Perhaps you’ve heard of this before: When giving someone feedback or critique, never follow a compliment with “but”; use “and” instead. Using “but” somewhat negates anything you’ve said before. Therefore, it would be foolish of us to say something along the lines of “quarantine has sucked, but,” because that’s simply not true. The loss undergone as a society and at the personal level cannot be ignored or overlooked. Instead, we’ll use and. Quarantine has sucked, and we have all lost a lot. Quarantine has sucked, and it has also given us time and space for self-exploration—whether we wanted that or not.
This 2021 Issue of Stretch is a collection of works from our enhanced writing class, and also from first year students outside the class. The predominance of memoir in both our internal and external submissions confirms the reflective nature of much of our first year at Emerson. The academic, personal, and political repeatedly collide and influence each other; it is clear that many of us have been processing our rapidly and dramatically shifting dynamics in the form of self-exploration in our writing.
As avid writers and generally creative individuals, many of us used art as a vessel for managing the deliberation of the self. Whether it was creating or consuming visual art, literary works, music, we looked to art to then look in at ourselves.
Does that sound pretentious? Maybe so. Regardless, our experiences and the ways we work through them are valid, and we can acknowledge our limits without invalidating ourselves. In this issue, we are doing what we can in the capacity we are able: It is the truth, and it is enough.
You were the harshest this year. When I first learned about you in school, the science textbooks said that you were everything new- new beginnings, new plants, new air, new skies. And in some way, that’s what it was. Everything shut down, everything closed, and a new way of living was in place. At first, I was angry at you. I locked myself up in my room and refused to see your skies if they weren’t the way I was used to; at the malls and the parks, hand in hand with the people I was connected to. But you brought torrential downpour and everything that I knew had gone down the drain.
It was a different way of beginning, but I began anyway. It was a new way of acknowledging the plants, but they were beautiful to take pictures of. The air was a completely different atmosphere, but it was clear in my lungs. And even though the skies were looked at alone, the sun was warm in a way I had never thought to notice before.
You may have been the harshest, but sometimes tough love is the only way to breakthrough. You took more than you gave, but perhaps I was in need of taking if I was to ever be ready to receive everything you gave in return. I have forgiven you, and I hope you have forgiven me, too.
Summer,
I was ready for you to come. Counting down the days, really. The hot, sticky nights were spent driving downhill and screaming songs from my childhood into your pink clouds. You allowed me to sweat out everything I had pent up inside, and I never wanted you to end. Your sands were soft and your waves were blue, and everything about you was perfect for me. My friends and I relished in your company, stealing your early morning hours for our tongues to talk away. Your air made me linger in the arms of my love, and beg my friends to stay for one more restless night. You hold the longest day of the year, yet, somehow, it always feels so short.
There are days when I think of you, still. I sing the songs from the hills in my flat new city. Those songs are reserved for new people now, not the people that you gave me. I hope this is okay.
Autumn,
This was my first year truly experiencing you. I had never seen such vibrant colors. Similar to Spring, you took and took until there was nothing left to grab, but I willingly put my life’s belongings into your hands. I wonder why the scientists describe you in that way; as a season who destroys everything that we have spent the warm days building up. Instead of stealing, you gently picked up the things I was so hesitant to leave behind. I was skeptical about leaving the hot days to their own, but you turned out to be a chilly gust of beautiful things I had never expected. Your leaves were a mirror, and I stared at myself changing into someone new. Opportunities had never been so clear, and they were scattered along your streets, underneath my feet like a blanket to fall back on. I suppose they call you Fall for that very reason.
I hope you are not cautious about the way you are used as a platform to leave things behind for the people who walk through your days. You are bursting with memories that are polaroids on my new walls, and I am grateful for everything you painted over. You gave me a new canvas to create on.
Winter,
You are the cold that I can never get enough of. While my friends sit inside by the fire during your icy tantrums, I stand outside and watch my breath dance in your song. I was hesitant of your barren trees, but you can see the whole park through the windows when there aren’t any leaves. While it’s true that your snowy white grounds are blinding, they add a light to the darkness. I could never be mad at you, and I talk warmly about your harsh winds. You let people forget about me, and watch me fade into your blackest nights, but I have no problem sitting amongst the stars. It is nice to be able to exist in a place where the only thing that covers me is open air.
I’m sorry that I cried while you held me, broken about people who think Winter is for leaving. But I promise that I never left you. You remind me that even on the shortest of days, something new is around the corner. As the warmer winds creep in, I promise I will hold your hand with gratitude for all the things you taught me about myself, and I won’t forget the light that your moon has engraved on my heart.
P.S,
New seasons are approaching, and I will accept them with open arms as you have done for me.
Records on Living Room Walls: How a Man I've Never Met Defines Me
By Sophie Pargas
As my grandmother left her home of Cuba behind with only a porcelain doll and small duffel bag of clothes to remember it by, not much was promised. Behind her, she left her family, friends, school, home; everything she had ever known was traded for a plane ticket to a country filled with unfamiliarity. She did, however, have one thing which the Castro regime did not succeed in taking from her: her parents, sister, and brother. Together, they struggled to acclimate to a new country, language, and culture, all the while fighting to make sure their’s did not go forgotten. Though years passed and The United States began to feel like more and more of a home, the story of my great uncle’s coming out and getting diagnosed with HIV proved that hardships could be found even in “the land of the free and home of the brave.”
Growing up, I remember visiting my great grandmother’s house and admiring dozens of records and pictures on the walls, remnants of a man I would never get the chance to meet. It wasn’t until later that my grandmother found the strength to tell me his story, but once I knew it, I never seemed to miss the ways it defined my family and our belief system. My grandmother’s brother, Aristedes Jacobs, defied social norms of his time and traditions of his culture by coming out as gay during the peak of the AIDS epidemic. Though sexuality was a taboo subject which lived up to the notorious saying of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” I often think of the courage it took Ari to face his traditional Cuban family knowing that their culture challenged them to reject his identity outright.
Heartbreakingly, Ari was a victim of his era and was diagnosed with HIV in his young adulthood. Soon enough, the disease stole away my grandmother's baby brother, leaving me to learn of his legacy through tear ridden stories and records on living room walls. Though his legacy is a heartache which is still felt by my grandparents, father, uncles, and aunts, I am certain that it has challenged the traditional Hispanic view of homosexuality and replaced it with a yearning for acceptance and empathy within my family.
