WRIT Large (Vol. 10)

WRITL ARGE

2021

© UNIVERSITY OF DENVER WRITING PROGRAM

WRIT Large is published by the University Writing Program at the University of Denver

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the University Writing Program at the University of Denver.

www.du.edu/writing writing@du.edu 303.871.7448 2150 E. Evans Ave., Denver, CO 80208

Contents 3 AN INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME 10 David Riche 5

FROM HERE AND FROM THERE

Naomi Perez

9 WOODSTOCK WEST EXHIBIT Aaliyah Jones 14

AN OPEN LETTER

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UNFIXED: A n I nvestigation

34

MY DOGS OF WAR

Noire Lin

of

Morgan Martin

H uman I ntelligence

Paul Swindler (in memoriam)

Commemoration by April Chapman-Ludwig 37

SEVEN BILLION SHADES OF HUMAN

45

IMMIGRANT DETENTION AND AN INTERCULTURAL FUTURE:

Sameha Haque

The E xample

Sam Colvett

of

Casa

de

Paz

50

Call for Submissions

51

Acknowledgments & Credits

WRIT L ARGE 2021

V O L . 10

An Introduction to Volume 10 When I first arrived at the University of Denver in August 2016 and set about settling into my new workspace, I happened to pass by a shelf of magazines outside my new office. At least, I thought they were just magazines. But upon closer inspection, I discovered to my delight that they were so much more. Each issue, featuring the title WRIT Large on a vibrant cover, introduced me to exceptional writing by DU undergraduates in a wide range of genres: memoirs, ethnographies, research arguments, and even contemplative essays (to name just a few).

I quickly collected a copy of every issue I could find, starting with the inaugural one from 2012. I spent several hours at home that night reading about topics that reflect the interests and investments of our community, spanning from the ANWR controversy to the Calvin and Hobbes comic series to the political meanings of hair.

Since that time, WRIT Large has changed me. Not only have I joined the editorial board, but I have also incorporated these exceptional pieces of undergraduate writing into my teaching. Whether we are discussing an essay about drag culture or Walsenburg, Colorado, I now encourage my students to see themselves in the texts that they are reading. To see themselves as writers whose work will resonate with their peers, their professors, their families, and their communities.

If this is your first time reading WRIT Large, I implore you to spend some time with this writing. To spend some time with these writers. You will not be disappointed.

You may even inspired to write something incredible. And if you do, don’t be afraid to share it.

— Dr. David Riche

Teaching Assistant Professor University Writing Program

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Perez leading a student protest she organized in 2019

From Here and From There

by

Naomi Perez WRIT 1133: Writing & Research | Professor Kamila Kinyon

WHEN I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD, I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND the concept of death. I could not imagine that the end of one person’s life could trigger a series of events that would upend my entire existence, shaping the person I would become. But one night in 2009, it happened.

I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was the only home I’d ever known. My family lived there, and so did my friends. Life in Albuquerque wasn’t perfect, but it was happy. As a second grader, my most pressing worries concerned when the next Hannah Montana episode would air. I spent most days with my extended family when my mom was at work. After her shift ended late in the evening, she’d pick me up and take me home. She worked hard to support us. On weekends, we would go to Chuck E. Cheese to make up for all the time we’d missed during the week. I was happy with our life together.

We got the news that my grandfather passed away late one evening. He lived in Madera, a city in Chihuahua, Mexico, where my mom grew up. We packed our bags and set out on a journey to cross a border I never knew existed. In those first days in Mexico, I thought I was starting to understand loss, as I said goodbye to my beloved grandfather. Then, my mother broke the news: hers was a one-way trip. She could not return to Albuquerque. I had a choice, go home alone or stay in Mexico.

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The cycle of loss would hit me every August. The week before school started was the hardest.

While my American friends were excited for new classes and picking out school supplies, I spent the week crying, wishing my mom and I never had to say goodbye. I was torn between two places—here and there.

How do you tell an eight-year-old girl used to playing with her cousins, singing with her aunts, and cooking with her grandmother in New Mexico that she may never see them again? How do you tell an eight-year-old that if she wants her old life back, she must leave her mother behind? How do you tell an eight-year-old her government does not want people like her mom in the country?

My mother explained that she had committed an immigration offense by having me in the U.S. She was hoping for a pardon, but there were no guarantees. It was an impossible choice. We knew the opportunities I would have in the U.S. were far greater than those in Mexico—a country overrun with corruption and forced poverty. But a life apart from each other didn’t seem like a life at all. So, I stayed in Mexico, hoping my mom would receive the pardon and get her visa. But she didn’t. And the education I was receiving in Mexico was not adequate. I longed for my old life and the opportunities in America, but I didn’t want to leave my mom.

After four long years of waiting, I decided to return to Albuquerque without my mom. The humid air felt heavier than usual that day. I avoided her, thinking it would make saying goodbye easier. It didn’t. Cheeks wet with tears, I got on a bus not knowing when I would see my mother again. It could be months, maybe longer.

Back in Albuquerque, I went to live with my aunt. From the day I was born, she had been like a second mother. Now, she was my “legal guardian.” Even though she became my guardian so I could enroll in school, it felt like a betrayal. I had a mother; she was in Mexico. But, I pushed through the feelings. I hoped the pain would be worth it. I excelled in school and began working towards my dream of attending the University of Denver. I also found community and empowerment as an activist for immigrant rights. It was a way to focus my 6

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energy on a cause and share my lived experiences.

But I still missed my mom. I called her as often as I could. Sometimes my school days were so busy, we wouldn’t even get to say goodnight. I spent the school months in Albuquerque and summers in Mexico with my mother. By the time I was 13, I was traversing the U.S-Mexico border by myself.

Summers were like the Chuck E. Cheese visits of my childhood. We had to make up for lost time!

But the cycle of loss would hit me every August.

The week before school started was the hardest.

While my American friends were excited for new classes and picking out school supplies, I spent the week crying, wishing my mom and I never had to say goodbye.

I was torn between two places—here and there.

I missed my mom so much. I even became a big sister while living apart from my mother, a bittersweet and painful occasion. My family in the United States understood my pain and were my biggest supporters. My grandmother and aunts lived in Albuquerque, and I saw them every day.

They reminded me the power of family—keeping me laughing, keeping me company, and keeping me sane.

However, I saw firsthand the pain the U.S. immigration system inflicts on families. I also knew that being an American citizen was a huge advantage, and my mother had sacrificed too much for me to waste that opportunity. Both for me and my mom, I needed to achieve my dreams, to make sure the sacrifices my family and I were making were worth it. In a way, I felt that if I was successful, it would erase the pain we endured. There was nothing I wanted more than to make my mother proud.

So, I began working on my college path. We couldn’t afford tuition, and I didn’t want to saddle my family with debt. In my sophomore year, I earned my first scholarship, worth $16,000. I called my mom when I found out. There was hesitation on the line. She was choked up, trying to tell me how proud she was, and how our sacrifices were finally paying off. Not long after I won the scholarship, my mother called with news of her own.

She had been pardoned by the U.S. government, and after years of trying, she was able to get her visa. She would finally be able to come and see her family again! Every year since I had left, she had traveled to the border to ask for her visa; and

Perez the day she committed to DU as a Davis New Mexico Scholar (left). Perez with her mother and aunt at her high school robing ceremony (right).

every time, she had been denied. Until one year, a nice immigration officer offered to file a letter of forgiveness on her behalf. The letter stated that, yes, she did something illegal by having a child in the United States, but she was sorry and didn’t know it was illegal since she was only 17 at the time. According to the immigration officer, it was a long shot. It worked! I’ve met many immigration officers in my life—some good, some not-so-good.

Although I have not yet met the man who helped my mom, I’ll never stop being thankful for what he did.

These experiences with family separation led me to become a youth activist and organizer. I became self-aware of my status and wanted to see change.

Working with these organizations, I learned about the process of family separation. In 2019, I even took a trip to Amarillo, Texas, to see children who had been recently separated from their families during migration. Every moment I spent learning about the unfairness and injustices of the immigration system led me to want change, and I knew I would need an education to do it.

My role as a youth advocate opened many doors. As a first-generation Mexican-American, going to college is a big deal. Getting into college and persisting means I am beating the odds. This

inspired me and prepared me for the road ahead.

On November 8th, 2018, my mother arrived home to find me crying. When she asked why, I simply replied “I got it.” She knew exactly what I meant. I had been named a Davis New Mexico Scholar and was awarded a full-ride scholarship to the college of my choice. My mom embraced me and we both cried together. We had done it.

I would be the first person in my family to attend a four-year university. I would be able to attend my dream school on a full-ride scholarship and not worry about the financial burden it would cause my family. It also meant that every sacrifice I made had finally paid off.

It has been 8 years since I came back to the United States without my mom. The journey has been hard, but I know it was worth it in the end.

At DU, I’m double majoring in Communication Studies and Spanish with a double minor in critical racial & ethnic studies and writing practice. I have made Dean’s list four quarters in a row and hope to graduate with honors. Each fall, my mom and my aunt drive me to Denver and help me move into my dorm. Although the goodbyes are still not easy, we know what it means for me to be here. The sacrifices my family and I made have all started paying off, and I cannot wait to see where I will end up.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image provided by author

Naomi Perez is currently a second-year student at the University of Denver and is a firstgeneration college student. Naomi started her academic journey at DU in 2019 as a proud Davis New Mexico Scholar, as well as a New Mexico Simon Scholar, and hopes to graduate in 2023. She is majoring in Communication Studies and Spanish as well as minoring in Writing Practices and Critical Racial & Ethnic Studies. Naomi is originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has been an activist and organizer since she was 15 years old and hopes to pursue a career with nonprofit organizations after her graduation from DU.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR I have always been a fan of writing. I always seem to have better control over my written words rather than my spoken ones. When the Covid-19 pandemic started, I was taking writing 1133 as one of my classes. Everything was closed, and my main priority was to stay home and keep my family safe. I also had to start working full time while attending online school since I became my family’s only source of income. The love I have for my family motivates me daily, and it was most prominent during times of struggle. It seemed as if the only way to keep myself sane was to focus on my academics and pour my soul into my writing, and what better way to cope than writing about the people who mean the most to me.

One of my major assignments for Writing 1133 was an autoethnography, which is a form of self-reflection that required me to explore my personal experiences. My story is something I will always be proud of. I was brought up by an incredible mother who taught me that no matter what happened, I should keep fighting for my dreams. Sadly, the thing that happened required me to live apart from her. However, every challenge I faced during these tough times only made me stronger and led me to where I am today. These experiences helped me learn and created a deep passion within me for activism surrounding immigration. I am always grateful and honored when someone gives me the space to tell my story; I am also thankful to those who choose to read it.

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WRIT LARGE: 2021

Woodstock West Exhibit

by

Aaliyah Jones WRIT 1733: Honors Writing | Professor Robert Gilmor

CURATOR’S NOTE: MY PIECE IS A DIGITAL EXHIBIT CREATED for “WRIT 1733: Stories from the Archives” in the Spring 2020 quarter. Our class was instructed to conduct research in DU’s archive to create an online exhibit that illustrated a particular story in DU’s history. We were given a tremendous amount of freedom during topic selection, ranging from the history of DU’s swim team to the progression of student-led clubs on campus. The primary restraints of this assignment existed because the Covid-19 pandemic began just a few weeks prior. Normally, research would be conducted in the physical archive located in DU’s library. For this quarter, all research had to be done online and was limited to the archival documents that had been scanned for use.

I initially expressed interest in researching the history of student clubs for minorities on DU’s campus from the 1960s to the 2000s.

Since I have started my undergraduate education at DU, I have been very much involved with groups such as the Latinx Student Alliance and the Access and Transitions community. Therefore, this topic of research felt familiar, which was comforting as my experience with archival research was quite the opposite. However, I was disappointed to discover that the documents detailing the history of minority-led groups on campus were quite minimal compared to resources for other topics. The lack of documents for my topic can also be attributed to our lack of access to the physical archive.

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Despite these challenges, I eventually found a statement made by the Black Student Alliance (BSA) at DU in response to the organization of protests after the Kent State shooting in 1970. I was aware that the Kent State shooting was the cause of the infamous Woodstock West, but I did not initially express interest in Woodstock West because I felt it was a topic that had been discussed a plethora of times. However, the BSA statement left me with a curious feeling that there was more to be unraveled and remaining stories that have not yet been told. It was then that I decided to shift my topic of focus to discovering the various perspectives that existed during the time of Woodstock West.

My major intention while piecing together content was to ensure that every perspective on Woodstock West from 1970 was represented. This was often a challenge when conducting research because perspectives from different groups of people were not equally represented in sources from the 1970s. By reading through nearly every DU Clarion paper from the months preceding and following Woodstock West, it became clear that opinions from minority groups on campus would be far more difficult to find. The simple observation of unequal representation in news and media is telling of a pattern of injustice throughout the entirety of history: the people that “win” are typically the ones that get to tell the story. It is too often that the “winners” and “storytellers” are the same people perpetuating the cycle of oppression. Therefore, I also intended for this exhibit to be a portrayal of the pattern of racial injustice that has occurred throughout the course of the United States history.

