Diving deep into the place we come from inspires the scenes for future creativity.
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Dennis Danziger has a method for bringing out the Realness in his students writing.
I Come From is a creative writing exercise that is one of the first steps to open the tap on the students’ experiences. The influence and method of POPS the Club, as guided by Dennis, unlocks the world these students live in.
Daily life for youth in Venice, CA—around the USA, and world—is reflected in the social awareness these young writers have.
This is a collection of favorite lines from the I Come From poetic exercise that Dennis uses in his classes.
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I Come From…
… a place where Justice is its own antonym
… being an athlete by day, and a gang member by night
… earbuds and the sweet vibrations of rap music
… parents who taught me to work hard and be grateful for what I have
… where people spend their Sundays in church praying for a better tomorrow
… Venice, California, aka Shoreline Crips
… where people pray on Sunday and will shoot you on Monday
… where people live paycheck to paycheck to survive
… alcoholics and guys always starting problems but never ending them
… a coyote leading my father into the U.S. and red ants crawling on my mother’s back as border patrol hover over her
… three bums fighting on the Venice boardwalk while tourists take pics and videos
… where the whites have all the power
… Cuban political refugees and stories about my descendants from Mexico, China, Ireland, Germany, Holland and America
… people who didn’t finish their education, but want a better education for their kids
… short tempers
… love them like no other will
… El Salvador, where I had to be careful to avoid getting involved in maras, the gangs
… my mother, the meaning to my life
… Culver City, where I see graffiti on freeways and think it is the art from lost souls expressing their feelings
… men who work hard and women who stay home caring for their children
… swimming in public pools and in mountain rivers
… screaming as reality sets in
… a family with no education, all they memorized were gang signs
… a generation with better opportunities thanks to my parents’ decisions
… keeping everything inside for too long until it’s too much to handle and all at once—a series of panic attacks
… a family that believes baseball is more than a game, it is life
… being bullied and ridiculed
… bad times when I feel my world collapsing and good times when my cheeks hurt from smiling so much
… a place where you can get hit up by anyone asking “where you from?”
… working my butt off to become someone
… internment camps, from those who fled, those who enlisted, those who wore “I am not Japanese” t-shirts and from night walkers who helped keep the lights off around Pearl Harbor to avoid another attack
… a family that never gives up
… a family where my mother and father work every day to keep me standing
… a family where nothing is given to you
… a family that fights and gets mad but can’t stay mad at each other for more than a minute
… a family that goes to church every Sunday at 7:30 a.m.
… a family that believes in God
… a place where you make friends with the neighborhood kids, but they slowly fade away as the years pass by
… appreciating the smallest things because I don’t know if tomorrow may even come
… a neighborhood that most people consider dangerous, but I consider it home
… appreciating my struggles and finding joy in my accomplishments
… strength and will and standing my ground
… best friends never giving up on me
… a family with two older step siblings who wish my mother and me dead
… cousins I helped raise who drive me crazy, but crazy with love
… a police record—battery assault
… being paranoid whenever I walk home because men are always looking at me wrong
… always going shopping but never having enough money
… smoking and drinking, to being sober and proud
… a crippled mom who needed help to climb out of bed to bury her husband who killed himself the night before
… hearing gunshots and turning off every light in the house
… a father who loves me from a distance
… hot chocolate and pan dulce on Saturday mornings
… if you wear the wrong color you get shot
… pasta, pupusas, and aroz con pollo
… Culver City … Salt Lake City … Dodge City, Kansas … Venice Beach … The Jungles … Los Angeles and Mexico … rock ‘n roll … Santa Ana, El Salvador … the Mar Vista Projects … East L.A .… 2500 years of Zapateca blood coursing through my veins … K-Town … the Egyptian pyramids … Buenos Aires y la cabanas … Nickerson Gardens …52nd and Crenshaw … Mexico City
… an island in Southeast Japan that my family ruled for 600 years
… Holocaust survivors from Poland and Hungary
… where the drug cartels have more authority than the police
… gunshots at 12:00 a.m. that make you hit the floor
… waking to the smell of coffee and the rattling of pots and pans
… winters that got as low as 10 degrees. Fahrenheit
… a household where I am the one with the highest education
… being an aunt the second I was born
… dancing in my room in front of four mirrors to relieve the stress
… a family where failure is not in our vocabulary
… an overprotective mother
… where homeless ask me for money
… a family that started out happy and slowly tore itself apart
… being the first in my family to graduate high school (three dropout brothers)
… a world that spat on my mother’s face
… daily lectures
… where narcs don’t hesitate before shooting a child in the face
… fearing late night phone calls
… losing several family members to violence
I come from being picked last.
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Please check out the first POPS Update:
California Students Transform Through Art With POPS
Photo: Ryan Vaarsi/Flickr