Cuban refugees forced to flee in the wake of immense political unrest, my grandmother and her family struggled to create a life and a legacy for themselves in America whilst honoring the ones they left behind. To them, culture and pride were everything; if they did not uphold the values of their country, they would find the mark it left on them slowly fading into oblivion. One of these values, encapsulated by the spanish word “machismo”, created a deep rooted and traditional belief in toxic masculinity and homophobia which seeped its way into the inner workings of my family. The term created an idealized and often completely unattainable version of men as unemotional, dominant breadwinners who strived for nothing more than power and women. Machismo culture not only worsened pre existing gender norms, but it also perpetuated a culture of fear surrounding sexuality. Men like Ari who, by Cuban standards, did not live up to the machismo characteristics by practicing homosexuality were considered weak and inmasculine by nature. Forced to decide between their identities and ostracization by their communities and families, many men chose not to relinquish their pride and value by coming out and instead led lives dominated by fear and shame.
My great uncle, despite having come out to his two sisters and living his truth behind closed doors, was no exception to the exemplification of discomfort surrounding sexuality within his family. Even after the disease began to deteriorate his body and mind alike, Ari had yet to share his diagnosis or even come out to his parents, and these words were ones left unspoken. Though my great grandparents inevitably learned of his sexuality and the disease which stole his life away, the conversation was one they could never bring themselves to have; at the mercy of shame, fear, and tradition, Ari was forced to carry a piece of himself to the grave with him.
While his death undoubtedly left behind insurmountable regret, pain, and suffering, the stories I have heard growing up have been centered on his life, his legacy, and the lessons learned in his wake. Ari’s identity completely challenged his culture, and it forced my family to reassess and redefine the beliefs upon which we build our legacies. In addition to serving as a hammer with which to tear down narrow walls encompassing narrow viewpoints, his story is a motif for the beauty and possibility of growth. After his death, my great grandmother showed her acceptance in her own ways; she wore a red pin which symbolizes HIV awareness to his funeral and even requested to be buried at his side. Today, I am proud to say that my family is one who accepts all people for their differences, and they have raised me to do the same. Despite the fact that society and culture pressured them to ostracize him, my family evolved into one who was proud of his story, who speaks fondly of his legacy and passed it on to me so I had this opportunity to do the same.
At his core, Ari was a man who lived his life in pursuit of happiness, and being gay was only one small part of this. A music producer and promoter in the iconic disco era, he loved to create music and share it with those around him. One of my favorite stories is told by my grandfather, who recalls the time Ari casually invited YMCA’s Village People to enjoy dinner with his extremely conservative and unknowing Cuban family. The platinum records I used to admire on the walls of my great grandparents’ living room are pieces of history, symbols of a budding success which Ari was only beginning to acquire and an impact which would long outlive the numbered years he was given. Though the records have since been taken down and the house in which they hung has become someone else’s home, Ari’s legacy lives and breathes through not only my family, but through every person we love, every difference we accept, and every moment we cherish in his honor.
For decades, I have been told, Mema’s fingers smelled of nicotine, trailing the scent of a pack a day and a love that ate away at my grandfather until it swallowed him whole just five months after I was born. After that, an already vicious candy habit became a lifelong method of staying cigarette-free. She said that it kept her mouth busy and her head on straight.
We were alike in that way– her weakness was See’s Candies butterscotch lollipops, and I favored peppermints to focus. It was not uncommon, during the five years that she lived in our home, to find us next to each other in the living room, teeth clacking on our respective hard candies until I finished my work or she tired of the barrage of bad news.
Her other method of oral fixation was toothpicks, little orange slivers that she dropped as she hobbled from room to room. Truthfully, that was about all she left behind– plastic wrappers and wood chips, breadcrumbs that led me back through the years after she was gone.
I was home for Christmas during my freshman year of college when she passed, as suddenly as one can pass after almost a century of life. It was California dreary out, with a blank sky and a bad attitude. She was three thousand miles away by then, but the West Coast was mourning. That night, I popped a coffee-flavored See’s lollipop in my mouth. It was the last thing I would bite into for days.
My wisdom teeth were never wise enough to grow in the correct direction, and with my already small jaw, their removal was an inevitability. We had made the appointment the previous summer, hoping to control the problem before it started. The timing could not have been predicted. But I would have signed away a world of hurt down the line if I could have absolved myself of surgery on the morning after my grandmother’s death.
My orthodontist was a genial Scottish man in his fifties. I had met him just once before, for our consultation. He charmed me immediately by recognizing my name and its correct pronunciation– “Gaelic, o’course,” he had said cheerfully. Mema would have been smitten. She always loved accents– anything about people, really, cultures and language and history. She told me once that she had lived so many stories that she couldn’t help wanting to hear everyone else’s. This was what I was thinking about when he began to rattle off the medications he would prescribe me for the weeks after the operation.
“Oh, I don’t need the strong stuff,” I interjected. “I’ll be just fine with the Ibuprofen, I’ve got a lot of grit.”
He chuckled, handing me a stack of forms.
“I don’t doubt it, Maura. Let’s just see how you’re feeling afterwards, eh?”
I was the last of my friends from high school to get their wisdom teeth out. I had stayed the night with Amelia right after the surgery, brought ice cream for Tyler every day for a week. I knew that there would be no conversation or ‘seeing how I felt.’
I am not taking those pills.
I have never lived at extremes. Modesty and moderation were ingrained in me before I could pronounce either word, by my mother and Mema and their working-class sensibilities. And if nothing else, I have held myself to those principles. In high school, even on the rare occasions that I allowed myself to go out on weekends, it was a point of pride that I knew my limits. I was never the least sober in the room– often, I was the most by far. I never, ever, lost control.
The assistant was a young, lanky man– almost a boy, really, I noticed as he plunged the IV drip into my arm. I imagined babbling to him when I woke up, making a fool of myself, having to be carried out like I once carried my high school friend when she mixed Vicodin and vodka.