I feel that events such as Woodstock West are especially important to analyze and discuss because they are examples of a major cause of the continuation of inequality: unintended or ignorant racial oppression. I believe that most of the ideas represented within my exhibit are messages that have always been clear within racially minority communities. However, previous modern representations

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and displays on Woodstock West caused me to realize that these same ideas are not often discussed in white communities. The lack of knowledge on this topic may be attributed to the lack of experience with racial injustice in one’s personal life. I would therefore like to push the notion that although these may not be conflicts that you must think about in your day-to-day life, it is still essential to reflect on these issues because there are certainly members within your own community who are consistently thinking about and faced with them in their day-to-day lives. Although the exhibit places a large focus on differences in racial perspectives, I hope that the empathy necessary to understand opposing perspectives is displayed by all groups of people, as race is not the only issue presented in the exhibit nor is it the only issue contributing to patterns of injustice.

As you explore my exhibit, I hope that you can discover the role that intersectionality played through the course of Woodstock West events and find the importance in revisiting broadly accepted understandings. You will be able to explore the opinions maintained and actions taken by several groups of people on DU’s campus in 1970. While there are numerous “labels” that can be given to these groups, the main perspectives identified are those of the Woodstock West community, the Black Student Alliance, Chancellor Mitchell, and DU faculty. While the relationships of these groups may not be clear at first, I also hope that you have the opportunity to explore how each narrative is intertwined with the others and how these relationships are reflected in modern day society.

Digital Exhibit Link:

http://portfolio.du.edu/writ1733montes/ page/100343

(requires logging into DU Portfolio)

Exhibit excerpts on pages 11 & 12. Content warning: exhibit material references violence and racism.

WOODSTOCK WEST MEMORIAM FLIER AUTHOR UNKNOWN MAY 18, 1970 The student flier, pictured here, details a funeral given for the Woodstock West community that was destroyed on May 15, 1970. The “death” of the community was partially due to the wishes of Chancellor Mitchell. The memorial service took place on the same date as the Black Student Alliance memorial service held for victims of the Jackson State Shooting (Foster, 1970). It is unclear whether the date chosen was coincidental or intentional, possibly contributing to the tension between the Woodstock West community and the Black Student Alliance.

Courtesy DU Special Collections and Archives

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BLACK STUDENT ALLIANCE HOLDS SERVICE FOR MURDERED BLACKS JOHN FOSTER, THE DENVER CLARION 1970 MAY 21 On May 14th in 1970, city and state police of Jackson, Mississippi opened fire on a crowd of black students during a protest at Jackson State University. Twelve students were injured and two were killed, an event nearly identical to the Kent State Shooting (Wyckoff, 2010). This Clarion article details the memorial held by the Black Student Alliance on May 18 for the victims and claims the event had only 50 attendees. The outcries and attention given to Jackson State did not equate to that of Kent State, and the event is often overlooked today.

Courtesy DU Special Collections and Archives

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image provided by author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Aaliyah Jones is a second-year pre-med student pursuing a degree in Biology, with minors in Chemistry and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. While she maintains a strong desire to study and work in the medical field (inspired by her mother’s assiduous work as a medical assistant), the pride of her Mexican American heritage is driven by her research of historical and modern-day issues of race and intersectionality (inspired by her father’s immense dedication to the study of race and class based conflicts). Her decision to pursue both academic passions stems from her astonishing indecisiveness, likely due to her Librabased personality.

When she is not studying, Aaliyah loves to listen to 1990s-2000s R&B music and go on adventures in the heart of downtown Denver or in the mountains. It may be assumed that as a Denver native, she would be bored with constantly exploring her own city. However, she will likely be lost approximately 40% of the time because her academic ability did not come with a sense of direction.

image on page 9: Courtesy DU Special Collections and Archives

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A N OPEN L E T T ER

by

Dear Lín Měi Líng,

Noire Lin WRIT 1122: Rhetoric & Academic Writing | Professor Pauline Reid

IN THE MANY YEARS THAT I HAVE WRITTEN LETTERS TO you, I have never thought of writing this one. I have tried to start this letter many times, yet the words that I want to say to you are as lost to me as the stroke order of the characters to your name. I am clumsy when I try to curl my tongue around the intonations of your name.

Our name. The name that our family cherished, but that you and I never knew how to. I write this letter to you, Lín Měi Líng, to offer you my words, my thoughts, my heart.

To you, I write this letter to tell you that you belong in this country, that no one can tell you to go back to a home that you never knew.

You never knew the village like mama and baba did; you never walked the dirt roads that weaved through homes packed to the brim with laughing children and tipsy parents. Your home is in Chicago, a city along the coast of Lake Michigan. Chicago is cold and busy, everything that Guangdong never was, but your popo brought your mama here with her sisters and brothers for a reason.

I wonder, sometimes, if mama and baba ever miss the way the ocean breeze would blow into the village at night, if they miss the stars that blanketed them. I wonder if mama and baba ever regret pursuing a broken dream of prosperity in a country that was so quick to tell them to leave after China brought home gold medals in the Summer Olympics of 2008.

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“Go back to China,” customers said to mama and baba in the tense weeks following the Olympics. They said, “You don’t belong here.”

Mama and baba laughed it all off, but you knew.

At only eight years old, you knew that there was something bad about the fact that boys your age threw buckets of green apples at the windows of our family’s restaurant. The boys you tutored after school, the same boys that you saw every single morning before classes started. You knew those boys since preschool, growing up together in classrooms only a few feet away from each other.

(The day after the buckets of green apples, you stood behind those laughing boys in the lunch line that ran along the cold walls of the hallway and wondered, “Why my family?”)

I wonder if you knew long ago just how different you were, if you knew that your skin color was a different shade than the other kids, if you knew that your almond eyes were too sharp.

I remember a long time ago, longer before the green apples on glass windows, how you hesitated when Mrs. B asked you how to say “Happy Chinese New Year” in Chinese.

(Always Chinese. Never Cantonese or Mandarin. You were always asked, “How do you say this in Chinese?”)

“Gong hei fat choi,” you said, quietly, under your voice. You fiddled with the hem of the bright red shirt that mama had asked you to wear that day.

For her, you would wear red, gold, the colors of a country that they left behind long ago. For her, you would endure being singled out during class by a teacher who had to prove that she knew your people better than you.

“What was that?” said Mrs. B, “Gong-hay-fatchoy? Did I say it right?”

(No, no, you didn’t, you had thought, this doesn’t feel right, why don’t you ask the other kids how they celebrate their holidays, their traditions, their ancestors.

Where are their questions, their printed coloring sheets of dragons and little Chinese kids with small eyes, hair buns, and qipaos?)

You kept your eyes glued on your untouched worksheet with a step-by-step guide on how to make paper lanterns, your red cardstock untouched on your desk.

“Yes,” you said to sweet, kind Mrs. B, “You said it just right.”

You grew up in a neighborhood filled with

language, with big families who weren’t born here.

You knew who was Italian and who was Polish by the accent that dripped from their English. You knew that there were kids who needed extra help learning English, that they needed other kids to help them with their school work.

You never needed help from anyone at school, but it was never your choice whether or not you got any. Your older sister had raised you to speak Cantonese without the accent that stained her English during her early years in school, the same accent that plagued your older brother. You escaped the English second language programs, the language counseling.

She patted you on the back and moved on, rushing to check on another student’s progress.

She left you there with a title you weren’t sure how to wear, an identity you were not aware of.

But, in the end, had you not escaped our language, too?

In high school, you wore the title of first-generation American without even knowing it. Your older sister went to college. Your older brother went to college. You were already three drafts into your college applications by the time your senior year had begun, miles ahead of your peers who struggled with even picking a topic. You were prepared to leave Chicago for a school far, far away. When Dr. M came in to do a college application workshop for your class, you decided that it wasn’t worth your time to listen to her tips and tricks.

Something she said, however, caught your attention.

“Did your parents go to college?” she had asked you, leaning over your shoulder to see the endless boxes that the Common Application had asked you to check.

“No,” you said.

“Well, honey, that means that you’re a first-generation student! Go, you!” She patted you on the back and moved on, rushing to check on another student’s progress. She left you there with a title you weren’t sure how to wear, an identity you were not aware of.

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You stared at the Common Application. You stared and stared, wondering how to understand the words first-generation.

Briefly, you thought back to the previous year when all of your friends were graduating. You thought about how you asked Daniela where she was going to college and how she smiled sadly at you.

“I don’t know if I can afford it,” she said, “I don’t have a social security number. I can’t get financial aid.”

(A few months after you submitted your applications for early action, you saw a GoFundMe campaign set up by teachers to raise funds for Daniela. She had been caught by ICE on a Greyhound bus coming back from New York, a city she loved and dreamed of studying theatre in. She had been detained, and a court hearing date had been set for years later.)

Daniela’s words echoed in the heartache you felt after staying up on the night of the 2016 Presidential elections, how you wondered anxiously why there were so many red states when Hillary was Lín Měi Líng, I am sorry.

I am sorry that you live in a country where you no longer know who you are and who you stand for. You stood in the classrooms of your elementary school pledging allegiance and justice for all, but there is no justice in detaining those with dreams.

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projected to win. You didn’t go to school the next day; half of your school didn’t go to school the next day. You felt fear, and you didn’t want to. You didn’t want to know why you suddenly felt so unsafe on the trains you rode every day on the way to school, why you were weary of every stare you got when you went outside. You didn’t want to know why you felt uncomfortable whenever you saw a red hat with the words “Make America Great Again” emblazoned across the front, why those words hurt more than the boys who threw green apples at our family’s restaurant.

Lín Měi Líng, I am sorry.

I am sorry that you live in a country where you no longer know who you are and who you stand for. You stood in the classrooms of your elementary school pledging allegiance and justice for all, but there is no justice in detaining those with dreams.

If mama and baba hadn’t been naturalized a few years before your oldest sister was born, would you be in Daniela’s shoes? Would you be another nameless face in the families of immigrants being disappeared in favor of a “clean” American image?

Would you be another name drowned out in the news by talk of immature tweets by a President who can’t get his own facts straight? Would you be denied the education that your parents had desperately wanted for themselves?

Was that the American dream that mama and baba left their families for?

I don’t know what it means to be the child of immigrants, what it means to be a start of a new legacy for our family. I don’t know why speaking

Cantonese to mama and baba on the phone still makes me feel like I should be wary of those who can hear me. It doesn’t make sense being a first-generation student when the immigrants you had grown up around are not the same type of immigrants in the news. Those immigrants are not your popo, the type of immigrant who had to cross oceans to bring only two of her children over at a time. Those immigrants are not the kind janitor that Daniela had interviewed her senior year, the type of immigrant who doesn’t know where most of his family is right now. The immigrants you had grown up around are not the ones I have decided to fight for, but they are immigrants nonetheless; they are people with dreams of crafting a new foundation to their legacy from the roots of their American dream, and they are still dreaming of a day where they no longer have to fight for the right to remain here.

I know there are immigrants who are not like mama and baba, that there are Chinese immigrants who hide behind the guise of being line cooks and nail technicians. I know that they fear the day that ICE knocks on their doors asking for their proof of citizenship, that they can no longer be in this country anymore. There are immigrants who must do whatever they can to survive, even at the expense of their own morals and ethics.

To say that immigrants are not being taken care of in a country founded by immigrants is an overgeneralization; it does not even begin to scratch the surface of the complexity of living with immigrant blood in our veins.

In America, there is a dream of a wall that stands tall before trenches filled with snakes and alligators, of a wall charged with electricity to keep us away. In America, the dream is no longer a dream, and children like us have been placed behind those walls where no one can hear their cries. No one can hear how they comfort each other in soiled clothing, how they are just children taking care of children like it’s just another day of playing house.

No one hears about how they suddenly disappear, how 1,500 children just vanish without a trace. In another life, would that have been you, a ghost lost among concentration camps disguised as a justified means to an end? Would mama and baba have forgotten your name as they clung onto distant memories of you?

I know that with talk of the 2020 census

coming up in the spring, there will be immigrants too afraid to fill out their household information. I hear of the fear that spreads in communities from their friends who hide them, the ones who act as if I don’t know what it means to live with immigrants. There is fear that they will be sent back to a home that might no longer feel like home to them, and I hate that there is so much fear in this country for trying to survive. That this fear is not unlike For mama, for baba, for you, I will learn how to take back the pride of being the child of immigrants that you should have known. I will continue to chase the language that we lost long ago, and I promise you that I will speak it once more, with or without the accent.

There will be no more discomfort, no more reluctance.

the one that you felt long ago in your room late at night, waiting for the results of the election. That this fear is echoed in the hearts of those who are just children of immigrants, the ones who are born here.

