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! ! beau-ty : noun [byoo-tee]
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: the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit.
! : the qualities of a being resembling all that is white and pure, innocent and untainted.
! : the qualities of a female individual or thing that gives pleasure to her male counterpart in the manner of submission, silence or surrender.
! : all qualities that neither offend the status quo nor society’s universal criteria for the human body and mind.
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01.01. BEAUTY {redefining societal norms and perceptions of aesthetic beauty}
! ! PEOPLE OF COLOR by India Perez-Urbano 08. BEAUTIFULLY FREE by Alexis Varnado 10. UNTITLED by Brittany Petronella 12. NO FOOTNOTES by Kirin Gupta 14. COMPLEJO by M. Tony Peralta 20. REQUIEM by Tiam Rahravan-Sahar 30. CONFLICTED BLESSINGS by Wendy Estrella 32. BODY THESIS by Josephine Demme 34. BUTCH by Meg Allen 36. WITHIN THE GLASS by Jalem Towler 44. MOTHER NATURE by Molly Prouty 46. EDIT by Jonas Black 48. ABOUT 50.
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WOMEN OF COLOR WOMEN OF POWER WOMEN OF BEAUTY INSPIRED BY “PEOPLE OF COLOR” BY ADRIEN PIPER
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alexis varnado, Phoenix, A.Z. Norther Arizona University/Arizona State University Walter Cronkite, Class of 2014
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I attend University but what I am starting to realize is that I am not a student…at least not in the traditional sense. The world of academia, though important, is not one that I can truly relate to. I am a young Afro-Mexican woman learning about a history that refuses to acknowledge my existence. My passion is seen as rage and as I begin to take charge of my education I am starting to realize the importance of learning outside of institutions. That is why I love to write, I want to be the creator and conductor of my own past. My biggest influence is Angela Davis; she, alone, has helped me to realize the importance of women in activism.
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I am young, passionate and very driven. I am done learning about the change and my goal in this life is to become it.
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! ! ! Beautifully Free !
There is beauty in the way our voices quiver, dancing dark black rhythms: confidently, beautifully, apprehensive. Our words slipping off our lips shaping the letters that help to form perfectly crafted sentences of strength. Beauty in our questioning and glamour in our political protest.
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We are QUEENS, MOTHERS,CREATORS, vibrant and compassionate.
There is beauty in our sensuality, elegance in the contours of our most sacred landscapes, swelling with pride - we are enough! Our bodies are our own and we can choose whether or not we offer them to you, him, they, she . We can choose whether or not we open our thighs or shout the algorithms of our minds ‌ the true beauty is not in the lips painted pink but the choice, the proclamation of worthiness. Through bent and bowing bodies we create rituals teaching others how to love by loving them with a wildness, a fierceness. We are more than our features and our hair length and texture should play no factor in our allure. Our exquisiteness lies in the many different colors of our puckered, scarred flesh, the spark of life that helps to illuminate the hue of our eyes. We are our morals. We are our voices. We are our convictions.
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I am more than the firmness of my breast- look me in the eyes! I was not created solely for the fulfillment and pleasure of others- listen when I say NO!
! Soy hermosa, Soy fuerte ! ! ! !
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brittany petronella, Valley Cottage, N.Y. SUNY Purchase, Class of 2016
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We might have been given the same idea to start with: “beauty;” but every artists’ perception and portrayal is a factor of their own imagination and I think that’s what beauty is. We all see the world and everything in it differently than the person next to us. Beauty really is in the eyes of the beholder. I have always had trouble formulating words to articulate what is on my mind. Therefore, photography is not only a hobby for me, but an outlet and an escape, as well, hopefully allowing me to show you my perception on aesthetic beauty through the visuals I create. The curiosity and creativity of my work shows others my outlook on beauty that my words could not possibly express. As a female, in order to be beautiful, society expects us to look like the girls in the magazines that are photoshopped to look the way they do. Now I'm not saying anything against the girls in the magazines because they truly are beautiful, but there is definitely a stigma on beauty and how we are supposed to be portrayed and look like as women. I'm not writing this to rant about how I am, and always have been, a thick girl. I'm writing this to show others the beautiful things that I am able to see despite the expectations that society has made for us. I want to capture the way I see beauty and show it to the world through my photographs because I wish everyone saw the beautiful things that I see.
