GRADE: Junior
HIGH SCHOOL: Harvest Collegiate High School
BORN: Sylhet, Bangladesh
LIVES: Bronx, NY
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: When Megan and I worked together on a flash-fiction murder story, it inspired me to be more creative in my own writing. I learned to use metaphor to tell the story of my culture, and it helped me write a College Now essay on violence against women. I’d given up on personal writing, but Girls Write Now inspired me to go deeper into my creative side and discover myself on the page. I hope to continue writing short stories that bring awareness to social issues that impact South Asians.
MEGAN WOOD
YEARS AS MENTOR: 1
OCCUPATION: Editor, TripAdvisor
BORN: Waupaca, WI
LIVES: New York, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Published in The New York Times, Refinery29, Forbes Travel Guide
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Meeting up with Sanjida to read her writing and hear about her life is usually the highlight of my week. Whether it’s a quick catch-up at Starbucks or a meandering afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I walk away from our meetings feeling inspired by the next generation of young women writers. Sanjida encourages me to look at the city and write through a different lens, and I appreciate how open she is with sharing her poetry and life with me. I can’t wait to watch Sanjida’s writing career take flight.
Dead Flowers & Forgotten Souls
SANJIDA SHEUBA
I was inspired to write these poems at random at two in the morning. I didn’t know what I was writing, but I knew exactly what I was feeling.
When you weren’t beside me I screamed out your name
My neighbors wonder who I whisper to at night in a home that is empty
In this heart that shatters over and over again
My pain is an obstacle
There are no dead souls here
There are just the pieces you left behind
The windows have become more foggy
No such thing as light in the room
I wake up most days with darkness in my eyes
And now I’ve forgotten what it’s like to breathe
There are too many dark spaces here
For the last few years I’ve only driven to escape from you
To leave you behind and never feel you again
But I guess that was not the case
The people in this town wonder where you’ve gone missing
Is there another place you call home you are searching?
But they don’t know you’ve escaped to a better place
My mind only dreams of you when loneliness seems to haunt me
I wonder where you’ve gone
Have you disappeared to escape from me
I thought it was some kind of loss that ripped me apart
When all along it was me who did all the breaking
My love, it’s only been a year or two and I can’t remember a single thing about you,
Or at least I now know of you from my past
It came at me from nowhere and destroyed the parts that have never been fixed
I wake up in the mornings
I see the ghost right beside me waiting for me to feel it again
But I don’t let it
I put these pieces of my body into more pieces
And shed many tears only up to once again in the same place
The roses here are fine without you and now there is a bit of fresh air
I plant these flowers beside me so I can stay alive
And I put the dead souls to rest so I can be the one to heal
There is no place for you to stay
There is no part of my life for you here
The Devil Sleeps with You
There is only so much pain a person can bear
and the agony of all it hurts.
On the days where my heart has drifted apart I write so I can feel as if I almost healed
There are tears shattered everywhere
My heart has drifted away from some of its emotions
to the point where any other emotion is no longer existent.
Tears just become something you’re immune to
and the feeling in your gut is something you get used to
and the days go by months go by and soon you learn to just let go
and you feel that every barrier you ever had just completely broke
and you’ve been broken and you no longer can be fixed.
Or maybe you do not know how to be fixed
As decades go by you start to wonder where all the time has spent
It’s been in places farther from the person you used to be or thought you were
For a while you woke up mornings with the smile on your face,
hoping that today you will probably be okay.
You forgot what disasters feel like,
you forgot the feeling of forgetting, enjoying you.
Forgot it all as the days swell upon you
You still wonder will anything ever be the same or will every day be on repeat
And I can feel my empty soul being buried
You wouldn’t know what it is like to feel pain
Until you felt a piece or even touched me if you please
I lay here with empty wounds and empty noises
The fear has begun all over once it turns midnight and I lay here with the sounds of pieces falling.
When I lay in these empty wounds and red marks and the scars left on my body I think of the way you make me feel.
I bet by now the devil sleeps with you at night instead of me being there to hold you
By now you must have forgotten what it once was like to breathe and soon your lungs will collapse and everything will be destructive.
Like the promises you left behind, you also left a huge piece of your shattered heart to me and now I must keep it safe.
The only danger here is you baby and there isn’t a soul left here to save you
You Can’t Sit with Us: Havana
MEGAN WOOD
Sanjida inspired me to write more creatively and boldly, a departure from my usual work of editing and writing Search Engine Optimization–friendly pieces. The following is an excerpt from a personal essay on a trip to Havana.
There I was, begging a beautiful blond hostess to fit my party of three into a walk-in seating at the hottest restaurant in town. The Kardashians had recently eaten there (with the Instagram pics to prove it) and we could hear 2017 pop hits and laughter wafting down from the rooftop bar. Servers wearing black glided past with trays of octopus carpaccio and watermelon gazpacho.