There are children of immigrants who are not born here, the ones who are immigrants themselves. I often dream of a day where they are no longer sent to court to speak a language they never had the chance of keeping. I dream of children growing up in this country to no longer be just immigrants, that these children can brand themselves with new identities. These children are different from you and me, but at the end of the day, we are all still children, and we are all still wondering where exactly we can call home.

Lín Měi Líng, I still have so much more to learn from you. For mama, for baba, for you, I will learn how to take back the pride of being the child of immigrants that you should have known. I will continue to chase the language that we lost long ago, and I promise you that I will speak it once more, with or without the accent. There will be no more discomfort, no more reluctance.

Our language is a symbol of honor to our mama and baba, to our popo, to our ancestors who had carved out the name Lín and named us as people of the forest. Our language is on the verge of being forgotten by children like you and me, of being nothing more than loose prayers said at ceremonies that we never learned how to perform. Our VOLUME 10

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language is our roots, our almond eyes, our yellow skin.

Our language is our heart; it is how we love and are loved.

I refuse to be silent any longer. Our bloodline is not the punchline of anyone’s joke, it’s not to be some novelty that can be exploited and tokenized.

It is our blood, our parents’ blood. It is the blood that they sacrificed so much to bring to a country built on blood and bones. It is the blood that we can no longer take for granted.

It is our legacy.

Love, Noire P.S. To mama and baba, I wish I could tell you that I love you with the language that you love. I wish that there was a way to remove the “American-born” from my Chinese identity, that I could understand the longing in your voice when you talk about visiting Guangdong. I wish that I could remove the barrier that is between us because of how I handle your language, that I could take away the years of words

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left unspoken.

But, the fact of the matter is, I can’t. I can’t give you a child who can translate government documents perfectly, a child who can stop pretending to be you to set up doctor’s appointments or settle documents. I have gone too long without speaking Cantonese, and I am afraid that I can’t prove to you that I can still understand the words that you mean to say to me without interlacing English in your sentences.

I wish I could tell you that I still love your language, that it is my language, too.

I know it must hurt to see me hurting without knowing how to express that you’re here for me. I know; I know that you both love me in your own ways, even if that love gets lost in translation. There are words you don’t have to say to me, but I wish for a day where you can choose to say them to me instead of exchanging them for broken sentences.

English isn’t your second language the way it is for me, and I know. As much as you think that I don’t, I know.

Mama, baba, I promise to be better for you, for me, for Lín Měi Líng.

Noire Lin is currently a third-year Molecular Biology major pursuing two minors in Chemistry and Medical Physics. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois to immigrant parents, Noire is the youngest of three. They hope to pursue a career in biomedical engineering research, specifically with the focus of using nanotechnology to create alternative, accessible treatment and diagnosis options for marginalized communities. One day, they also hope to adopt the chubbiest cats and to take care of a thriving succulent garden.

image provided by author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR In high school, I majored in Creative Writing with a concentration in Creative Nonfiction, and I never stopped loving the art of writing. In the fall of my sophomore year, I had the pleasure of taking WRIT 1122: Rhetoric in Politics with Dr. Pauline Reid.

As someone who holds multiple marginalized identities, I always struggled with trying to write my thoughts on how they all intersect and interact with each other. Through Dr. Reid’s class, I was able to use my foundational knowledge of creative nonfiction to properly express the relationship between American politics and my own personal identities.

“An Open Letter” is a memoir that focuses on the idea of losing touch with language and how that loss contributed to my connection with a first-generation Chinese American identity. My memoir is written as an open letter to my younger self, and I decided to address myself with my Chinese name in order to create some distance. This memoir holds my current grief for many past regrets, and I had given my heart to my younger self in an attempt to reclaim our loss of self.

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Unfixed A N IN V E S TIG ATION OF H UM A N IN T EL LIGENCE

by

Morgan Martin WRIT 1733: Honors Writing | Professor LP Picard

IF YOU’VE EVER BEEN TO THERAPY, YOU’RE PROBABLY familiar with the Notepad.

You know the one. It’s the big yellow legal pad your therapist whips out at your first meeting, the one that keeps you up at night as you wonder whether she wrote that you were beyond help, or that you were a terrible person, or that you might be a sociopath.1 Logically, the Notepad is nothing but a practical tool. Therapists see a lot of clients and need to remember certain key pieces of information about them to do their job. Still, there is something unsettling about watching someone write down their first impression of you before your eyes, particularly when you are at your lowest.

My parents forced me to start going to therapy the winter of my freshman year of high school. In a matter of weeks, I had gone from being a high-achieving student to failing multiple classes, and the most alarming part was that I did not seem to care enough to do anything about it. After a handful of therapy sessions, each of which I was dragged to kicking and screaming, my therapist put down the dreaded Notepad in the middle of one of our many discussions about my problems at school and posed the question that floored me.

“Can you describe yourself without using the word smart?”

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Okay, this might just be me.

I had no answer. Suddenly I knew what the Notepad said. Straight-A student. Defines herself by intelligence. Has spent her entire life being told she is smart. Does not know anything else about herself.2 My subsequent quest to forge an identity for myself outside of being intelligent has left me with a host of questions. What is this trait that has defined me for so long? Who gets to decide what intelligence is? Who has it? Who does not? How do we—as a society—define, measure, and value intellect? Why do we pit people’s minds against one another? How do some aspects of a person’s identity influence whether others see them as smart?

WIT BEYOND MEASURE: THE PSYCHOMETRIC APPROACH Historically, there has been some debate over the best ways to measure human intelligence. Some believe it cannot be measured objectively at all.

Perhaps the most widely held understanding of the quantification of intellect is that it can be done using an IQ test, grades, and standardized test scores.

One of the most common beliefs regarding the most accurate way to measure intelligence is called the psychometric approach, and it has evolved within the field of psychology over the course of nearly a century and a half. Put simply, the psychometric approach is the empirical measurement of skills associated with intelligence as a measure of a person’s intellect. The psychometric approach first manifested in anthropologist Sir Francis Galton’s psychophysical assessment developed in 1883, which assumed that physical skills were linked

to intelligence. The idea was that people who fared better on physical assessments, such as grip strength or vision tests, were of higher intellect because their brains had a greater degree of control over their bodies. After Galton’s theory came the Binet-Simon intelligence scale created by French psychologists Alfred Binet3 and Theodore Simon in 1905. This was the precursor to the modern IQ test.

What is this trait that has defined me for so long? Who gets to decide what intelligence is? Who has it? Who does not? How do we—as a society—define, measure, and value intellect? Why do we pit people’s minds against one another?

Interestingly, Binet and Simon themselves did not believe intelligence was measurable in the same way that we measure values like mass or temperature. The inventors of the first IQ test knew that intellectual qualities are not quantitative attributes.4 In Binet’s mind, intellectual attributes were heterogeneous orders, a type of measurement in which there are different variances between degrees.5 However, most modern-day psychometricians do not realize this distinction and regard intelligence tests as scientific instruments that yield accurate measurements.

Simon and Binet designed a “scale of intelligence” to test for attributes such as concentration and memory. Though originally intended to identify

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Hermione Granger’s boggart—the representation of her worst earthly fear—turns into a professor telling her she’s failed all her exams. To this day, this quintessential genius character’s crippling fear of failure is one of the most relatable things I’ve ever read.

What is a smart kid if she is no longer smart?

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It should be noted that while he was well versed in the field of philosophy, Alfred Binet had no formal training in psychology and worked for much of his life as an experimental psychologist, conducting his own research but being repeatedly barred from teaching positions. Perhaps Binet had more reason than most people realize to doubt the efficacy of his tests, which are so widely and blindly accepted today.

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I choose to interpret this piece of information as rendering my SAT score completely meaningless.

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Psychological researcher Joel Michell best summed this up in an article relating heterogeneous orders to the Binet-Simon intelligence scale. If you add one meter to a length of ten meters or to a thousand meters, the value of that one meter does not change.

Now let’s say you are trying to measure how humans experience heat. If you continually increase the amount of heat you apply to someone’s skin, the sensations they feel at each interval differ qualitatively because not only will the subject’s sensation of heat intensify, so will the pain they feel, so the sensation cannot be measured in a linear way. There are qualitative differences between degrees that are quantitatively the same. This, in essence, is a heterogeneous order.

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those who needed academic assistance, this intelligence test was later commandeered by the eugenics movement to identify the “feeble-minded.” The test was designed in accordance with the idea of heterogeneous orders, as most intelligence tests are, even if they are not treated that way by professionals.6 The Simon-Binet scale was later modified by American psychologist Lewis Terman to create the Stanford-Binet IQ test, which to this day is among the most widely used intelligence tests. This test is designed to measure the subject’s memory, reasoning skills, and general knowledge, usually through recognition of patterns.

Binet is, in a way, the father of intelligence tests, but he admits the assessment he created has limitations. Aside from his doubts that intelligence could ever truly be quantitatively measured, Binet thought his test could only be accurate when applied to children with similar backgrounds. He believed intelligence to be unfixed.7 Evidence to support Binet’s supposition that IQ is unfixed comes in the form of the Flynn Effect, first discovered by psychologist and philosopher James Flynn. The Flynn Effect is the worldwide phenomenon of a fifteen-point average increase in IQ over generations beginning in at least 1930.8 Some possible explanations for this effect include increased schooling over the generations, better nutrition, less childhood disease, and greater parental attention to children. Flynn believes the phenomenon indicates a change in the way people in successive generations approach problem-solving. Regardless of the cause, the existence of the Flynn Effect merely reinforces Binet’s concerns about his own intelligence assessments.

It calls into question the sanctity of a test created in the early 1900s as a measure of intelligence in a changing world and indicates that IQ is not fixed

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over generations or in populations and may not be fixed in individuals.

Today, there are three main types of intelligence tests. The most common type is a static test in which the subject solves a set of problems without feedback, and a score is determined based on the number of correctly answered questions. These include assessments like the IQ test or the SAT.9 They may be designed to measure fluid intelligence, which is the ability to solve problems using logic without the use of pre-existing knowledge, or crystallized intelligence, or the ability to apply previously acquired knowledge.

In a dynamic test, on the other hand, the subject learns as they go, receiving guided feedback when they answer a question incorrectly until they either get the correct answer or the examiner runs out of clues to give them. Dynamic tests are based on the idea that cognitive abilities are modifiable, and as such, they likely provide a greater measure of fluid intelligence than static tests. They measure not only an individual’s cemented ability, but their ability to develop a skill. Dynamic tests are not yet considered very reliable in the field of psychometrics as there are not many fully developed and formalized dynamic tests in use.

A third type of intelligence test is a typical performance test, which is similar to a personality test. These assessments are designed to measure a subject’s intellectual engagement and openness to learning rather than intellectual ability. During a typical performance test, a subject may be asked how strongly they agree that certain statements describe them, such as, “I enjoy work that requires conscientious, exacting skills.”

The psychometric approach certainly has some merit, and it is popular among professionals in the

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For example, one might view a math test as an assessment of one’s math ability. However, there is qualitative variation between degrees of measurement on a math test, because as the test progresses, the questions do not vary uniformly. They vary both in difficulty and in the skills required to complete them. If you look at a person’s score on a particular math test, you can make inferences about their mathematical ability. A math test yields qualitative data about a person’s math skills rather than quantitative data.

This is what Binet envisioned for his intelligence tests. One could make inferences about someone’s mental abilities from the items on a test. In short, any attempt to assign a single number to someone’s intelligence is somewhat inaccurate.

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Well then, I guess I’m writing this paper for a reason.

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See Sternberg and Kaufman (2002) for more about the Flynn Effect.

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The SAT and other standardized tests may be a more accurate measure of a student’s socioeconomic status and their school’s financial resources than of intelligence, since it costs money for students to take them and for schools to provide necessary prep.

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fields of psychology and education. Its main flaws are that there is no way of knowing whether intelligence can be accurately quantified. Maybe a person’s intelligence can be measured based on their adherence to a set of fixed attributes, but it seems unlikely that it can be summarized by a number or set of numbers, given the concerns of psychologists like Binet and the changes in the implementation and results of intelligence assessments throughout history.

HOW ALIENS SEE IT: MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES Think of the smartest book, movie, or TV characters you can. You may be picturing Hermione Granger,10 or perhaps Dexter Morgan, Lisa Simpson, Sherlock Holmes, Sheldon Cooper, Annabeth Chase, or Spock. While there are no hard-and-fast rules for the genius character archetype, all these characters tend to show their intelligence in similar ways. They are book smart. They are excellent problem-solvers, often using their intellect to bail other characters out of danger. They are often social pariahs, and they may use unnecessarily complex language to answer simple questions, prompting the other characters to demand they “say it in English.” The genius trope begs the question of whether intelligence is defined by someone’s ability

to memorize facts out of books and use big words.

Some researchers feel there is more to intelligence than the way it is commonly represented.

