Generation F

by Molly MacDermot

  “We can have that world,” she said. “But not by going to the past. We make it by going forward.”

  ANGELY MOREL

  YEARS AS MENTEE: 1

  GRADE: Sophomore

  HIGH SCHOOL: Manhattan Village Academy

  BORN: New York, NY

  LIVES: New York, NY

  PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: Honorable Mention

  MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: My mentor and I went to a book launch, which left me completely amazed. I learned a lot about being empowering and standing up for what I believe in. There were people from all ages and generations, but it was like everyone was thinking the same thing. It taught me to be proud of who I am—a Latina, a teenager, and a woman—and it motivated me to work hard and prove that I can do anything.

  KATE JACOBS

  YEARS AS MENTOR: 6

  OCCUPATION: Senior Editor, Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group

  BORN: Grand Rapids, MI

  LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

  MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Even though we are from different generations, Angely and I are a lot alike. Through our weekly meetings and our writing together, we are constantly learning about things we have in common. (Even our birthdays are only two days apart!) The biggest thing is that we both have sisters, and we’ve both experienced how the relationship with our sisters changes over time. The only difference is, mine has been going on longer.

  An Everlasting Bond

  ANGELY MOREL

  Me and my sister’s relationship changed when she went to college, but it didn’t change in an entirely bad way. This experience helped me mature and opened my eyes to how to cherish the moments when they happen.

  My relationship with my sister changed when she left for college.

  Before, we were really close, like a piece of gum, we stuck to each other. We had a sister connection that always drew us together like we were in sync. Whenever we got hungry, we knew we had to make a snack, go to the living room, and watch something together. Or when it was Friday and the house was quiet, we would put music on and start dancing to Anthony Santos, no questions asked. And whenever our mom screamed at us, my sister would defend us.

  When my sister left for Princeton she said everything would be the same and she would call me every day.

  That didn’t happen.

  Ivy Leagues are no joke.

  Now we talk only sometimes because either she is studying or I am—it seems like it’s just never the right time. We’re always out of sync. When she comes home from school on breaks there is no dancing and watching movies all the time like before. She’s always worrying about all the things she needs to get done before returning to school.

  My mom doesn’t scream at her anymore because my mom puts her on a pedestal—the daughter who got into a fancy college on a full-ride scholarship. And when I get screamed at I have to deal with it myself.

  Living and sleeping in the same room for years made us inseparable, and not having that anymore has made us drift apart. But I still get excited and always count down the days till she comes home because even if we don’t talk every day, she is my best friend. She still knows me in a way that no one else ever will. And I treasure the memories I do have with her. But things aren’t like they were before.

  I Could Never Love Anyone as I Love My Sisters

  KATE JACOBS

  My relationship with my sisters has had so many ups and downs over the years—this piece is about a time when it was at its best, and how that memory sustains me even when our relationship is more difficult.

  My relationship with my sisters changed when they started high school. As kids, we had always fought, and as twins they had frequently ganged up on me. But when I was a senior in high school and they became freshmen, something flipped. We went to a large high school and a lot of the kids at our new school had a lot of money. It was a pretty overwhelming change, and I wanted to protect them from feeling insignificant, I think. And they looked to me for advice about how to navigate this alien place. Also, having twin sisters was novel, unique, and a little cool! I was proud of them, not embarrassed by them for the first time ever. I went to their basketball games, they came to my plays. We sang Destiny’s Child songs on the radio together while putting on makeup in our bathroom. I drove them around with the car windows down and a breeze in our hair, our laughter carried away on the wind. We pigged out on sour gummy bears together, cried about the movie Titanic together, and made life hell for our parents together.

  When I left for college, I made them picture frames with our picture and a quote from the 1996 Little Women movie: “I could never love anyone as I love my sisters.”

  It’s been twenty years since I gave them that quote. And since then we’ve laughed and cried and fought. And we’ve loved—friends, husbands, babies. But that quote is still true—no matter how many others I love, I’ll never love anyone else the same way I love my sisters.

  AMINA MORGAN

  YEARS AS MENTEE: 1

  GRADE: Junior

  HIGH SCHOOL: The Institute for Collaborative Education

  BORN: New York, NY

  LIVES: New York, NY

  MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: Lauren and I have been meeting in one of the flashier cafés in our neighborhood, which coincides with the idea of how much where I live is constantly changing. We couldn’t have met here a few years ago, since this place didn’t exist back then. I was recently in Nepal and I noticed their streets were lined with the type of family-owned businesses my neighborhood used to have. And although I sometimes miss those smaller shops, I also enjoy the change that gives color to what I write with Lauren and the stories I tell my friends and family.

  LAUREN SPENCER

  YEARS AS MENTOR: 1

  OCCUPATION: Assistant Managing Editor, Woman’s Day magazine

  BORN: Pasadena, CA

  LIVES: New York, NY

  PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: NYU School of Professional Studies Teaching Excellence Award

  MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Writing with Amina has been so fun because not only have we tackled things that both of us were nervous about (I’m looking at you, poetry), but also because once we get rolling talking about women in the world today and our power, I feel energized. Our weekly get-togethers are filled with the good fun of exploring new topics and also appreciating that by living only blocks away from each other we have some of the same view out the window, but I always look forward to hearing how she sees it differently—or the same—as I do.