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kirin gupta, Washington D.C. Harvard College, Class of 2016
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I am a brown female college student who aims to think about gender advocacy, racial justice, sexuality, class, a critical decolonial consciousness, and all the overlapping, intersecting webs of knowledge production that make these things into the sources of power and diffuse oppressions that they are. I believe in using art and action to make our politics salient and visible. Liberation is a big word. But we demand relevance.Â
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No footnotes
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There is woman seething inside me And she needs to justify herself With every second breath How can you Expect a full sentence When you want so many footnotes For why things don’t fit into place My body is a legal document Not the complex kind Not the kind you need to go to school to learn to read Because you seem to already know My body is, for you, illiterate and so legible Surveilled and pieced apart Labeled for easy pickings Cutlets: digestible, convenient There is the Feminine in me Taught and still becoming incomplete, filling jagged edges with collages of unfinished and running out of glue Trying to un-teach her-self there is the “girl” who can’t become a woman and is tearing her hair upwards out of scalp trying to grow into her definition her footnote reads: not curvy enough, not exotic to the hips, touch of sharpness to the tongue, slightly uneven breasts belly curve is demented but her vulva is in place – reassuring but not quite enough, thereby, girl QED
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There is something brown in me And it smells like shit Or curry because 6 year olds don’t lie and they can’t be taught that kind of cruelty Something immigrant and dark Something dusting hair over my forearms darker than any of my classmates, bloating my lips and my eyes until I look like a mosquito soon-to-be-ladies skirt around me, shading their eyes in their light hair, glancing down into their training bras, wondering why I don’t wear one, looking cautious, as though I might bite and for sure have malaria her footnote reads: I can be white too I go to school in America I say the pledge louder and harder than anyone I even say that God part because I I I believe in the US and don’t look at my skin Look directly In my eyes Because they are earnest and wet when you tell me I am Terrifying or Wrong – ft. 2b. not out loud but look at all those pictures of the bad guys why do they all look like my dad And is this why he shaves so close to his face so obsessively like his life depends on it Twice a Day Because he cant look like one of them you already look at him funny on this side of the boardroom why cant you love his cheeks deep brown under the stubble like I do – look into my eyes and tell me that I don’t belong what is Citizen and why cant Immigrant be too no wait I take it back because I didn’t migrate it wasn’t me don’t blame me Don’t blame my parents they just wanted More and they didn’t get it isn’t that Enough No – I am Brown – the Disruptive There is Sexual in me there is longing to taste Woman and touch her reach her as subject as object there is longing to hold Man around his neck and fuck him claim him as subject as object there is yearning there is wetness there are the heady heavy hormones and the scent of sex in my sheets there is Too Much because this is not Lady or Allowed her footnote reads: dominates only as much as is wanted, mostly foreign; expected to have more unconstrained expression of sexuality dark; could have predicted a whore ft. 3b. yet immigrant; could have predicted a prude or dry emptiness dominated only enough to be still Lady doesn’t drip on the newspaper in an administered test as they made her watch lesbian porn not the bisexuality and heavens godforsaken not a lesbian relationships with women likely brief enough to be negligible !16
desire may be fueled by sexual trauma strangeness in taste probably linked to the abuse chalk it up and leave it alone no cures for that just a footnote