In his book Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice, psychologist Howard Gardner asked readers to expand their view of what constitutes intellect by pitching them a scenario: [S]uspend the usual judgement of what constitutes intelligence, and let your thoughts run freely over the capabilities of humans—perhaps those that would be picked out by the proverbial visitor from Mars.11 Your mind may turn to the brilliant chess player, the worldclass violinist, and the champion athlete…

Are the chess player, violinist, and athlete ‘intelligent’ in these pursuits? If they are, then why do our tests of ‘intelligence’ fail to identify them? […] In general, why does the contemporary construct ‘intelligence’ fail to take into account large areas of human endeavor?

To answer these questions, Gardner proposed his theory of multiple intelligences in his 1983 book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. He separated human intelligence into eight different modalities: 1) visual-spatial, 2) linguistic-verbal, 3) logical-mathematical, 4) bodily-kinesthetic, 5) musical, 6) interpersonal, 7) intrapersonal, and 8) naturalistic12 in order to create a more

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My nerdy, angry-feminist heart will always harbor a soft spot for Hermione, as will, I imagine, the heart of any girl who was ever picked on for being a bossy know-it-all.

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The fact that Gardner feels the need to ask the reader to pretend they are not human in order to gain a more neutral view of human intelligence says something about the skewed nature of the societal messages surrounding it.

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One website I found had this quiz the reader could take to find out their intelligence type. For anyone wondering, I got musical.

Maybe it’s a sign I’m pushing past my focus on academics and spending more time on things that make me happy, like singing and playing the guitar. Or maybe it’s because I indicated in one of the questions that I used to watch The Voice. I choose to believe the former.

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holistic model of human intellect.

The theory has faced criticism from psychologists and educators who claim that the various “intelligences” merely represent personality traits or abilities, and there is little empirical research supporting it. It can be—and has been—argued that the abilities Gardner references above are simply talents or personality traits and that intelligence is an altogether separate concept. On the other hand, perhaps we only think of intelligence as being related to the subjects on which we are graded in school because that is what we have been taught.13 Society places a heavy emphasis on certain “modalities” of intelligence, as Gardner would put it, especially those that it considers to be most useful for the greatest number of people. Additionally, while Gardner’s claim that each type of intelligence engages a different region of the brain is not scientifically accurate, strictly speaking, the theory of multiple intelligences can be integrated into neuroscience.

In order to support the case for the plurality of intelligences, teacher and educational neuroscientist Carlo Cerruti attempted to adapt the theory of

multiple intelligences for use in the field of educational neuroscience.14 He examined how certain areas of the brain are engaged when someone is asked to complete activities targeted at different types of intelligence. Integrating neuroscience into the psychological theory of multiple intelligences will hopefully provide educators with a more detailed understanding of how children’s minds work and how best to implement this theory in education.15 Over time, research like Cerruti’s will provide them with a solid foundation with which to practice multiple intelligences instruction.

The theory of multiple intelligences is also useful beyond the field of education; it can be applied to processes like second language acquisition, according to a study featured in the Journal of Language Teaching and Research. People who are learning their second language can apply the eight modalities to their studies and strengthen their language skills while also strengthening their different modes of intelligence. For example, students wishing to develop their musical intelligence within language learning could sing or listen to music in their second language, while students looking to

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Also, if human beings had yet come up with a concrete answer to what intelligence is, I would not be writing this paper.

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According to Cerruti, this is a relatively new field of study. Its basic purpose is to provide a body of research for the learning process that will help educators address students’ needs more effectively.

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The use of the multiple intelligences theory is gaining traction in education, though every program has a different interpretation of how it can be applied to instruction. The Harvard Graduate School of Education, for example, encourages educators to implement multiple intelligences theory-based instruction. The idea behind this type of instruction is that students should not ask “How smart am I?” but rather “How am I smart?”

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implement interpersonal intelligence could join a club or meet with people who speak their second language. Regardless of whether the multiple intelligences theory is scientifically accurate or an effective representation of human intelligence, it can be applied to the acquisition of skills. The theory of multiple intelligences represents a more holistic and inclusive view of human intelligence than the psychometric approach.

THIS…IS…JEOPARDY! WHAT ARE INTELLIGENCE CONTESTS? When I was in second grade, I became deeply obsessed with the movie Akeelah and the Bee. Upon first viewing, I was thrilled to find that I could spell some of the words. I used to sit in the backseat of the car and beg my mother to throw words at me while we drove so that I could impress her with my linguistic skills. When the Scripps spelling bee circuit finally came to my school, I was the first student to sprint across the classroom and sign up for it. I would go on to best my classmates in school spelling bees and place in the top ten at regional competitions a few times over the next several years. Spelling became an obsession.

I chewed through list after list of words from different origins, memorized hundreds of Greek and Latin roots. For me, nothing rivaled the fluttering feeling of anticipation as I stepped up to the microphone and awaited my next word, or the thrill I received from slowly and deliberately rattling off the correct letters followed by the smattering of applause that scored my shaky walk back to my seat. For me, and for many other word-loving kids, the beauty of the bee went beyond the satisfying way the letters of a familiar word clicked together, the harsh rhythm of the tangled mess of consonants that characterizes German-derived

words or the melodious string of vowels that composes French-derived ones. There is something magical about the pronouncer praising your skills with a simple, “That’s correct.”16 The National Spelling Bee has been held annually since 192517 (being cancelled only during WWII and in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic), steadily growing in coverage and popularity. A contest that first earned recognition with nine participants in 1925 now draws over five hundred spellers who earn their spots in the national bee by competing in school, regional, and statewide bees.

Spelling bees have become something of a sport for elementary and middle school kids.18 An article in The Atlantic posits that part of the growing American obsession with spelling bees in popular culture is due to the fact that because English is a melting pot of linguistic rules borrowed from other languages, spelling in English requires a higher For me, the beauty of the bee went beyond the satisfying way the letters of a familiar word clicked together, the harsh rhythm of the tangled mess of consonants that characterizes German-derived words or the melodious string of vowels that composes French-derived ones. There is something magical about the pronouncer praising your skills with a simple, “That’s correct.”

level of skill and memory, a deeper understanding of different languages than spelling in any other tongue. In other words, we love to watch spelling bees because the words can really challenge the spellers. They can come out of nowhere, consist of a mesh of archaic languages, and take down even the most prepared, experienced speller on stage. And when the pronouncer throws out a word you know

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The word that took me down in my final regional spelling bee was “hallux,” which is medical jargon for “big toe.” (Perhaps this prophesied my future as a biology major?) Alas, I never got a shot at the national bee, but my word habit is still deeply ingrained in me. Sometimes, when I’m anxious, I still spell some of my favorite words under my breath.

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The 1925 bee organized by The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky, in which eleven-year-old Frank Neuhauser won with the word “gladiolus,” is commonly believed to have been the first-ever national spelling competition in the U.S. I myself believed this until I ran across this article. It turns out, the true first national spelling bee, was organized by the National Education Association in 1908. Victory was claimed by fourteen-year-old African American student Marie Bolden, whose victory has been swept under the rug.

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The Scripps National Spelling Bee finals air annually on ESPN, drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers each year. Furthermore, the spectacle of spelling bees has inspired movies like Akeelah and the Bee and the Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound, and even a Broadway musical entitled The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

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and you can piece together the letters along with the contestant as you watch from your living room, well—even better.

If you know some of the words in the bee, it means you have the mental capacity to spell in one of the most illogical hodge-podge languages in the world. The first year I tuned in to the Scripps National Spelling Bee on ESPN, I was struck by how many of the spellers had the same or a similar story to my own about how they had been pulled into the world of competitive spelling. Almost all the kids interviewed said some variation of “I watched the bee on TV when I was younger, and I could spell some of the words, and I thought, I can do that.”

Spelling bees are hardly only contest in which Americans pit people’s intelligences against each other. The wildly popular general knowledge game show Jeopardy draws 10 million viewers each week. Interestingly, according to an Inside Hook article, the show improves dramatically in ratings and viewership when a contestant is on a winning streak. University of Toronto adjunct professor Shaun Young, who in 2012 edited the anthology Jeopardy! And Philosophy: What is Knowledge in the Form of a Question? attributes the show’s popularity to the fact that “it allows people to engage in a competition of intellect, from the comfort of their own home... And I think there’s probably an element in many of us, if not all of us, about testing our own level of knowledge and intellect.”19 Another aspect of the quiz show that contributes to its acclaim is the variation of its topics, ensuring that almost every contestant and viewer will be able to answer questions in some area.20 Common categories include things like history, literature, science, sports, and colleges and universities. Young adds that one of the show’s largest draws is that as viewers follow along with the questions, they can envision themselves on the show, answering them in person, going on winning streaks just like their favorite contestants. As Young points out, “many

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viewers undoubtedly at some point think ‘Well, you know, I could do that.’”

Journalist and USA Memory Championship winner Joshua Foer observed and entered yet another type of intelligence contest: memory competitions. In his TED Talk, Foer described how he became entrenched in the world of competitive memorizing after discovering that most of the contestants had average memories; rather than relying on innate skill, as most believe they do, they implement ages-old techniques to memorize random sequences of numbers, the order of shuffled decks of cards, and more. A study conducted by University College London confirmed that these seemingly prodigious mental athletes possess average intellect and that there is nothing anomalous about the structure of their brains. Much like Foer himself, the other contestants at the USA Memory Championship were drawn to the competition because they realized that anyone could succeed at it with time and practice.

Perhaps the popularity of things like bees, quiz shows, and memory contests owes not only to our desire to be blown away by others’ intelligence, but to our tendency to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the contestants. Put simply, we do not watch intelligence competitions to see that other people are smart; we watch because they make us feel like we could be as well.

FISH CLIMBING TREES: INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION In December 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act passed through Congress with bipartisan support.

It was designed to reinforce governmental regulation of schools by allocating more resources to special education and increasing the amount of federally mandated standardized tests. Differences in test scores from the beginning and end of each school year could then be used to judge the effectiveness of teachers.21 This law included a special education provision

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See Bleier (2019) for the full Inside Hook article, including quotes from Young.

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My mom and I obsessively play the Jeopardy game on our Amazon Echo. The division of categories between us is something of an art form. We have taken to shushing one another aggressively when Alexa announces a category one of us knows they can answer.

Whether this game is actually good for our relationship remains to be seen.

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For information on why this policy has been a failure, check out this episode of Last Week Tonight.

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that required U.S. schools to identify gifted and talented students and tailor the curriculum to them.

Both the metrics used to identify gifted students and the implementation of this accelerated curriculum vary between states and often between school districts as neither of these things are explained by federal laws. However they choose to do it, American schools are tasked with separating their students into two groups: the smart kids, and everyone else.

While it is crucial for intelligent students to be challenged by their curriculum,22 the metric used to identify these kids points to a definition of intelligence ingrained in the American education system that is disturbingly narrow and may lead schools to neglect to foster every student’s unique intellectual strengths. According to the National Association for Gifted Children, the process of identifying gifted and talented students in schools that implement accelerated programs23 generally begins with the nomination of a student by a teacher, administrator, or family member. The student completes assessments that may include an IQ test. The student’s academic record is considered, as are observations made by the student’s teachers, often taking the form of a checklist of attributes

associated with gifted students. Modified curricula for gifted students vary dramatically between regions, but it is usually some version of the curriculum for a given grade level delivered at a faster pace, sometimes supplemented with extra activities to cement academic and life skills.24 Inevitably, using the same metric on every student in a given school will allow some to slip through the cracks and miss out on the educational support they need. Many schools rely on IQ tests to single out intelligent students, the merits of which are debated among psychologists as a true measure of intelligence. The identification of talented students is also partly based on academic record and observation of students in the classroom. However, not every type of intelligence shows up on a student’s report card.

When Howard Gardner first developed his theory of multiple intelligences in the early 1980s, his exigence grew out of a concern that society’s definition of intelligence, particularly within the American education system, was far too restrictive.

Among the eight types of intelligence he believes human beings to have, he felt that only logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic intelligence were prescribed any value by the school system.

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According to a report made to Congress by the U.S. Commissioner of Education in 1972, when above-average students are not sufficiently challenged by their curriculum, they are prone to feelings of boredom and frustration. Those that go unidentified may suffer social and psychological consequences and fail to excel in school.

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A recent Purdue study revealed that while around 3 million students were identified as gifted during the 2015-16 school year, an estimated 2-3.6 million students who could be identified as gifted were not, either because they attended schools without access to identification resources or because they were members of an underrepresented group. Groups that are underrepresented in gifted programs all over the country are comprised overwhelmingly of students of color.

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For example, in my hometown of Boulder, CO, gifted and talented students are identified based on cognitive assessments, academic record, and parent- and teacher-surveys. These students are then given an advanced learning plan that at many schools involves placement into separate accelerated classes that integrate standards from higher grade levels. They are also encouraged to participate in district-wide events such as the Boulder Valley spelling bee and the regional science fair.

