Brevity: Can Fiction Save Felons?

November 5, 2017April 30, 20194 Comments

Hi friends, I’m trying out a new feature on this blog (on top of regular posts). Let me know what you think. 🙂

brevity (2)

Brevity features short weekly posts on the interesting, incisive, or inexplicably moving ideas inspired by my Harvard professors and classmates. It’s a record of the detail in those intellectual and creative moments, as well as an exploration of the curious questions that keep me up at the midnight hour. Here’s an honest snapshot of my mind.

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Can fiction transform the lives of prison inmates?

I attended “The Words to Say it: Teaching, Writing, and Incarceration” panel last Thursday, featuring a discussion with novelist and Emmy-nominated screenwriter Richard Price, writer and prison-reform educator Edyson Julio, and author and legal scholar Michelle Kuo, moderated by my fiction writing professor cum novelist Claire Messud. In short: so many writers!!! And all of them discussing not simply the craft of writing, but the question that began this post, which on broader terms, entails an interrogation of this:

How does fiction matter to real-world issues?

As a person who loves to read and write, I think about this question a lot. It bothers me because I can’t seem to find a concrete answer, but I also feel assured in its uncertainty because of course! There is no simple answer in life, least of all in the humanities.

I find this dilemma between what is deemed ‘practical’ and fiction, which is not, so sensitively expressed by Edyson Julio. He is a Bronx native from the Black community — one which is beleaguered by disproportionately high incarceration rates. To put things in perspective, one in three black men can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. As a community, black Americans are incarcerated at an average rate of 5 times that of white Americans.

Going home to write stories felt weirdly self-indulgent.

– Edyson Julio

Yet, what brought him to his incarceration work was a work of fiction, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (I had read an excerpt of it previously during fiction writing workshop). The novel moved him so much that it prompted him to teach creative non-fiction writing class at Rikers Island, New York City’s main jail complex. Something unexpected happened: As he taught the inmates how to write, they began to create for themselves whole new personas, inventing new gestures, names, identity, and what seemed to be a new skin to cope with the bleak, violent realities of imprisonment.

Fiction presented for the inmates the possibilities of writing the other self, of transcending a fixed identity of a criminal that they have been condemned to. All three panelists agreed that the current state of incarceration in the US was that even if you didn’t enter prison a criminal, you would leave as one. Can fiction allow them to imagine being more?

What happens to the imagination in jail? The truth is stark: those dreams that the inmates have before entering prison get utterly dispelled. Even when they leave the prison compounds, they are changed, or as Price says, “you can’t get the prison smell off your brain”. In jail, the inmates have been conditioned and manipulated by their environment to fight or flight. It doesn’t occur to them that they are entitled to have dreams. For many, their natural instinct becomes basic survival.

Sometimes, fantasy is on scale with the reality. Your world becomes this vicious crowded phone booth. You think, maybe if I move this way, I’ll get this free pocket of air… You don’t think: “I want to fly a plane”.

– Richard Price

Fiction compels us to inspect the underlying narratives of our culture. That, perhaps, our concept of sin since Genesis — Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — is incomplete. Instead of perceiving the act as falling into an eternal state of sin, it can be viewed as a necessary awakening of human consciousness and a chance for human growth.

Maybe what fiction can accomplish is more subtle. It steers me to comprehension by nurturing the chaos of reality into a recognizable shape. I exercise the muscle of imagination and of empathy. And in spotting similar things between me and the character on the page, I recognize the humanity within myself. What can fiction do for felons? It does what it does for all readers — it allows the inmates to recreate themselves so that they can become multitudes, multitudes that can encompass contradictions in their identities (criminal versus father, son, brother, etc.) and disparities between their dreams and realities.

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

…

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

Unlocking Your Dream College: Essay Tips, by a Harvard Student

October 8, 2017April 30, 201910 Comments

Can John Harvard’s ghost tell me about the art of writing?

Here I share the process I went through in creating my Harvard application essays. 🍯 Other application tips can be found at Free Resources →

I applied to only one school in the US, so this post is definitely not about a tried-and-true method. This is how I did it personally, and bear in mind that you might find it helpful or not. So pick whatever inspiration you can get from this and, ultimately, follow your gut.

My favorite analogy for the entire college admissions affair is matchmaking. ✨ The entire affair involves composing unclichéd love letter after love letter (essays), presenting an authentic yet attractive résumé of your merits (the Common Application), being appraised in face-to-face conversations over coffee (alumni interviews), and having those around you vouch for your suit (recommendations).