“Sorry,” the hostess said. “Our next opening is three days from now, Tuesday at lunch.” As a former restaurant inspector for Forbes Travel Guide, I was accustomed to this kind of table guarding in three-star Michelin French restaurants and coveted Manhattan spots recently reviewed by Pete Wells. I definitely wasn’t prepared for the you-can’t-sit-with-us attitude on the Communist island of Cuba.
The day before my flight to Havana, I hopped on Skype and plugged in country code +53, to make dinner reservations at three paladores (privately run restaurants) I wanted to try: Dona Eutimia for frozen mojitos, O’Reilly 304 for seafood tacos, and La Guarida for the “wow” factor. Well-traveled friends had warned me of Cuba’s serious reservation policies, a requirement in a country with food shortages and laws that limit restaurants to fifty seats. No one answered my calls.
On arrival to an industrial-chic Airbnb apartment in Old Havana, our welcoming host, Yordin, took my restaurant reservation requests seriously and promised to call on our behalf. Each day, he’d tell me with a twinge of regret, “It was impossible. No reservations left.”
Instead of my thoroughly researched and professionally vetted foodie restaurant suggestions, Yordin sent us to perfectly acceptable restaurants: La Terraza and Habana 61. Many of the more interesting gourmet items weren’t available during our visits, and the offerings st
ayed in the strictly bland lane of chicken, fish, rice, beans, and plantains. The food was fine, but mostly forgettable. We stumbled into a few restaurants out of happenstance: Casa Pina on Santa Maria Beach for lukewarm fried chicken and shredded carrot salad; shrimp skewers that were likely the cause of my “traveler’s stomach” and mojitos made with lemon-lime soda instead of muddled sugar and citrus at Café Neruda on the Malecón. One hit (that we repeated every morning throughout the trip) was Café Archángel’s strong cortadas and fluffy vegetable omelets, served alongside a sign promising, “No Reggaetón.” Perhaps Yordin was ignoring my requests and ushering us to restaurants where he knew the owners. Or maybe everything was booked. It’s not like we could sign into OpenTable and find out.
MAEVE SLON
YEARS AS MENTEE: 4
GRADE: Senior
HIGH SCHOOL: Harvest Collegiate High School
BORN: New York, NY
LIVES: New York, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Published in Harvest Tribute; Moth GrandSLAM
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: Endings are strange. It’s all I can think of now. The end, the end, the end, theend, theendtheend. This is my last year with Girls Write Now and it’s all I can write about, too. Vivian and I have been a pair for four years of bad first drafts, silly writing games, and words that roll off our tongues. And four years later, our final drafts are now polished, ready for the world. Thank you for giving me the confidence to love my writing.
VIVIAN CONAN
YEARS AS MENTOR: 7
OCCUPATION: Librarian
BORN: Brooklyn, NY
LIVES: New York, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Published in The New York Times, Lilith, Narratively
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Maeve, over the past four years, I have seen you grow from a shy girl to the confident young woman you are today, with opinions you’re not afraid to voice and talents you take pleasure in exploring. I love your curiosity about things you notice when we’re in the street, on the subway, in museums and parks. Through your eyes, I’ve come to look at the world in a fresh way. Much luck as you enter the next phase of your life: college. I will miss our weekly meetings, but we’ll definitely keep in touch. Vivian
The End
MAEVE SLON
One afternoon in fall, after talking to Vivian, I realized why I had been so anxious lately. The perfect word to describe it, given by Vivian, is “demarcation,” a line dividing me from my childhood.
when did i stop
being afraid of the dark?
suddenly! or maybe over time,
the dark did not scare me
the way that it used to.
and soon i was walking
alone to school every day
and when did independence
become so lonely,
i remember how things used to be
how normal it was to pick my nose
and cling to my brother,
it’s just how it was,
and how strange it is to laugh at it all
wasn’t that me yesterday?
or maybe it had been a while since
my dad had come to tuck me in at night
and how my brothers and i
played through the tall grass all day.
soon i will be living far from this moment,
far from home,
home now something else
when did i become so old
life used to be such a distant thought
not something that
could crawl under my nails
and squeeze my chest
and shout, “this is the end!”
Milestones
VIVIAN CONAN
One day Maeve was musing about how some before-and-after moments have a clear dividing line. Others are less distinct: you know they happened, but you’re not sure when. That got me thinking.
Some are picture clear:
The day I stop sucking my thumb,
Agree to let my father paint my nails
With bad-tasting stuff
So I can hold my head high
When I start kindergarten.
The day I earn my first money,
Dollar bills in an envelope
For after-school work
Operating the buttonhole machine
In my aunt’s pajama factory.
The day I show up for my first library job,
Say “May I help you?”
