by Ummer AliWhen I was 6, I met Sheikh Muhammad Sharif.
He helped me learn kindness. When I was 10, I wrote my first short story. That began my love for writing. When I was 12, I got my first in school suspension. I learned to watch what I say. When I was 13, I had my first heartbreak. It taught me that you can’t always have what you want. When I was 15, I wrote my first good short story. It showed me that I actually had the talent for writing. When I was 16, I had been to 7 funerals. Each one took a part of me with it. When I was 16, I met Mr. Kanakis. He showed me that you could be a good person, even if you’re surrounded by bad things. When I was 16, I watched my best friend kill himself. It broke me. When I was 17, I graduated high school. Fuck everyone who said I wouldn’t. When I was 20, I had my first real heartbreak. It showed me to never trust anyone with my secrets. When I was 21, I graduated college in 4 years. Fuck everyone who said I couldn’t. When I was 22, my dad became my best friend. Love you pops, I wouldn’t be where I am right now without you. And Now I’m 23. 3 heartbreaks, 9 suspensions, 4 graduations, 14 funerals, 1 loving family, 1 fractured mind, countless hours of self-doubt, and I have no idea what I am. All I know is that I am everything I’ve written in this piece and so much more. The only thing I know how to do is fight; fight for happiness, for love, for knowledge, for my family. So I guess I’m a fighter.
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By Linda CheriyanJust like many other immigrants, my family came to America in search of the “American Dream.” As a little girl growing up in India I was thrilled when I heard I would be able to come to The United States. The name “America” rang excitement to my ears. My father held his own business in India and tutored students; my mom helped my father out with his business. I realized in America my options would not be so limited; I could now have endless opportunities, dreams, and freedom. I would be in a utopia at last. I came to America on November 13th, 2003. I thought to myself, “I really can be anything in this land.” We came to America in hopes of something better, my father ended up getting a job that paid minimum wage, to give my brother and I a better life. My mom sat home and took care of things around the house because she wasn’t qualified for a job. In elementary school, I was always the odd one out because I bragged about my culture and the kids were not interested. I was considered weird because I didn’t match their personality. Kids made fun of me, and I thought things were supposed to be better. They made terrible remarks “go back to your country,” or “you better be careful of her because she probably has access to bombs.” I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to go back. I had a place where I was actually allowed to call home, and soil to my name. I had friends who understood me. I had parents who were not trying to find a balance between the two cultures, and somewhere along the way forgot to parent. “How can this possibly be better?” my little mind questioned. But how did the American dream become a fantasy for so many immigrants? My last trip to India, my uncle and I debated about the “American Dream” of course living here I had a better experience of this so-called “dream.” I was told I should be grateful and from what he has been told it is something everyone dreams of. The only thing that hung around in my head in that moment was “Why?” So he explained, “When I was growing up, America was and is still known as the land where you can be anything no matter who you are and what your status is.” I understood his standpoint and where he was coming from, the grass will always seems greener on the other side for anyone looking in. The options to us seem bigger and lavishly given out because of the false portrayal through media of what America really is. I myself was once in his place where I dreamt of this American Dream, where I would be able to live a life where I was given equal opportunities, but when exactly did my dream start to fade? In high school it hit me: this “American Dream” I was chasing after, is non- existent. It’s all just a myth to keep hopes in the people’s mind and to keep us continuously working for the capitalist society for the wealthy. The “American Dream” was just that, an AMERICAN dream. For a person of color like myself, it was a fantasy that we did not fit into, yet we desired to obtain. According to Google the definition of the “American Dream” is “the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.” The “American Dream” is something where the so-called “equal opportunities” are only created for the white man who is privileged, and has the opportunities. Race has always played a key role in the division of our country, pushing minorities farther away from attaining this dream; blinding their vision of the dream they had in mind. Placing minorities in impoverished neighborhoods and not granting the same opportunities as the rich. Our education system itself is something that makes it harder on the students to attain the dream by making them fall into unimaginable debts they will never be able to pay off. If we make a dollar more in our family income we suddenly stop receiving financial aid. We must pay out of our pockets with the job that pays less than minimum wage. On top of all of this, we have our parents constantly bickering in our ears to keep our grades up, and yelling at us that we’re not trying hard enough. They do not understand the education system, the workload, and stress we are under in college. Then when we finally get out of college we go on a scavenger hunt to find jobs. Preferably a job that fits the degree we paid thousand of dollars for, but all of the jobs ask for “minimum of 10 years of experience.” Being a woman doesn’t make it any better either, we undergo the gender wage gap, meaning we get paid less than the men sitting next to us who is doing the same job who have the same qualifications. Now we live in a time where the bachelor’s degree holds the value of a high school degree, so we have to rush to find a graduate school in hopes to find a job that will pay off all the unnecessary loans. Suddenly the dreams we had turned into nightmares that propel us into poverty, and deny us from being able to fulfill the goals we once had. The vision begins to fade. So how can one say in spite of all this the American Dream exists?
