There was once a young woman named Zlata hailing from a far away land. A land that was neither real nor unreal. This land of origin was a blissful safe haven, and was all that she knew—she knew nothing of …
When West Africans resettle in the United States, Europe, or elsewhere, the tension disappears and they take on one identity, as Guinean, in a new foreign land. I am interested in exploring the factors that suddenly leads to unity and eventually the formation of a community in the foreign land but doesn’t seem to happen in their own home country.
Sometimes I look at my computer screen, at all of the words that I’ve written and all of those that have yet to show themselves to me, and I have the sense to think that I’m looking into a cracked mirror that I don’t quite comprehend.
"I have felt within Venezuela throughout my entire life while spending all of my twenty outside of it. In an attempt to finally understand what happened to the beautiful country in my mother’s stories, I begin to ask questions and start memorizing her recipes."
In conjunction with the release of "Fire in the Lake," the third annual volume of creative writing from NYU's Prison Education Program, the editors answer questions from NYU Gallatin students.
"On balconies, in silence, my mind swaying with the music, / I’m thinking where does the ocean end and the sky begin? I’m thinking / when does the morning bus leave? I’m thinking how much for one more drink?"
Some point down the line, an awareness manifested that I was not a part of the American ideal, or rather, that something bigger believed that I was not a part of the American ideal.
Through writing and political activism, Ding questioned the ways in which China's State and Party demanded that she flatten her ideologies and personhood to fit cleanly within a single, legible identity: the model socialist woman.
Like an apartment, a box is private, personal, sensitive; it stores its content within walls, behind an address. As a package, it has only the functions of identity, security, and portability. As long as it arrives at the right place, without internal damage, it has completed its task. It will not be integrated into its recipient’s life.