There is Spirit in me there is belief beyond rationality in my world, an order in which this is deeply out of place ; stop stop there is something bigger, I feel, something stronger not perhaps cyclic but there is Energy out there and sometimes within me there is the everything that is nothing there is knowing that I don’t know there is disgust and the ache of allure there is having the words and trying so hard not to have them her footnote reads: Not real religion not ascetic nor mystic nor monk shouldn’t interfere with you so sorry I just meant to close my eyes and breathe wasn’t trying to be some kind of foreign I’ll just enunciate what Religious or God means to me and no no I’m not asking you anything personal just telling what you told me to explain I know science I go to school just I believe in Spirits too and no to those who say there is rational and irrational, real and unfounded Believes what is unbelievable; inexplicable. There is Shame in me All fathoms deepened and entrenched by her She. wearing my Intestines on her arms and my Hair wrapped as gloves around her feet the Knots caught up between her toes like in the ridges of the drain bitten barren cuticles and the edges of sharp nails eat me from the inside, press out through carrion flesh caressing my cavities and fissures like the secret soul of Retch her footnote reads: so sorry so sorry so sorry I was born like this I was became like this I was made into this blame him blame her blame elsewise No so sorry I know No It’s me Yes so sorry so sorry slurring together and humiliated footnote reads, head to feet, down to feet, I am feet, I am beneath, I am the footnote on every moment with my Betters I am below see me here so sorry so sorry to Intrude
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There is something on the Border that won’t be taught Hindi; god forbid for that I can’t speak English well enough that won’t be wearing men’s clothes; but won’t buy a long dress that speaks in the Academy; and screams at the face of a closed door that puts on lipstick carefully; and hacks all her hair off in one stroke that doesn’t know, but talks anyway; and tomorrow contradicts herself that doesn’t talk when maybe she does know; and tomorrow scorns silence that proclaims American; that proclaims Immigrant; who asks why not both as one, but offers two selves to choose from her footnote reads: origin unknown. Created. unreadable. Ambiguity in the space of erasure and non disclosure. How much is there In all of us That isn’t here, in me That there isn’t time to write How many more footnotes to get written How many more footnotes that run longer than the text Because god forbid –no stop there whose God –no—another annotation [[God wont understand God wont allow The kind of world where— well, for you-for you—]] God Won’t allow the kind of World Where No One Footnotes For You
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! ! ! ! ! M. Tony Peralta ! ! is a silkscreen artist from Washington Heights, Peralta NY. Getting much of his inspiration from his Dominican roots and his neighborhood of Uptown, NY, Peralta’s graphic design is defiant and ! Peralta extended his art on to fashion with the Peralta Project. He recently presented his radiant. solo exhibition at Renaissance Fine Art called “Reconnected” which documented his trip back to the Dominican Republic in an attempt to get reconnected with this roots. !! !! “Complejo was pretty much inspired by the whole Sammy Sosa thing a ! years back, when he came out in public and looked completely few different than he previously did. It sparked this whole kind of idea ! around identity. But not only identity; I grew up with low self-esteem ! when I think about why I think part of it had to do with the way my and mom ! used to talk to me. It’s not her fault, but it’s just certain things that she would say, things that all Dominicans use, you know, the whole “pelo ! malo.” All that stuff that they had learned through the whole Trujillo era , it’s! kind of like instilled in them. There is a large generation of people that have grown up with certain issues, like myself. I just wanted to talk ! about it because we never do.” ! !
COMPLEJO
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! ! ! When I first saw Sammy Sosa I laughed.
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Sammy Sosa is somebody who, I remember, I had a sense of pride towards. There was that whole controversy with steroids, but that’s something that we would bypass and overlook. However, this changing of complexion, and then owning up to it and promoting it in some sort of way, I felt like he just tainted his legacy. Not only did he bleach his skin but he relaxed his hair and uses contacts. It’s just taking it to a whole different level. That’s when it went from funny to disgust.
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I think that Dominicans…we are very surface people. It’s all about your presentation and how you look. So for a man, you go to the barbershop every week to cut your hair because you always gotta look fresh and crisp. It’s also something that happens in the black community. I guess it’s just a cultural thing. It’s just like growing up broke: you don’t want to appear looking broke. So how do you mask that? It’s by, you know, always having a fresh pair of sneakers.
