Generation F

by Molly MacDermot

  NNEKA ULU

  YEARS AS MENTEE: 1

  GRADE: Senior

  HIGH SCHOOL: Queens Gateway to Health Sciences Secondary School

  BORN: Columbus, OH

  LIVES: Queens, NY

  MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: I arrive, fashionably late, to meet Jasmine at the Whitney Museum for one of our adventures. While the exhibits were stunning, what I treasured the most from that day was our conversation. I shared the details of my first love interest, she relayed the mixed feelings that came with moving into a new apartment, and we both ruminated over the lack of (at least) six-foot-tall men in our lives. By talking to someone who is eerily similar to me, I better understand the aspects of writing that transfer seamlessly across generations and the aspects that are tinged by the times.

  JASMINE STEIN

  YEARS AS MENTOR: 1

  OCCUPATION: Senior Creative Strategist, The New York Times

  BORN: Novi, MI

  LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

  PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: The New York Times; Entropy Mag; NoiseMedium

  MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Both Nneka and I write what we know. Regardless of genre, we write about the cities we have lived in, the people we know, the people we love, and the conversations we have overheard. I think the most rewarding part of our writing relationship is that we use our work to pull back layers of ourselves and open up to each other. No subject is taboo, and writing is the way to get at the things we are both scared of and hopeful for.

  A Contemplation of Love

  NNEKA ULU

  As part of a generation of blacksmiths that bend and shape the concept of love into various (sometimes twisted) forms, I look to my mother for advice. I understand the importance of looking at untouched metal, for it is impossible to shape any metal without first appreciating its untampered state.

  Looking at the women in my life, I ponder their experiences constantly. They have all juggled the term “love” on their lips, yet none have convinced me of its sweet taste. In fact, none have recalled it as having been sweet. To them, love was not a euphoric feeling but a term that was either thrown around casually or banned from their vocabulary with such celerity that it made even Voldemort jealous. Love was not a pleasure but a means of survival.

  My mother was twenty-three when she first met my father. They met in a hospital in Trinidad when my father delivered the news that her only remaining family member had passed. Her tears fell violently. They fell not only for her dead brother but for herself. She was now alone. Captivated by my mother’s beauty, my father vowed to take care of her. After years of dating, they got married and moved to America.

  At first glance their story seems like that of a fairy tale. A damsel? Check. Distress? Check. A knight in shining armor? More like a suave nerd with a heart of gold and good money, but check. I grew up believing that their story was romance to its finest degree, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to question.

  When my mother talks of my father, she praises him for being an amazing provider as well as being generous to a fault. Even after the divorce, they would still laugh and talk to each other. They would buy each other birthday gifts and exchange kind words. They have one of the nicest damn divorces I have ever heard of, yet something struck me as peculiar. My mother had never talked about loving my father. In fact, she had never even referred to him as attractive. She would speak of him with warmth and reverence but never love. Has she ever stated that she loved him? Yes. Numerous times. But to me, it appeared as though the sweetness of her love tasted more like water.

  To dive more in depth, I will break down the nature of their relationship. My mother grew up in destitution softened by her beauty and piety. She had fair skin and long curly hair, and attended every Sunday Mass. She was the jewel of her small town and was treated with adoration despite her status. My mother had been shrouded in God’s blessings and she knew it. On the other hand, my father grew up in a privileged family and held one of the more elite family names in the village. He was trained from youth to become a doctor and had the support of a hardworking father and diligent mother. He grew up the prince of the slums, enjoying a privileged life yet still scorned nonetheless. He was not the most attractive, nor the tallest, but he was blessed with a big brain and a big heart. God granted him success.

  My mother said “I do” because my father was a doctor and could support her. My father said “I do” because my mother was beautiful and could guarantee him beautiful children. Both “loved” each other for their potential to the other. Is that wrong? One would swiftly admonish this behavior and call it a disrespect to “real” marriages. One would shake their head and say that they are making a mockery of love. I was one of these opinionated individuals.

  I vowed I would marry for love, but as I grew, love appeared to me as cotton candy. It was something that was flashy and bright. It was something that was sweeter than nectar. It was something that disappeared as suddenly as it was created. When sweetness leaves too quickly, it leaves bitterness behind. I was bitter. I was bitter because I knew I was too young to be bitter.

  I currently view love with a curiosity and zeal rendered when seeing an oddity of nature. Love is sweet, bitter, sour, and savory. These flavors add to its depth. Each flavor seasoned with a particular experience. Love is not limited to one person, and it can transcend into other forms. Love is a concept I have witnessed and experienced to some degree. However, numerous forms of love remain misunderstood in my eyes. I am studying love as if I were stargazing on a cloudless night. Love is still under my contemplation, and it may remain there for quite some time.

  Red

  JASMINE STEIN

  “Red” is about grief and loss and coming out of that grief through partnership and love. It was inspired by a prompt to write a piece about color.

