Over the course of this semester, this class has offered me many different experiences. It was different (which I really enjoyed) because the writing that is typically expected from an English class can get boring quickly and be a bit… restrictive. Being able to talk about one’s own experience when reading a book, and having words to choose from (from the glossary) made each assignment unique in their own ways. Also, the space we had to sometimes say “I’m not sure any words from the glossary fit, I think it can be better described as this” was really impactful to me, from both a writer’s and a classmate’s perspective. Like I mentioned before, it’s nice to not have your own creative process disrupted by assignment requirements to think a certain way. At the same time, hearing others say they what they came up with or why words int he glossary couldn’t have been applied to their experience was really interesting. This isn’t a creative writing class, except it kind of was! It’s not often that a class allows students to just let their minds flow in the way they did here. Because of these things, I think what stood out to me the most most was being able to read other people’s posts, and discussing them in class. It created space for us to connect more as a class and have discussions that we normally couldn’t had the work been submitted on canvas or even made a “discussion post.”
I come from a family of Dominican immigrants — a rebel grandfather, a victim grandmother, an escapee father looking for work. This has always been part of my identity, and has always been something I never wanted to lose touch on. Considering recent events, it has been hard to think about immigration outside of a political or legislative view. Reading the texts I chose over the course of the semester as well as listening to the experiences of my classmates opened a world of empathy, and reminded me that there are more experiences than just my own. Many of the works we experienced as a class showed how immigration can shape someone’s sense of belonging and identity; experiences that can be shared between cultures rather than fully inside one or the other.