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The funny thing is is that people who are rich don’t pay attention to those things. I’ve been around millionaires, and stuff, that kind of look like bums. Their whole thing is about comfort. All they want to be is just comfortable. But for people of color, it’s about what makes you feel good. When you buy yourself a new pair of shoes and you wear it for the first time, you feel good. And people compliment you. I guess people are just always chasing that feeling of just feeling good, as opposed to just feeling comfortable with yourself and always feeling good—not needing material things to make you feel
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good.
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! In September of 2013, the Dominican Republic passed the ruling Sentencia 168.13 which invalidated the nationality of Dominican-born children of migrants of Haitian decent by expanding the definition of “foreigners in transit” to a period of 85 years. Once implemented, hundreds of Dominican-born youth will be stripped of their Dominican citizenship.
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Sentencia 168.13 is keeping the Trujillo tradition alive in a very subtle way.
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The young people should be in an uproar about that ruling because it’s just something that is unfair. It’s as if the United States were to tell me that I’m not American anymore because, even though I was born here, my mother is from Dominican Republic.
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The world needs to shame the Dominican Republic. People need to continue making a big deal about it. I think that Dominicans here, in the United States, and Dominicans in the Dominican Republic need to unite, protest, and get the attention of the government. The whole thing is political propaganda. Haiti is never a threat to the Dominican Republic but the politicians use it. It’s a practice similar to that of the Trujillo era. They constantly put people in fear that the Haitians want to take over the Dominican Republic, but Haitians aren’t thinking about that shit. They’ve got their own problems, they’re just like any other set of immigrants that leave their country for a better life. Dominican Republic is already a poor country, but your country has to be fucked up for you to leave your country to go to Dominican Republic for a better life.
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One thing that I heard, which is kind of interesting, I think Junot Diaz might have said something to this regard: this sentencia was a political move. Peña Gomez, the front runner of The Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), the main political party, had majority vote every time he ran for president. A lot of people who supported him were people who had Haitian background. So, by instilling this new law you’re basically eliminating voters who would potentially support the PRD party. Just that alone is fucked up: eliminating voters so that your party can win.
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tiam rahravan-sahar, Vancouver, BC Canada University of British Columbia, Class of 2017
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I’m a second generation Canadian of Iranian descent who is trying everyday to figure out what that means. My parents are expatriates who left Iran after the political revolution of 1979. In many ways, I am an offspring of that revolution and so I spend a lot of time thinking about ways in which we can use our minds and souls as revolutionary tools instead of weapons of violence. One way that I’ve found to do this is through poetry. I’m particularly passionate about using writing as a means to reclaim the gaps in identity that many immigrants and their children face.
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It’s easy to believe that beautiful beings are somehow more privileged, but that also makes me wonder what is expected of the beautiful? What is not expected? And if we allow for less love towards someone who we deem in a position of privilege, then where do we draw the line? And how does that affect us when it comes to knowing our own beauty? I want to nurture the idea that if we’re selfish in our suffering, there is only so much progress we can make in connecting with the communities around us.
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! ! ! ! Requiem'for'Second'Generation'Girls'with'Brown'Skin'' !