by Erick GarciaHappiness. The nine letter word that embodies everything ideal that the human being can want out of life. It’s the one thing that we all desire and strive to obtain despite our respective opinions as to what it means to us. To some, happiness can be represented as having a high paying career, travelling the globe, entertaining others, or anything grandiose. To others, happiness can be represented as being something a bit simpler such as having a stable life with a family or having a significant other. Whatever happiness means to us, we all have an idea of what it means to be happy and what brings us happiness. Or at the very least, even if we’re not completely sure of what could make us happy, we’re definitely sure that we want to feel happy. Unfortunately, there’s another word, a ten letter word that I can only describe as embodying the most pervasive feeling in the human experience. That ten letter word is known as depression. All of us have felt what depression is like, and to say that one can be immune to it is to say that one is not human. Even Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a man who seemingly has it all and whom many people would agree has quite an amazing life, has suffered from depression. I say this to show that even the most well off person isn’t safe from this horrible state. If you are reading this, I believe it’s safe to assume you have battled with depression in your own way, so let me say first and foremost that in writing this article I do not intend to make you feel worse, nor do I pretend to have the solution to what’s troubling you. Rather, I write this article with an ethics of care to simply tell you…that you are not alone, and that I want to understand you. At this point, after having read the word “depression,” you are probably all of a sudden thrown back into your memories of what it’s like to be depressed. Sometimes it might be a mild depression, other times it may be very strong. Keep in mind, depression is a normal thing. It’s how we deal with it that will determine how severe it can be. The source of your depression is probably way different than mine, but what connects you and me are the feelings of helplessness, suffocation, loneliness, pain, carelessness and numbness. You probably feel like there’s no end to your suffering, that you’re a burden to others, that no one would care if you went to them for advice, and that even if they cared at first they’d eventually stop caring. There comes a point when even all of these things probably stop bothering you, and what’s left is the feeling of being on autopilot. I might be right about you, but I might also be wrong. These have been my personal feelings, and it has been my experience that others have felt what I’ve felt. Everyone suffers differently, and everyone deals with their suffering differently. What we can all agree on is that depression sucks. Big time. You may say that it’s not a big deal and that it doesn’t bother you, but one thing that no one will ever say is that they actually like feeling depressed. So, what am I saying all of this for? Well, I’m saying all of this for two reasons: the first is to tell you that I’ve been there before. The second is to tell you that despite what you may think or feel, there’s a way out. I myself have been dealing with depression as far back as I can remember. Sometimes I didn’t really know why I felt depressed, much less how to deal with it. Other times I knew exactly why. What I did know was that it was a pervasive feeling that was all too present. And every time I thought I had beaten it, I would relapse. I never took any medication for it because I knew that what I was going through wasn’t something so severe that required medication, but at the same time it was my opinion that medication wouldn’t have helped anyway. The lack of friends in elementary school and in most of high school certainly didn’t help. I wouldn’t get over my depression until my mid-twenties, right before becoming a part of this online magazine. It was a long journey, but I managed to do it. And you can rise above it too. At the time I joined this