So, how to write a heartfelt love letter to your dream college that is true to who you are? Some universal pointers ring true: be genuine (hmm, who likes a pretentious impostor in love? not me.); present a compelling but focused narrative of yourself (how are you best defined? think Linkedin with an emotional punch.); an unique insight that ties together your past, present, and future (show them what you will be bringing to and taking away from the relationship).

Bearing these pointers in mind, I’ll touch on each of the following:

How important is the essay?
How to brainstorm?
How to present your topic?
How to finally write the essay?

essay1

What are the essays for? i.e. “Why should I care?”

A lot of international applicants tend to underestimate the importance of the essays and put in double the amount of time on pulling up their standardized test scores (SAT/ACT). While scores are definitely important, my personal advice would be to spend the most time and thought on your essays — above every other component.

From your high school transcript, lists of activities and honors, and teacher recommendations, the AO is trying to piece together a coherent picture of who you are. Your essays are the biggest canvas for you to add that crucial, app-defining stroke that pulls all those disparate threads together in a strong, clear narrative — all in one move.

Only the essays can do that.

Everything else (scores, activities, recommendations, grades) are just floating bones in the ether. The essay is the flesh that anchors them, makes sense of them (why is this girl playing the piano, reading thrillers and volunteering at a homeless shelter?) and settles them in their order in the universe of YOU THE APPLICANT (what matters most to you, how you think, how you see the world).

In short, your essays configure the ‘individual’ that the AO sees, arranging the ‘bones’ of your application into a living, breathing person with a history and a story — a story in your own voice that should resonate and make the AO advocate for you with fervor during the committee meeting. 💓

How to brainstorm my essay topic? i.e. “I’ve done a million random and interesting things, how do I choose what to zoom in on? Should I just write a 650-word autobiography of my life???”

Better than everyone else, you need to know why you should be getting into your dream college (if you have one, that is). Many people are unsure of why they should be admitted even after submitting their entire application. I believe that is a huge mistake. In my opinion, the pithy platitude to ‘love yourself first before you can find true love’ is gold.

Love yourself first, so you know what you deserve

there is no such book, in case you were wondering

This means you must, before you even open a blank Word Document, at least attempt to answer: I should get into my dream college because ________________________________.

Please don’t be modest! 😎

To facilitate the process, picture this. You have two minutes alone in the lift with the Dean of Admissions of your dream college and you have his/her full attention in this short span of time to sell yourself as an applicant. You’ve got to make the elevator pitch of your life.

What will you say?

The thing is, the whole application process is eerily analogous to the scene I just described. You only have your essays to make that direct pitch to the AO, but the AO doesn’t have a lifetime to get to know you; instead, your application will probably get a few hours of scrutiny on average. That’s the only shot you have, so make full use of what you get.

That’s tough because not everyone has done that life-defining one thing which absolutely screams to be meditated on. I was having trouble in the brainstorming stage since all my activities seemed pretty on par with one another, and I decided to do this:

Step 1: Create an ‘elevator pitch’, namely ‘Why should I get into my dream college?’ Mine came down to this: 1) writing for a cause; 2) passion for history, culture, politics, truth, and the narratives we tell ourselves; 3) international exposure and reconciling contradictory perspectives (travels and reading). Tips: Think along the lines of what sets you apart from other applicants. The T-shaped (well-lopsided) student is almost always more attractive than the O-shaped (well-rounded) one. Essentially, in this pitch, you think about what horizontal attributes you have (e.g. intellectual imagination and curiosity across disciplines, and strength of character) as well as the vertical (that which is normally called a ‘spike‘ — an in-depth passion, skill or talent that goes far deeper than your peers).

Step 2: This elevator pitch is going to be the personal narrative you drive home in EVERY SINGLE component of your application before your essays come in — this means your honors, activities, teacher recommendations (send your bullet points to your teachers for their reference), and additional information (if utilized).

It’s all about internal consistency. Your application should stand as a coherent story, with different parts reinforcing, resonating with, and complementing each other.

Step 3: Review your application thus far (your essays are still unwritten at this point) and think from the perspective of a stranger who is reading it all for the first time: what will you be most curious about this applicant by now? What needs to be expounded on the most? What is left dangling and untied? Whichever bullet point in your personal narrative that is, it is a perfect candidate for your Common Application essay. Then, tackle another strand of your personal narrative in the supplementary essay (if any). Note: Not every bullet point in your personal narrative needs an essay to catapult itself into the AO’s consciousness; it’s your judgment call.