“Don’t give me too much,” I remember pleading. “Look at me. Promise me that I will walk out of here on my own.”
He must have listened, because when I came to, it was with a surprisingly clear head. At least, the part of my head that I could feel was clear. I spent the car ride home in silence, poking at the numbness, pushing down the tears that were welling up in my eyes.
Healing happened, slowly and awkwardly. A prescription of Hydrocodone sat on my dresser unopened; I refused everything but aspirin and a steady supply of vanilla pudding. Instead, I spent my days drifting between sleep and discomfort, but I suffered in silence. The whole house, after all, was suffering too.
Mema was not an affectionate woman– in the years that I knew her, she was not even particularly kind. She was stubborn and abrasive, with a Southern drawl turned scratchy with years of smoking and sighing and complaining.
She was also the strongest woman I have ever known.
After she quit smoking, she kept as far as possible from any sort of vices that would shorten her lifespan, replacing them instead with virtues… temperance, fortitude, and CNN. Even in her last years, when my parents begged her to have a glass of wine each night just to help her get to sleep, she refused. Her pain management was a strict combination of stubbornness and grit, and her health remained remarkable for her age.
But when you are close to one hundred years old, regardless of how healthy you are, on some level, every part of your body is begging you to just stop. To rest. Sometimes, it’s even in your own mind.
Once, I heard her ask my mother, “Why am I still here?”
“You know that we can’t get you back on a plane safely with all this oxygen, Mom.”
“No,” she sighed. “Why am I still here?”
But she accepted it. She held firm, and she stayed. Even when we ran out of money and resources and patience, when we had to fly her those three thousand miles to move back in with my auntie Beth, she stayed until she could not stay one second longer.
When I was seventeen, I once stood staring into her medicine cabinet on the precipice of explosion. I had my father’s gin and my mother’s anger in my stomach, and I knew what matches it would take to light that fuse. But I stayed, strong and composed, just as she did every day. I couldn’t do it for myself. So I did it for her.
I am not taking those pills.
I was, at the outset, correct about my ability to push through the discomfort. My constant fear of losing control had given me an acute awareness of how much I could handle, and I walked that line confidently. I did everything right, took the antibiotics and cleaned the surgical sites with a ritualistic reverence. All of my focus went towards the pain in my mouth. And the other pain, the ache that had settled into the bones of our house and deep into my chest, went untreated.
Until it couldn’t anymore.
I pushed myself too hard, I understand that now. I had convinced myself that I was out of the woods entirely, that I hadn’t felt any real soreness for days, that I was ready to shut the door behind a miserable week. That afternoon, I went hiking with my best friend, and we caught up over coffee and pre-Christmas peppermint bark. She tried to mention Mema, and I pointed out a hawk in the trees ahead.
By the evening, I was curled up in excruciating pain, convinced that the left side of my jaw was cracking and splintering as I laid with a bag of ice that did no real good. Taking Ibuprofen was like trying to stamp out a forest fire.
With gritted teeth and an apology, I cracked open the bottle of Hydrocodone.
That night was one of the worst of my life. I dreamed apocalyptic wastelands, bodies fetid and festering after the pestilence of the pandemic that had already defined that year. I saw my grandmother, sweating in and out of sleep– alive for a moment, but dying again and again. In the confusion and haze, for just a moment, I thought she might have been a god.
My fever dream ended as a weak winter sun began to stream through the window. I was drained, more exhausted than I had been the night before, but the ache had disappeared and my head was clear. I stripped the sheets and washed off the night, plugged in my headphones, hit shuffle perched on her old bare mattress.
And I was catching my breath/
Staring out an open window, catching my death/
And I couldn’t be sure/
I had a feeling so peculiar, that this pain would be for/
Evermore
I didn’t even notice I was crying until the drops hit my legs. I do not think I could have stopped myself if I tried. But I had run out of the desire to control.
Hey December, guess I’m feeling unmoored/
Can’t remember what I used to fight for
Everything, my grandmother and mother have insisted, exists in moderation. But what is moderation when we feel in extremes?
I rewind the tape, but all it does it pause/
On the very moment all was lost/
Sending signals to be double-crossed
We are made for vices, for cigarettes and coffee and chocolate cake. We are made to cling to any semblance of control, and then to watch again and again as it slips away, and then we are made to try again.
When the tears ran out and the last notes played, I pulled myself up and grabbed my keys. On my way out of the door, I caught a glimpse of something on the kitchen counter– a small glass bowl filled with See’s lollies. We had bought a box to send her for Christmas the day before she died.
This is what she left behind. Plastic wrappers, wood chips. A gap in the family and four gaps in my jaws. Ninety-nine years of stories and stubbornness and Southern sensibility. I carry the weight of her within me, her love and her loss. I manage our pain the way that she taught me, with control and composure. But I’m learning my own ways too.
And I couldn’t be sure/
I had a feeling so peculiar, this pain wouldn’t be for/
Experience is a difficult concept to bring to life on paper. It requires the act of being able to sit with oneself and consider all the elements that make an encounter so vivid that it stays in the mind, transforming an event into memory into experience, that which is so powerful, it alters how one feels, in the moment and afterwards. Bringing that emotion to life in an authentic way was important for Tarfia Faizullah in writing her poetry collection, Seam. She chose not to go the same route many of her contemporaries might follow — heavily researching an experience before attempting to conjure the mindset that can accurately replicate it; instead, she traveled to Bangladesh where she spoke with birangona, female survivors of the 1971 Liberation War, which saw many women and girls raped, tortured, and traumatized by the Pakistani Army that captured them. Faizullah adds a valuable addition to the New Historicism school with her attention to truth and validating the ordeals of women long shunned by their own communities, and changes how experience is renewed and reexamined on paper in her book.