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Gardner observed that the result of this narrow view of intelligence within the education system was the emergence of what he dubbed “uniform schools,” which he described thusly in Multiple Intelligences: A uniform school features a core curriculum—a set of facts everybody should know— and very few electives…In the uniform school, there are regular assessments, using paper and pencil instruments, of the IQ or SAT variety…

The uniform school picks out and is addressed to a certain kind of mind—we might call it provisionally the IQ or SAT mind. I sometimes call it the mind of the future law professor…[T]o the extent that your mind works differently—and not that many of us are cut out to be law professors—school is certainly not fair to you.

In proposing his theory of multiple intelligences, Gardner envisioned an education system in which the facets of human intelligence that are often prescribed less value and attention were placed on the same level of importance as their more widely valued counterparts. In his mind, students were more likely to succeed if society expanded its definition of intelligence to acknowledge that feats of the young mind do not only take place when a student can read at a college level or complete a sheet of

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multiplication problems in under a minute. Labeling certain children as “gifted” by the metrics most commonly used may neglect students who are intelligent in other ways, such as those whose minds are built to understand and produce music or those with an exceptionally developed understanding of social cues and interpersonal relationships.25 As it turns out, Gardner might have been onto something regarding his concerns about education.

A meta-analysis of educational practices in Turkey that concluded in 2016 found that the implementation of the multiple intelligences theory in the classroom had a positive effect on students’ academic achievement. Multiple intelligences theory translates into instruction mainly through activities designed to strengthen students’ different modalities of intelligence. Research into the use of this model in education reinforces a simple truth: when schools expand their view of what makes a person smart by placing importance on skills outside of logic and linguistics, students benefit.

Gardner’s exigence was echoed over twenty years later in a TED Talk in which educator Ken Robinson wondered whether schools are killing creativity in students by placing more weight on subjects widely considered to be the most useful to students later in life. Worried the education system was too focused on churning out one type of

Incidentally, a 2019 meta-analysis in the Psychological Bulletin found a positive correlation between students’ emotional intelligence and their academic achievement. Students whose schools devote resources to developing their social and emotional skills generally achieve good results academically.

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scholar, Robinson mused, “If you were to visit education as an alien and say, ‘What’s public education for?’ I think you’d have to conclude, if you look at the output...the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors.”

While it could be argued that both these experts raised concerns about the education system a long time ago, I should point out that ten years after Ken Robinson gave this talk, I saw many of these same issues within the education system. National standardized testing for elementary and middle school students focuses exclusively on math and reading, and schools that do have arts programs do not devote nearly as much time or as many resources to the arts that they do to the supposedly more important areas of study. Moreover, the accomplishments that prompt adults to praise a student’s intellect are overwhelmingly grades, standardized test scores, and participation in additional academic activities—the things which also happen to comprise the bulk of college applications.

Standardized testing is a manifestation of both Gardner’s and Robinson’s fear that schools focus too heavily on creating a single type of student by applying the same narrow metric to everyone.

Gardner voiced concerns about one of the most common standardized tests in the country, the SAT, in Multiple Intelligences, pointing out that “if you add up a person’s verbal and math scores, as is often done, you can rate him or her along a single intellectual dimension.” Standardized testing has been around for centuries, starting in Imperial China as a way to test applicants’ fitness to enter government positions and slowly invading the field of education over the intervening years. The

introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act and the Common Core Standards Initiative in recent decades dramatically increased the number of federally mandated standardized tests. Although the Internet is rife with opinion pieces that passionately support or bash the efficacy of standardized tests as a measure of intelligence, there is very little empirical data supporting either side of the debate.26 However, an increasing number of colleges across the country 27 are abandoning the SAT and ACT requirements that were once staples of the college admissions process, opting instead for test-optional policies that allow applicants to choose whether or not they submit their standardized test scores for consideration. Perhaps the surge of test-optional policies reflects a cultural shift away from “a narrow assessment of human potential,” as suggested by a 2018 study on the application and effects of test-optional policies at U.S. colleges.

Indeed, though there is no way to know whether standardized tests really quantify a person’s intelligence, the study found they at least have little to no bearing on a student’s academic achievement, as students who did not submit their test scores to the universities evaluated had a higher enrollment rate and an equivalent—and sometimes slightly higher graduation rate than students who did submit their scores.28 Going by the definition of intelligence set by American schools—that is to say, skilled linguistically and/or mathematically, high IQ , high scores on standardized tests, excellence in a classroom setting, able to learn information above grade level at a fast pace—I am what most would consider an intelligent student. Granted, I am no prodigy, and odds are I am probably not “gifted” (my elementary

26

I spent a ridiculous amount of time scouring the web for research on whether standardized tests measure intelligence and was unable to find many sources that were not tinged with the author’s opinion. I imagine it’s hard to figure out whether standardized tests actually measure someone’s intelligence because, as I’ve discussed, it can be argued that humans do not have a way to measure intellect. Certainly, tests like the SAT test your short-term memory, your focus, and how quickly you can perform certain tasks—not to mention how long you can wait to drink water or go to the bathroom—but do these things really constitute intelligence? And should College Board be the entity we allow to answer that question?.

27

Including DU, which adopted the test-optional policy the year after I applied. Someone remind me why I spent so much time preparing for the SAT?!

28

According to the same study, test-optional schools also received significantly more applications from Black and Latinx students, and students from underrepresented racial minority groups were less likely to submit their scores than white applicants. By abandoning standardized testing as a measure of student potential, colleges not only expand their views of what indicates intelligence and potential in applicants, but they also take a step towards more even race representation in higher education.

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school did not have an identification program), but I did not have too much trouble doing well in school because I conformed to the traditional standards of intelligence set by the education system. I did not slip through the cracks as I have learned, so many do. However, just as my label of “smart kid” has stuck with me, the experience of being barred from this label sticks with people too.

How does one sum up a systemic neglect of the broad meaning of intelligence and the lasting damage this can have on millions of students in one (albeit obscenely long) feature?

In his book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, humanistic psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman recounts his experience of not being one of those lucky students singled out by the education system as gifted. He points out that “the concept of intelligence has no fixed meaning. Scientists, indeed all of us, interpret behaviors according to our own beliefs and experiences. Therefore, it is worth taking a very close look at the meaning we give the word ‘intelligence,’ for it has an immense impact on millions of lives.” Kaufman himself was relegated to special education due to his apparent lack of academic prowess. Yet today, as a successful adult, the label that was placed on him at a young age has stuck with him even as he disproved it. Kaufman’s sentiment is perhaps best summed up in a quote often (mis)attributed to Einstein: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”29 Perhaps when we expand our definition of intelligence in how we label and educate

30

students, we will give them the chance to achieve.

After all, if I am learning anything from this project, it is that no one really knows what intelligence is. I’m starting to think it does not mean anything at all.30

UNFIXED My relationship with intelligence will probably always be complicated. I have learned over the past several weeks that this thing I have allowed to define me, this thing I cling to as a means of making me worthwhile, is more complex than I originally thought. I do not believe a person’s intelligence can be measured by a number or a grade or summed up on an application. During my research I have stripped away the concrete nature of the measurements, perception, and value of intelligence, and doing so has made me realize that behind the immense concept of intelligence, there are only human beings. Like Dorothy pulling back the curtain and realizing the Wizard was just a man, I have realized that the IQ test was invented by a mere person a hundred years ago, that the standards for what makes a person gifted or average or challenged were created by people, that our view of whether we or others are intelligent can be influenced by all kinds of arbitrary factors.

I still don’t really have an answer to my therapist’s question. I am smart, and I can describe myself as smart even though I recognize that this means something different to everyone. I would answer that I am stubborn, curious, and passionate.

I don’t give up on things. I love to sing and write and play with my dog. I bake when I am stressed. I am a woman in science. I am a terrible driver. I’m hearing impaired. Maybe I don’t have to have an answer to the “Who are you besides your brains?” question yet. Maybe I won’t ever need an answer.

Maybe, like intelligence, who I am is unfixed.

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This quote is so often misattributed to Einstein that History.com listed it in an article entitled, “Here Are 6 Things Albert Einstein Never Said.” The site may be fighting a losing battle on this front; at this point, pretty much anything can be turned into an Einstein quote if it’s slapped over a dramatic black-and-white photo of him in a fancy font. But I digress.

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Honest to god, this feature kept me up at night. I would literally lie in bed staring at the ceiling trying to figure out how best to get the point across. In truth, there are a million reasons why someone might struggle in school and a million ways in which a student can be smart. How does one sum up a systemic neglect of the broad meaning of intelligence and the lasting damage this can have on millions of students in one (albeit obscenely long) feature?

WRIT LARGE: 2021

WORKS CITED Baş, Gökhan. “The Effect of Multiple Intelligences Theory-Based Education on Academic Achievement: A Meta-An-

alytic Review.” Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, vol. 16, no. 6, 2016, p. 1833, doi:10.12738/estp.2016.6.0015.

Bleier, Evan. “The Psychology Behind America’s Love Affair With ‘Jeopardy.’” InsideHook, 17 May 2019, www.insidehook.com/article/television/why-america-loves-jeopardy-james-holzhauer-ken-jennings-alex-trebek.

Cerruti, Carlo. “Building a Functional Multiple Intelligences Theory to Advance Educational Neuroscience.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 4, 2013, p. 950, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00950.

Cherry, Kendra. “Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 17 July 2019, www. verywellmind.com/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences-2795161.

Cherry, Kendra. “How Alfred Binet Helped Develop Modern Intelligence Tests.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 9 Apr. 2020, www.verywellmind.com/alfred-binet-biography-2795503.

“Do Standardized Tests Accurately Show Students’ Abilities?: Resilient Educator.” ResilientEducator.com, 5 May 2018, resilienteducator.com/news/do-standardized-test-show-an-accurate-view-of-students-abilities/.

Flynn, James. “Why Our IQ Levels Are Higher Than Our Grandparents’.” TED, Mar. 2013, www.ted.com/talks/ james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents.

Foer, Joshua. “Feats of Memory Anyone Can Do.” TED, Feb. 2012, www.ted.com/talks/ joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do?language=en#t-658684.

Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. 3rd ed., BasicBooks, 2011.

Gardner, Howard. Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice. Basic Books, 2008.

Gentry, Marcia, et al. “Gifted Education in the United States: Laws, Access, Equity, and Missingness Across the

Country by Locale, Title I School Status, and Race.” Purdue University College of Education, 2019, www.educa-

tion.purdue.edu/geri/new-publications/gifted-education-in-the-united-states.

“Identification.” Identification | National Association for Gifted Children, www.nagc.org/resources-publications/ gifted-education-practices/identification.

MacCann, Carolyn, et al. “Emotional Intelligence Predicts Academic Performance: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 146, no. 2, 2020, pp. 150–186. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1037/bul0000219.supp (Supplemental).

Maftoon, Parviz, and Saeid Najafi Sarem. “The Realization of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (MI) Theory in Second Language Acquisition (SLA).” Journal of Language Teaching and Research, vol. 3, no. 6, 2012, p. 1233, doi:10.4304/ jltr.3.6.1233-1241.

Marland, S. P., and Office of Education, Washington, DC. Education of the Gifted and Talented - Volume 1: Report to the Congress of the United States by the U. S. Commissioner of Education / S. P. Marland, Jr. 1971.

Michell, Joel. “Alfred Binet and the Concept of Heterogeneous Orders.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 3, 2012, p. 261, doi:https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00261.

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WORKS CITED (CONT’D) Robinson, Ken. “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” TED, Feb. 2006, www.ted.com/talks/

sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?referrer=playlist-re_imagining_school#t-184110.

Ross, Terrance F. “The Spelling-Bee Obsession.” The Atlantic, 29 May 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/ archive/2015/05/the-spelling-bee-obsession/394394/.

Shafer, Leah. “How We’re Smart.” Harvard Graduate School of Education, 12 Oct. 2017, www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ uk/17/10/how-smart.

Silberman, Hannah. “A Brief History of Spelling Bees in America.” Fords Theatre, 2014, www.fords.org/blog/ post/a-brief-history-of-spelling-bees-in-america/.

Sternberg, Robert J. and Kaufman, James C. “Iv. Psychometric Approaches to Intelligence.” Encyclopedia of the

Human Brain, V. S. Ramachandran, Elsevier Science & Technology, 1st edition, 2002. Credo Reference, 24

May 2020. http://du.idm.oclc.org/loginurl=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/esthumanbrain/ iv_psychometric_approaches_to_intelligence/0?institutionId=1676.

Syverson, Steven T, et al. “Defining Access: How Test-Optional Works.” National Association for College Admission Counseling, 2018, https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/publications/research/defining-access-re-

port-2018.pdf.

Venable, Nick. “The 10 Most Common Jeopardy! Categories.” CINEMABLEND, CINEMABLEND, 8 Oct. 2018, www.cinemablend.com/television/10-Most-Common-Jeopardy-Categories-70856.html.

