I have this vivid memory of getting annoyed during my twelfth grade AP Literature class as my partner, who was providing me feedback on my essay on Othello, told me, “this isn’t how Ms. Vazquez told us to structure our essays.” I was not annoyed at her at all, but as I tried responding in the least condescending of ways, I realized that I wanted to write but not why.
I am from the Southside of Chicago, born to two immigrant parents from different parts of the world. My mother is from Poland and my father is from Mexico, so when I tell you that my English was absolutely terrible as a kid, I truly mean it. I said words in a weird Latin and Eastern European accent despite not knowing either Spanish or Polish because broken English was how my parents were able to communicate with each other. And outside the home, the promotion of writing in a poor and underserved neighborhood and school was out of the question. To say the least, the environment in which I grew up was not conducive to the promotion of any sort of writing. In fact, if I was to tell the kids I grew up with that I wanted to be a writer, you can bet that I would have been bombarded with all sorts of insults, and so I never considered nor was pushed to pursue writing or any other creative art form. No, my days as a kid were filled with getting in trouble with the other neighborhood children.
I like to consider myself a pretty ambitious person. Going into eighth grade, I knew that I would not get out of the Southside if I went to the local high school, so I decided to apply to high schools outside of my neighborhood. I was able to do that, but I quickly became very dissatisfied with my school and the rest of the schooling system. I went to a charter school meant to serve predominantly minority students helping them achieve their dreams of attending college, though they would fail to tell us that less than a third of their students actually graduated college. The thing about my school was that conformity was the key to success in their eyes. From the very beginning during orientation, they made everyone line up without saying a word, facing the back of the head of the person in front of them, lest we get detention before school even starts. Naturally, I did get detention during orientation to be served the first Friday of the first week of school. It wasn’t for talking out of turn or even stepping out of life. I got detention because as they were going down the line to make sure the uniform was as they desired it to be I had a brown-colored belt rather than the black they demanded. I promptly bought that black dress belt after orientation.
Can you imagine the effects of being placed in a high-stress environment with serious consequences for mild transgressions has on the mind of a fourteen-year-old? We quickly adopted their policies without much pushback or else we would get another detention for merely wanting to explain ourselves. This effect started infiltrating every aspect of my life even in my homework assignments from Math, to history, and to my writing.
In the spirit of George Orwell, I tell you all this because in order to understand my motives for writing, you need to understand my early development, and during my senior year in that AP Literature class, I knew that I wanted to write, despite never being encouraged to. I wanted to be creative because it was a rejection of the conformity I had to face during my most formative years. Rather than being an obnoxious asshole in class, I wanted to write to express myself because in the back of my mind I thought it would’ve allowed me to protest the strict system in some sort of passive way. And in that moment I knew that I had some characteristics of a writer, and while I wasn’t able to describe it then, I am glad to recognize it now. I was vain and lazy. Vain to think that my writing was better because it was structured differently compared to the other students, and lazy because I think that I really wanted her to tell me my essay was fine so I could go back to doing the homework for the following class I did not do. While I was lazy and vain, I was also rebellious. Rebellious because I wanted attention from my peers and teachers. I wanted to be noticed as a student who is capable of great things without crutches. That just because I was from the Southside of Chicago didn't mean I was unable to write thoughtful creative pieces outside the box the school set for us. My why would not become actualized until my Junior year of University.
At the beginning of my Junior year, I took a creative nonfiction class in which I discovered my desire to write. It was very unexpected, as I only took the class because it seemed like an interesting break from my typical history classes. In this class, I wrote an immersive affliction essay in which I describe the abuse I was put through growing up on the Southside, by my parents, and by my extended family, and I realized that after completing it that I felt good as if a big weight was lifted off my shoulders. It felt good to finally explain how I felt whenever my mom tried to kill herself in front of my brothers and I. It felt good to finally explain how I felt when my dad left the family and my mom made me take public transportation in my cap and gown for graduation. It felt good to explain the amount of fear I feel whenever walking down my neighborhood streets filled with gangbangers and gunshots. Even right now, just writing this allows a sense of relief. A relief that allows me to not bottle up trauma until I just explode but get some sort of cathartic release that provides me with self-clarity and understanding.
I knew right after finishing that essay that I wanted more. I wanted to write more to delve deeper into who I am based on the things that I’ve gone through, not just the bad but also the good, and I wanted to go beyond just writing in a journal about what I was feeling. When I did write in a journal about my feelings, it wasn’t enough. I was missing validation for my feelings. I wanted recognition.
Comments