Faizullah’s ties to her culture is evident in how devoted to its exploration she is in her work. As a Bangladeshi American, she is privy to two cultures, but strives to stay away from the western narrative, instead choosing to come to terms with the duality of being a person of color in America, and then just another Bangladeshi in her ancestral country. Her poem, Self-Portrait as Mango, angrily retorts to “How long have you been in our country?” with “Suck on a mango, bitch, that’s all you think I eat anyway…This mango was cut down by a scythe that beheads soldiers, mango / that taunts and suns itself into a hard-palmed fist only a few months / per year, fattens while blood stains green ponds.” (Faizullah 23). Faizullah ironically calls herself a mango and articulates that what is a simple object to one person holds generations of history for another. While the mango ripens, it is witness to war and violence, but still grows until the day it is properly eaten (sucked open with teeth), or analogously, truly appreciated for the history it holds. Self-Portrait as Mango represents Faizullah’s tone as a poet; she is confused at her status as an other in America, she is angry when her validity is questioned, and yet she is indignant with the knowledge that her heritage has a rich history that rises far above any of these challenges to her identity.
This style is evident in Faizullah’s notes to herself in Seam. While she takes on an appropriately modest tone when addressing the birangona and emulating them, there is still that reverence for a past yet undiscovered by her. Such is true of Interview with a Birangona as she takes time to self-reflect in third person on her findings of the women’s experiences: “You listen to the percussion / of monsoon season’s wet / wail, write in your notebook / bhalo-me, karap-me / chotto-sundori— / badgirl, goodgirl, littlebeauty—in Bangla / there are words / for every kind of woman / but a raped one” (29). Not only is Faizullah questioning her culture’s inability to accommodate raped women, but she does so in a melancholic rather than accusing tone. She asks readers to consider why there is no infrastructure in place to support the birangona, or at least educate the communities about the long-term damage sexual assault has on victims. Her thoughts are expanded further in other poems where Faizullah suddenly becomes mournful and almost separated from what she is talking about as she emulates the birangona’s distanced retellings of their own traumatized encounters in the camps they were brought to. She tells readers, “my body became an eddy, / a blackblue swirl. Don’t cry, he says. How when the time / came for his choosing, we all gave in for tea, a mango, / overripe. Another chance to hear the river’s gray lull.” (34) Faizullah becomes much more metaphorical and perhaps even more poetic when she takes on the birangona perspective, a way of speaking that is common for victims of trauma to distance themselves from what happened. In turn, Faizullah’s dialogue and that of the birangona is distinguished from the much harsher, violent language of the rapists. All this works to create an eerie conglomeration of memories retold into an experience that shocks readers into the women’s awful realities as slaves to a traumatic past and their scapegoated present. What is presented in Seam becomes another experience on its own, for readers who have not had to witness the same kind of violence that is described, for Faizullah, as the child of parents scarred by the liberation war, and for the women who had to put their trauma into words for us to understand even an inkling of what they felt. Seam then reconfigures how we think about the representation of experience for all involved in its depiction, for without the multiplicity of historical perspectives, and then Faizullah’s own influences as a person of color in two very distinct worlds that perceive her identity differently, we would not have the same ability to experience so deeply as we did with this book, where no aspect of the memories and thoughts we read about feels unexamined and unfelt.
The way in which Faizullah truthfully pursues the telling of experiences in her poetry is a valuable contribution to the New Historicism literary theory. She does not merely try to grasp on her own what it is like to be a birangona, but seeks inspiration from the very women who know what it is like. Writer Kristina Marie Darling of Tupelo Quarterly puts Faizullah’s writing as “tragedy turn[ed] to narrative and set[ting] other pains into motion, be it grief or a desire for some form of justice. Faizullah also documents the stories in compact ways, choosing the most potent images and details to render heartbreaking devastation, and then moves to a larger, almost prophetic, question that forces readers to confront the senselessness of such a death” (2015). In other words, Faizullah’s cultural connection to the events she speaks about, and her willingness to strengthen that connection, is what allows her to translate words said by women likely desensitized to their own trauma if only to be able to bear it, in a way that resonates with readers and forces them to consider the needless violence of the war. New Historicism itself is a cultural study that strives to reconnect a work with the time period it is produced in or influenced by. It is not just a matter of what happened, but a matter of interpretation of the historical events themselves. With this examination of historical literacy in mind, Faizullah casts a telling light on how exactly birangona have been treated since they survived the war. She laments on their being shunned by communities for their ‘dirtiness,’ despite the total lack of control these women had in their circumstances. She asks readers to consider the women’s self-inflicted guilt over the futility of their situation and the guilt added on by their families and neighbors, and how that increases birangonas’ trauma. There are words for every kind of woman but a raped one. By asking these questions, Faizullah attempts to further enhance the contextual analytical methods of New Historicism by juxtaposing the circumstantial with the emotional.
In showing readers the lack of respect for these survivors, Faizullah ultimately addresses how we need to interpret events — as experiences that affect our own and should be treated as such. Seam does not just ask what happened, but it confronts violent experiences with a forwardness that shocks readers into sympathizing with victims and considering what can be done to right the wrongs of history and prevent another mass traumatic event from occurring. We are stirred into thought and action by the poetry’s historic validity, and Faizullah’s own willingness to be meta. While traveling to Bangladesh to interview the birangona, she notes, “I take my place among / this damp, dark horde of men / and women who look like me— / because I look like them— / because I am ashamed / of their bodies that reek so unabashedly of body— / because I am / an American, a star / of the blood on the surface of muscle” (12). She is different, a misdiagnosed ‘other’ in America, but as soon as she is in her country of origin, Faizullah emphasizes feeling strangely more American than before despite mingling with those who look like her…startlingly too much like her. That familiarity and lack of it at the same time is another influence in the way she is able to convey her sincerity and truthfulness as a narrator for the birangona in her poems. There is an acknowledgement of disconnect, but a drive to bridge that gap by finding the truth buried underneath cultural stigma and old historicism’s failure to interpret experience according to person and place in time.
Through Seam, Tarfia Faizullah contributes an entirely new way of recording the human experience for those who witnessed it in the past and alternately those who learn about it in the future. What is produced is a vivid re-narration of experience that is able to explore both the feelings felt by those involved in such encounters, while also questioning the supposed objectivity of previous historical interpretation methods. Faizullah posits that it is impossible to approach history without a subjective lens, and we are all the better for it, for only then can we truly understand the emotions that drive human action. Faizullah takes New Historicism head on with Seam, and fearlessly confronts the context from which her subjects’ stories were violently created so that readers may understand how their own experiences are subconsciously affected by the past.