Sing%of%ruined%daughters.% A%song%for%the%youngest%one% who%sits%by%the%windowsill%naked%% from%the%waist%up.% She%forgets%to%pull%the%drapes%so%the%mail%man% watches%her%every%morning.% He%takes%an%alley%facing%the%house%% without%being%seen%% for%the%few%moments%where%her%still%silhouette%will%be%at%full%force,% hit%by%the%sun%=%a%blinding%light.%
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Sing%for%summertime%% when%he%will%watch%her%skin%% turn%from%porcelain%to%caramel%to%crisp%% =bottom=of=the=pot=brown,%% something%not%as%sweet%as%before.% Now,%the%silhouette%screams%but%% her%silence%was%so%becoming:%
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The%way%she%let%her%hair%hang%like%a%veil,% sticking%to%her%back%and%breasts,% showing%her%how%the%body%must%be%hidden.%%%
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Remember%that%she%bled%% like%the%womb%bleeds,%every%month,%a%small%labor% There%were%mornings%she%would%wake%with%blood%% caked%under%her%Bingernails.%% She%was%fearful%of%her%own%hands.%% Avoided%sitting%next%to%the%woman%in%hejab%% reading%from%a%pocket%sized%Quran%on%the%b=line%bus,% knew%her%black%curls%were%dangerously%free%% in%that%company.%%
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The%epitaph%reads:% A"two"syllable"name"for"destruction, her%grandmothers’%words carved%in%marble.%
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wendy estrella, Valley Cottage, N.Y. Nyack High School, Class of 2015
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When I originally took this photo my mission was to portray the idea that the pregnant teenager, in this case my cousin, was looking onto her new life that was about to form. She was going to become a new mother and regardless of all of the problems in her life she still looked forward to becoming a mother and starting a family. I decided to do a double exposure because I was curious to see how it would come out. The double exposure still preserved the original meaning that I wanted, but it also had another meaning behind it. With the double exposure it looks as if the pregnant girl is barricaded inside the gate. Although she is looking forward to this new future as being a new mother she is surrounded by this negativity that society portrays on her because she is a teen. The gates symbolize society and the fact that she is inside them represents all the negative comments and all the hate that she receives from society. I feel like this photo resembles all the teens that are going through this. They feel trapped with all these negative comments but they still look forward to that future.
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josephine demme, Nyack, N.Y. Oberlin College, Class of 2017
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I study creative writing and visual arts at Oberlin College. I am most interested in exploring queer issues with my work; from my experience as a queer person but also my perspective on many of the greater issues that surround queer people globally. This piece in particular addresses my experience as a queer person.
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! ! Body Thesis !
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i want a forest of beautiful things not hid behind the trunks of these trees pretending i’m not here bruised and ruined
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I want to be a sweetheart sweetheart sweetheart sweetheart do you understand what I’m saying?
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that someone might want to kiss you who would ever kiss you and taste your fucked up mouth taste
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since i’ve cuffed my pants around the ankles this hair has been rubbed away until skin
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clawing through winter paper flesh around a pulsing ribcage to find what exists inside or beneath:
when im coughing back from breathing out pink-green smoke breath in the winter to count the moments in between
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picture phosphorescent rubies punctured through some dim lit valleys what if we had plants instead of organs?
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to notice the way a chest hangs like a still life painting serene and static beautiful and not mine just fruits on a plate on the table
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THIS IS A BODY THIS IS BODY THESIS: BODY IS A BODY THIS IS A BODY THIS IS A BODY IS THIS A BOY DTHIS IS AN ODD BODY (oddity) BODY T HIS IS
! I sit when I pee and I’m happy !
wilted roses on the kitchen table when the LOVING FEMINESTS say to not look a woman is to hate a woman and want to shout BUT TO KNOW HOW TO LOVE A WOMAN INFACT I DO IT EVERY NIGHT
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I wake up with my thumb in my mouth and chewed fingertips I think I’m an eight year old
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and eachtime this inky needle starts kissing up my arms I’m not a sketchbook but at least I can call it mine
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to say I’m as good as flat chested (at thirteen though, the death of me)
“these arms are my arms”
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BUTCH Meg Allen
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Meg Allen is a photographer from San Francisco, CA. Her collection “Butch” explores presentations of identity and female masculinity through portraits, many of them of her friends. The collection was inspired by Susie Bright and Jill Posener’s book “Nothing but the Girl” and from her personal experiences with the social gender binary.