online magazine last semester in the fall, I was taking an anthropology course called Death and Dying in Society. As part of this course, I had to read Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning. Frankl was not only a psychiatrist, but also a holocaust survivor, and Man’s Search For Meaning was his autobiography. Not only was his autobiography one of the most page turning works I’ve ever read, but it opened my eyes and enlightened me to a lot of things that I hadn’t really thought of before, some which really helped me to get over my depression and existential crisis that I was also going through as a result of that depression. One of the most important takeaways from this autobiography was the concept of the “will to meaning.” This concept states that the primary motivation in the human being is the search for meaning, and that if the human being knows the “why” of his or her existence, then he or she can withstand the “how” of his or her existence. Essentially, this says that we all have something or someone to live for in our lives, and if we know what or who that is, then we can overcome any obstacle in life. In other words, our will to live is what gets us through the day. We all have something or someone to live for but it’s very easy to lose sight of that. It’s even easier to convince yourself that you are alone in dealing with your depression. When that darkness that surrounds you becomes so overpowering, even the loudest voices from the people who are closest to you can be tuned out. But quite the contrary: one is never truly alone. This was a fact that was further reinforced when I read Frankl’s autobiography. We easily convince ourselves that we are alone and that no one will want to help us. In the worst cases, we can sometimes convince ourselves that we don’t matter to anyone. That is just simply not true. Not in the slightest. It took me a while to be convinced of that, but I assure you that it’s true. You will always matter to someone, whether it’s your family, your friends, your professors, anyone. You absolutely matter. And those people are always there for you. And if you love those people nearly a fraction of how much they love you, believe me that your depression also hurts them too. So instead of thinking no one cares about you, think about the people who love you and use them to fight this depression that has you down. They are your reason to live and to rise above this horrible feeling. And maybe the most important thing to remember when you feel helpless is that you do have a say in the matter. You do have a choice. You have the choice to either let yourself be consumed or to tackle your depression head on and beat it. Like Frankl states in his autobiography, “man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.” I tell you all of this to try and convince you that yes, it IS possible to leave your depression behind. There ARE people that care about you and love you and want nothing but to see you happy, and that there IS a reason to beat your depression. Your depression may belong to you, but it doesn’t mean that you have to fight it alone. There ARE people who are willing to weather the storm with you. Don’t ever convince yourself otherwise. But most importantly, I write this to tell you that the ability to overcome your depression is in YOUR hands. I write this because I too care about you and how you feel. And if having read this helps you to conquer the darkness in any way, shape or form, then I’ve done my job not just as a writer but as a human being. As Brandon Lee’s character Eric Draven stated in the film The Crow, “it can’t rain all the time.” Things WILL get better. Don’t let yourself be brought down because of life’s circumstances. I don’t pretend to know exactly how you’re feeling, and I don’t want to tell you to get over yourself and that what you’re going through is a walk in the park. All I want is to tell you that as long as you’re still breathing, the worst hasn’t happened yet, and that happiness isn’t a destination or an end goal: it’s something that’s right in front of you. All you need to do is to want it and take it.
