WP4: Writing in my Life
In my senior year of high school, I was an avid writer. Poetry, prose, spoken word — all of it. The notes app on my phone became a safe haven, and I began to think in writing. Writing shifted the way I interacted with daily life — the sights, the feels, the relationships. Writing became a vessel for me to not only vent but interpret. Putting my thoughts into words allowed me to dive deeper into whatever I happened to be writing about. It culminated in a senior-year project at my high school, the meditation. This piece is probably the best writing I’ll ever put out, and the process of writing behind it helped me come to terms with themes in my life I never thought to previously explore.
Since senior year, I haven’t applied myself in my writing to any significant extent. Sure, I had to take WRIT150, but the class was hit with the COVID-bomb, and I had several different commitments that I distracted myself with. Even now, during this class, I held the guise of being busy (which I was, working two jobs and taking other classes) but the writing in this class reopened the real reason I stepped away from it in the first place: while extremely rewarding, it was exhausting. Constantly working through ideas about identity, racism, love, and more — it all felt extremely heavy, and I couldn’t live my life in the light-hearted, jovial way that I always did. The flip side, however, is that living with a writer’s lens helped open up the world in new ways that I still use and cherish, but I felt that it was too burdensome for me to keep in college.
This semester, writing has played a similar role in my life. I definitely didn’t live in the writing as much as I did my senior year of high school, but I returned to the place where I was trying to think critically about the larger, more complex themes in my life, to a point where it became rewarding and the (tiniest bit) exhausting. The reason I feel more solace this semester is that writing, and exploring these themes through these projects, felt much less of a burden than it used to. This is definitely partly due to me not being as invested as I used to be, but my explorations in this class felt much more rewarding than I thought they would be. The overall experience definitely transformed into what Prof. D set out for it to be for us students, an overall reflective semester that contributed to the spaces in which we were writing. In the end, these pieces opened the door for me to continue writing in the future, for myself and (potentially) other people. At the beginning of the semester, writing felt like a chore — halfway through WP1, it became a tool for me to explore ideas I would have few other ways of exploring. While I couldn’t apply myself to revise and revise as I used to, each of these pieces changed the way I see large themes in my life and contributed to the conversations I was taking part in.
Across various formats, the projects this semester helped me learn more about my own identity, and how languages like Hinglish and food play major roles in my family relationships. It all began in the first reading, where Vershawn Ashanti Young introduced the idea of preserving your own voice in your writing. With this in mind, I explored how to carry my voice in my projects, while discovering stories like mine through interviews and research. All of this helped me learn more about how these cultural and social forces helped shape the way I see the world and continue to transform it. None of this would have been possible without the writing — it forced me to sit down and wrestle with ideas that I previously left untouched. Now that these ideas have been discovered, they are platforms I can use for future thinking when sharing my stories and talking with others about similar topics in the future.
What’s more, this writing also influenced the way I live day to day, specifically when it comes to my family and food. With my family, I’ve made more effort to communicate with my parents on a deeper level than the cultural barrier that’s held us apart for so long. I now lean into what it is that they want to talk about, whether it’s work, TV, the dog, etc. I want to make sure that looking back, I knew I was able to connect with them in meaningful ways, beyond the confines of language. With this newfound approach to my family relationships, I also make an effort to hear more about the stories of others, their experiences with culture, and their family life. Each of our narratives are intimately connected, and I think can help bring us all closer together as people.
With food, I’ve sought out new restaurants, and researched more into the story behind them. My research into Mexican-Lebanese food led me to X’tiosu Kitchen, where I’ll be eating in a few days with friends. Presenting itself as a small taco-stand in East LA, X’tiosu has a rich history. Started by two Oaxacan brothers, the restaurant represents the blend of culture they grew up in when they were struggling to feed their family back home. When rising through the ranks of the food industry after crossing the border, one of the brothers had his formative culinary years in a Middle-Eastern restaurant and brought that with him when he met his brother to start X’tiosu. Now, when I look for somewhere to eat, I look for the narrative behind the food, and how that can inspire me to make something, or share a story. I have a newfound appreciation for the food my mother makes, and can’t wait to go home and learn more from her, and use it as a vessel to show and receive love.
As I continue this relationship with writing, I want to work to produce content at the level I used to be able to, in terms of the voice of my writing. I used to be very good at injecting a spoken-word Esque tongue into my pieces, probably because I used to write everything by saying it first. Looking back, this is what made my most memorable writing special, alongside the introspective reflection. Looking forward, I want to rediscover this voice, and use it to share stories that will not only speak to me but my audience as well.