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I wanted to see an update in what butch women looked like since the last publication I'd seen in the 90's...Susie Bright and Jill Posener's "Nothing but the girl.” This series, Butch, is a response to the brave individuals displayed in those images. I heard so many people saying that butch was a dying thing, that a lot of butch people were transitioning and I didn't think that was necessarily true. I knew the landscape had changed but that butch-identified queers were definitely still around en masse. Butch is a environmental portraiture project and exploration of the butch aesthetic, identity and presentation of female masculinity. It is a celebration of those who dwell outside of the stringent social binary that separates the sexes and a glimpse into the private, and often unseen, spaces of people who exude their authentic sense of self. I hope to show viewers beauty in a form they aren't used to.
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! ! ! I never wanted to wear dresses.
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I've always been more masculine than my female contemporaries. I felt like my shoulders were really broad and thick, I wasn't delicate and girly. And that was all fine until I hit puberty. My mother told me I couldn't wear makeup when I was 12, as if I even wanted to. But by the time I was 16 she was like "Why aren't you wearing makeup? You need to wear clothing that is more fitting to your figure!" All kinds of stuff like that. I grew up in the 90's so big skater clothing and grunge was in. It was annoying when she'd tell me this, but I shrugged it off and wore polos and tucked my shirt in to appease her. We both laugh at this now, she gets it now, but of course at the time she was worried for me. This was before Ellen had come out...which really was a big shift in the media perception of gay in general. She didn't want me to be ridiculed and I get that. But I also was really annoyed with typical ideals of beauty. Girls obsessed with it around me, had eating disorders, hated certain features about themselves that I thought were beautiful and unique. Even some of my friends of color wanted to look more white, have their hair be blonder, their noses be different. It made me sad because I thought they were so beautiful as they were. More beautiful than the cookie cutter look I saw in magazines. And those were just the feminine friends! Then there was me, who felt like I should have been born a boy because of my masculine ways. I just tried the best I could to fit femininity. Which never felt comfortable.
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jalem towler, Conyers, G.A. Harvard College, Class of 2015
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In my time at Harvard, I have been involved with the Phillips Brooks House Association both as Vice President and a director of Roxbury Youth Initiative (a summer camp). I have loved working with my kids in Roxbury through the summer camp and after school tutoring. In addition to service, I am involved with Speak Out Loud, a spoken word organization on campus. This year, I was blessed with the opportunity to attend the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) in Boulder, CO.
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As for the issues I am passionate about, most of them fall under the category of social justice. Because of the work I’ve done with children over the years, I have a passion for on the ground education reform: I want to see young people grow, have their voice be heard, and develop into leaders and controllers of their destiny. Through writing, I like to build awareness around the realities of life, everything ranging from poverty and its lasting effects on childhood to spirituality and presenting my faith in Jesus Christ in a unique and powerful way that resonates with my readers. At the end of the day, I hope that my words can be used to leave people asking questions because finding answers to those questions is where the process of change begins.
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My life motto for 2014 is: Fight. Walk. Speak. Listen.
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! ! ! !Within the glass !
In the morning, I help Brianna brush her hair in front of a cracked mirror A piece falls off, but she picks it up and puts it back in place She asks me, ‘is this what beauty looks like?’
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With a mother who left her with nothing but her green eyes at age 2 and a father who died fighting at age 4, at 6 years old, Brianna is granny’s daughter On the first day of first grade, she puts on ripped jeans and the same shirt she’s worn three times this week. She also grabs a book bag holding dull no. 2 pencils, wrinkled paper and some halfeaten crayons. I can’t frown for her, but she catches a piece of the mirror before it falls off again and says, “I have enough.” When she comes home that day, she tells me the teachers keep offering her more, “Do you wanna take a plate home Brianna?” Mimicking them, Brianna says she didn’t say much, just nodded, smiled and took the plate of free food to give to grandma before it became like her book bag
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Broken, B-R-O-K-I-N is how she chooses to spell it at age 12 because she sees bro for the brother she wishes she has and kin for the family she dreams of and wonders if she changes the spelling will it change the meaning its given to her life? she tells me she misses her old home, but now she’s a child of the Robinson family and with them, she has a book bag full of mechanical pencils, pocket binders and one of those iPad airs The shirt she used to wear has been replaced with a closet that goes so deep that Brianna tries on new clothes every day At school, she tells me the teachers keep saying, ‘I bet you love your new home, Brianna.’ She tells me she just nodded at them again and goes on to tell me how she walks home, dangling her book bag on one finger, dropping it on the ground so that it doesn’t look so brand new On Fridays, when she’s allowed to walk home alone, she says she finds an open field, drops her belongings, rips her sleeves and screams.
