Writing South Carolina

Carolina Fund

Description

"How can we make South Carolina better?" Normally this issue is reserved for lawmakers and voters, but Writing South Carolina, volume 3, gives voice to fifty high school juniors and seniors from across the Palmetto State who have offered suggestions. The University of South Carolina Honors College annual writing contest presents a necessary voice for them as well as a revealing portrait of their lives and desires using their own words and insights. Contest judge Mary Alice Monroe provides the foreword for this volume and has said of the contributing students, "They are astonishingly talented, further ahead in the game than I was at their age."

Through a variety of short, creative genres, students share their own gripping experiences in South Carolina, often about of growing up and going to school here. This year's selections range from poems about the cycle of abuse to short stories about minimum wage to essays about problematic sex education in public schools. Writing South Carolina, volume 3, offers a collection steeped in creativity, honesty, and clarity. High school students witness and encounter some of the most subtle and serious problems in South Carolina's school system—and they demand change.

Monroe, a New York Times best-selling author of children's books and novels, including A Lowcountry Christmas and The Butterfly's Daughter, provides a foreword.

Sujets

• Creative Writing
• Language Arts
• Young Adult Nonfiction
• The Graveyard Book
• Superiority (short story)
• The Rules of Survival
• Self-help book
• Atticus Finch
• Spirit of South Carolina
• ADAPT
• Coastal Carolina University
• Anderson University (South Carolina)
• Boy's Life (novel)
• University of South Carolina
• Dick and Jane
• Captain Underpants
• Memoir
• On Writing
• Université de Caroline du Sud
• Jonathan Safran Foer
• Composition
• Adage
• John Steinbeck

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611179194
• Langue: English

Extrait

WRITING SOUTH CAROLINA
Seniors - front row, left to right: Aimee McVey, Milner Martin, Nicolas Fernandez, Amairany Aguirre, Brandi Cunningham, Alexis Etheredge, Jasmine Shabazz, Hannah Jane Pearson; second row, left to right: Mary Alice Monroe, Melis Tirhi, Abby Johanson, Kenni Ojediran, Megan Jensen, Isis McNeal, Taylor Widener, Sarah Williams-Shealy, Erintrude Wrona, A da Rogers; third row, left to right: Steven Lynn, Christian Eitel, Jared Mack, Katherine Kristinik, Tavashia Berry, Morgan Rizer, Mallory Clamp, Andrew Herbst, Maxwell T. Hall, Anna Sheppard.
Absent: Jamie Altman, Michelle Barton, John Sterling Poole
Photograph by Allen Anderson
Juniors - bottom row, left to right: Bailey Babb, Alexandra Hurd, Alyssa Conner, Candace Beebe, Breanna Murrin, Manogna Kolluru; second row, left to right: Mary Alice Monroe, Patsy Mejia-Rocha, Emily Brooke, Sarah Finleyson, Jaynae Jefferson, Morgan Blanken-becklor, Mya Johnson-Jones; third row, left to right: Erin Hackney, Hali Hutchinson, Issac Blackwell, Hampton Slate, Alan Lanxton, Alaina Kiffer.
Absent: De-Jah Burton, Eliza Kapeluck, Sydny Long, Zyria Rodgers
Photograph by Allen Anderson
WRITING SOUTH CAROLINA

VOLUME 3
Selections from the Third Annual High School Writing Contest
Edited by A da Rogers and Steven Lynn
Foreword by Mary Alice Monroe

