12 Lives in 14 Tweets

A collective self-portrait of ENGL 143N

In the first class session of the creative nonfiction workshop I’m teaching this fall at Cal, I asked each student to try encapsulating their lives or sense of self in 140 characters or less— in a tweet, that is. The idea behind the exercise was to encourage the students to think of how they might sketch themselves, quickly, as a character, with the understanding that they might be both boxed in and liberated by the absurd constraint on the length of their self-portrait. I added two tweets of my own to the mix. Here’s what the exercise produced.

A badly-written bildungsroman, feat. broken-glass music, sweltering chapparal, & an agnostic, awkwardly curious Bible-baby.

I dream of founding the first chapter of Passive-Aggressives Anonymous, but I’m too passive.

Up to no good in the hills of north Berkeley, following the deer past the fog and Japanese maple, grandfather’s camera in tow.

Former boba shop girl, prefers most things less sweet. Studying writing from the fishbowl of her Berkeley co-op.

Ever-anxiously succeeding, failing, reinventing, mind expanding, leaning in, searching, an introvert at center stage, hopeful and hopeless.

Not sure how I ended up here, but hoping to get a good story out of it.

Hobby gardener, cries at the poetry of perfect tomatoes — tangled roots beneath

Just another brown girl who always carries hot sauce, a good playlist, & la Virgen de Guadalupe wherever she goes

I am Mexicana, the pink color of guava, the melancholic violin in mariachi, the taste of cool cucumber and lime, I am chingona.

I am running late, but I will be there.

Following the north star out of the plastic desert, exchanging beach for bay, I am not alone. Among these books and trees, I feel known.

Lifelong nebbish has a kid, a boy. Ten years later, he’s a weekend rage-aholic, yelling at Little League umps over balls & strikes.

Just like all the other lit girls, biding my time till that Didion documentary comes out.

I was too ugly for LA and too broke for NYC. If Cancers think the world revolves around them, then why did I have to make the trip home?

(Many thanks to Brian Herrera for suggesting the idea of ‘A Well-Tweeted Life’ as a class exercise.)