  The sand was burning underneath the feet of Miranda and Lile. The red dirt flowed in between the cuts of their toes and they were unable to tell if they were in water or on land. They had traveled as far east as they could afford to, and they had intended to reach the end of the world. When they found it they just sat and watched the sunset. The sun looked like it was on fire. “But it always does,” Miranda told Lile. “No matter where you are, the sun goes down slow at first and then all at once.”

  It wasn’t the distant sun that lit up the sky and was fading down to leave them in utter darkness that confused them, but the hot coals of the earth below them that was shocking. “Have you ever felt sand this hot?” Miranda asked Lile. “Never in my life have I ever questioned the very stability of the ground we are sitting on as much as I do now,” she told him. “I fear it might fall beneath us at any moment.”

  Red was the color of their skin. It was the color of their home they had left behind, and the color of the plane they flew east on. It was the color of the red-bean ice cream they ate on movie nights, and the color of the light that flickered on Bowery from the fading bulb that kept them up at night. And it was the color of the truck Noah played with the night he died, and now it was the color of the sand they were burning on.

  LILY WALKER

  YEARS AS MENTEE: 1

  GRADE: Senior

  HIGH SCHOOL: Lower East Side Preparatory High School

  BORN: New Orleans, LA

  LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

  MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: I have always loved reading magical realism, but when I began to write short stories I realized that I was more comfortable with realistic fiction. Although I have a diverse background, I tended to write about the same types of stories I saw on TV, which were repetitive and whitewashed. Amira’s help has shown me how to create stories that are more magical and unique than I ever thought possible. Her knowledge of science in writing has been an incredible resource for my newfound love of writing science fiction, and exploring our mutual interest in magical realism has been a blast.

  AMIRA PIERCE

  YEARS AS MENTOR: 1

  OCCUPATION: Language Lecturer, Expository Writing Program, New York Uni
versity

  BORN: Beirut, Lebanon

  LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

  MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: For years, I have said I wanted to explore young adult fiction but given priority to “more important” genres. Then I met Lily and loved seeing her light up as she told me about her current favorite series, The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. Soon, I found myself at The Strand, exploring the YA section for the first time ever, and taking a few titles home, including Meyer’s Cinder. That book—and everything else that has come with getting to know Lily—has opened up new possibilities for making meaning in my writing life, my teaching life, and my life life.

  Fake (an excerpt)

  LILY WALKER

  This is an excerpt of a short story I have been working on called “Fake.” The piece takes place in a tech-oriented parallel universe and questions the authenticity of relationships and society’s interpretation of mental illness.

  I’d met him on a Sunday.

  And at my favorite coffee shop, no less.

  I spent all day at that café, nestled in a corner and scribbling tirelessly in a leather-bound journal. Perhaps for most, spending a lazy Sunday in a quiet café would be charming. Almost picturesque. But I felt the day’s labor like a horizon carrying the weight of the sun at twilight, and the four lattes that I had consumed did nothing to calm my fervor.

  Scratch. Erase. Tear. Scratch. Scrawl. Tear. Rip. Scratch.

  By noon I was hyperventilating. For a brief moment I looked up, away, above the dancing letters on my page, and caught the barista giving me a curious look. Then, a smile. Bright white and alluring, a sharp contrast from the yellowish pages I wrote on. The pages.

  Scratch. Erase. Tear. Scratch. Scrawl. Tear. Rip. Scratch.

  By three in the afternoon my eyes were glazed over, and I was not sure if it was from the sickeningly banal task of writing for so many hours or if it stemmed from my genuine hysteria. I figured it was the latter, because soon I felt the tears fall. Tears.

  Tear. Scratch. Scrawl. Tear. Rip. Scratch. Scratch. Erase.

  By six I was a robot. I did not need to see myself to know what I looked like. Deadened eyes. Glossy hair tied back and slipping out of its ponytail. Freckles. Tanned skin. Deadened eyes. Flushed cheeks. Glistening brow. It was hot. Hotter than it had been when I got to the coffee shop that morning. I looked over to the barista again and briefly registered that there was a different person in the place of the man with the glowing smile. A woman this time. I watched her pour milk into a mug through the stuffy air. It was hot.

  Scratch. Erase. Tear. Scratch. Scrawl—

  “Hey.”

  I startled. An unfamiliar man was sitting in front of me. Perfect posture. Crooked glasses.

  “Hey,” he said again. “I noticed you were writing something.”

  I stared at him. Of course he noticed that I was writing something. It was obvious. Mainly because I was writing something. “Yes.”

  “What are you working on?”

  I said nothing. If I said something, I would crack like a porcelain doll. I would obliterate into dust. I would freeze so intensely that—

  “Are you okay?” The man looked concerned now, whereas before he seemed almost . . . hopeful?

  I looked at him then. I really did. He was something straight out of an ad campaign. His skin was olive-toned and smoother than mine. His hair was sandy and coiffed. His lips formed a perfect bow and pout. It took everything in me not to cringe at his irreproachable figure. He could have been eighteen or twenty-eight.

  “What do you mean by ‘okay’?” I finally responded. I closed my journal for good measure, in case his eyes drifted to the words. The words.

