From an early age I remember feeling trapped between identities. As an only child I was constantly torn between two very different parents, asked to take sides in arguments or choose a certain tradition to uphold over another. As a grandchild I was awkwardly stuck in the middle, my cousins being either twelve years older or nine years younger than me. As a half Puerto Rican woman, I was “othered” because I didn’t fit in with one side of my family or another -- I was either too white or not quite white enough. I felt as though no one could ever understand what I was going through, and that nobody really wanted to hear my opinion. Even more than that, I was thoroughly confused about who I was. What did I believe? Where did I fit in?
As a writer, I have always been fascinated with identities, especially those that shape you in ways that you were never even aware of. From birth we are bombarded with messages of what society deems as the “norm,” and the behaviors and attitudes that are acceptable. As a cis-gendered woman, I was taught from an early age to wear dresses and be interested in fashion, told that I shouldn’t play rough sports like football, and told that I wasn’t going to be as good as the boys at math and that I should “try extra hard.” Even though I was never aware of these messages growing up, I have come to understand how my expectations and perceptions of gender have been skewed by the outside influences that I received. This journey to understanding both my identities and cycles of socialization began the first time I picked up my pencil and began exploring what different characteristics all work together to create my unique self as an individual and as a writer.
Growing up in a small, homogenous town in Michigan, there really wasn’t much room to branch out and reflect on the different social identities which shaped the way that I saw life. I had grown up knowing the same people my entire academic career and knew that the vast majority of my friends and family fell in the same categories: White, Christian, Middle Class, and Conservative. Attempting to share my experiences was painful -- debates often ended with me fighting a losing battle as the only student in the room who held certain beliefs. One of the only outlets that allowed me to say whatever I wanted was writing. My journals are filled with memories that I didn’t want to forget, and many questions I could not answer at the time. My sense of being stuck in the middle in these moments is all too apparent.
My first English class in college allowed me the creative outlet I craved while discovering who I was. Instead of the standard five paragraph essay, my professors encouraged me to play with form and to have my writing flow in a more organic structure. I was also given the ability to write about any topic I wanted -- something I was not used to. Having this freedom sparked my interest in making sense of my different identities, and what they meant to me. My first assignment in English 125 was a personal narrative, where we were asked to write about an experience that we had and connect this to a broader implication. In essence this assignment blended the art of storytelling with the idea of having a purpose -- something that an audience could relate to. I chose to write about a vacation to visit my father’s Puerto Rican family in Pennsylvania, a trip that was especially salient to me because it brought up a lot of questions of belonging and culture that I had continued to grapple with over many years. When beginning to write I had no idea where to go. I began to write my narrative as if it was taking place, from my anxieties on the car ride there, to being embarrassed at my lack of being able to speak Spanish, to my emotional breakdown in my abuela’s dusty garage. The scenes came easily, but the reflection proved to be much tougher. As I outlined my experiences, I realized that I was also outlining the beliefs I had been socialized to accept: that I could only be one race, or a part of one family, or even that I had to choose sides. After many drafts, my moment of resolution became clear:
“Looking up, I saw twelve other tan faces smiling back at me, and felt immensely proud to be a part of my Puerto Rican family. It didn’t matter that I didn’t look exactly like my cousins; I realized they still loved me because I was a part of their family. Our blood bonds are much stronger than my white skin.”
Looking back on this essay, I realize that this was my first experience taking steps to reflect on who I am and how the world sees me as a person. Instead of feeling as though I was always caught in the middle of my two races, my personal narrative allowed me to see that I hold many identities which influence my interactions in different spaces and situations -- the key is to recognize how these parts of myself manifest in my daily life and experiences. Before engaging with this genre of writing I was very much unaware of what my actual beliefs were, and tried to go along with the status quo of others around me. Being creative demonstrated to me that writing is not just a tool to persuade others, but an approach I can use to understanding myself.
Upon entering the Minor in Writing, I had just declared my English major and found that the classes which most interested me strongly focused on topics surrounding social justice -- classes which focused on the writings of individuals from many different backgrounds and experiences and their reflections on their interactions with the world. Continuing my interest in writing to understand myself, I enrolled in English 325: The Art of the Essay to fulfil an upper-level writing requirement. The class was fascinating -- our professor used pieces written by writers of all different races, genders, and ability statuses to model for us the diversity of experience and reflection when thinking about our own writing. I specifically remember one essay about a giant named Leonid Stadnik, which brought tears to my eyes as I was reading it under a tree, on a sticky July day outside of my apartment. The complexity and tact which the author, Michael Paterniti, displayed was an inspiration for me to use writing and understand the ways which one person is layered -- and how often competing or contrasting identities create and shape our communication with others.
