Brown-skinned Girl
My name is Victoria Martinez, and I am a Mexican, female, pansexual, 21-year-old multidisciplinary artist. This piece titled “Cafe: El Color de la Tierra” is centered on the beauty of brown skin and femininity. It has become so important to me to show the world how beautiful brown skin is and how magical women are. For the majority of my youth, I struggled with self-hatred. The media and everyone around me made me believe that beauty was defined by white, European features. I hated my brown skin, my round nose, my puffy hair. Even within my own Mexican culture there was racism. Mexican’s themselves favored the “weritos”. (blonde/light-skinned person) There…
Rise
Hi! My name is Anna Miramontes. I’m a 21-year-old Afro Filipina, and a 4th-year college student at the University of California, Berkeley— go bears! My story and my identity are intricate and complicated, but that makes for a good story, right? My father was a black veteran in the marines that suffered from PTSD and my mother was a differently-abled Filipina woman that migrated to the United States in pursuit of the American dream like many others. I grew up in an abusive environment. My father was constantly letting out his frustrations on my mother through physical and verbal abuse. We never had a stable living situation because neither of…
Wordsmith
Hi APC! My name is Linda Sol and I am a 20-year-old rapper/poet, from Chicago. From the inner city to Stanford University, I have found a safe haven in the world of poetry. I’ve competed in many spoken poetry competitions such as Louder than a Bomb, where I was a finalist and CUPSI, where I made it to the finals twice. My art has always been inspired by my Puerto Rican identity, my family’s resilience, and my understanding of self-love and self-preservation. Naturally, my love for poetry and music birthed who I am today: a lyricist. In my short time as an emcee, I’ve had the blessing to open for…
Shredded
Hey APC! Today, we’ll be doing a little something different. Instead of an article, we are featuring an interview that Tyler Newman had with teen entrepreneur, Kacey Gleaton about her jeans business, Kacey Jordan Jeans. Read below for more! 1) What inspired you to create Kacey Jordan Jeans? I used to walk around school and get compliments on an old pair of thrifted jeans that I’d ripped up myself. Every time I walked around the halls in them, people would ask me where I got them. Once they‘d find out that I made the jeans, they would ask me to make them a pair. I’d always smile and laugh in…
Artistic Connection
Hey APC! I’m Christine Lee, and I am an incoming freshman at Harvard College. You may know me from my popular Youtube channel, Christine Lee! (Scroll down for Spanish Version) I’ve always been one to grab a pencil and paper and sketch whenever I felt the sudden urge to do so. I take after my grandmother in this sense, who had taken up painting and sketching after her retirement. One summer night in 2015, when my sister and I went camping with my grandparents in their RV, I woke up around midnight because I could not sleep and found my grandmother sketching under the dim lights of the cramped kitchen…
Brush Strokes
Hello APC! My name is Andrea Gonzales and I am a sophomore at the University of San Francisco, studying Business Marketing and Design. As a first-generation Filipina with strict (but loving) parents in the medical field, I’ve been told that art will always be “just a hobby.” Since my family members consistently reduced the importance of art to merely a “pastime,” I forced myself to believe that the medical field was meant for me and neglected my passion for art. Plagued by the idea that medicine was the only opportunity to be successful, I initially enrolled at the University of San Francisco as a nursing major. But as I finished…
Broken Words
Hey APC, my name is Tiffany Jacome and I am a senior at an all-girls school in NYC. I am Latina, born and raised in Ecuador, having come to America to pursue a future for myself. I am 18 and if my life could be described in one quote, it would be: what is said can be done. If you say you can’t do it, then you’re most likely right. In this piece, I could talk about all the struggles I’ve gone through as a teenager. The heartbreaks, lost friends, insecurities, fears and more, however, if we went into that, I’d never stop writing. Instead, I’d rather share with you…
Moment Captured
Hey APC! My name is Sokhna Samb and I’m an aspiring cinematographer. When it comes to my work, I am constantly inspired by vibrant colors, symmetry, and most importantly by what’s being captured and what’s not. In my future work, I would like to explore how detached the camera is as a tool of photography and cinematography. Inspired by watching movies as a kid, as a teenager, I began to make my own short films. I hope that in my life I’ll be able to both create and participate in spaces where black women are directing films and creating stories that are universal yet very specific to poc experiences. I’m…
A Look in the Mirror
Hey APC! My name is Andrea, and I’m a junior at Phillips Exeter Academy. I go to a boarding high school in New Hampshire, I grew up in Hong Kong. Although there are numerous differences between these two places, such as in culture and social norms, I’ve discovered one striking thing they have in common—the disturbing prevalence of white beauty standards. You’d think that a homogeneous Asian city would at least adhere to a less restrictive set of beauty standards, but I’ve come to realize that this notion is naive and untrue. The presence of white supremacy manifests in subtle, insidious, indelibly damaging ways, whether in countries next to or…
“Oreo”
Hey APC! My name is Karla Sterrett and I am a 16-year-old from New York. You’re not black enough! You “talk white”! You’re an Oreo, white on the inside but black on the outside! Hearing these comments from the age of 11 to 16 hurts. How am I supposed to respond to a comment so degrading? Words such as these make me feel powerless, tearing down my confidence, enlarging the insecurities I already have about myself. Being black is apart of who I am, so for another black person to say that I’m not “black enough” is worse than a slap in the face. It’s as if your own pride…
A Single Note
What’s up APC? My name is Ritika, and I am an incoming freshman at Duke University. I’m trained in classical Italian opera, but I sing pretty much anything and everything! Singing is a lot of things to me—an outlet, a hobby, a voice for change—and it’s one of the few things in life I know I’ll never be able to give up. Music has given me a place in the world to share who I am and being able to express myself in a way that is completely unique to me. I love singing because it gives me a way to connect with people, whether it be fellow musicians, theater…
Crush
Hey APC, my name is Tyra Hughes and I am a sophomore at West Orange High School. From a young age, I was surrounded by a heteronormative idea of love. In the movies I watched, to the books I read and even the relationships that my family members had, I had only ever seen love as being between a man and a woman. That lack of LGBT representation made it incredibly hard for me to understand and accept my sexuality as a sophomore in high school. Our society has always set straight as the default sexuality of the human race, and so when I first began to question my own…