I would like to thank Caitlin McGill for her profound patience and support when I wrote this during a time of much personal unrest and dissatisfaction. I learned so much in the few short weeks we had together.
It was the championship game. It was the 9th inning and we were losing by 2 runs. I was next up to hit and as I stood on the on-deck circle, the nerves crept in. The cheers of the crowd, the smell of hot dogs from the concession stand, and the torching sunlight that made me sweat so much. So much was going through my mind at that moment. I was practicing my swing and timing the pitcher, but I was so nervous. I was next up to bat and if I didn’t get a hit, my team would lose the championship. My teammate drew a walk, so now it was my time. My parents were standing right behind home plate. My mom cheered me on, screaming my name as loud as she could. My dad, the one whose dream was to play professional baseball, stared at me with such intensity that I could feel it as I walked up to the plate. He always did that.
There was someone missing from the crowd, but I couldn’t think about it at that moment. I stepped up to the plate and stared at the pitcher. I wanted to get in his head and I wanted to intimidate him. I was on a mission and no one would stop me. I wiped the dripping sweat from my eyes and forehead, rubbed my gloves together, and dug my feet in the dirt. The umpire signaled to the pitcher. He was ready and unfortunately for him, so was I. The cheering grew even louder and my teammates roared in the dugout. Everyone’s eyes were on me. “The best player on the team.” “The man to win us the championship.” As the pitcher began his windup, I took a deep breath and remembered that this was for her. For the person that wasn’t in the crowd that day. The ball was thrown, its spin telling me that it's a fastball. As I waited for it, the world turned silent. I only saw the ball and I heard nothing. Then the screaming and cheering happened. My teammates scored and we won the game. The coaches and team ran to me and huddled over me, celebrating. They dumped water on me and tried ripping my jersey off. I looked at my mom and dad, and they were crying. They were crying because they were so happy. They were proud. They were also crying because someone was missing. I looked up at the sky, made the sign of the cross, kissed my chain of the cross, and said, “That was for you. I love you abuela.”
Christmas Time Is Here
I was reading a book from one of my favorite novel series, Captain Underpants. It was a couple weeks before Christmas and I was so excited. I already sent my letter to Santa. I used blue construction paper and wrote it with a pencil. I always asked Santa to sign my letter after he finished reading it. A lot of gifts were under the tree and my mom was finishing up the rest of the decorations. My mom is one of those Dominican moms that completely transforms the house for an upcoming holiday. Dominican moms go crazy about decorations for holidays and they’d decorate a month ahead of time, depending on the holiday. She hung some lights on the windows, put the stockings up, and put little Santa plushies around the house. I was most excited about going to my abuela’s house for Christmas. The whole family was going. My mom’s side of the family is huge, so I didn’t know how everyone was going to fit in the house. I didn’t care, as long as I got to spend Christmas with my abuela and the family. I loved abuela’s house. As soon as you walked in, you’d smell the food she was cooking. That rice with habichuela and the scented candles she had all over the house. There was a portrait of Jesus on the living room wall and some other paintings. Sometimes, I’d look at the portrait and stare into Jesus’ eyes and move back and forth, because I always thought he was staring at me. I don’t think he was though. My favorite part of abuela’s house was this couch she had. It was leopard skinned and I always sat there. That was my spot and everyone in the family knew that.
Tears
I had reached the part of the book when Captain Underpants was battling the villain, Wedgie Woman, and I heard my mom’s phone ringing. It was her sister, so she picked it up. A minute into the conversation, my mom ran outside. I was scared because my mom had never done that before. I wondered if my aunt was okay. My mom came back to the house ten minutes later and was crying. My dad was on his way home from work, so there was nothing he could do at that moment. I had to put on my big boy pants and do something. I went over to my mom, hugged her, and asked what’s wrong. She looked at me and said, “Everything will be okay. Just go to your room and watch some TV.” So I went to my room and watched my favorite show, Power Rangers. It didn't feel right to just go and watch tv, but I was scared. The show reached the point where the rangers got their megazords to defeat the villain. A couple minutes later, I heard the door and it was my dad. I ran out the room and hugged my dad. When I looked at his face, I saw tears streaming down his cheeks. Why was I the only one that wasn’t crying?
Is The Price Right?
My parents had to work, so I had to go stay at abuela’s house. She lived in Brooklyn. Not a bad part of Brooklyn, but it wasn’t great either. My mom didn’t like Brooklyn that much; all the graffiti, crime, and stuff didn’t make her comfortable. It’s where my parents grew up. It’s where they met and it’s where the majority of my family was born and grew up. Brooklyn was home to everyone else, except for me.
My mom dropped me off, talked to abuela, and kissed me on the cheek goodbye. When she left, my grandmother told me the plan for the day. She spoke to me in English and Spanish, but mostly in Spanish, since her English wasn’t the best. I could already smell the food she was cooking. It smelled like eggs or something. I was amazed I could smell her cooking from upstairs, since the kitchen was downstairs. I guess the scent was very strong. I sat down on the leopard skinned couch and turned on the television. It was a really old-fashioned television. It had like a little antenna, and I would usually play around with it for fun. Every time I turned on the television, I looked for our favorite show. The Price is Right! We watched the show every time I was at abuela’s. I never knew why abuela loved watching the show. I still don’t know to this day. My parents say it’s because it helped her with her English. I try not to think or talk about the show anymore. When the episode finished, we went to go pick up my little cousin, Ryan, from daycare. It was a short walk from the house and abuela always said that walking is good exercise. On our way to the daycare, we saw a homeless man sitting on a bench. The man was short, with a scruffy beard and he was wearing glasses. I looked at the man and felt bad for him. “It’s awful that people live like that, abuela,” I said. “Yo sé,” abuela said. We walked up to the man and she handed him five dollars. He was shocked. He said thank you and God bless. We crossed the street and I asked abuela why she did that. “Dios dice que ayudemos a los necesitados,” she said. God says to always help those in need.