Regardless of what happiness means to you or to me, you don’t need to look far to find it, and it doesn’t have to be impossible to obtain it. Depression will always pay you a visit once in a while because life won’t always go the way you want it to. Not every day will greet you with a smile, but as long as your heart’s still beating and you’ve got people who love you to remind you of what’s important, you can and will find your way out of the darkness. And once you’ve accomplished that, your definition of happiness will start to take form, and the word happiness will become so much more than just nine letters put together. by Kevin TranWhile growing up, every individual tries to find their place within society. We all go through this no matter whether we admit it or not. In the spring of 2016, I was having a conversation with my professor and we had spoken about my Vietnamese heritage. He recommended a novel written by a Vietnamese professor at the University of South California (USC), Viet Thanh Nguyen, named The Sympathizer. Before I started reading it, I looked into the novel and noticed that it was a recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. This had made me eager to purchase the book and begin reading. I was always amazed at the lack of Vietnamese culture portrayed within American society unless it was about the Vietnam War. Looking up books or movies about Vietnam always gave me pictures and videos about soldiers, war-ridden streets, and despair of the Vietnamese people who were given no choice but to endure what was going on right before their eyes, just as my parents did. This novel opened my eyes to the war and its aftermath from the perspective of a Vietnamese individual instead of those who came in to help fight against communism. However, growing up with Vietnamese parents helped me realize how beautiful the country truly is regardless of it being ruled as a Socialist Republic. This debut novel for Viet Thanh Nguyen follows an undercover communist sleeper-spy during the Vietnam War and its aftermath. The main character, who remains unnamed, is giving a confession on his recollection of events between the Fall of Saigon and his imprisonment in Vietnam many years later. During this time, we notice a conflict in his character as he knows that he must report to the North but he sympathizes with the people of the South. From the opening moments of the book, we are put right into the actions that occurred before before the Fall of Saigon. The beginning of the book helps us fill the gaps within society and gives a voice to the voiceless. It also helps bring a new perspective to those events that transpired 40 years ago. The novel highlights the many themes that are still evident in today’s world. First, the theme of betrayal and how it has harmful effects on the person and those who are involved as well. Being a sleeper spy was no easy feat as the main narrator describes it as talent, and it is either the best or the worst qualities of his personality. Also, the conflicts that occur between both the Western and Eastern cultures/societies come into play as societal integration occurs with Vietnamese finding refuge to escape the war. First and foremost, the protagonist makes us feel like we are one with him in every aspect of his life. From his decision making to his thoughts, it makes us feel as we were right there from the opening lines: “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds, . . . able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that this is a talent,” he continues, but “I wonder if what I have should even be called talent. After all, a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The talent you cannot not use, the talent that possesses you — that is a hazard.” The talent that he speaks about is the ability to be able to sympathize. It helps him develop a conflict within himself to do what he believes is right. This talent that he possesses is both his strength and his weakness. Gaining the General’s trust while on the route to betrayal for the Communist party. The protagonist secretly is observing the general and others around him in order to report back to the Viet Cong. This complex binary personality helps us sympathize with the narrator as we go through the various emotions and drama that we encounter through the novel’s 382 pages. After fleeing from South Vietnam, we follow the narrator to Los Angeles, California where he lays low in search of ‘refuge’ from the war. While located in America, he is learning to adjust to the Western culture as many Vietnamese refugees did to escape their war-ravaged homeland. He also experiences the racism that occurred due to the relocation of thousands of Vietnamese people in America. After being located in California, he then works on set of recording in the Philippines before leading the exiled Vietnamese troops back into Vietnam. He becomes imprisoned on this mission and starts to confess everything that transpired leading up to that moment. The ending of the novel speaks perfectly to the events that transpired and the people that Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote them for. “WE WILL LIVE” the protagonist states. Despite the hardship that the Vietnamese people faced, they had endured. This beautifully written novel gives voice to the voiceless. Nguyen states himself that “Although my family and other refugees brought our war stories with us to America, they remain largely unheard and unread, except by people like us.” Americans tried to forget this war that they lost but sometimes they forget that they were not the only ones who lost. The South Vietnamese people lost their land and the country lost its freedom.