  It All Started With . . .

  AMINA MORGAN

  I have noticed the rapid changes occurring in my neighborhood and how the new generation of people have impacted the flow of the surroundings. The little things I used to not notice are now all I see.

  I remember going to Twin Donut five years ago, soon after I’d moved to my neighborhood: Washington Heights. It was right at the entrance to the subway station, and my favorite thing to order there was their oatmeal, avena, which I’d take on the train with me to school. It was served in a to-go coffee cup and the consistency was more something you drank than ate with a spoon. It was well spiced and comforting and reminded me of when I was young. Whenever I walked in the door, the people who worked there were always friendly and smiled. Then one day a “Closing Soon” sign appeared, and soon after, the place was empty and blue wooden panels sprang up around it. Next a “Boston Market” sign popped up. At first I was excited because their food had always been a treat when I lived in New Rochelle, but when the Boston Market finally opened it wasn’t as special as I remembered. That’s when I realized how much I’d taken Twin Donut for granted.

  This isn’t the first time that a business has closed down because of how the neighborhood’s demographic changed. It makes me wonder what came first: the real estate agents driving the change or the new people moving in? By making the neighborhood more “desirable” (and who makes that call?), do the business owners become less involved in knowing who lives t
here? It makes me wonder if you can have a personal connection only if it’s a small family-run business. There used to be a lovely older couple who owned a florist shop on the corner of 158th and Broadway. The windows were always filled with lush plants, lots of living things. They didn’t care much about keeping it neat and were good at what they did. Now there’s a GNC (General Nutrition Centers) in its place. Where there used to be natural light, it’s now artificially bright, and flower food is replaced by whey and protein.

  Don’t get me wrong, through it all I still love my neighborhood. When I walk out the front door of my building, I feel bittersweet curiosity as to what will come next. When the places I love close, I get a little nervous because change is good . . . in moderation. It’s hard to know when a neighborhood might lose its identity. You can get to know a neighborhood by its people; however, it’s up to the community to keep its values in sight.

  Two Sides to Every Story

  LAUREN SPENCER

  Amina’s observations about the neighborhood we share made me think about the nature of finding oneself through our own perspective from one generation to the next. She and I share a neighborhood, but with a few blocks and a couple of well-placed decades in between.

  The first time off the A train at 190th Street in my new neighborhood gave me a sense of up and down. For one, I’d never realized Manhattan had so many hills—I was used to the flat, gridded plains below 125th Street—and rolling down a steep incline to my apartment made me realize how city developers had left this bit alone. I was also experiencing the vertigo of being out of a decade-long marriage and realizing that glorious freedom could mix with hard loss. My new building also reflected a tale of two worlds. On the west side was a sheer stone cliff topped by Fort Tryon Park, where a now-fancy restaurant sat. I couldn’t actually afford to go to that restaurant, but it made me happy to know it was there.

  When I exited the building out the east side, I was on Broadway, where salsa music vibrated the pavement. There was a health-food store that had been there, according to the lady behind the counter, for two decades. There was a tax place next to a bodega where a card table sat and men played dominoes. I was home. Not because I knew anything about dominoes, but because I felt community. No one knew me, but everyone still smiled. For the years I lived in that apartment, I grew to understand how to live in different sides of a situation, whether it was outside my window or inside my heart. I could get dressed up and climb the hill for a pricey dinner or slip on my flip-flops and cross Broadway for a batida; could plan my future as solo or make a date with a new possibility.

  Recently I took a walk up in my old neighborhood, having moved a bit south a few years ago. A beer bar had replaced the tax place. The bodega was boarded and a sign teased a new restaurant coming soon. But the health-food store was still there and a card table of domino players was outside. A lot had happened in the seven years since I’d lived there but the core remained the same and I realized how the stories that form us are available in the streets we walk through every day.

  AMINA MUKHTAR

  YEARS AS MENTEE: 1

  GRADE: Junior

  HIGH SCHOOL: Benjamin N. Cardozo High School

  BORN: Lahore, Pakistan

  LIVES: Queens, NY

  PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: Gold Key

  MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: I find that I don’t tend to give as much time to writing as I would like to, and being in Girls Write Now has given me time to write more regularly, especially in genres I haven’t explored yet—namely, writing fiction and poetry have been new for me. I’m looking forward to more genres that are outside of my areas, especially magical realism. My mentorship with Leah has fostered into a friendship and we talk about a number of topics other than writing, including my friendship problems and school worries.