  Scratch. Erase—

  “I mean,” he said, cutting me off from . . . what? I was so delirious that I could not remember if I had actually started writing again or if I only thought I was. “I mean, I approached you because I thought we were the same. But now that I see you, I wonder . . .”

  “The same?” I questioned.

  “The same,” the man confirmed. “I saw it when I first walked in. Our eyes. They’re the same. They’re the eyes of our people.”

  Deadened eyes.

  His explanation was strange. I rapidly deduced two possibilities: The first was that he was in some type of cult that sucked the souls out of its members until they looked like vacant-eyed sex dolls. The second was that he was hitting on me. Either way, the man was bizarre and timeless and, though he was beautiful, something about him was unnatural. I feared if I kept speaking with him my parents would next see my face on the side of a milk carton.

  So I didn’t. I continued writing. It didn’t take me long to realize that the man was still sitting there, with his impeccably straight back and steady gaze and horn-rimmed glasses. When I glanced up at him beneath my lashes, he didn’t seem bothered at all that I had ignored him. He quickly caught my eye before I could look away.

  “It’s the Super Bowl today.”

  “It is?”

  “That’s why there’s so many people here. This place turns into a bar after six.”

  “I know that,” I said irritably. This was my turf. My favorite coffee shop. I had just spent ten hours in this caffeinated death trap and this man had the nerve to tell me that it turned into a bar at six? As though I had not already included that in my plans for the day. As if I would have forgotten that crucial detail.

  He recoiled. “Sorry. I just wanted to let you know. Because, um. You seem like you’re still using this place as a café.” He gestured toward my coffee.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m dying in here.”

  “I know.”

  Maybe we were the same after all.

  New Year, New Orleans (an excerpt from “The Other Guy Won”)

  AMIRA PIERCE

  This is an excerpt from my essay “The Other Guy Won.” Though based on events from my ordinary life, I want it to read like an adventure tale, its anxious female narrator finding power in a world she is compelled to build from an amalgam of fragments—past and future, personal and political, fantastic and real.

  On the very last morning of 2016, Sam and I took our first flight together, from Brooklyn to New Orleans. That night, we ate oysters on Bourbon Street at a place called Desire, then walked hand in hand through the Seventh Ward to hear music at a club that had just opened on an otherwise dismal stretch of houses and vacant lots. It was called Po’ Boys and the headlining act was two women in ghost-lace dresses who played violins and crooned folk songs. A drummer coated in tattoos and piercings inserted fragments of skull-thumping noise between their haunting feminine harmonies.

  At midnight everyone moved outside to set off fireworks in the parking lot. I was afraid to light the Roman candle a new friend offered me but stood behind Sam as his flew with a whizzz and a popp and lots of smoke and light. It was 2017!

  We kissed deeply, absorbed in the happy crowd of old and young bodies and haircuts and clothes and shining eyes, buzzing brains that pretended a fake future, professed a love of nature amid the chaos of the city, long limbs that told how fucked-up and beautiful we could be at once.

  We were both innocent and grimy; it had rained that night and, as we would learn in the week that followed, New Orleans seems to have a way, even in winter, of always coating you in its weather.

  For seven days, as we wandered that haunted, pulsing, breathing city, our new president-elect was absent from the conversations we had with each other and all the kind and crazy people we met. For seven nights and mornings, we rested in an old house that sighed with the changing weather. Our New Orleans bed felt like a magic carpet, like Sam and I were floating, swimming, gathering strength for the year ahead. I stared up at the ceiling fan and talked about Beirut and my family there, and Sam talked about wanting to go to Tehran to see his family, as he never had. I imagined we would go to those faraway places together, but I never said it. The fan whirred and groaned.

>   New Orleans was like a rainbow-colored shooting star that fizzled into the grayness of winter. Brooklyn that January felt dead like a cemetery, gray like a tombstone.

  SHANAI WILLIAMS

  YEARS AS MENTEE: 2

  GRADE: Junior

  HIGH SCHOOL: NYC iSchool

  BORN: New York, NY

  LIVES: Bronx, NY

  MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: This may be my second year with Girls Write Now but it was my first year with Julia as my mentor. From the day I met her at the Girls Write Now office she has been a bundle of inspiration, support, and excitement. I have learned so much with her. Whether during our tours through exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Poets House, and the New York Public Library at Bryant Park; or our conversations that start off simple and end up dripping with ideas. I swear, if our ideas alone could make books we would need to build a library to house them.

  JULIA CARPENTER

  YEARS AS MENTOR: 1

  OCCUPATION: Writer, CNNMoney

  BORN: Atlanta, GA

  LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

  PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: 2018 Awesome Without Borders grantee; 2018 Shorty Award winner

  MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: This is my first year working with Girls Write Now, and I am so happy to have met Shanai. She inspires me so much—in how much she literally does (school! playwriting! so many extracurriculars!), but, more important, in how much she creates. She sends me poems constantly. She writes them at night, after school, on the weekends, whenever she is moved to jot something down in her Notes app. Her dedication to following her inspiration encourages me, in turn, to listen to my own. I am hoping in the coming year we continue trading work, sharing whenever it comes to us.