I was born and raised in the United States to Vietnamese refugees. I was lucky enough to be able to have many Vietnamese traditions passed along to me. What I am most proud of is my parents and the journey that they endured to get to where they are today. Vietnamese is who I am, it is in my blood. Hopefully one day, the tales of the Vietnamese refugees will make mainstream media and help individuals understand the war better from the viewpoint of those who were directly affected. I want to thank Viet Thanh Nguyen for writing such a beautiful novel and helping me say even louder that I am proud to be Vietnamese. by Leslie RomanAlice falls into the Abyss, the depths of a deep world she never knew about. She awakens to find that everything is abnormal: the clock, the walls, the people, the animals etc. Alice is not in College though. We are. Education is just one of the many obstacles we have to overcome to get a better future—but some agree with the idea that it is not necessary to go to College. To me, College hit so hard, it got me thinking about questions like; “What have I been doing with my life? Why didn’t I do better in high school? All the time I wasted I could have used to prep myself on what major I wanted or even where to go to college, to decide whether to go out-of-state or to commute. This is my experience on my journey to College starting from high school to present. I was the girl who got along with everyone, literally. I had no problems with any of my classmates. I was the type of person that never interfered with other people’s business, nor did I want to know their business—unless with my best friend, which is something completely different. I always passed my classes with high grades, but math and science were not my favorite subjects. In parent-teacher conferences, I was always getting great comments like; “She does all her work”, “She does not give any trouble” etc. I became the good student who focused on all the assignments she needed to do. But then everything changed when the fire nation attacked [Avatar Joke]. When I became a senior, I was excited to leave. I didn’t have to take anymore regents. I thought about all the sleep I would get. What I wasn’t doing was going in-depth on my research for College. It was not that I did not want to go College. I felt like I was not ready. My idea of College was, “This is the most important decision of your life. What are you going to do? Where are you going to go? Do you really want to leave your family and friends behind?” Various questions raced through my mind. I was not thinking clearly. On top of this, there was more a rush to apply to TAP, PELL, FAFSA, and supplements so I could go to the College I wanted. I was so unfocused I was not even looking for my prom dress, until I literally bought it on the day of. Anyway, I only had one college advisor, who only came in to help the senior class apply to colleges. Through my eyes, I saw as my friends constantly came into her office during lunch, afterschool, and mornings getting applications done—but I felt like I was not doing enough. I had completed my own paperwork, my own applications, yet I was caught up with the idea that the college I chose is the final place where I can take my college experience. Everyone, and I mean everyone, during that spring time began to get receive letters from different schools. I saw the smiles and the frowns from people’s faces whether they got in or not. Then there was me, the “good student”, who has not received any answer except one from the 10 different colleges I applied for. But what I guess you can say that what finally damaged my hopes of going to College was that my supplement forms never got completed due to a miscommunication of the advisor. I was able to get an appeal though, and I arrived to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Great I thought, another school for law after I just graduated a high school of Law and Government and Justice. Needless to say, I was a lazy-ass freshman. I thought I was going to get away without doing all my work, and participation? LIES! At this point, I was like “Why did I treat high school like it was so important?” I ended up having all C’s except one A for my freshman year of College. And I bore the consequences of it. With a GPA of less than 3.0 I could not apply for anything I would have wanted to do. I kicked ass though next semester but I realized something. Your life, who you want to be or what you want to do with it, lies in your own hands. I had a wake-up-call in my first ever Anthropology class. This is not to hype my professor or to make it seem like everyone should take him—unless you are ready for a challenge. He gave me an awakening about how life is, how college is, and made me think about what I want to do. I can get all my assignments done, and be on time, but he made the class engaging. Through his lessons and charisma, I will put it simply, “Time is of the essence”. Life is too short not to see what is in front of you. You can die an instant, but would you be happy with the life you have created for yourself? The courses I have taken were not easy. But who said that life was easy? We have to deal with that professor, who is sarcastic, the students who think that everything someone else says is funny and the load of work that we need to do to pass the class. We have those moments where, we say, “I’m a broke college student,” when we do not have money for food or things we need. But I wanted to involve myself with the John Jay community, so I went and volunteered for community service and currently for this Zine. I took the steps, and got the motivation. I even changed my major to Anthropology. To put it bluntly, College is not a Wonderland. But there’s exciting stuff out there if we look. |
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