Hyperlinked Information:

• pg. 21: https://search-credoreference-com.du.idm.oclc.org/content/entry/esthumanbrain/ iv_psychometric_approaches_to_intelligence/0 • pg. 21: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00261/full#note-31a • pg. 21 footnotes: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00261/full#note-31a • pg. 22: https://www.verywellmind.com/alfred-binet-biography-2795503 • pg. 22: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents#t-1670 • pg. 23 footnotes: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-kind-of-intelligence-do-you-have-3867398 • pg. 24: http://www.verywellmind.com/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences-2795161 • pg. 24: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867685/ • pg. 24: http://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/jltr/vol03/06/23.pdf • pg. 25: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/the-spelling-bee-obsession/394394/ • pg. 25 footnotes: https://www.fords.org/blog/post/a-brief-history-of-spelling-bees-in-america/ • pg. 26: https://www.insidehook.com/article/television/why-america-loves-jeopardy-james-holzhauer-ken-jennings-alex-trebek • pg. 26: https://www.cinemablend.com/television/10-Most-Common-Jeopardy-Categories-70856.html • pg. 26: https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do?language=en#t-658684 • pg. 26 footnotes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6lyURyVz7k

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WRIT LARGE: 2021

Morgan Martin is a second-year student majoring in molecular biology with minors in chemistry, Spanish, and leadership studies.

She wants to work in medicine. She is from Boulder, Colorado. In her free time, she likes to read, write, play the guitar, and spend time with her dog and cats.

image provided by author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR This paper is part of a project for my freshman honors writing class, which tasked students with exploring a complex topic from many points of view. My experiences in the education system drove me to explore the concept of human intelligence. I wanted to find out how people measure and value intelligence and who gets to decide who has it and who does not. This project gave me a new, broadened perspective on intelligence.

Hyperlinked Information (cont’ d): • • • • • • • • • •

pg. 27: https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/gifted-education-practices/identification pg. 27: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00261/full#note-31a pg. 27 footnotes: https://www.valdosta.edu/colleges/education/human-services/document /marland-report.pdf pg. 27 footnotes: https://www.education.purdue.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/access-denied-abstract.pdf pg. 28: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1130745.pdf pg. 28: https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?referrer=playlist-re_imagining_ school#t-184110. pg. 28 footnotes: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000219.pdf pg. 29: https://resilienteducator.com/news/do-standardized-test-show-an-accurate-view-of-students-abilities/ pg. 29: https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/publications/research/defining-access-report-2018.pdf pg. 30 footnotes: https://www.history.com/news/here-are-6-things-albert-einstein-never-said

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M y D ogs

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WRIT LARGE: 2021

of

War

M y D ogs by

of

War

Paul Swindler In Memoriam

WRIT 1533: Writing & Research | Professor April Chapman-Ludwig

The air is thick and hot, as the dust pours out from the Mojave Desert.

My body is tired; it aches. Click, clang, clack: the sounds almost becomes melodic, rhythmically bouncing against my chest, the sound walking in cadence with my gait. I remember the rookie moves I used to make.

Whether it was the thick chain around my neck or full body armor/200lbs of gear, I remember thinking, I should have worn these on my belt loop today.

Twenty miles of pounding hot sand continues to roll on as the metal gets branded into my chest from the weight.

The chain—strong and seemingly unbreakable, even though we know it was made by the lowest bidder. A silver warrior logo with blood and sweatladen with dirt from a long day’s work. The pain of it cranking on our necks like a leash compelling us to fight for good against evil. This chain is a reminder that those emblazoned silver logos personify the warrior, the military lifestyle. What we feel doesn’t matter as long as we accomplish the mission. Those words…

Four short slices of data, who I am, who I belong to: name, service number, blood type, and religious preference. The data serves as a place keeper and a reminder of purpose. Years after the war has subsided the metal becomes a token of a man’s history of personal experience, and loss—a gleaming pendant of great pride, strength and a solemn memory that pain, no matter how long, is still only temporary.

It’s hard to breathe. My body hurts like a ton of bricks were dropped on me. Jingle…jingle, jangle my vision starts to come back. I roar awake, “is everybody okay?” The radio won’t stop squawking, “Bravo 4-2 this is Shark Bite, I repeat we are green and green but the vic is down, I can’t move.” The American flag bandana attached to my belt loop is bright and blinding. I lay down holding security, prepared for a counter attack. Shit…that was too close but it’s not my time yet. Jingle, jingle, jangle. My dogs of war arrive “not a tag lost that day.” I look down as our quick reaction force arrives. It provides a sense of peace and protection, a knowingness that I am not alone, that I belong. I am valuable, but I have a job to do, a very dangerous one. A job that carries a distinction that is unmatched to those who value it. Those are just two days of our dog tag stories and we have thousands more. These are my dogs of war, these are my Dog Tags.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image provided by author’s family

Paul Swindler was a veteran transfer student in April Chapman-Ludwig’s writing and research class in fall 2019. He wrote “My Dogs of War” as a short vignette to describe an artifact of significance in his life, his dog tags, and the memories he had of serving in Afghanistan as a United States Marine. Paul passed in November 2020 and now rests at the Fort Logan National cemetery in Denver.

He will be remembered as a loving son, brother, and born protector.

A NOTE OF COMMEMORATION If you met Paul Swindler and spoke with him, even for a few minutes, you probably heard a story and left the conversation with a story of your own to tell. Having Paul in my transfer student writing and research class in fall of 2019 meant that I and his classmates heard many stories and then had our own to tell. I share a few moments from my time with Paul, but these moments are a fraction of the bigger picture.

An older student veteran, Paul consistently came to class with enthusiasm and a contagious smile. DU was Paul’s dream school, and he worked hard to connect with his peers, professors, and the campus community. Paul drove from Colorado Springs through snow storms to attend his classes while also being present for his family.

He was inquisitive and driven. He always supported his classmates and peers, and he approached writing and research with a focus and dedication he brought to every situation. We talked often about connecting peers to DU resources, how best to encourage students to attend off-campus class trips, and dedication to family. At the end of class, Paul said in a survey, “It is the best educational experience I have ever had, it is intellectually stimulating, challenging, but faculty and students are helpful, and I feel like people want to see me succeed here and help me do so especially with a very demanding family life.” Paul succeeded at DU, and he helped others as they helped him.

On a class trip, I asked Paul about his sleeve of tattoos. One was a large tattoo of an angel with the words “born protector” underneath the wings. For Paul, being a protector was who he was at the very core. Even after his death, he saved seven strangers’ lives through organ donation.

There are plenty of stories to share about Paul, and anyone who knew him likely has their own. I feel grateful for having known him at DU, even for a short while, and I am lucky to have had such a dedicated student.

April Chapman-Ludwig

(Paul’s WRIT 1533 Professor)

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WRIT LARGE: 2021

Seven Billion Shades of H uman

by

Sameha Haque WRIT 1133: Writing & Research | Professor David Riche

BROWN (adjective): OF A DARK, WOODY OR DUSKY COLOUR, tending towards red or yellow; dark-complexioned; tanned or sunburnt.1 As a child, I never quite understood the color brown. In kindergarten, I remember being tasked with drawing a picture of myself. This was supposed to encourage creativity and inspire the artists within our fiveyear-old selves. As I finished the rough outline of my stick-figured masterpiece, I realized it was time to fill it in with bold crayon strokes. The only problem was that the “Flesh” crayon that was handed to me was not the color of my skin. I wish I could say that my five-year-old self realized the issue behind this and instead colored in the self-portrait with a darker color. Instead, I colored in my skin with the color “Flesh” because no one wanted a brown picture.

Recently, Crayola introduced a 32-pack of crayons called “Colors of The World.” This pack was released in efforts to advance inclusion within creativity. The pack includes shades such as “medium golden,” “very deep almond,” “extra deep golden,” and “extra deep rose.” In the announcement of the release, Crayola CEO Rich Wuerthele stated, “’With the world growing more diverse than ever before, Crayola hopes our new Colors of the World crayons will increase representation and foster a greater sense of belonging and acceptance.’” 2 When I first read this, VOLUME 10

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the first thought in my head was that the world has always been this diverse. Of course, I probably shouldn’t negate a positive. After all, better late than never.

Color (noun): Any of the constituents into which light can be separated as in a spectrum or rainbow, and which are referred to by names such as blue, red, yellow; any particular mixture of these constituents; a particular hue or tint.3

Sure, scientifically speaking, the colors of skin are categorized into four neat and clean categories, but there are more than seven billion different shades in between.

It’s relatively simple to characterize the colors of the skin into four different categories: red, white, yellow, and brown. However, the color of skin is a lot more complicated, with thousands of shades in between these four generic categories.4 It all begins with melanin, the pigment that gives skin and hair its color. Melanin is formed “in membrane-bound organelles,” melanosomes, within melanocytes, which are specialized cells that supply “packets of pigment” to the dendrites surrounding the epidermis. There two distinct types: pheomelanin, the yellow-red pigment, and eumelanin, the brownblack pigment. Of the two pigments, “eumelanin is the dominant chromophore,” the color most perceivable to the human eye; however, pheomelanin provides the undertones of the skin’s hue.5 The production of melanin is affected by a variety of elements that range from genetic makeup to UV exposure. It should come as no surprise to say that the human skin is repeatedly exposed to various DNA-damaging environmental factors.

In fact, ultraviolet radiation is probably the largest concern one should have when discussing skin.

1 2 3 4

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See Brown. (2015).

See Setty (2020) See Colour | Color. (n.d.)

See Schlessinger (2020)

WRIT LARGE: 2021

Given this fact, it’s probably a relief to hear that the most important photo-protective factor is actually melanin. So far, many studies have shown that the chance of getting skin cancer is lower in darker-skinned people than in people who have lighter skin.6 It’s truly perplexing to realize that the very thing that offers us protection from cancer is also the thing many of us dislike the most about ourselves. Sure, scientifically speaking, the colors of skin are categorized into four neat and clean categories, but there are more than seven billion different shades in between.

Skin (noun): Tough, elastic outer covering of invertebrates. In mammals, it is the largest organ of the body and serves many functions. It protects the body from injury and from the entry of some microorganisms and prevents dehydration. Nerve endings in the skin provide the sensations of touch, warmth, cold, and pain.7 “Do you apply sunscreen regularly?” Growing up, this was the most common question I was asked during family functions.

It’s an understandable question. Nowadays, “apply sunscreen daily” is the most sought-after skin-care advice. It’s the least you can do. After all, sunscreen helps protect the skin. It filters out ultraviolet (UV) radiation using two main types of active ingredients. The inorganic particles, such as zinc, create a physical barrier which scatters the UV waves, while the organic particles absorb the UV rays and release the energy as heat. The SPF on sunscreen bottles, which stands for “sun protection factor,” is often misconstrued as the strength of protection; however, SPF “actually refers to how much longer it takes for [ultraviolet rays] to redden the skin with sunscreen” compared to skin without.8 Nonetheless, sunscreen protects the skin. What other reason could there be for sunscreen? When my family would ask me “Do you apply sunscreen regularly?” my answer was always “Yes,” regardless of whether or not I actually did.

5 6 7 8

See Matts and Dykes (2007) See Brenner & Hearing (2009) Skin. (2008) See Isguven (2012)

“That’s good,” they would reply. “You don’t want your skin to get any darker.” They were right. My skin could be described as dark brown, and I didn’t want it to get any darker. As they often liked to point out, things were more difficult for a person of darker skin tone than those with lighter skin tones.

Looking back at these moments, it’s hard to imagine my young brain accepting the idea that lighter was more beautiful. However, I know for a fact that many other young girls of color have experienced this—being told to use sunscreen not for practical purposes, such as protecting your skin, but for the purpose of preventing your skin from getting any darker.

Fair (adjective): Beautiful to the eye; of attractive appearance; good-looking.9 One of my most vivid memories as a child was walking into a South Asian grocery store and coming face-to-face with the stuff of legends. The thing that could supposedly change my entire life in one week. The thing that could guarantee me a successful life.

Yes. I’m talking about Fair and Lovely, the highly sought-after skin-lightening cream that was sold in nearly every Asian marketplace.

The branding of the cream was very distinguishable.

At the forefront, you could see a lighter-skinned model, and behind her were darker-skinned versions of herself. The darker her skin, the further 9

See the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “fair.” Might I point out that nowhere in this definition is “fair” synony-

she was pushed into the background. The model with less melanin in her skin stood at the forefront of the box smiling brightly, but her darkest-skinned version in the back wears an unhappy expression.10 South Asian communities often portray being dark-skinned as something that needs to be cured, as if it’s an illness we need to be rid of. This is apparent not only on the box for Fair and Lovely, but also in the commercials for this skin-lightening product. The advertisements almost always depict a dark-skinned woman who looks in the mirror and hates what she sees. The problem is always rectified as soon as she starts using the lightening cream and notices a change in the way people treat her.

These ads resonate with more than enough young women of color for Fair and Lovely to be extremely popular.

