Jaden Janowick-Cockrell ’27, Ava Landreth ’27, Audrey Redmond ’27, and Kate Wilson ’27
Gateways to Transformation: On Books, Writing, and the Power of Language
ON BOOKS
“Finding Comfort In The Pages of Franny And Zooey”
by Audrey Redmond
Where were you when you read the book that changed your life?
I was on set for a movie.
It was one in the morning. I was sitting in the holding area with the other extras-an abandoned theatre. It was November in Newport, Rhode Island. The heat from my foot warmers (actually hand warmers because that was all they had on set) I had placed into my Converse was slowly dying. The girl next to me had fallen asleep in her costume, a fairy of somesort. I was envious that she was somehow able to contort her body into a comfortable position in the reclining seats. Sleep was not going to come easy for me, so I decided to occupy my mind with the one book I had with me.
Franny And Zooey by J.D. Salinger had made its way into my bag, solely because it was the thinnest and smallest book I owned. I didn’t think I would be awake enough to fully enjoy or even comprehend the words, but somehow I was able to. I fell in love with what I read.
I’ve always loved telling stories. When I was younger, this love started as keeping little notebooks full of short stories about cats with superpowers and making music videos to Taylor Swift songs with my cousins. As I got older, this passion evolved into acting, something that completely took me out of my comfort zone. Much like Franny And Zooey, acting came to me by chance. I auditioned for Peter Pan in middle school on a whim, only trying out because my best friend at the time wanted me to. Thankfully I agreed and ended up playing the role of Racoon Twin Number Two. Surprisingly falling in love with being on stage in the process.
The only issue I found with wanting to pursue acting professionally was the fear of failure and the isolating feeling that came with it. I was already a shy teenager and telling people in my small town I wanted to act for a living was laughable, and very few would be able to empathize with me. But therein lies the reason why I love telling stories: the ability to make people feel seen.
Franny And Zooey made me feel seen. More than seen I suppose. I finally felt understood as an artist. The book also allowed me to feel connected to a group of artists who all feel the same insecurities about their work. The characters in the book struggle with their place in the theatre industry. Why do they still continue to act, and why do they love it? It’s essentially a guidebook for anyone who is questioning their passion. One particular section in the book has always stood out to me. It’s a letter that both siblings receive from their older brother. “Act, Zachary Martin Glass, when and where you want to, since you feel you must, but do it with all your might. If you do anything at all beautiful on a stage, anything nameless and joy-making, anything above and beyond the call of theatrical ingenuity…” (Salinger 68). I believe the reason why this part of the novel has always resonated with me is because it instills the idea that if you feel a passion for something deep down, you should act on it. It shouldn’t matter how ground-breaking it is. It’s simply beautiful because you love doing it.
After reading the novel once, I read it again and again. In total, five times over the course of three days on that set. I wanted to take away everything that I possibly could from Salinger’s words. I wanted to soak up all the knowledge and wisdom that these characters had to offer me. I felt reborn and my yearning for creating and telling stories was at an all time high. I mainly took away that to be creative in this world is a blessing. We should treasure and protect these parts of ourselves.
“Books Help Me Feel Reconnected to Humanity” by Kate Wilson
When people think about books that can change a person, they usually think about the classics. The ones that make a reader think about life’s big questions, and a young person’s place in the universe, or books that can sway someone towards an ideology. But for me, my big life-changing book was a how-to book that I checked out of the library when I was around nine years old.
I don’t remember any details about this book, but at the very least, I’m confident that my brain didn’t make it up to fill in the gaps. Unless my brain really did make it up, and convinced itself that it didn’t. That idea terrifies me.
The How-To book was quite large in my small hands, and about an inch thick. It was filled with DIY projects, like things that you’d make with your dad in the garage. Things like little woodworking projects to start out with, such as toolboxes and birdhouses, and more complicated projects like desks and workbenches towards the back.
I didn’t check out the book because I loved woodworking though, I checked it out just to look through. I liked the idea of making things, and I flipped through it to see finished projects, sort of like browsing Pinterest. Instead of running around the playground, you could have found me in the little hot plastic tunnel with that book, avoiding the harsh sunlight, flicking woodchips around, looking at pictures of woodworking projects.
Nowadays, I own around four cookbooks. I could probably count the number of times I’ve made one of the recipes on one hand, but I like browsing the recipes available to get inspired to cook my own dishes to suit my picky palette. My favorite places to find them are thrift stores, because that means that they were either fairly bad or really good, which is exciting in its own way. Was this book loved and used every night by somebody’s grandma, or was it put in the “Give Away” box for a good reason? The answer may lie in the recipe for a Jell-O salad.
Years later, I came across a post online about a book that looked interesting. It’s a book called Making Stuff & Doing Things. What a gripping title. So specific, and informative too. Real thought-provoking stuff. But I decided to buy it because I heard many good things about it, and I have to say that it’s probably one of my favorite books of all time.
