Creating remixed poetry was a really interesting and creatively challenging experience for me, as I’m much more comfortable in prose and I had to figure out how best to make the medium work for me and the creative ways I wanted to go about expressing the narrative I was trying to tease out of the […]

Introduction  My grandmother was born in Bari, Italy in October of 1929. She was 20 years old when she left for the United States of America, later giving birth to six children––the youngest of them being my mother. At family dinners, our large crew would gather at two tables (unable to fit on just one) to shove down focaccia bread, manicotti, and biscottis, alongside our after-dinner […]

In M NourbeSe Philip’s ZONG!, Philip depicts the Zong Massacre using language from a selective bank: the language surrounding Gregson v. Gilbert, a law case which brought attention to the mistreatment of slaves. Much like Philip, I sought to create a poem inspired by another archival document. For this project, I will be using two archival documents, […]

Introduction I grew up in the heart of Saratoga County in upstate New York. While an incredibly historic location, almost all of the surrounding towns are unrecognizable to anyone not from the area, which is why I usually have to turn to naming landmarks to get any semblance of an affirmative nod from others (the […]

I’ve spent my whole life moving from country to country every few years and after a while, they all began to blend together with the exception of a select few. Japan was one of those special chapters that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Every cultural aspect from the cuisine to […]

Why don’t we hear more about the female abolitionists? If I had to guess, many people in this country wouldn’t be able to name very many beyond a select few like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, and the result is the influence females had on the movement is likely marginalized in the minds of many. […]

Introduction Everyone’s family history is made up of a mix of family decisions as well as economic incentives. For example, the people that one’s parents and grandparents decide to marry change the trajectory of the entire family. Economic changes also affect the trajectory greatly. From choosing one’s profession to choosing what country would be best […]

Introduction For this project, I used a document that talks about Aleppo, Syria in the early nineteenth century, particularly the the Syrian textile industry. The specific reason why I chose this document specifically is discussed in the “Archival Search” section of this blog post, but the main reason why I focused on this document is […]

A Little History I have been going to the same beach and same beach house every summer of my life, as it has been cemented like a family tradition. My mother and her sister and friends went to the same beach since the 70s-80s, and I will likely continue to go with my extended family […]

My entire family is from Bulgaria. Even me, though I was just two months old when my parents moved to the United States. We visit every year for just a couple of weeks, which is not really enough time for me to feel attached to Bulgaria as a place, but I’m keenly aware that it […]