Unfortunately, I was not spared the demanding claws of the lightening cream. All of my life, I had been plagued by how dark my skin was. I could never find a “cure” until I was gifted with a healthy supply of Fair and Lovely by my grandparents.

Finally. I could do something to change the color of my skin and maybe better reflect South Asian beauty standards. It’s actually funny when I think about it now. It’s not as if my grandparents or anyone in my family were lighter than I was; nonetheless, the color of my skin somehow offended them.

For years, I justified their behavior as always wanting what’s best for me. That was far from the truth.

I realized this years later. Better late than never, right?

10

point that colorism is perpetuated by colonialist ideals.

See Mariam (2017)

mous with white or a lighter skin tone, further adding to the

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Lupita Nyong’o © Sebastian Kim, Flickr. com (left); © Walt Disney Television, Flickr.com (right).

Colorism (noun): discrimination on the basis of skin color within your own ethnic group.11 The funny thing about colorism is that most of the time, it’s done in a very subtle manner. To me, colorism is the number of times I’ve heard someone say something like “She’s pretty for a dark-skinned girl.” To me, colorism means, hearing someone tell me, “Don’t stay out in the sun too long, your skin will get too dark.” 12 To me, colorism means people telling me “Avoid drinking tea or coffee; it’ll make your skin too dark.” 13 “Mom, your skin color looks so different in this picture. Who did your makeup?”

“It was one of the salons in Bangladesh.”

“Did you notice that the color of your foundation was different from your hand?”

“I did.”

“Did the people at the salon not notice?”

“I’m pretty sure they did it on purpose. That’s just the way they do things at salons.”

“So, it’s customary for women to get lighter shades of foundation than their skin?”

“Yes.” “You don’t see that as being problematic?”

A pause. “I mean, like I said, it’s just the way they do things in Bangladesh.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It just means that—maybe it’s in our culture.”

To be fair,14 this issue is common not only in South Asia. When I asked a friend of Latinx descent whether or not colorism was prominent in her community, she replied, “It’s very common for Latinx members with lighter skin to be valued more over darker complexions, so yes, colorism exists; however, it’s often overlooked because it’s difficult to admit.”

I agree that it’s difficult to admit. I have never questioned the idea of “It’s in our culture.” In fact, I have probably justified colorism to myself in this way more than a couple of times. That said, colorism might be subtle, but the repercussions of coming to hate being dark are anything but subtle. The good thing about growing from your mistakes is that when you realize where the issue lies, you tend to stop listening to the bullshit.

Culture (noun): learned and shared concepts, values, or beliefs (conceptual), or as an adaptive system.15

I wasn’t surprised. It’s not as if I was expecting the worst. I knew colorism existed in many different forms. What is interesting is that, oftentimes, the

In South Asian countries, it’s very common to see women getting lighter shades of foundation for their skin. Who can blame them? That is the

11

14

12

13

See Irisa and Lamisa (2020) As if there’s a very clear limit as to how dark a person’s skin should be to be considered beautiful.

Probably the most outrageous myth I have ever heard. It’s crazy to think how many people believe this.

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people who inflict colorism and the people who experience colorism rarely acknowledge it as such.

When discussing colorism with both the former and the latter, most of the time the answer will be “It’s in our culture,” which equates to “So don’t make a big deal of it.”

WRIT LARGE: 2021

The word fair is used in this context in a different manner to which it was defined previously. Here, it is used to mean “the

15

absence of bias.”

See Lyman (2008)

cultural standard of beauty. Women choose to have lighter skin for their pictures because they are under the assumption that lighter skin is more beautiful, more feminine.16 And they are not alone. Film and marketing industries across many countries very rarely cast darker-skinned women.

Take Bangladesh, for example. I don’t think I have ever seen a prominent show, movie, or advertisement where the main actress has dark skin. This is, in fact, jarring, because the majority of people in Bangladesh do have dark skin. So, how is it possible to not see any actresses with very dark skin? The answer lies in editing and makeup. Regardless of how dark the actress’s skin is, the editing team will usually go in and lighten their skin.

Here’s a recent example. In 2014, critically acclaimed actress and Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o was featured in Vanity Fair with seemingly lighter skin than usual. After the release of the magazine photo, critics quickly pointed out that Nyong’o’s flawless dark brown skin was several shades lighter. Although it still isn’t certain whether the skin lightening effect was done in editing or was due to lighting, the implications of this action are nonetheless concerning. Aisha Phoenix, a post-doctoral researcher and author of “Colourism and The Politics of Beauty,” says it best: “Irrespective of whether or not pictures of women of colour are digitally altered or lighting is used in such a way that it produces an unnatural pallor, the results and the implicit message they convey are the same: women of colour, whatever their skin shade, are not light enough for mainstream media because they are not white.” 17 Even after winning an Academy Award and becoming an acclaimed actress, Nyong’o was still considered too dark-skinned for this prominent magazine. These events occur far too often in the United States. That said, why would that be surprising? Colorism is a result of colonialist 16 17 18 19

See Paul (2016)

mentality, after all. It’s things like this that encourage young girls of color to think that the melanin in their skin makes them look too dark, when in reality it makes them shine brighter than the moon and stars combined.

Colorism is a result of colonialist mentality, after all.

It’s things like this that encourage young girls of color to think that the melanin in their skin makes them look too dark, when in reality it makes them shine brighter than the moon and stars combined.

Brown-skinned: 18 People who should be proud of the natural melanin that is produced in their bodies to make their outwardly appearance brown. The melanin that shines under direct sunlight.19 One time in middle school, my friends and I sat in a circle making jokes and talking about Buzzfeed quizzes. More specifically, what kind of bread we would be. It was an innocent enough conversation, except for the fact that my friends were all very white. So, they were all obviously white bread.

When it was my turn, my friend hesitated, and I could almost see the internal struggle of her deciding what was racist and what wasn’t.

I helped her out. “I would be burnt toast.”

“Very burnt toast,” 20 she replied, without a pause. I laughed along with everyone else. What else could I do? I had just said something derogatory about the color of my skin, and she had gone along with it. It was no one’s fault but my own. In fact, I often found myself making negative remarks about the color of my skin and laughing about it.

Looking back, I regret the remarks I made that day, and the remarks I let everyone else make about my skin. Sure, there was a time when I was unable to cope with my brownness, when I would look in the mirror and think only “I should try that new 20

When she said this, I could feel the bitterness of the burnt

See Phoenix (2014, p. 99)

toast coat my tongue and infiltrate my taste buds. But at the

Definition coined by author.

moment, I suppose I thought I was doing everyone a favor by

With the use of SPF of course, to further protect the skin’s

labeling myself as “burnt toast.”

natural barrier.

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lightening mask that was recommended.” There were even times when I thought I would give anything and everything to have the color of skin that my friends had.

Now, I think about how it was even possible for me to view the melanin in my skin so harshly. Now, I apply the sunscreen on my skin because it’s healthier for me, not because it’ll keep my skin lighter.

image on page 37 © Malika Ladak, Flickr.com

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Now, I drink as much tea as I want. Now, I understand that the melanin in my skin not only protects me from the sun, but also makes me who I am.

Now, I make no excuses for the behaviors propagated by my “culture.” The plain brown of my skin makes me...me. Most importantly, now, I can color in my skin with the crayon titled “deep almond,” in another one of my stick-figured masterpieces.

REFERENCES Brenner, M., & Hearing, V. J. (2009, May 1). The protective role of melanin against UV damage in human skin.

Retrieved May 25, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2671032/

Brown. (2015). In C. Schwarz, The Chambers Dictionary (13th ed.). Chambers Harrap. Retrieved from Credo Reference: http://du.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/chambdict/ brown/0?institutionId=1676

Colour | Color, n.1. (n.d.) Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved from https://www-oed-com.du.idm.oclc.org/view/ Entry/36596?rskey=bhVxUM&result=2&isAdvanced=false#eid

Fair, adj. and n.1. (n.d.) Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved from https://www-oed-com.du.idm.oclc.org/view/ Entry/67704?rskey=gf7EjK&result=2&isAdvanced=false#eid

Irisa, R., & Lamisa, H. (2020, May 10). “I’m not racist”—But are you a colourist? Retrieved from https://www.thepvblication.com/post/i-m-not-racist-but-are-you-a-colourist

Isguven, S. (2012, May 9). How does sunscreen protect you? Retrieved May 24, 2020, from http://www.yalescientific. org/2012/05/how-does-sunscreen-protect-you/

Lyman, R. L. (2008). Culture, concept and definitions. In D. M. Pearsall (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Archaeology. Elsevier

Science & Technology. Retrieved from Credo Reference: http://du.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.credorefer-

ence.com/content/entry/estarch/culture_concept_and_definitions/0?institutionId=1676

Mariam, S. (2017, May 17). Daring to be dark: Fighting against colorism in South

Asian cultures. Retrieved May 1, 2020, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/

daring-to-be-dark-fighting-against-colorism-in-south_b_58d98c5fe4b0e6062d923024

Matts, P., Dykes, P., & Marks, R. (2007). The distribution of melanin in skin determined in vivo. British Journal of Dermatology, 156(4), 620–628. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2133.2006.07706.x

Paul, A. (2016). Beyond the pale? Skinderella stories and colourism in India. Ideaz, 14, 133-145, 150. Retrieved from https://du.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.du.idm.oclc.org/scholarly-journals/ beyond-pale-skinderella-stories-colourism-india/docview/1853613694/se-2?accountid=14608

Phoenix, A. (2014). Colourism and the politics of beauty. Feminist Review, 108(1), 97–105. doi: 10.1057/fr.2014.18

Schlessinger, D. (2020, March 19). Biochemistry, melanin. Retrieved May 05, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/books/NBK459156/

Setty, G. (2020, May 22). Crayola unveils new packs of crayons to reflect the world’s skin tones. Retrieved May 24, 2020, from https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/us/crayola-skin-tone-crayons-trnd/index.html

Skin. (2008). In Philip’s Encyclopedia. Philips. Retrieved from Credo Reference: http://du.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/philipency/skin/0?institutionId=1676

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image provided by author

Sameha Haque currently attends the University of Denver, where she studies biology with a minor in sociology. She was born in Anaheim, California and lived there for nine years before moving to Delta, Colorado. Sameha is the eldest of three, with two very adorable and energetic younger siblings. Her hobbies include reading and watching every show on Netflix.

Sameha also enjoys writing and speaking out about issues that have affected not only her but also those around her.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR For the majority of my life, I had been plagued by the brownness of my skin. It wasn’t something that I could fix, so the knowledge that I had to live with this shade of brown for the rest of my life was worrisome. Of course, I knew that many other people had this same worry, but I wasn’t aware that this was an actual issue that had a name: Colorism. When I discovered the meaning of this word, I automatically thought back to the many times I had heard negative comments about the color of my skin from people who share the same race as me. I thought about how it was possible for one to look at the color of my skin with such disdain, as if being dark-skinned would somehow hinder my abilities to accomplish something. There are so many people who have encountered colorism, but because it comes from people who are close to them, it’s easy to brush off. It is for this reason that I decided to tackle colorism as my quest.

One of the biggest challenges while composing this odyssey essay had to be the fact that colorism is such a broad topic that affects so many different races and cultures. I didn’t know where it would begin and how it would end. So, I decided to break it down and focus more on skin

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colors in general. Maybe if people understood how the melanin forms in the body, it would be easier to tackle the main constructions of the essay. Because of the broad nature of the topic, I decided to write mine in the constellation essay-style, where each essay would represent a different topic in regard to colorism.

I hope that, through my stories, the reader will begin to see the many ways that colorism can be inflicted on someone. While it can occur in a very explicit manner, most of the time, it’s very subtle, and we often brush it off. The fact of the matter is that if we continue to brush it off, the situation will keep spiraling. If we continue to allow our close friends and family to make off-handed comments about the color of our skin, we will end up not only hating our skin but also forcing the next generation of young children with dark skin to go through the same things we did.

That’s not a feasible option. Instead, we should focus on the fact that no two people have the exact same shade of skin and that’s perfectly fine. Abandoning the colonialist mentality will help us understand that all seven billion shades of skin are beautiful.

IMMIG R A N T DE T EN T I ON A ND A N IN T ERC U LT U R A L F U T U R E T HE E X A MP L E OF C A S A DE PA Z

by

Sam Colvett WRIT 1133: Writing & Research | Professor Libby Catchings

IMMIGRATION POLICY IS, WITHOUT A DOUBT, ONE OF THE most contentious issues in modern American politics. At the time of this writing, the incoming Biden Administration has promised to form immigration policy based on “the basic premise that our country is safer, stronger, and more prosperous with a fair, safe and orderly immigration system that welcomes immigrants [and] keeps families together” (“President Biden Outlines Steps”). If the Biden Administration is successful in this goal, it will mark a significant departure from the immigration system that has mixed criminal law and civil immigration law in a phenomenon scholars call “crimmigration.” One product of this historic criminalization is an abusive detention system that has been prevalent in American immigration policy for decades. Indeed, immigrant detention has risen to the forefront of national attention in recent years; many organizations have publicly denounced immigrant detention as an institution and implemented humanitarian efforts to confront some of the abuses rampant within it.