  LEAH ANDERST

  YEARS AS MENTOR: 1

  OCCUPATION: Assistant Professor of English, Queensborough Community College, CUNY

  BORN: Fargo, ND

  LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

  PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Basic Writing Journal; Stanford University Grant Recipient

  MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Amina and I have had a great time meeting and talking about writing and attending Girls Write Now workshops, but we’ve also had a lot of fun doing extracurricular stuff such as going out to dinner and seeing a movie together (Black Panther!). I really enjoy the connection we have and the relationship we’ve built so far over the year.

  Untitled (Cheating Man)

  AMINA MUKHTAR

  This in-progress piece represents me branching out to a genre I haven’t explored. It’s unorthodox for a teenage girl to write about, but I wanted to get into the mind of a cheater.

  My unsteady hand sent the salt shaker to the ground, thousands of salt particles sprawled over the polished, mahogany wood floors.

  “Jesus,” I muttered, stooping down to pick up the salt particles from the floor in disguised shame.

  “Wow, honey, you can’t keep a hold on anything . . .” my wife, Ruby, spitefully commented. Ruby and her snide comments are like a relentless BB gun, they don’t hurt if you hit someone with its bullets one at a time, but all those little hits accumulate to an everlasting pain.

  “Thanks for your encouraging comments, they’re duly noted.”

  “Smartass, why don’t you just get a sweeper and sweep up the salt, it’s not like we’re going to eat that now.”

  “You know what, Ruby, just let me do what I’m doing.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  As I proceeded to pick up every salt particle off the floor like a fool, I thought back to how I’d gotten in this situation—my job lost, the only emotional connection I’ve made in a long time turned out to be a complete sham, and my wife has no clue about what I’m going through.

  I heard her before I saw her. Her laugh permeated the bleak office, through the dismal environment built by the forever unsatisfied employees. She walked with an air of vigor that was foreign to us. She caught the attention of me and those around me—not because she was beautiful or anything, but because she was the first new employee that the company hired in over a year. Working in a small company, you don’t see many different faces, and, working in an accounting company, you don’t see many lively faces. Everyone who was working already had their life sucked out of their soul. Coupled with that, we worked in the heart of New York—Syracuse. Or at least that’s what people who live in Syracuse call their city to make them feel better about their mediocre existence. Not to shit on Syracuse, but there are definitely more exciting places to live in New York.

  Anyways, cut back to the new employee; she was being shown around the office as I was filing taxes. I tried to catch her eye several times, to get her to acknowledge my existence, but she was too busy trying to stay interested in what our manager was telling her. Though it was obvious that her thoughts were drifting away from her conversation, our manager was quite blasé to the same blank, expressionless look people get when talking to him. Though he is one of the sincerest guys in the office (and the one who gets you fired), he isn’t the most enthralling.

  Frustrated that she wasn’t returning any of my hopeful glances, I decided to “get some water” and conveniently bump into them. As I started to get up, my palms grew sweaty and I unexpectedly started to second-guess my decision. What if I sneeze on her and inflict my snot on her? What if I touch her boob by accident and she thinks I’m a pervert? What if I trip on something and tumble into her, sending her flying across the room? What if I actually do get the chance to introduce myself but my breath smells like rotting garbage puked in it and she never wants to talk to me again?

  Grabbing a mint and cautiously making my way toward her, I began to realize how laughable I sound. She’s just a young woman who is new to our office and wants to be acquainted to her workplace—no need to be intimidated. Besides, I have a wife whom I’ve wholeheartedly tolerated for the past fifteen (or is it sixteen?) years.

/>   I’ve made that joke to her once and she found it hilarious, which she finds everything to be. She’s never been one to get easily offended and approaches life with a very coolheaded attitude—something that I’ve always loved about her.

  That night I lay in bed, battling desperately with my mind to stop racing with images of her. Ever since I talked to her this morning, my mind keeps on drifting off to thoughts of her—how her mellifluous voice perfectly complemented her generous eyes, how everything she said seemed to be from a place of intellect and importance, how she managed to keep you entertained the entire time she talked, your eyes never wandering somewhere else . . . God, I’m doing it again. It’s not like I fell in love with her, but she was a refreshing change from my dreary life, one embedded in routine and restrictions. You can’t do this and you shouldn’t do that is all I am told. Wasn’t it Plato or Locke who philosophized the concept of free will; well, where’s mine?

  Flash Non/Fiction/@FlashNarratives

  LEAH ANDERST

  I don’t normally write narratives or fiction, but I was inspired to try when Amina began working on a short story. These are some of the flash narratives I’ve posted on Twitter.

  At church with her Catholic friend, staying behind during Communion, Kim wondered whether that wafer came from Jesus’s thigh or breast.

  Unrolling the crisp bills in his pocket, Sean tried to contain his excitement. His broken pinky finger notwithstanding, his first day driving for Rex had gone well.

  She did her best work around 11:30 a.m., after she’d finished two cups of coffee and had a proper bowel movement.

  Bill lately spent his weekends wandering the aisles at grocery stores and home-goods stores. He had very little room for new things in his studio apartment, but his day as a contestant on @PriceIsRight was fast approaching.