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I watched a tear crawl down her face after church last week. She’s cracked me in her room several times And boy, was she smiling so hard when she watched the shards hit the carpet She didn’t say much, but I could see the pain this time, in red drops of blood on her knuckles She picked a piece of me up and carried it with her out of the room
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molly prouty, Upper Nyack, N.Y. Nyack High School, Class of 2015
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I'm a junior at Nyack High School. I like to travel anywhere, but even more when it is to experience a new culture; I've done a service trip to the Dominican Republic and a summer exchange program to Nicaragua that have both made me see the world from a broader perspective. I think this piece shows the beauty of the earth and of nature, while also exposing Earth's fragility. "Mother Nature" is beautiful, but she is also being slowly weighed down by pollution. I know it's said all the time, but the beautiful aspects of nature really are being gradually destroyed by humans. This work seeks to remind the viewer of the effects human actions have on the environment, as well as the delicate beauty of the world that we should feel obligated to protect.Â
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jonas black, Nyack, N.Y. State University of New York at New Paltz, Class of 2016
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I’m a student studying education and English. Professionally, I want to get my teaching certification so I can inspire young people to change the world and help give them the tools to do so. Personally, I want to create a great and lasting work of literature. Words are the most powerful tools, and the most dangerous weapons I know of.
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! !! Edit !
When I was eight, I took up my father’s razor and sent my eyebrows swirling down the drain it took my mother three days to notice but I have always been a fast learner
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I am not a sculptor, and I am not a surgeon, and yet I still have fantasies of myself, standing before the bathroom mirror blades and chisels, paring and carving subtracting
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white, whittled limbs (the slivers on the floor) and blood in the bathroom sink
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I do not think I will be able to sand down the rough edges this time.
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ABOUT !
In social movement theory, cognitive liberation “denotes a threestage shift in consciousness: first, individuals no longer perceive the system as legitimate or just; second, those who once saw the system as inevitable begin to demand change; and third, those who normally considered themselves powerless come to believe that they can alter their lot in life.� Revolution can only occur once those who are aggrieved experience this cognitive liberation. Cognitive Liberation is a national, virtual magazine to showcase students who are creating art for social change. This art and literature magazine serves to catalyze action and disruption around the issues of our generation. Activism through expression.
! COGNITIVELIBERATION.ORG || @COGLIBMAG
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FOUNDER
! INDIA PEREZ-URBANO is a second-year undergraduate at Harvard College studying Sociology and Global Health & Health Policy. She is a proud Dominican-Trinidadian from Nyack, NY. She is involved in activism around global health equity, especially issues specific to access to treatment for HIV and hepatitis C. Art has always been an important part of her identity and she strongly believes that it has a fruitful duty in informative and emotional agitation. Cognitive Liberation was mostly inspired by the art activism that emerged from the U.S. HIV/AIDS movement in the 80s and 90s.
 
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THANK YOU JOSEPHINE DEMME KIRIN GUPTA BRITTANY PETRONELLA WENDY ESTRELLA JALEM TOWLER TIAM RAHRAVAN-SAHAR ALEXIS VARNADO MOLLY PROUTY JONAS BLACK M. TONY PERALTA MEG ALLEN
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{CGNTV/LBRTN 01.01.}