The book doesn’t have an author credited on the cover, instead an editor, because “Making Stuff & Doing Things” is a collection of tutorials from old punk zines. It covers a broad range of subjects, and flipping through it can take you from a tutorial on how to play guitar, to instructions on how to juggle, a guide on common edible plants, composting, making dandelion wine, a tutorial on how to pee standing up for ladies, DIY toothpaste, a guide on dumpster diving, how to fix a broken toilet, how to make cat food, and a whole bunch of other things that I left out for the sake of space.
I haven’t used any of the tutorials in the book yet, because I haven’t needed to yet, but I keep the book close anyway in case I do one day. Of course, I have the internet, but where’s the fun in that?
The book means a lot to me, because it means independence. It’s a book about relying on your wits and your community to stay thriving and healthy. One of the most important aspects of the punk mindset is your community, and not relying on corporations. That’s why they DIY their clothes and accept everybody excluding fascists. The book makes me feel like there’s still hope.
All the books I’ve talked about have spoken to me in the same way. They help me feel reconnected to humanity. They all teach things that humans have been doing for thousands of years. Making furniture out of wood, eating plants outside, sewing your own clothes, cooking food for dinner, and making art. Even chapter books carry on the human tradition of storytelling.
I get sentimental when I think about mankind, and how even though humanity changes, humans stay relatively the same, and I think that all the kinds of books that I love help carry on all of our traditions and quirks.
ON WRITING
“Why I Write” by Jaden Janowick-Cockrell
My title for this paper is stolen from Joan Didion who stole it from George Orwell. I did it because I like the premise and I like to think it connects me to her.
Learning to enjoy writing has been a long process for me.
For most of my life, I was homeschooled. I was taught for grades one through twelve by my family and their friends and later in co-ops. A homeschool co-op is a place where many parents or professional teachers gather and offer modular classes to be selected by families.
I had a hard time learning to read. I remember being in my grandparents’ living room where we would sometimes use the tables as desks for our school day. I would stare down a word that was so long that I could not imagine it meant anything. I can still see this centipede of letters — I am not quite sure what the word was— but I am reasonably certain I was staring down the word chestnut.
For the purpose of telling this story, I am in third grade now. I go to a homeschool co-op in my hometown — Eastern Tennessee is not a good place to be homeschooled, as creationism abounded and the teachers were mostly unhappy mothers to large southern Baptist families. I often have to get my grandpa —known to me and now you, dear reader, as Papa— or one of my other family teachers to decode my homework with me. I am upstairs in my grandparents’ house. It is dark and there is a desk lamp illuminating the high white desk Papa and I are sitting at with stools. I hate my teachers for not explaining the assignment and the way they never seem to answer my questions.
Papa has told me before that he is dyslexic and had a lot of the same problems with reading and understanding work in school as I do. We bond over my difficulty with school often because Papa is one of my best teachers. Papa understands what works for me and what does not and he always has creative methods for helping me through. Tonight we are reinterpreting some of my homework.
We sit on our stools and he looks at the page of the cursive alphabet I’ve brought home to practice with. Papa starts the lesson using a technique that he used to use when he was my age: “The little A can look like a turtle with its shell arching over the body of the letter. The big G has a swan’s neck, practice that curl.” So we go through our zoological alphabet, me trying to dissect the curves and points with my shaky pencil and Papa giving me the visuals I needed. That lesson had an impact on me, not the subject matter exactly —I can barely read cursive today, let alone write it— but the concept of assigning a story or personality to shapes I did not understand is a tool I use to this day.
Later in high school, I employed that same way of thinking, imagining that the molecules and other “stars” of my biology textbook were knights and ladies. Anything to bring all those abstract thoughts into a visual. These scenes reflect the negative parts of my relationship with words, before age eleven or so, that was all it was — a chore forced upon me by teachers.
When I started reading for real, it was different. reading took me on adventures and made me sympathize with situations I could never have experienced otherwise. I started writing because I have a lot of opinions and I read a lot. Someone told me those were characteristics best suited to writing.
Now, my favorite things to read and write are zines —miniature do-it-yourself magazines. The reason I love making and reading zines is that they are usually very personal and political and the style is always intimate and free form. All of Orwell’s motivations for writing can apply to zines, the most popular being historical impulse —documentation of protests and friend’s bands are popular subjects— and the political —zines are a popular queer artform and are often used to disseminate information on feminist causes and anarchist theory. I love the lack of traditional structure and seeing what people think about when there is nothing telling them what to do or how to work. I love observation and the way it feels to read writing that dissects experiences so well that they become universally understood and relatable —an excellent example being either Why I Write or On Keeping a Notebook by Joan Didion.
