Introducing Words Unburden Me
Wise Ink staff visits our YAPB authors pre-pandemic.
We’re so excited for the release of our latest Young Authors’ Book Project (YABP) anthology, Words Unburden Me!
About the Program:
In YABP, classroom teachers, school staff, volunteers, guest artists, and 826 MSP staff support students in the creative process of writing original works around a theme. Illustrators, designers, publishers, and printers collaborate with students to create a professionally published anthology each school year.
For Words Unburden Me, we partnered with three classes of ninth-grade English Language Learners at South High during the 2019-20 school year. 826 MSP staff and volunteers, along with teacher partner Angelica Torralba-Olague and teaching artist Maria Isa, worked with students to think and write about themes of identity, family, heritage, and language. Students explored pressing issues such as gun violence, racism, immigration, historical trauma, and much more.
Students were in the homestretch of the project when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. On top of the uncertainty and anxiety of the pandemic, our nation witnessed one tragedy after another: the murder the George Floyd, the rise in Asian hate crimes, gun violence, police brutality. In many ways, the pain and trauma of 2020 underscored the importance of an anthology like Words Unburden Me, especially for our young authors. 826 MSP's Program Director, Cristeta Boarini, conveys this powerfully in her introduction for the book:
“In the midst of twin pandemics of coronavirus and systemic racism, listening to Black, Indigenous youth of color like the voices in this book could not be more necessary. When COVID first arrived in the U.S. and Asian Americans experienced higher rates of violent hate crimes, we were already talking about dispelling Asian stereotypes and historic erasure in our classroom. When images of children in cages at the US-Mexico border were prevalent on TV, our students had already been talking about immigration and family separation. Our students were deeply engaged during discussions and readings about police brutality, gun violence, and the Movement for Black Lives long before the world knew George Floyd’s name, because we already knew Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, and countless others’ names.* For our students, these issues are not just some intellectual thought experiment, or something that just happens in the news far away. These issues affect their lives in visceral, tangible ways. We saw the impact when they had heated debates about what a Black or Brown person should do in a traffic stop, when they told us about parents and siblings in their home country whom they hadn’t seen for years. Our students had so much they needed to say, so much the world needed to hear.”
*It pains us that since this introduction was written, we already need to add the names of two Twin Cities community members, Dolal Idd and Daunte Wright.
Words Unburden Me is a powerful collection of youth voices, a reminder of the comfort, connection, and resilience we can find by sharing our stories and, as Hawi writes, being proud of who we are — even in the most difficult of times.
To learn more about Words Unburden Me and the work of our young authors, join us on April 30 from 4:00-5:00 pm for a virtual book release party! The event will feature readings from student writers and a panel of guest authors and educators. Register at bit.ly/2P8JaCR.