The University of South Carolina Press
2018 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN 978-1-61117-918-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-61117-919-4 (ebook)
CONTENTS
Foreword
Mary Alice Monroe
Acknowledgments
Juniors
Raising Violence
Twenty-First-Century Pigeon House
Alyssa Conner (First Place)
Speaking for Those Too Young to Understand
That One Line
Erin Hackney (Second Place)
South Carolina, or, A State of Improvement
The Words That Wouldn t Come Out
Sydny Long (Third Place)
Teenage Roulette
Cheer Up
Sarah Finleyson (Honorable Mention)
Simple Solutions
Krasivaya
Alaina Kiffer (Honorable Mention)
The S Word
I Believe in Magic
Bailey Babb
The Decrescendo of the Arts
The Power of the Written Word
Candace Beebe
The New Renaissance
A Grave Understanding
Issac Blackwell
Diary Entry from an Abuse Victim
My Experience with Southport
Morgan Blankenbecklor
Going Green in South Carolina
Metamorphosis
Emily Brooke
Dirty Little Secret
Forever Branded
De-Jah Burton
Improving South Carolina by Improving the Lives of Future Citizens
Inspired by the Fight
Alexandra Hurd
Growth of a Palmetto
Mice-Related Inspiration
Hali Hutchinson
16
A New Way to Grow Up
Jaynae Jefferson
How Can You Fix It?
Being Inspired
Mya Johnson-Jones
Renewing Our Reputation, Expanding Our Borders
People Skills
Eliza Kapeluck
The Great Carolina?
Lessons from The Kite Runner
Manogna Kolluru
This Crystal Is Not a Girl s Best Friend
How Captain Underpants Decided My Future
Alan Lanxton
The Iodine State
Pearly Gates
Patsy Mejia-Rocha
The Fallacy of Neglect, Neighbors, and Other Things
Holdenification: The Extent to Which a Fictional Character Changed My Perspective on Life
Breanna Murrin
Carolina State of Mind
The Moment I Escaped Death
Zyria Rodgers
A State Left Behind
Feeling Invisible
Hampton Slate
Seniors
Losing Jake: A South Carolina Problem
The Body s Mechanics
Erintrude Wrona (First Place)
The Confederate Ghost
Representation Matters
Jasmine Shabazz (Second Place)
Letter to a Beaufort Businessman after He Tipped Me a Twenty for Telling Him How Much His Yogurt Cost
Learning to Know: Finding Change from A Visit from the Goon Squad
Anna Sheppard (Third Place)
Buttered Biscuits, Cotton Hair, Dirty Jokes, and the Kardashians
How Mr. May Made Me a Poet
Hannah Jane Pearson (Honorable Mention)
They s a-goin
It s a hard job, son
John Sterling Poole (Honorable Mention)
Just a Book Bag
Life-Changing Read
Amairany Aguirre
The State of Things
Down the Alleyway
Jamie Altman
Broken Together
Assassins and Hope
Michelle Barton
A Lost Privilege
The Battle of Inspiration
Tavashia Berry
The Box That Hinders Us
Help -ing Me to Love Reading
Mallory Clamp
New Car, New Rules, Same Old State
Losing Faith and Finding It Again
Brandi Cunningham
They Blocked Paradise and Put Up a Billboard
Which Tree to Be
Christian Eitel
Loved by Everyone
Life and Afterlife
Alexis Etheredge
All of Them
Revelation on Mango Street
Nicolas Fernandez
The Importance of Social Events
Books-the Spark That Lights Imagination
Maxwell T. Hall
South Carolina s Other Prejudice
Ever-Changing Perspective
Andrew Herbst
Cursive Recurrence
Extremely Insightful and Incredibly Life-Changing
Megan Jensen
The Girl with the Butterfly Clips
It Started on Page 4
Abby Johanson
Unspoken Cries
How I Define Living
Katherine Kristinik
The Dreamer
Caged Birds
Jared Mack
Fine Arts: Why Are They Important?
Learning from a Tragedy
Milner Martin
Recommended Strategies to Ignite Economic Growth
The Ultimate Mentor Book
Isis McNeal
It Is Time to Fix Our Roads and Bridges
A World to Explore
Aimee McVey
A Melody to a Nightingale
Finding Expression
Kenni Ojediran
Finding the Answer
The Craving
Morgan Rizer
The Time Has Come
Vanishing the Past
Melis Tirhi
You ll Have to Watch Yourself
Lessons from Russian Aristocracy
Taylor Widener
Finding Liberation
Salvation
Sarah Williams-Shealy
Contributors
FOREWORD
Life is one long story. Birth and death. Happiness and sorrow. Rejection and acceptance. For a writer, all life s experiences are fodder for stories. I write today to celebrate the significant and important stories, essays, and poems written by the finalists of the third South Carolina High School Writing Contest, presented in this esteemed collection, Writing South Carolina .
I am in awe of the contributors in this book. They are astonishingly talented, further ahead in the game than I was at their age. I applaud them for this important achievement and validation. Each of them can now claim the honor of being a published writer.
It took me much longer to cross that line. I am one of ten children, the third eldest. My family is a well of material I ve tapped into many times as a writer. Some of my happiest childhood memories are rooted in story. I was an avid reader, and when I was unhappy with an ending or wanted more, I wrote my own version. The art of creating stories lived in me before I could name it. My brothers and sisters and I wrote plays and musicals, created circuses, and built forts. We were an imaginative bunch. Imagination is the playground of creativity. Never forget that. Don t let your imagination lie fallow. That ground is rich and fertile for a storyteller, at no time more than when we are young and believe anything is possible. By keeping our imaginations active, by maintaining that sense of wonder, we writers continue to discover stories.
The memories of those early days shine brighter now than I know they were in reality. Over time our memories evolve to become stories we share with others-our children and grandchildren-to be passed down through the generations. I recall my third-grade year in Mrs. Crawford s class. She came to my desk, a story I d written in her hands, and asked, Mary Alice, did you ever think you might want to be a writer when you grow up? I stared back at her, dumbfounded. I could get paid to write stories? As an eight-year-old child, I had never dreamed that writing could be a job. From that day forward, whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer came readily-a writer. Such is the power of a good teacher or mentor.
It would be decades before that tiny seed of possibility would grow and blossom into a career. I was not published at the tender age of seventeen and eighteen-the age of the students represented in this volume. At that age I had enough rejection slips from the magazine Highlights for Children to decorate a wall of my room. I learned early that rejection is a part of this career. I started out in journalism and later became a ghost writer for nonfiction books. My first novel didn t get published until well into my thirties. I lagged behind the pace of these brilliant young men and women.
They may be young, but these students have important things to say to the world. They are wise beyond their years and possess the talent to express themselves so clearly and with such voice that I was astonished. So pay attention to their short stories, poetry, and essays. Feel the emotions captured in words, rhymes, and diction. Hear the insights they ve gleaned from their experiences and observations. Ponder their questions and opinions.
I encourage these young writers to keep writing. Stretch your