Each essay component of your application should ideally show a different dimension of your exciting brilliant multi-dimensional self.

How should I approach my chosen topic? i.e. “How can I make the AOs sit up — eyes shining and pen furiously annotating — on a blurry caffeinated night after reading ten essays in a row? 😵 “

Generally speaking, there are two main ways your essay can make a powerful impact: either your experience is one in a million OR you go through a pretty ordinary experience but arrive at a revelation that only you can reach.

The latter, what I call the uniqueness of insight, might just work better. The insight that was drawn, the reflections gained, and the perspective with which you view the experience are far more important than the specific topic itself. When you have a powerful insight, the experience does not matter much per se except as a plot device to lead the reader into the refreshing embrace of your insight.

Some questions that might lead you to deeper insights:

On experiences: Why is this experience part of your personal narrative but might not be for others? How has it uniquely shaped you in unexpected ways (think: personal growth)? What do you want to differently in the future now that you’ve had this experience?

On personality traits: How do you see the world differently? Are you able to uncover any small moments with big meaning that might pass others by? Who are you by the virtue of your motley of ideas?

On spikes: By virtue of the depth of your craft or the intensity of experiences it has brought you, what do you understand about your area of strength that others do not, or what higher revelation has that given you about how you want to lead your life?

💪

Now, write the essay — write it like a good writer, like a good storyteller.

The craft of good writing is sometimes intuitive, but more often than not it depends on practice — reading lots of good writing, imitating good writing, and discovering your own style.

Read the most evocative, atmospheric and powerful scenes in your favorite stories — see how they hooked you with dialogue, described an intense moment, and painted the setting. Books on writing such as The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White will be worth the time investment if you are not confident about your writing and need guidance. In particular, read successful college application essays (I must have read close to a hundred) to see how they do it in a limited word count.

There is a wide pool of successful college application essays online, but be discerning about them. After all, each essay must be looked at in the context of everything else, a context which you are not privy to. The college application essay is not meant to be read in a vacuum. Hence, there will be successful essays that will make you scratch your head and wonder what earned them the acceptance. A mindset that is helpful when reading such essays is to ask ‘what works for me and what doesn’t?’ and ‘why do I like this but not that?’, and to add those observations and reflections into your writer’s arsenal.

Here are the people & resources that helped me tremendously (to varying degrees):

Various editions of 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays
http://www.collegeessayguy.com/
The people who gave feedback for my essays (3 is a good number — someone who knows you well, someone who doesn’t, and someone who is a good writer). Tips: seniors in the colleges that you are applying to can be great critics. Someone who doesn’t know you well can tell you what impression they have of you from your essay (if their impression wildly deviates from your personal narrative, it’s a warning sign to make some changes). It is also extremely important to have the tenacity to edit! If you can’t find anyone suitable to give you feedback, putting the draft down and looking at it again with new eyes around 1-2 weeks later can be immensely constructive.
The New York Times publishes a handful of college application essays on money, work or social class each year. There are some gems — I’ve linked the 2015 edition below.

I’m also making my Harvard supplementary essay available to all my blog subscribers. After subscribing at the sidebar on the right, if you’d like to read it, sign up here →

Finally, good luck! It’s a daunting, stressful time for everyone, but it is worth every last ounce of your focus and creativity. Go for it, believe in yourself, and ultimately, as it is in matchmaking, leave it up to destiny. While you’ve chosen your dream college, she needs to choose you too; and how that unfolds is as unpredictable as the human heart. So, know that sometimes who you love might not love you back, but there’ll always be your true love waiting – around an unexpected bend, the very personification of the finer irony of the vagaries of life. Love boldly, and the college you will belong at will find you unexpectedly.

Feel free to share this with whoever you think might find it helpful. 🍀 And see you on the other side!

Lots of love,

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Embracing Rejection At Harvard (also unexpected surprises)

September 10, 2017April 30, 201913 Comments

A rejection 😦 (There is a twist at the end, so read on.)

Dear Writing,

It’s an open secret that I love you but have never felt very sure about you. You’re a complicated lover — sometimes, you come so close I can breathe your scintillating effervescence and feel you intimately against the insides of my skin; other times, I’m reminded by your improbable capriciousness. You don’t belong to me, you dance nimble steps a distance away, you ask, all wide-eyed innocence, Who said this would be easy?

I know. I really do.

