As I’ve mentioned before, I like to write.

I took advanced English classes during High School, as well as a creative writing class. Although I plan on majoring in Creative Writing while attending Western Washington University, I enjoy other hobbies as well.

I love art; drawing, taking pictures, and making videos. During the summer of 2017, I even bought myself a Nikon D3300 to continue these hobbies. This page is a collection of some of the stuff I’ve made. Enjoy!

Photos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing

2/7/19

Making of the Gendered Order

 

De La Fuentes’ main point was that the Europeans oppressed practices like marriage and baptism into the culture of Havana slaves. Resist, I’m sure they did, however there was a desire to belong. This allowed an ideology among Europeans that these communities were subordinate and followers of white people. The Europeans put laws in place with the intention of limiting slaves. Although De La Fuentes points out that because of their misconception, Europeans found it easy to target these laws at blacks rather than slaves, “thus erasing differences between the two and highlighting the primacy of race over freedom as a marker of status.” This was the racial order; a structure surrounded by racial “inferiority” to maintain itself through not only the whites but even the oppressed. With eventually no jurisdiction, freed or slave, the social construction of black dehumanization was made the basis of this society.

The history of gender inequality follows a similar system here in the United States. Our country was founded one nation, under God. The nationalism of America prioritized religion. We were expected to practice androcentric beliefs with laws set in place limiting women in the name of God. The signature of a married (white) woman held no legal power and was referred to as “civil death.” The separation of church and state was enforced within the First Amendment, stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”Yet, women were still not able to vote until the 19th Amendment, more than 100 years later. These laws confused religious order and what we considered the natural state of society. This I imagine, is what De La Fuentes would call a “gendered order” where our culture found itself structurally sound on misogyny.

 

 

3/12/18

Margin Doodles

 

1st Grade

You drew your mom a picture with those ugly, fat markers you turn out to hate. You drew her stick figure body smiling next to your stick figure dad, making sure to draw him with the brown marker instead of the pink. You might have drawn yourself in the picture as well, maybe holding both of their hands, but you can’t recall because the picture really wasn’t about you. This was a gift for your mom, the only gift you know how to give. She was a lonely military wife who sacrificed the sheek look of the black fridge to hang up your marker-bled-picture with a tacky fruit magnet.

3rd Grade

Your mom signed you up for a daycare you pretend to hate. Julie, the daycarer, tells you how to do it. She tells you exactly how to sit the white paper along the 3D printed image, grab the dulled out crayon you’ve been burning through your previous attempts, and run it smoothly over the paper until the edged image is copied onto the page. But you can’t, you just can’t do it and that hurts. She mistakes your frustration with a temper tantrum or some sort of offense on her but its not, its not about you. You and Julie both decide you shouldn’t touch that crayon for the rest of the day.

Middle School

You hate team projects. You were the excluded, the silent, the person you wished was in charge of more than just the decorator for the poster. “Draw a pair of eyes, make them bloodshot” she said as she wrote “Marijuana Kills” across the top of the tagboard with those ugly, fat markers. You noticed it was about her. That this was her poster, but I guess you didn’t mind. Her name was Peyton and she was pretty. You looked at her too much as the the two of you held up a marker-bled and incredibly inaccurate drug poster with doodles in the margins.

Present

Your drawings now consist of three a.m. faces that all belong to a slim-tip sharpie you stole from your art teacher. He loved you, but you loved that sharpie. “It’s the only one that doesn’t bleed” you told yourself. You also told yourself you’d draw him something in return. You forgot. Instead, you hide your drawings in a sketchbook that nobody will see, in a room nobody else will visit. But art is meant to be seen, and you hold onto the hope that maybe one day, you will be too.

 

 

 

 

2/22/18

Jace

 

You, as my little brother, were very little. Being three years younger and yet three feet shorter, you crouched a little ways ahead of me and rummaged between the cracks of our patio. Both of our bare feet burned on the pavement so I began shifting my weight onto either foot, but you, you picked up a broken shard of glass.

