My Published Work

Here's a list of my written work that has been published online!

***click to read***

on Lulu.com

Inner and Outer Worlds: Creativity, Mental Health, and Activism

on Pollinate.Co

Puppetry: Exploring Representation Through Abstraction

on Blog.CampusClipper.Com

How Creativity Can Be A Part of Your Life

The Creative Mind in a Chaotic World: Balancing Mental Health, Art, and Political Involvement

Soothing Creative Spaces in the City

Desi Galli's Garden Fresh Culinary Experience

The Crossroads of Creativity and Activism: A List of Fully Expressed Politically Active Artists

A List of Student Savings on NYC Cultural Treasure Troves

on HoneySuckleMag.Com

Utopia and the "Gentle Fantasy of Now" in "So Pretty"

Sustainable Oral Care: An Interview with Terra&Co.'s Azra Hajdarevic

The Undeterred Spirit of Frida Kahlo

LUmkA: Cortney Connolly’s Surreal, Satirical and Multidisciplinary Brainchild

On The Uncertain Future of Education

A Review of OutSet: The Young Filmmakers Project

Queer Voices, Queer Stories: An Interview With Pier Kids' Director Elegance Bratton

Proposal for a 2020 U.S. Constitutional Amendment: Defund the Police and Abolish Private Prisons

A Review of Groundbreaking Artistic Media

a piece about my mother...

She is distant to me, she is close to me. She is foreign yet familiar. She is an enigma, she holds the world in her hands, my world, and her world, the rules changed for us halfway through living in it.

In theory and in practice she loves me more than food and sleep and has gone without both for my sake. In theory and in practice she has uprooted homes, displaced paternity, and stared into the jaws of institutions for my sake.

I have always tried writing of her but have always fallen short. Even the theoretical cannot contain or touch her essence, her godness. To this day she hasn’t read much of what I’ve written. But she knows I write. She supports me yet she gives me privacy.

She carries the wind on her shoulders, to fly and to breathe (life) with. She steps on the clouds each day after opening her eyes. She carries a beauty, which she selflessly portioned out from her infinite supply--allowing some to make up myself and my sister. She contains light and lightning in her toes, in her eyes are multitudes of realities, understandings, visions, and choices.

In her breath is wisdom, vitality, grace, deity. Her lungs are power and flowering soundwaves. Her skin blankets all who encounter it, her hands are ready and willing to serve and be served.

Has anyone looked at her like this? Like a lover. It’s what she deserves.

For so long I’ve done my best to acknowledge her and to honor her as a mother. She has a few who honor her as a sister, a companion, a friend. Then there are those who honor her as a mentor, a teacher, a guiding light, a standard, a beacon. But I know that soon there will come someone to hold her the way that I long to be held.

I know then that we will walk out the process of being loved at the same time. We will have to learn surrender and trust together yet separately.

She has not been able to go before me in this way.

Step by step by step, we walk. The three of us: my mother, my sister, and me.

Who will receive us? Who will accept our womanhood in all three of its dynamic, billowing, undulating-like-waves-crashing stages?

...

Creative Writing Class: "Foreigner"

There are different implications of being a black foreigner, just as there are implications of being a black citizen. Traveling While Black is a handbook, a necessary guide. There are different implications of being a spec of color among white than there are for being a spec of white among color. White is money. Money is belonging. All else is other. Black people are othered at home. Just as they are more readily othered abroad. I don’t know if I can ever feel like a carefree backpacker, traveling with my European skin and hair, making me feel invincible. Don’t have enough money? That’s alright, your status elevates you. You are the emblem of beauty, of power, of success. The world assimilates itself to your highlights, your eye color, your languages so you can feel at home anywhere. There is a pocket, a space for you everywhere. Like Bong Joon Ho said, we all live in the same country--which is capitalism. We all live in the same country--it has the counties sexism, patriarchy, racism, colorism, misogyny, classism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia. These are the counties that we exist in everywhere. At home and abroad. So there is no rest, no home for the other. Only a foreignness--one that is not trendy. One that is confusing, displacing, anxiety-inducing, neurosis-spawning, internal-crises-creating. An identity of discomfort. Of pretending not to be watched while all eyes stare at you. While others draw nearer or retreat further to inspect or to shun. Subaltern. Unspeakable. Impossible association on the basis of appearance. Now some of us can handle it better than others. Some of us can pass through a crowd with a song and dance riveting enough to make those of The Similitude lenient. Some of us have convincing code-switches and a masala mestiza of genes. But we all carry our true passports in our hearts and there comes a time--sooner or later--when the papers are demanded of us. Where are you from, really from? Why do you or don’t you speak or behave the way I am used to someone of your appearance speaking or behaving? Why are you here? The summation of their queries. Why are you here and not in your own corner of the world? Your own home that our gentrification has passed over and allowed to persist, malignant, benign. Why would you venture outside of the confines of my understanding of you? A constant alienation. But for others, the chosen, privileged, historically dominant groups. To them the world says: Welcome. Please enjoy your stay. You are welcome here.

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something I drafted with a creative writing prompt in mind