I applied for a fiction writing workshop under Harvard’s Creative Writing program, housed in the college’s English Department. A brief Googling yields some interesting yet intimidating history about the program on The Crimson (Harvard’s daily newspaper): Writing Classes Turn Students Away is pretty self-evident from its five-word title; Ink and Paper: Creative Writing at Harvard calls the selection process “notoriously competitive”; Many Dissatisfied with Creative Writing compares Harvard’s (intimate 12-people workshops) to the larger number of creative writing offerings at other schools like Yale and Princeton.

To determine admissions, all of Harvard’s creative writing courses require a separate application that includes a three to five-page writing sample in the relevant genre due on the first day of classes each semester. Each student also ranks their course preferences when applying.

Frankly speaking, I don’t have a lot of experience with fiction writing. It’s something that I always wanted to do, but I ended up talking more about it than ever seriously attempting it. I have not written a novel; I have never been to a writing workshop; I have not even published any short stories online or elsewhere.

Yet, when I opened my inbox to read that email on a drizzling gray afternoon on September 5, my heart still died a little. (It resurrected sometime later.)

Here were the first things that enveloped me. Self-doubt (Maybe I’m not a good writer? Should I stop trying for this kind of thing? Goodbye The Advocate and anything remotely creative writing related.), thoughts of if-only and what-if (I should not have started working on my writing sample eight hours before it is due; why did I ever think this was a good idea?), and a sense of resigned helplessness clambered into my mind in a clamorous scuffle. Even though I had an inkling of the competition that it is inevitable when you gather the best and brightest together for a limited number of opportunities, and I knew I was competing against not only my peers but also upperclassmen and graduate students for those 12 slots, rejection is never (and should never be) easy to swallow.

In a mildly depressed haze, I went to the gym at the M.A.C. for the first time since college started. The steady thuds of my soles against the treadmill pulled me out of the despondent swirl of thoughts. And I recognized the pulsing, irrevocable pull I felt towards challenging and transformative experiences, the inextinguishable yearning I had for doing hard things that can change me, and the heart that drummed loudly to authentically live and achieve my best — if I can never get rid of my ambition, I must necessarily come to terms with this ugly but formative thing called rejection.

The moment I officially acknowledged that in my mind, all the clutter cleared. What mattered then was how fast I could condition my mind to move past rejection and whether I could figure out how to try again, again and again — however many times it would take — in a progressing, more sophisticated fashion.

Life works in mercurial, unbelievable ways.

Turns out I’m the first name on the waiting list! Someone didn’t enroll (thank you!!!) and I got in! 🙂

The next day, on September 6, when I was on my way to shop another class, I refreshed my inbox and saw an impossible email from the Harvard Creative Writing Program.

I got in, off the waiting list! Firstly, I didn’t know there was a waiting list. Secondly, isn’t it incredible that I am the first name on the waiting list? Thirdly, it must be by some strange miracle of the universe that someone just so happens to be unable to enroll and I get to discover all this behind-the-scenes stuff. This is what I think: God wants to test my resilience. The power to embrace rejection is harder to master than hard-earned acceptance. So every rejection I taste at an early phase is a precious chance for self-growth.

So, yes! I am now one of 12 students taking the Fiction Writing workshop under Professor Claire Messud this semester.

And yes, there is a happy ending to this story.

But, the happy ending is not the key thing here. What is crucial is understanding that we must each discover how we individually can embrace rejection, conquer it in as short a time as possible, and keep moving with high hopes and concrete action — all these set against the backdrop of Life in which rejection is constant and inescapable.

Even as a freshman, I find myself constantly faced with the prospect of not getting a coveted class. For instance, out of the four classes I’m taking this fall, three had an application process. I might have ended up with a completely different slate of classes in another time and place if all three didn’t happen to work out. Introducing my Freshman Fall classes:

A Humanities Colloquium: From Homer to Garcia Marquez
Freshman Seminar: The Creative Work of Translating
Fiction Writing: Workshop
The Fundamentals of Archaeological Methods & Reasoning (For people who are like ‘HUH? You want to be an archaeologist?’, no I don’t, but in an alternate universe, I would be a 20th century tomb-raider. This anthropology class satisfies the Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning General Education requirement, yay! Farewell calculus!)

I am immensely grateful for the rocky way I converged with my fiction writing workshop and this early rejection on the cusp of my transition to four years at Harvard. I will never be able to stop myself from aiming for things I love — no matter how high the probability of rejection. In a place like Harvard, or even in life, the most empowering thing might just be to proudly wear whatever rejections come my way like emblems of a battle-hardened veteran driven by unyielding dreams.

Lots of Love,