I Love my Dad and I Hate Asthma
I turned down the radio and opened the car window. It was sunny with that type of breeze that, when you take a deep breath, you feel relaxed. My dad was driving. It was only me and him in the car; my mom was in another car. My dad was wearing this nice suit and he got a haircut two days before. He wore some really nice glasses too. We were talking about baseball. That was probably the only thing that could distract us from what the day was about. My dad always talks about his love for baseball. His dream was to be a professional baseball player, but that dream wasn’t supported. He had the talent to play professionally, but he was forced to work at a young age at his dad’s restaurant. His dad wasn’t the best at caring for his kids and their dreams. As he drove, he was telling me that his dream of playing baseball in the MLB lives through me. “Your mom, abuela, and I sat down one day and discussed your future. I don’t want you to have a childhood like mine. Skipping school to work and not being able to do what I wanted to do sucked. I didn’t want you to play baseball because I feared that I would act like my father. Abuela looked me in the eyes and said that I am better than my father and you will make this family better no matter what you do. What you’ve accomplished at this point in your life is beyond what any of us could’ve dreamed of. I’m proud of you, your mom is proud of you, and so is abuela.” My dad parked the car. We did our special handshake and got out of the car. Everyone proceeded into the funeral home.
“Name him Sebastian. Sebastian is a name for a boy that will do great things. He will be someone special,” abuela said. I saw her in the casket and I couldn’t process what was happening. How did she die of an asthma attack if she didn’t have asthma? How would God let this happen to her? My dear abuela. She looked so peaceful in the casket. Her eyes were closed, her hands folded together holding a bible, and she was wearing like a dress or something. I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Now she can make some rice with habichuela for God, the angels, and everyone else there. She can watch The Price is Right with all them too. That’ll be fun. She’ll be able to watch my games from heaven too. Watch me get the game-winning hit for the championship.
Author’s Note
I was hesitant to write this memoir. I’m not an “open person.” I don’t like to get personal or tell people about things like this. I pondered what I should write about for the longest. I’m writing this right now and I see a picture of me and my abuela on my desk. It’s a picture of her holding me. I’m wearing a cute, little outfit with a spongebob hat. Spongebob was my favorite when I was a baby. I think about her everyday. How different would life be if she were still alive? It’s a question I’ll never have the answer to.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge and say thank you to the class for workshopping my memoir, and providing thoughts and opinions that helped me improve it. I would also like to acknowledge my abuela for being the superhero she was.
Girlhood: The Forgotten Céline Sciamma Film We All Should Have Seen
By Ivy Miller
It is not a hot take to question the usefulness of queer films that seem to insist on being white, old and reminiscent of each other. In fact, when Potrait of a Lady on Fire came out, and I told my gay friends about it, they practically rolled their eyes. Many of my friends who happen to be young, queer, and women of color, were understandably not going to scramble to applaud another white woman for making another film about white women—even if these ones were in love.
What may have surprised my friends however, as it certainly surprised me, was to learn that the director behind Potrait of a Lady on Fire had made very different films prior to her lesbian period piece. In fact, Céline Sciamma made three coming of age queer films all before Potrait of a Lady on Fire, and the last one in particular stands far apart; Sciamma’s Girlhood is everything that Potrait of a Lady on Fire could never be. Girlhood (2014) is about a young black adult named Marieme growing up in the suburbs of France. We follow Marieme as she confronts issues with race, gender, poverty and sexuality alike, all while finding joyous moments with her friends that strike just as genuine a chord.
Girlhood starts with a montage of people playing American football who we can’t tell are girls until they victoriously take off their helmets in a group huddle, and we see their proud wide grins as they shout to each other. While some of the girls are revealed to be wearing eyeshadow and lipstick, and sporting long hair under their helmets, others are shown to wear black streaks as their only make up and display nearly shaved heads. This small detail becomes increasingly relevant throughout the film; it's as if the masculine football armor—with room for a plethora of identities underneath it—foreshadows the fact that our lead Mariame will continuously change her clothes and hair as she tries to discover where both her power and comfort lies. At one point Mariame exactly mirrors the friend group she makes, and wears a stolen tight dress and shimmery makeup after all the girls have dressed up altogether in a modest hotel room. This scene is arguably the most fun we see Mariame and her friends have on screen—which is only fair considering Sciamma makes the conscious choice to cut the playful montage to the entirety of Rihanna’s “Shine Bright Like a Diamond.” At the start of the song the girls have gotten to know each other a bit, but by the end of the song we are convinced of the magic of a girls night in to cement a group of girls together as true friends.
Mariame makes friends and she makes mistakes. For instance, it is hard not to wince when we hear Mariame’s younger sister accuse Mariame of becoming just like their older, and abusive, brother. Furthermore, when Mariame seems to be leaving one dangerous situation only to “escape” to another, we root for her friends when they try to attempt to forbid her from doing so. However, only moments after the harsh exchange takes place, Mariame says simply to her friends: “make me laugh.” In response, her friend Adiotuo looks briefly right into the camera —and thus intimately into our eyes—right before she tells us and Mariame that the charismatic leader of the group, Lady, is actually named Sophie. This exchange is exemplary of what Girlhood does so well: it lets its characters be vulnerable, and even miserable, but it is never too long before they are funny, caring and defiant once again.
Before allowing Adiotou to say her “real” name, Lady says a very important line: “my name’s Lady, it’ll be on my grave.” In this sense Lady will not be defined by her birth given name, instead the only name that matters is the one she chooses to die with. As the captive audience, we know Lady’s real name is Lady because we have watched her friends and her world use that name, just as we will stand with and recognize Mariame when she starts to look a bit different. Towards the end of the film, we see Mariame wearing a binder and with very short hair. It is unclear if this outfit is for her physical protection against the seemingly violent men she works with, or is reflective of what Mariame feels her true form may be. When we then watch Mariame slow dance with a girl we are reminded of the deep loyalty and fondness that she once had for her old friend Lady, and we wonder if the friendship we had witnessed earlier carried a different kind of love than just platonic.
These are questions that Girlhood doesn’t answer. Admittedly, this can be frustrating, as sometimes as a witness to Mariame’s life we want her to answer our questions. Especially by the end of the film one may find themselves expecting Mariame to define herself to us—and more importantly to those around her. As I watched Girlhood, I waited for a dramatic monologue: a moment in the film devoted to Mariame telling her world who she is and who she isn’t. It is not a spoiler to say that this moment does not come. Mariame does not tell us—or her friends, or the men she works with, or her first boyfriend, or her family— who she is, but perhaps this is simply because Mariame does not know yet. Meaning, Girlhood’s nuance in its exploration of gender and sexuality seems to lend to a larger truth. The truth being that Mariame is still growing up, she’s still finding out who she is, and the film won’t announce or clarify an answer that Mariame hasn’t discovered for herself.
