Radiah Jamil, Class I
Photo Source: Positive News Organization
In the midst of the loneliness and isolation that the pandemic has spread, TBLS senior, Kayla Morgan, has created her own safe space to reflect upon and try to make sense of the powerful forces buffeting her life.
That space is her writing.
“Most of the time I was just in my room, on my bed, doing nothing,” Kayla says, “and with all this time I was, like, ‘Why don’t I just give my writing side a chance?’ ” The free-time activity of putting pen to paper soon blossomed into a meaningful passion that has helped Kayla stay afloat with life-changing obstacles occurring both before and during the pandemic.
As news of police brutality, systemic racism, and the Black Lives Matter movement has gained attention worldwide in the midst of the pandemic, she has used poetry to explore topics important to her pertaining to identity and community. In her poem “My Mother’s Allegiance,” Kayla wrestles with the conflict between her mother’s American identity and her native identity as a Jamaican.
This poem won a National Scholastic Arts and Writing award. Kayla is one of the many young people who have found comfort not by turning to Instagram or Netflix, but to their own writing creations during this time. In Philadelphia, the Mighty Writers nonprofit organization, which for years has taught young writers a variety of genres, saw a surge in enrollment during the pandemic. The group currently serves over 3,500 youth.
The Director of Writing at Mighty Writers, Kalela Williams, believes writing can be therapeutic for people so young that their values, beliefs, emotions, and everything else under the umbrella term of identity are still forming. “When you’re young,” Williams says, “you have the passions and feelings of an adult, but you don’t have the brain space to make sense of it all.”
The increased presence of social media and technology in everyone’s lives comes alongside the increased exposure to turbulent political, social, and economic forces worldwide. And with so much news and information to digest, the pandemic has served as a kind of spark or catalyst for change.
In New York City, the Girls Write Now nonprofit organization has been mentoring the next generations of women writers since 1998 and Stephanie Cohen, who is a mentor at Girls Write Now, has seen a pattern in the themes of the writing that students have produced during the pandemic.
“There was a lot about identity,” Cohen says. “People were reflecting more on their communities, families, friendships — old ones, new ones, and re-evaluating friendships, and a lot about college coming up with what they plan to do now that they are juniors and seniors in high school during this very precarious time.”
It’s possible that the pandemic has set in motion something healthy here — especially if the tools that young writers develop as a part of their safe space stay with them, available for use at any time for communication, reflection, transformation, and all else, whether in unprecedented times of hardship or normal transitions to different stages of life.
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