In particular, my writing in English 315 developed a new focus as we received our longest assignment, a portrait essay. The prompt? Written across the board was the following assignment:
Pick an object, person, or place. Write until you embody its essence.
Despite having experience with personal narratives and other creative non-fiction works, the prompt was daunting. While it was easy to reflect on a moment in my life which impacted me, the thought of investigating something I wasn’t as familiar with was difficult to begin. When brainstorming I kept going back to Leonid Stadnik’s story, and really wanted to dig into the deeper structures which were touched on throughout the piece. I began to just start writing about things that interested me, and discovered that I harbored some negative feelings towards my hometown -- Oxford, Michigan, the former gravel pit capital of the world, and a place I never wanted to return to. However, I marveled that I still had pride in the people who lived there -- eighteen years of life and loss has created a connection that is difficult to cut ties with. From my ruminations, my essay “Welcome to the Gravel Capital of the World,” was created as a contextualization of my experiences and outside reflections.
During this process, I realized how my creative writing began to intersect with the mechanics that were often discussed in my writing classes -- I was forced to contextualize and analyze my personal narrative:
“It may be confusing, but these pits are home -- they’re a part of our small, largely unknown town that those who live there won’t forget. Their cavernous lakes and dusty roads seem inviting gestures, hoping to lure us into their gates and keep us there forever. And so they might, since it’s so hard to resist the memories and hopes that the gravel pits have inspired over all these years.”
Writing from a place in between both pride and shame, my work surprised me in how engaging it was to peel back many different sides of an issue and truly exemplify its “essence,” its story. I grew from this push to view topics from alternative angles, and to contextualize my experiences in terms of negotiating myself at different stages of my life. It was the first time in the minor that I began to fully understand the different spheres of influence and structure that writing can reach.
As I continued with the minor, I grew more comfortable exploring my identities and experimenting with new styles and thoughts. However, paralleling my growth as a social justice advocate, I felt as though I had come to a standstill -- while writing about myself was cathartic and interesting, a part of me desired more. I wanted to speak to many people, to inspire and to motivate others to share their stories and begin to reflect on and contextualize their identities as well. What I really wanted was to create something that took action.
Tired of just teetering in the middle between writer and advocate, I was able to combine the two in my work during the Gateway to the Minor in Writing. During this course, our largest assignment involved the remediation of a former piece of writing into a new medium and for a new audience. I chose to work with my English 125 essay of experiences with my race, and was energized to use this piece as a vehicle for social change. My final project, entitled “Recognizing Race,” was a video presentation I created, modeling the lesson plan for a hypothetical freshman seminar called UC 100, which discussed different social identities each week. This assignment challenged me to think critically about how to engage with a different type of audience than I was used to as an English major, and about the role of education as a motivation to understand how we interact with the world:
“As new students at the University of Michigan, you are guaranteed to come into contact with individuals from a variety of backgrounds and experiences different from your own. The goal of UC 100 is to prepare you for these experiences in an increasingly multicultural society. This semester we will be discussing the influences and interactions of multiple social identities as they relate to campus climate and cultural significance.”
My writing grew immensely throughout this assignment because it was a new style of persuasion and reflection that I had never done before. I was able to put my words and experiences into action, in a medium that could reach many others and that would not have been possible without the reflection and contextualization that I had processed throughout my other classes at Michigan. No longer was I stuck in a stage of exploration, but catapulted into a world geared towards writing with a larger goal in mind: looking towards the future. Our writing can do so much to influence and shape society, and it takes all sorts of people and writers to contribute to a world working towards understanding ourselves and others.
Navigating my identities as a writer and a minor in writing has continued to challenge me in the ways I think about writing and think about myself. This has been evident to me in exploring my evolution as a writer parallel to my growth as a social justice ally. Just like social justice is a process, so is my writing. I’ve had to grow comfortable in my identities to understand who I am, explore the ways these parts of me interact with my past experiences and the world, and ultimately have just begun to use this growth as an internal motivator to be a change agent in our society. I don’t want to sit by and passively focus on myself as a writer, but use these clarities to make our world a more inclusive and accepting place for people of all identities and backgrounds. It’s these voices -- the ones that are continually marginalized by society -- that are so important to understanding ourselves and others. I feel as though I am reaching a place where I believe the same for my writing; a place where I continue to grow and evolve as not only someone who enjoys stringing sentences together, but as someone who wants to use writing to break out of the middle and carve out a place for the words of all people.
This realization is one I continue to explore each day -- and this journey is far from over.
Finding My Essence