There is beauty in this nuance, and for many queer individuals alike, there is also a universal truth in addition to Mariame’s personal one. Just as Mariame does not have the words, or space, to verbalize her being yet, many queer youth may take comfort in watching Mariame and knowing they are not alone in not being able to define themselves. I watched Girlhood on a couch next to my dad and his girlfriend, both of whom know I am a lesbian. What they may not know however, is that sometimes this label feels inadequate in explaining how I feel about my sexuality and particularly how I relate to my gender. What a personal relief it was then, to watch a film called Girlhood that had no interest in prescribing to a definition or experience of womanhood that I—and so many others—have become increasingly severed from.
However, Girlhood tells the intricate story of a Mariame, a black woman, growing up in a community that is deeply affected by the product of France’s racism. Mariame and her friends all live in public housing and, through the lens of the film, it appears as though there are no white people who live in these apartment buildings. Furthermore, Mariame, although certainly not defined by her world’s limitations, undoubtedly has to deal with the intersection of racism and sexism throughout her daily life. In this crucial way most of Mariame’s experience of “girlhood” is nothing like mine— but that shouldn’t make this film any less meaningful to me. Often I hear people like me who are white and queer equate how much they like a film to how much they relate to it; but how can we push for diversity and at the same time only desire to watch films that tell the stories of people who look like us. Of course there were still moments and scenes in Girlhood where I “saw myself” in the characters, but I ask again: why is seeing yourself in a film more meaningful than being able to see someone else?
After I watched Girlhood I called my friends and told them they had to watch it. I did not promise them that they would love it, but I was able to promise them that it wasn’t another film about white gay women for white gay women. I was also able to promise them that the film wasn’t a period piece. I told them what I will, in a sense, tell you: while Girlhood and its beautifully portrayed Mariame may have not made it to the big screens in 2014 like its younger and estranged sister, Portrait of a Lady on Fire did in 2020, the film and Mariame deserve a place on your screen at home and, if given, they will likely find a place to stay in your mind long after.
Where to Watch: Hulu (with premium subscription), Amazon Prime ($2.99 to Rent), Youtube ($2.99 to Rent), Itunes ($4.99 to Rent), Apple TV ($4.99 to Rent).
Acknowledgements
Before writing this piece I had never written a film review. Of course I had watched films, analyzed films, texted my friends and family to demand they watch a film, but writing a review is a different story. To write a review of a film is in a sense to quantify its value, and to be honest I never felt I was worthy of doing this. Who was I, as a nineteen year old, to think my opinions on a film should matter to anyone? However, as we entered the “Literary Review” Unit of Research Writing I realized that this would be my opportunity to write a review for a film that I felt had been looked over by mainstream audiences and critics alike. I may not have felt worthy of writing a review of Girlhood, but I knew the film was worthy of a better review than I had been able to find scouring on the internet. I would like to thank my professor Livia Meneghin for encouraging me each step of the way, and for helping me to create a review that I think reflects the beauty and importance of Girlhood.
One Bible Quote Pocket Knife Away From An Existential Crisis
By Jenna Reilly
For four years, from ages eight to twelve, I played in a bowling league two towns from mine at Patchogue Bowling Alley each Wednesday night from four o’clock to five thirty. The bowling alley was running down with half-seventies, half-nineties era technology and upholstery that smelt of pretzels and old carpet. But I enjoyed myself every time I went because I found that I really liked to bowl. The satisfaction of the pins crashing down from the force of the ball or the calculations needed for the perfect aim to knock down the last few pins, etc., I found much joy in the sport. I played with the same two to three boys, some varying as the years went on. Though I never got too close with them, an imaginary rivalry sprung in my head. I thought I kept it secret, but I definitely made gloating faces when I won or acted like nothing was wrong when I had lost without realizing it.
At one point, I wanted to win so bad that I began to pray to God to get strikes or win games. Not to say I didn’t work on my technique and actual skill in the game, but I used to literally pray to win when that didn’t seem to work. Thinking back, I don’t know why I thought that it would. I must have thought God worked in ways that he really didn’t, because when I didn’t win, and I found that my praying for bowling was useless, instead of questioning whether praying for sports was reasonable, I questioned why God wasn’t helping. I do not know if it was reason or lack thereof as a child, but I began to question what everyone was telling me about God. When I was twelve, I had to quit the league because Confirmation classes started for my church which were on Wednesday nights.
In my Confirmation classes, in a room filled with children’s toys within the part of the church that doubled as a preschool, we learned of men hearing signs from God, Noah’s ark filled with two of every animal in the world, and more. Our Pastor would give us sodas and snacks as he told us lessons and words from the Bible and how they could relate to our lives. Though we never discussed hot button issues like LGBTQ+ and God’s view of them or abstinence which I thought we would, that was probably for the best considering my soon-to-be-discovered sexuality.
These classes originally started two years before we were supposed to be Confirmed. Three months before our holy day, our Pastor said we would be going to classes for half a year more instead. With no explanation or reason given to us, we were all pretty confused and aggravated, but still went on.
One other requirement along with Confirmation classes was that we had to attend pretty much every Sunday mass in our little, old white church. We all did, except for my friend Ben who barely went to class nor church for the last year and a half of our Confirmation studies. This bothered my other friends and I who spent literally countless hours in that church or its classrooms. Surely what is right and fair will prevail, I thought, this is God we’re talking about, right?
Well there I was on Confirmation day with Ben and the rest of us, getting Confirmed for God. Remembering the endless hours of masses and events we all had to go through together, they all seemed rather pointless then with Ben standing there as well in the parish hall on a brisk Sunday morning in fall. I was wearing a lace-lined white dress with my black slip-on concert shoes, which hurt very badly due to my pre-existing blisters from the required Confirmation hike we went on two weeks prior. I was at the peak of the awkward stages of puberty at fourteen years old with my braces and straightened, yet still frizzy, blonde hair.
