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Throughout history, civilizations have used storytelling as a means of teaching and explaining. A notable example is with Aesop’s Fables, where the stories ultimately convey various morals such as how The Boy Who Cried Wolf teaches to not joke about dire circumstances.This practice of sharing stories to teach is still present today and only becomes increasingly more important as our world becomes more complex. We currently live in an age where language has become so nuanced that a single word can immediately snap someone into a particular train of thought. Briefly mentioning the word “abortion” immediately divides a room, and a predictable, argumentative, defensive discourse between opposing sides ensues. This project will foundationally argue that the political topic of abortion has become abstracted, meaning that conversation surrounding it has become normalized, hyper-polarized, and overall difficult to comprehend the broader implications of. However, the primary argument in this project is that stories, fictional and nonfictional alike, can and do serve as an empathetic, accessible, and rhetorically powerful method of navigating difficult conversations. I will draw on fiction stories such as Red Clocks by Leni Zumas, as well as nonfiction stories AFAB people have shared about their experiences with abortion bans. Stories help bridge the gap between the facts and cognition by reintroducing and embodying the emotions associated with otherwise large, complex issues like abortion. It is only once we bridge this gap that we can take action and push forward together as a society. 

History is arguably one of the most important forms of knowledge humanity possesses because if we forget it, we are doomed to repeat it. The purpose of this project is to delve into the most vile, obscene, and overlooked parts of human history. It brings awareness to events that are rarely taught in schools or shown in full detail. This is important because, as stated previously, if you forget history you are doomed to repeat it and these events are something that must not be repeated. This project uses a creative fictional narrative to explore real atrocities experienced throughout history. Wars and genocides were researched and woven into a science fiction and fantasy piece. The story follows Isaac, a young man who is transported through time by a mysterious cult who plans on using him to usher in the apocalypse. On this journey Isaac witnesses various vile acts. All of this causes him to reflect on a larger question: do the ends justify the means? All of this was done to show that history is far from dead. And if we the future inheritors of this country are careless these atrocities can happen again. 

The Distant Star’s Shadow is an epistolary story of individuals victimized – explicitly and implicitly – by their pasts, cultures, relations, and the grand, inscrutable designs of empire. At first as seemingly mundane sci-fi ‘frontier’ story set on the planet of Ocher-IV, it does not take long for the work’s narrative to begin breaking down as psyche shaking revelations are made. This come to a head when, as convention and perception shatter, the narrator breaks free of their traditional role and becomes a tangible character, one able to enter and leave the plot as they choose. The setting, the mysterious and concerningly lethal Ocher-IV, which serves as the perfect staging ground for a new wave of space colonization, is also significant. This is a place where vast whistling fields of Lex-Fan stones jut upwards toward a starless sky, where white gleaming domes accented with indigo stripes collect red dust at their bases, and where vast, sublime storms cascade through ancient valleys. The air of retro-futurism that courses through this story’s setting is my attempt to place it in conversation with other sci-fi hallmarks, such as Stanislaw Lem’s The Invincible andRay Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, which both serve as inspiration. The Distant Star’s Shadow aims to challenge science fiction’s harmful, yet commonly held, notion that humanity has a right to colonize and ‘civilize’ the universe. This work intends to demonstrate, through catastrophe, the folly of ‘civilization’, both as a notion held by a colonial self, and as a tool of othering.

Losing a loved one can be one of the most difficult experiences to overcome. In Beyond the Last Goodbye, I am able to express my emotions about my grandparents’ death and handle my grief through poetry, a method I didn’t think of as grieving. Losing my grandfather to cancer was something I couldn’t quite grasp. I understood what death was and how he wasn’t going to come back but not being able to understand that a long-term illness would take him away is something I still have trouble coping with. In recent years, my grandmother was always in and out of the hospital but I never once thought she would die so soon. Her passing was expected but I didn’t want to admit to myself that she would also be gone. This feeling of unfamiliarity with death overwhelmed me and began to impact my day-to-day life.  Not being able to properly cope with their deaths has encouraged me to learn more about different coping strategies and stages of grief people experience, after avoiding the method of coping myself. At first, it was easier for me to bottle up my emotions and not share the pain I was feeling. This was before I was introduced to different types of poetry and was able to let my emotions flow through rhyming words and stanzas. In this collection, I share my personal feelings and coping methods while highlighting the different grieving stages people experience.

Our alarm systems are rewired when our bodies undergo trauma and mental distress. The reaction to the outside becomes more extreme, it's a feeling, it becomes an involuntary reaction in your being. In moments alone, we can hear our body and mind screaming for help and we can’t stand the sound of it. In the current fast paced world, it is encouraged to chase the debilitating sounds of life, yet this race can never be won. Normalizing burnout, hard working individuals lose sight of true happiness, peace and purpose. My goal of this project is to bring awareness to the sounds of the body and that the key to unwinding can all be found in moments of reflection and solitude. Gathering knowledge through reading materials written by Buddhist monks, nuns, psychiatrists and traumas survivors I will create a collection of creative works that will display how deep traumas run through the mind and body and how we can start to heal when we take time to quiet our lives. I aim to cultivate a project where individuals can see their reflection and take a moment, and to ask themselves, how loud is my body?

Empowering Voices is a project that stems from my realization as a young reader that the characters in the pages before me did not look like me or reflect my culture. The absence of reflective representation in literature profoundly impacted my engagement with reading, revealing the need to explore the implications of Latino book bans in the United States. This study aims to investigate the impact of Latino book bans, ultimately advocating for inclusion and preservation of Latino voices in the canon of American literature. The methodology involves literature reviews of the content from three prominent banned books -I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Mexican Whiteboy, and The Boy from Mexico- as well as interviews with those affected by these censorship efforts. Findings indicate that the censorship of Latino literature consequently impacts cultural identity, inclusion, and academic performance among Latino students. The marginalization of these narratives deprives all readers of rich and diverse perspectives. This research emphasizes the need to promote inclusivity in literature and advocate for the preservation of Latino literature. Such efforts are essential to ensure that all readers can see their experiences and identities portrayed in the pages before them.