“Mom please, look at what he found” I said, thumbing the anxiety in my palm. She sat unbothered and bathing in the sun. You stood silent, white-knuckling the object until you didn’t want to stand anymore. I ran as fast as my chubby legs could carry me with you still close behind.

“Stop! What did I do?” I yelled over my shoulder, trying to slow down. I turned just in time to see you shrug. Your silence felt heavy but the summer still hummed and we were both squinting through heat. That round face of yours looked down then, because you noticed the shard in your grip now tinted red.

“Come on” I said, reaching out for your hands, “let’s go inside before you get infected.” You gave into my tug, following me through our front yard and onto the gravel entrance. Once we had stopped to kick off the pebbles from our heels, you finally said “I’m sorry.” Neither one of us expected that.

With a quick twist of the door knob, never looking back, I said “I know.”

 

 

10/2/16

What is Wisdom?

 

In my childhood bedroom, the window sat on the right wall, facing the foot of my bed. I woke up to sunlight. The window looked like a picture. The sun sat low, with many clouds up above it. A sun beam was painted along the curled curtains and purple walls. When I walked downstairs, the small house was very awake. There was the pretty woman, with a tall stature and wavy brown hair. She was in the kitchen, cooking something the boy nearby was eager for. I didn’t want it, there was a new box of cereal waiting for me. I asked the pretty woman nicely. But I upset her, and she said no. She said she’d be done with it soon, to go play outside and come back in when my appetite wanted it.

The front door opened to a white-painted deck with a lawn. It was decent and had multiple trees. On the right, the tree’s branches curved against each other and reflected a hazy red off of their leaves. All of the branches made seats, perfect for someone petite. I climbed upon one of them and sat there. Many folk were out, including my neighbor. She was the same age but mean. Her yelling at me from the curb, interrupted my gaze. She asked to play and agreed to stay around the sidewalk. I went inside to change. My outfit was summer themed with flip-flops. We sat on the curb talking and marking the ground with chalk. Somewhere in the conversation, we bickered about being faster than each other. Daring me to a race, I said yes. We proudly marked the starting line and waited for the count. I bolted on three, and I took the lead. The finish line was the lamp-post near her house, but I never reached it. Instead, the front of my flip-flop caught a wide crack in the pavement. Scraped knees and palms, with a bite mark on my tongue from contact. I looked down at a blood covered toe. I sat there tasting copper and crying. I was so close, it frustrated me. I yelled whatever word my mouth could make and tried punching the ground. My knuckles vibrated as my neighbor walked me back to my house.

The pretty woman disinfected my toe while letting me tell her how unfair it was, how I would’ve won. She didn’t seem concerned though, she smiled. She left the room and came back with a recognizable plate of food. She finished up my toe and returned my foot to me. I sat, eating. It was better than cereal. The pretty woman told me not to hate the crack. How someone in the past probably hurt it just as I was. I wanted to argue but I didn’t have anything in mind. She responded to the silence by telling me how I was being a kid and it was just being a crack in the pavement. I let the sun go to waste and stayed inside. I returned to the window and purple walls. There weren’t any sun beams on the curtains anymore. The window was still a pretty picture but the clouds were shaped differently than before. They looked pink. Looking down I saw the crack I had never noticed before today. It looked sad and very small from here. I stared for a while, letting my head rest on the window frame. Standing up, I walked downstairs into the bathroom. I grabbed my stool. I reached for the disinfectant and hid it under my shirt. I grabbed neon green duct tape sitting in the tool cubby and ran out of our front door. The sharp smell filled my nose as the entire bottle splattered the sad crack. I knelt on the wet concrete. The skin of my knees were still raw and healing around the stubborn pebbles. I began to tape crooked pieces of tape along the concrete’s wound. From then on, the window was an even prettier picture.

 

 

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