One such organization is Casa de Paz, a Colorado-based nonprofit founded in 2012 near the GEO Group-run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Aurora. Casa de Paz provides “hospitality to families separated by immigrant detention”; it was created by executive director Sarah Jackson after spending time at the U.S.-Mexico border with people in detention and witnessing immigrant VOLUME 10

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families being separated from one another (“About Us”). I initially became involved with this organization in 2019 as a first-year student at the University of Denver through a service-learning class, and I continued to volunteer throughout the remainder of the year as much as possible. Despite my limited experience as a volunteer, I would offer that Casa de Paz represents something significant—a more humane response to the complexities of modern

It is not enough to simply say you love another; you must actively welcome the other into life with you and show them this love. From this guiding point of interculturality, detention seems to be the exact opposite of the appropriate response to immigration.

immigration than immigrant detention. In contrast to the criminalization of immigration, which has led to painful and abusive detention practices, Casa de Paz serves as an example of the beauty that an intercultural and welcoming view of immigration could create. Since its inception, Casa de Paz has established temporary housing for previously detained people and families visiting those still detained, produced a documentary, written a book, started a “Casa on Wheels” program to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, and drawn volunteers from all over the Denver area (“About Us”).

One such volunteer, Fernando Pérez Ventura, has embodied this intercultural and welcoming approach to immigration particularly well. Fernando is a Mennonite pastor from Mexico who had originally come to the United States in 2016 as a part of his religious work on intersections between faith and interculturality. At an event in a Mennonite Church in Denver, Fernando and his wife, Rebeca, advocated for interculturality as a spiritually transformative way of interacting with others, one that recognizes the diversity and dignity of all people. Beyond the more well-known concept of multiculturalism—which, in their framework, refers to multiple cultures being present in the same place—Fernando and Rebeca argue that interculturality is characterized by learning from and being transformed by other cultures (Pérez Ventura and Torres Gonzales). As a result of this work, shortly 46

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after arriving in the Denver area, Fernando became involved with Casa de Paz. We would often volunteer on Thursday nights together. As joyful as he is wise, Fernando boldly claimed, with conviction and energy, that “God is an immigrant.” One minute, he would be speaking with me, a new college student volunteer, about theories of international relations; the next, he would be across the room, letting a previously-detained immigrant know that he was there for them and loved them. To paraphrase something Fernando once told me: it is not enough to simply say you love another; you must actively welcome the other into life with you and show them this love. From this guiding point of interculturality, detention seems to be the exact opposite of the appropriate response to immigration.

Instead of intercultural welcoming, the increasing interconnectedness of law enforcement and immigration policy—along with the growing perception of immigration as criminal—has resulted in a system that essentially treats all immigration violations as criminal violations (Marín and Jefferis 956–58), even though “a noncitizen’s eligibility to enter, reside, work, and eventually naturalize in the United States is found within administrative law, not the criminal code” (956). As legal scholar César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández points out, the first examples of immigrant detention in the United States were on privately-owned residential facilities that shipping companies bought to hold immigrants until their status could be determined by an immigration official (24). Immigration policy later evolved in response to the shifting demographics of immigrants to the United States. These policies ranged from the explicitly racist, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the implicitly racist, such as the 1920s’ quota laws (García Hernandez 23, 30). The specifically punitive detention practices we see today rose from several additional factors, of which some of the primary drivers were “the government’s ‘detention as deterrence’ platform” and its “mandatory detention” programs in the 1980s and 1990s (Marín and Jefferis 961).

These practices have been increasingly prevalent and cruel in the past few years under coordinated efforts by the Trump Administration. A damning report from the House Judiciary Committee finds that the Administration “began formulating

its plan to separate parents from their children as early as February 2017” (2). The “zero-tolerance” detention policy used to justify those separations began mandating the prosecution of border crossings at unprecedented levels (Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives 11).

According to ICE data published by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), the total average daily population in detention rose from 33,124 individuals in 2009 to 44,872 individuals in fiscal year 2018 (Glassanos, Facility List-Main),1 marking record-breaking highs almost every year (Cullen). More recently, Human Rights Watch reports that the Trump Administration had “the intent to expand ICE’s daily detention capacity to 60,000 people on any given day” in fiscal year 2021 (Cho et al. 5).

What Casa de Paz and volunteers like Fernando remind us of is that these problematic policy decisions have tangibly detrimental impacts on detained individuals. Counts vary widely depending on the source, but on the local level—and according to ICE data published by the NIJC—the Denver Contract Detention Facility, the Aurora facility to which Casa de Paz responds, has a max capacity of 848 individuals and has operated at around 70% of daily capacity for the last several years (Glassanos, Facility List-Main). René Lima-Marín, who spent time both in prison and in this ICE detention center, noted “how cold it (was) in the facilities” and further stated that “the immigration detention center did not allow contact visits,” which is even more restrictive than prison incarceration (Marín and Jefferis 964–965). Casa de Paz volunteers who participate in its detention visitation program support Lima-Marín’s assessment of these sites as worse than prison in some regards. They report that contact visits are prohibited and that detained immigrants are allowed only to speak through phones and plexiglass windows with visitors. Further, at the time of this writing, Jason Crow’s congressional office is still conducting regular oversight visits to this center due to “multiple cases of disease outbreaks” reported in the facility in February of 2019 (“ICE Accountability Report”).

There is a notable sense of gravity whenever the subject of the detention facility comes up at Casa 1

de Paz, as it often does, and its effects are quickly and personally observable in people’s responses to being there. I myself have seen a woman excited to receive a Coke because there were none offered in detention. I have heard people express excitement for showering, as there was not regular access to showers in detention. And I have been disheartened to hear a man claim, “This is my first day in the United States”; he had been in detention in the US for months, and he had yet to experience America outside of detention walls.

Further, detention is widely acknowledged as having adverse mental health effects on detained individuals, and these can be compounded for people who are seeking asylum or humanitarian protection in the United States. A review of twenty-six studies from eight different countries found that “adverse mental health consequences of immigration detention are consistently recognized across the literature”; these adverse effects include “high levels of anxiety, depression and PTSD and poor quality of life” (Werthern et al. 14). Re-traumatization in detention is also prevalent; the Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture claim that “detained asylum seekers find themselves locked up in a foreign system that can be reminiscent of the persecution they fled” (Keller et al. 68–69).

These conditions pose a stark contrast to the environment of Casa de Paz. Casa de Paz is a direct response to the criminalization of immigration and is grounded in an authentic desire to make the world a more welcoming place by whatever means available. Evident in every aspect of Casa de Paz is a desire to make people feel welcome as an alternative approach to crimmigration and detention.

This includes offering a home-cooked meal, a place to shower, a place to eat, a place to sleep, a person like Fernando to talk to, and help with transportation to wherever is next. From volunteers offering previously detained immigrants a hug to laying cards on the beds that simply say “You are loved,” Casa de Paz demonstrates what it can mean for the US to serve as an oasis for those who have gone through hell, and it provides a microcosm of the future interculturality we should hope will come to define our world.

The NIJC data sheet created by Glassanos is publicly available and linked within Cullen, though it can be difficult to find by searches for author or title. For ease of reference, each citation to Glassanos includes the spreadsheet page where the corresponding information can be found.

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WORKS CITED “About Us.” Casa de Paz, https://www.casadepazcolorado.org/about-us. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021.

Cho, Eunice Hyunhye, et al. Justice-Free Zones: U.S. Immigration Detention Under the Trump Administration.

American Civil Liberties Union, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/supporting_resources/justice_free_ zones_immigrant_detention.pdf.

Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives. The Trump Administration’s Family Separation Policy:

Trauma, Destruction, and Chaos. Majority Staff, Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, Oct. 2020, https:// judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/the_trump_administration_family_separation_policy_trauma_destruction_and_

chaos.pdf?utm_campaign=4526-519.

Cullen, Tara Tidwell. “ICE Released Its Most Comprehensive Immigration Detention DataYet. It’s

Alarming.” National Immigrant Justice Center, 13 Mar. 2018, https://immigrantjustice.org/staff/blog/ ice-released-its-most-comprehensive-immigration-detention-data-yet.

García Hernández, Cesar Cuauhtémoc. Migrating to Prison. The New Press, 2019.

Glassanos, Christopher J. ERO Custody Management Division: Faculty List Report. 6 Nov. 2017, https://immigrantjustice.org/sites/default/files/uploaded-files/no-content-type/2018-06/ICE_Facility_List_11-06-2017-web.xlsx.

“ICE Accountability Report.” Jason Crow, Congressman from Colorado’s 6th District, https://crow.house.gov/about/ice-accountability-report. Accessed 30 Mar. 2021.

Keller, Allen S., et al. From Persecution to Prison: The Health Consequences of Detention for Asylum Seekers. Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, 2003, https://phr.org/wpcontent/ uploads/2003/06/persecution-to-prison-US-2003.pdf.

Marín, René, and Danielle C. Jefferis. “It’s Just Like Prison: Is a Civil (Nonpunitive) System of Immigration Detention Theoretically Possible?” Denver Law Review, vol 96, no. 4, 2019, pp. 955-972. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3345768.

Pérez Ventura, Fernando. Personal interview. February 14, 2020.

Pérez Ventura, Fernando and Rebeca Torres Gonzales. “Interculturality and the Church.” First Mennonite Denver, 19 Jan. 2020, https://www.fmcdenver.org/adult-education/2020/1/21/interculturality-and-the-church.

“President Biden Outlines Steps to Reform Our Immigration System by Keeping Families Together, Addressing the

Root Causes of Irregular Migration, and Streamlining the Legal Immigration System.” The White House Briefing

Room, The White House, 2 Feb. 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/02/02/ fact-sheet-president-biden-outlines-steps-to-reform-our-immigration-system-by-keeping-families-together-ad-

dressing-the-root-causes-of-irregular-migration-and-streamlining-the-legal-immigration-syst/.

Werthern, Martha von, et al. “The Impact of Immigration Detention on Mental Health: A Systematic Review.” BMC Psychiatry, vol. 18, no. 382, 2018, pp. 1-19, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-018-1945-y.

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Originally from Franklin, Tennessee, Sam Colvett is a second-year student at the University of Denver studying international studies and public policy, with minors in leadership and Spanish. Next year, he will begin graduate work in international studies through the Korbel 5 Program. He has concentrated on immigration-related topics throughout both of his majors so far, and he hopes to continue studying these everimportant topics.

image provided by author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR In my WRIT 1133 class with Dr. Libby Catchings, our final project was to produce an ethnographic research project using responsible methodology on a distinct community in our lives. I decided I wanted to focus on my volunteer experiences with Casa de Paz. Since starting to volunteer with the organization the prior fall, I had already had extremely impactful experiences with Casa de Paz’s mission, environment, and other volunteers, and I wanted to explore some of this in writing.

One of my favorite aspects of this project was that I got to have more in-depth discussions with Fernando, a volunteer at Casa de Paz who has been particularly influential in my worldview. As I mention in my piece, I believe Fernando embodies many of the core values of Casa de Paz, and I think his outlook on life and immigration has a lot to offer the world. What he and many other people involved with Casa de Paz remind me is that, even in the midst of something as horrible as immigrant detention, there is still some hope for the future, if we can take interculturality and welcoming seriously. This is reflected even in the name of the organization, which literally translates to “house of peace.”

Another fascinating aspect of this piece is how the American societal context has shifted since I initially turned in the project. Since the Winter Quarter of 2020, President Joe Biden has succeeded Donald Trump after only one term in office, and the incoming Administration has promised dramatic shifts in immigration policy. Even with the potential improvement in the political environment, however, structural inequalities and violence inherent in the immigration system are no easy matters to fix.

Nevertheless, there is some hope for much-needed change in the future.

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Submit Your Work

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SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR VOLUME 11: Texts written during the 2020–21 academic year may be submitted electronically (by students or by instructors on behalf of students, with their permission) to the Editorial Board at writlarge. du@gmail.com by August 1, 2021.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR VOLUME 12: Texts written during the 2021–22 academic year may be submitted electronically (by students or by instructors on behalf of students, with their permission) to the Editorial Board at writlarge. du@gmail.com by June 15, 2022.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are very grateful to Doug Hesse and the DU University Writing Program for funding and supporting this project over the last ten years. We would like to thank our generous colleagues who have championed and nominated such tremendous student writing.

Finally, we would like to thank Keith Rhodes and Joe Ponce for their diligent efforts in the copyediting process.

FACULTY EDITORS April Chapman-Ludwig, David Daniels, Rob Gilmor, Matt Hill, Heather Martin, Keith Rhodes, David Riche, Aubrey Shiavone, & Daniel Singer.

2020–2021 EDITORIAL BOARD April Chapman-Ludwig, David Daniels, Heather Martin, LP Picard, & David Riche.

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