The whole congregation of my fellow church members came today with some added extended family members of the confirmands, as my pastor called us. We sat in the nicer portable fabric-covered chairs awaiting the ceremony. I was nervous that I would trip and fall or recite something incorrectly, I did not want to mess up the day we had waited so long for. But the service started and after thirty minutes and some godly songs we were called up with our immediate families.
We all stood on the sandy, gym-like wooden floor in front of the white and brown altar and five-foot cross hanging above it. Our families stood behind us, my proud Mom behind me, tearing up, and my Dad, also proud but a little less passionately, at her side. While my Mom is semi-religious, my Dad claims that the church will cave in if he steps foot inside. My Dad’s mom was very active in my church, many of the older members would speak of her and my Dad’s family very fondly to me. I did not know much of her devotion to God, though years after her death, some of her hand-made holiday decorations were still on display during my time at the church. My Dad said he had to go to mass each Sunday growing up, though he did not care much for it. And usually following in his Father’s footsteps, he has told me that my Grandpa coined the statement about the church collapsing with his presence.
As my pastor spoke, I kept feeling for an extra holy presence, which I didn’t quite find but also did not really expect. He’s always here regardless, I thought to myself. Well, maybe.
We each swore our oaths and we were suddenly Confirmed. All of that and it was over, great, I optimistically thought.
We finished up the ceremony and started to head out after our celebratory breakfast luncheon when my pastor gave us each a bag of gifts. One of them being a cross and another being a pocket knife with a bible quote. I loved the pocket knife but that seemed kind of weird to me - get Confirmed - receive a pocket knife. I guess I should have expected the unexpected when it came to this entire experience.
When I was home that night in my room, next to me a wooden cross with a brass Jesus hung on the wall by my Mom, I contemplated the day and everything that led up to it. I had to sit through two and a half years of Confirmation classes and Sunday services and then go on a required hiking retreat in the upstate mountains of New York, all while Ben missed out on most all of it, to gain an already pre-existing misunderstood concept of prayer and God and a pocket knife after some ritual of Confirmed faith? Something wasn’t adding up in my brain. This did not seem like what I thought religion was.
Back then, I would have never considered that God was not real, especially on my Confirmation day, but I did not see many logical reasons behind why my life was going how it was meanwhile God was supposed to take care of me. Now I knew things could have been much worse and I knew I was very lucky to have the life I did, but things have not always been sunshine and flowers for me. So I questioned, why would God make it that way? I wasn’t a bad kid . . . right?
I was taught to ask God for forgiveness for wrongdoing to prevent bad things from happening, so I asked and prayed. He was always supposed to forgive us, so why were things still going the way they were? Why did two of my grandparents get taken from me when I was a child? What did I do wrong back then? Why do people get to cheat their way out of things and still get the prize at the end like Ben? Why was my hard work and effort in attending two years of church and class rewarded with another half a year at the last minute? Why did I have to go hiking and get blisters on my feet to get confirmed and be accepted by God? Everything might be even more simpler than we all think it is, but if that is the case, then what is the purpose of it all if it’s not for God?
My religious journey was nothing I took too seriously for too long. Only for a few years in childhood was I devout, but I never thought much of it as it faded away, only remembering that I did not have the best experience getting Confirmed. I had many childish reasonings and ramblings that led to my questioning of faith. But sitting here now, open to any interpretation of life (personally favoring the one that we all just simply exist within scientific fact), I wonder how “wrong” I was at such a young age to question.
I grew up and at the age of fifteen I realized I was bisexual. It took a lot to overcome the internalized homophobia within myself to realize who I was. But once I did, I started to gain confidence within my sexuality and myself that I never had before. I am glad my church did not take a stance on it during my time there because it may have made my acceptance even harder, though I assumed most religions were against it. Realizing my sexuality solidified my questioning nature of God and (mainly) the major organized religions such as Christianity or the Protestant branches which I grew up under.
New questions began to unravel my ideas of God and such religions. If God loves all His creations, then why are people like me considered sinners to the church? Why was I born like this and then destined for a horrible life of discrimination and oppression? Why did I have to hate myself for fifteen years before somehow learning to like what God apparently hates of me?
Without my questioning of faith, I might still hate myself for who I naturally am. I didn’t know who I was then, but I’m grateful now that I questioned it all at such a young age to follow the path that I personally needed to. Maybe everything went wrong for the right reasons in the end.
Naturally, this all led to the loss of God as my answer to everything. Why we suffer, die, love, endure, exist, etc. So within that came a desire to have a reason for it all, which is a natural human reaction to life, and that is why so many people turn to religion. It is much simpler to live your life for God than to find a reason yourself, it seems.
Relying on God is a valuable tool when it comes to the hard things in life. That’s why it has been so popular for thousands of years: because life is not the kindest! Think about all of the people who worked their whole lives for minimum reward except the love and grace of God for their devotion and (hopefully) a one way ticket to heaven. Now, take away God and heaven from that equation, if that is all they focused on, what else did they have to live for?
If I did not have God to live for, then I needed another reason. Once I stopped relying on Him to guide me to my purpose and meaning, I felt lost in it all when things got difficult. But over time and through my experiences, I learned my own lessons of what life can provide and what I could try to make out of it. I saw love for my friends and family, passion for my interests and hobbies, confidence in who I was, the beauty of the world around me, and so much more. The hard parts of life became a little bit more blissful when I saw the brighter side of what I could make of my existence.
So when I began to question: why is this happening to me, to all of us? What is the purpose of my life? I realized that I am not completely sure, nobody truly knows. But over time, I discovered that maybe my life could be whatever I wanted to make of it.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful for what Professor Armour has taught me about memoirs. I had not written many memoirs before Research Writing, I was more of a fan of realistic fiction and I was used to that form of storytelling. But after reading examples and studying what distinguishes a memoir from other pieces of writing, I discovered the impact they could have. This piece specifically allowed me to process many feelings from my experiences with the church and beyond. I never truly analyzed my experiences and their effects on me until I spewed it all out on a page and wrote my memoir. Professor Armour allowed me to discover a new form of analysis within my own life through writing, and I am very grateful for it.
