, he told us how he had once asked renowned indigenous author Linda Hogan to write The Hummingbird’s Daughter, a now-published novel with deep Native American and Mexican roots. He claimed his mind was too Western to write it himself. She waved her hand peacefully, and then she replied to him, “The Western mind is a fever. It will pass.”

The act of bearing witness can transcend our barriers if we commit with respect and love. Not only can this apply to others’ stories, our own stories deserve that due diligence, too.

The day Mr. Urrea came to Towson was a day I noticed my mind lost some grounding with reality. It may seem like a simple thing. About two months into the school semester was when Mr. Urrea held his masterclass, and I decided my regular class started at 4:00 (it actually started at 3:30). Conveniently, Mr. Urrea’s talk was scheduled until 3:45, and then I stayed until 4:00 as it ran over. I thought I’d only be a few minutes late, not a half hour. I came to understand that my own mind had tricked me. It has happened often, and it is always unnerving when it does. There have been times when I needed my memory. I needed to rely on it, to be there for the people who I care about most, who were depending on my memory in one of the most literal forms you might experience. I was a witness for the rape of someone I love. During pre-trial interviews, they asked me to recount what had happened. Instead of answering truthfully, faced with a gathering of legal workers, my vision blacked out, but I didn’t stop functioning. I ended up telling the story of my own rape, for the first time.

They dismissed me from the case. I was the only witness. I know it’s not my fault, and that this is the justice system we live with—but the rapist was charged for his drug possession, not for the rape. The justice system itself told someone I love that their rape didn’t happen, that their feelings were invalid. If I had been able to articulate and process my story before that moment, maybe I’d have been able to tell the victim’s. Perhaps telling my story in that moment wouldn’t have mattered. Telling our stories, and integrating our stories into the narrative and the understanding of our society, will.

Another revolutionary author, bell hooks, excavates in her fist-pumping title, Rock My Soul: Black People And Self Esteem, that the way in which we act and behave, especially in life’s throes of mundanity, has a crucial effect on our mental health and identity. During the masterclass, Mr. Urrea shared with us a lesson: an entire life is a river, and its tightest bends are where you’ll find the stories, where something either must change or must fail. The choice between embracing our story or suppressing it is in the ordinary, everyday choices and bends that we face. Building ourselves and our identities is in any opportunity to express and perform your story, your thoughts, your feelings.

***

Photo courtesy of Towson University

It’s okay to not feel creative in quarantine

By: Bailey Hendricks, Marketing & Publicity Director

With more time on your hands during quarantine, you may feel some pressure to write a poem, make art, finish your manuscript, or generally be productive. I, for one, have been feeling some of this pressure myself.

It seems like since we are home, we should be “making the most out of this time.” If the pressure you’re feeling is not to finally finish that poem and submit it to a lit mag, maybe it’s wanting to clear out that junk drawer or finally organize all of your take-out menus. Whatever guilt you’re feeling for not being as productive as you’d like, take a moment to try to release that guilt. Understand that these are unprecedented and uncertain times. You shouldn’t add that extra pressure on yourself.

Make time to do things that give you the most comfort. Maybe that’s sipping on some tea, putting your feet up, and reading a good book. Or, maybe it’s making some chocolate chip cookies, or painting your nails, or just taking an extra-long, extra-hot shower.

Whatever activity gives you the most comfort is what you should be putting your energy into right now. We are all going through a collective traumatic experience, all around the world. It’s normal if you’re unable to focus, are sleeping more, or even are snacking more than usual. Be gentle with yourself during this time and seek comfort in the little things.