A few months ago, I applied for a scholarship and had to write a personal essay as part of the application. I didn't get the scholarship, but I am quite proud of the essay I put together. One of the questions I had to answer with the essay was "how will the community be better for [my] presence in it," and I think I explained that pretty well. It also is more or less a statement about why I write. Since this is my digital home, more or less, I felt it was important to share it here as well.
This is my water bottle. The bottle itself, the base that supports everything else, is my identity as a storyteller. I’ve been telling stories since I could talk, entertaining myself first and foremost, giving myself the space to make up a new world. In the third grade, I learned that writing my stories down made them stronger and gave me a bigger audience. Books were my comfort, but they didn’t have a lot of people like me in them. I wanted to change that and make sure people could see themselves as stars of their own stories.
Over time, the stickers I’ve put on the bottle have illustrated how my interests and attitudes have developed and changed. Starting the base layer is a comedy/tragedy mask sticker. I started studying theater in sixth grade, and I fell in love with the language of the stage and the ability to take on a new persona whenever I wanted. The script showed me how to tell a story through dialog and acting taught me how a change in inflection or body language impacts how an audience perceives a line. Both pieces helped me figure out when to describe every detail and when to leave room for interpretation.
Next are two stickers that are roughly the same size – a chocolate concha, and the Star Trek: The Next Generation communicator badge. My mother is second-generation Mexican American, and she deliberately did not share her culture with my brother and me because she had learned that assimilating into Anglo society offered safety and security. I’ve spent much of my life trying to connect to my personal heritage, and that has led me to seek out Mexican culture on my own. It’s not a path people talk about, and finding my way alone has been challenging. Mine is not an uncommon experience, but it is one that’s frequently overlooked in the United States. I’ve not found many stories related to the journey I’ve chosen to take, and I want to share my map with people walking the same path.
My father died when I was 17, and I’m eternally grateful to him for introducing me to the world of speculative fiction. He was a geek, and Star Trek was the first sci-fi show he watched with me. It was appointment television for us, opening my eyes to the world of what-if and imagined futures. I also learned about character development over a long period of time and drove my father nuts by pointing out continuity errors, both of which impact my writing to this day.
The last layer of stickers represents things that are the least obvious about me – a bisexual pride flag, a disability icon, and an autism infinity symbol. I put these on my water bottle because I want to be open about the kinds of experiences I am able to share. I’m a bi woman who is married to a man. I am an autistic woman with low support needs. I have mental and physical health issues that are not easily seen but impact the way I approach everyday life. Generally, if a character in a story has any one of these identities, it is their core characteristic – they are the Bi Character, the Autistic Character, the Disabled Character. It’s rare to see a character that is fully fleshed out as a person who happens to be bi, or autistic, or disabled, much less any combination of the three.
My water bottle is my way of saying that I exist in this world in these ways, and I want to be seen. I tell stories to show other people that I see them, I know they exist in these (and many other) ways, and I want them to be seen, too. My goal is to shine a light on as many different ways of being as I can, so that my audience can find a way to see themselves in a story as something other than a token or a villain. We create our own worlds and there’s room for everyone in them.
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