And actually find what he’s looking for.
“Thank you,” he says,
As if it’s no big deal.
Some are fuzzy,
Knowable only on look-back:
Realizing I’m no longer afraid
To mount the podium
And speak to an audience.
In fact, it gives me a thrill.
Morphing from middle-age to senior,
Selecting shoes for comfort, not style.
Feeling content
With my life
And myself.
AYANA SMITH
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Senior
HIGH SCHOOL: University Heights High School
BORN: Brooklyn, NY
LIVES: Bronx, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Published in The Grade, New York Daily News
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: When Cecily said “I love window-shopping in Walmart,” I knew that we would be a pair that can’t be beaten. Over the course of Girls Write Now, Cecily has done what other adults in my life have discouraged me from doing: writing how I speak. Through working with Cecily, I’ve gained confidence in my most authentic writing, and I’ve gained confidence in challenging people who try to strip my writing of its voice.
CECILY ROBINSON
YEARS AS MENTOR: 1
OCCUPATION: Teacher, Great Oaks Charter School
BORN: Jersey City, NJ
LIVES: Oldbridge, NJ
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Distinguished Educator Award, Outstanding Student Achievement Award; featured in The Wall Street Journal
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Thank you, Ayana, for making me a mentor. We have been able to learn and grow together, which has been the utmost pleasure. We are one and the same! Thank you to Girls Write Now for having such a phenomenal program to provide opportunity and access for girls.
The Fluidity of Language
AYANA SMITH
For a society where we are taught that everything is black and white and that the standard conventions of English are the only correct way to express ourselves, perhaps language can be organic.
Language: the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured or conventional way.
This is the definition of language I was taught to follow in school from pre-K to twelfth grade. In the eyes of my teacher, or at least the eyes of the curriculum, our sentences were to remain simple: Keep the sentences concise, short, and sweet; keep the message as concrete as possible. There was never room for creativity or ambiguity. Do so in a fashion that didn’t compact more than a simple sentence’s worth of information in a single sentence, periods and commas preferred, while all other punctuation was snipped from the paper.
I mastered this language, and for a while, I was a firm believer in enforcing the standard conventions of English onto everyone. I would rain down on my peers when they misplaced commas and spellcheck my teachers throughout the lesson.
Although I had only ever gotten the occasional eye roll, I never truly faced the repercussions of my incessant grammar policing until one of my middle school peers stopped me and said: “Yo, Ayana,” one of my peers said, “you talk White.”
For those who do not know, this is bigotry. Maybe not bigotry verbatim because the way I speak is not an opinion; however, the implications of the statements perpetuate an opinion held by members in my community (and surely communities beyond the South Bronx). White Americans speak one way, and Black Americans speak another way.
And f
rom then on, I had a new identity attached to me. It came with a slew of names. Smarty-pants. Know-it-all. Dictionary. And it came with a myriad of false equivalencies. Because Ayana speaks like that she must be a nerd and too smart for us. Because Ayana speaks like that she must be stuck up. Because Ayana speaks like that she must want to be White. Feeling isolated within my own community, I looked outward. If I speak White, why not speak to White people? However, when the voice I had cultivated through listening to my mom and aunties’ kitchen banter and from running around the park with the other neighborhood kids bore into conversations with White Americans, I was always given this look of bewilderment. I would pronounce “ask” as “ax,” say “be” instead of “are,” and overemphasize my vowels when expressing excitement and outrage. No longer was I Ayana-the-know-it-all-who-talks-White.
This caused me to rethink the way I saw language. Perhaps language is something fluid and malleable; perhaps pronunciation is the result of our history. The way we speak is never something to be ashamed of, nor should it be something divisive.
In life, I have always felt that most White Americans do not understand my language, Ebonics, where singular verbs are seldom used and a soft “uh” sound replaces phonetics like “ay” and “ah.” Ebonics, a proverbial that’s inextricable from my skin color and features—typically various shades of brown skin ribbed by wide bridged and flat noses, thick lips, and small ears. Ebonics, a language that perpetuates the poverty we live in: Academia is written in terms that only the educated may understand, anything watered down and translated runs the risk of succumbing to political propaganda to push an agenda; and who would be willing to hire someone who sounds like they are flailing in the high tides of the million rules of standard conventions of American English?
And in life, I have always felt that most Black Americans do not understand that I do not speak or write like this because I wish to bathe my skin in baths of bleach. Rather, I enjoy it. Expanding my vocabulary to create tasteful sentences that normalize uncanny phonetics and words. Making my peers flip through dictionaries and snidely remark that I must “read thesauruses all day.” What I don’t enjoy is language being used as a barrier set in place by notions passed off as community imperatives—“Talking like that is talking White”—which serves only to alienate members who have tongues that orchestrate new and different sounds. I will always be unapologetically Black:
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