What Didion did in her works was describe an event she saw someone else experience, then tell her own story about what she believed they felt or did. In this process, Didion makes the emotions of this stranger perfectly understandable and universal even if their actions started out as inscrutable. I hope to someday be good enough to make others feel that way.
Why I wrote as a child was purely involuntary because of an imposed structure. I write now because it is the way that my mind works— talking out problems on the page or trying to capture the beauty of real life. I do not write all the time, but there is something in my head similar to what Orwell said, about knowing he would always write. The inevitability of writing is a common feeling, perhaps because we are already composing stories in our heads to tell others or to process our own thoughts. I am grateful to have this outlet.
“Snacking Isn’t Eating,” Meditations on Journaling by Ava Landreth
I did a writing workshop a few years ago where the teacher opened the class with this question: “What’s one word you associate with writing?” Going around the table, my classmates said “Cathartic,” “Meditative,” “Empowering.” As my turn to share neared, I scrambled to find a pretentious and long word to express my “undying love” for the craft, and how writing comes so easily for me. A word someone else hadn’t used yet. But that would have been a lie.
“Stressful.”
Writing has always been something I associate with stress. Don’t get me wrong; I think I’m a good writer. I have always liked arranging and rearranging words into unnecessarily complicated sentences, I love playing with the English language, and I’m a huge fan of the works produced by my internal monologue. But my transcription system is faulty.
I like the way my writing sounds when it’s floating around in my head, but getting it down, especially when I’m expected to read it back, can be an exhausting task. Presented with an essay prompt, I am almost alway sitting on my hands in front of my computer for hours the night before the assignment is due.
I don’t love writing.
I do not, however, consider journaling writing. Jotting down little notes and ideas that pop into my head isn’t writing. It’s jotting. Trying my best to scribble down the argument the couple next to me on the subway is having isn’t writing. It’s eavesdropping. Eavesdropping is fun. Writing is scary. Thoughtlessly journaling my private thoughts lifts the weight of a shitty day off my chest, but writing? Writing is something that’s been edited. Something that people read. Journaling is just for me.
Over the years, I have kept dozens of notebooks. Some I fill up to the last line and some only a few pages. Some contain bits of gold that I stumble on years later, excited to turn into something new, and some are sparsely filled with unfinished to-do lists and notes from classes I don’t remember. Some of them I would guard with my life and some I’d be happy to forget on the train seat next to me, left for someone else to discover and fill up with their own bits of gold.
When I was thirteen, I decided, while window-shopping at a West Elm with my best friend Eva, that I was going to start writing down all of the things that happened in my life that I felt belonged in a movie. When the time comes, I thought, I will read through my notes, pick the best of the best, and write a screenplay. I have yet to write a screenplay and the frequency of these notes dwindled pretty quickly as I entered high school but the ones I do have send me flying back in time.
The very first entry reads, “Eva accidentally grabs Nick’s penis during lunch. ‘It’s not even erect! You just touched my flaccid fucking penis!”
To most, this would be an inappropriate, and even disturbing, thing to find in the journal of a 13-year-old. For me, this entry sounds like the New Voices Middle School cafeteria, smells like Pizza Fridays and makes me want to reach for my phone and text Nick, whom Eva and I haven’t seen much of since eighth grade. To this day, the memory of Eva reaching into Nick’s shorts pocket for her keys that he stole and accidentally groping him never fails to make me chuckle.
While I was writing one of many college essays and supplements – at the last minute, of course – my mom dragged my teary eyes away from the computer screen and handed me a notebook. She guided me out of the living room and into our little brick-walled guest room, turned on the lamp and told me to write. I told her I had been trying and that it wasn’t working.
“No, no, no. Stop trying to write this essay. Just write. Write anything.”
She set a timer for 20 minutes and said I couldn’t stop writing until she came back, even if all I could get down was, “I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write”
Wiping snot from my nose, I reluctantly started, probably writing about how I didn’t think the exercise would work. Before I knew it, I found myself completely lost in it. I let go of the assignment, and just put pen to paper. It didn’t feel like writing anymore.
When my mom came back into the room, it had been 45 minutes.
I have since done this “brain dump” exercise whenever I’m stressed, excited, or have some other writing project I’d like to productively procrastinate. Flipping back through notebooks, I’ve found these pages of endless writing. The first couple pages of a given entry are frequently tear-stained accounts of bad days, or things I’m worried about. They almost always end miraculously and outrageously optimistic.
I recently tried to explain to a classmate this idea that I don’t count journaling, jotting, and scribbling as writing. They responded, “That’s like saying snacking isn’t eating.”
That’s exactly right, I thought. Snacking isn’t eating.
I imagined serving patrons of a fine dining restaurant snacks I have made for myself. I gently place two tall Ikea drinking glasses stuffed with pickles, chunks of sharp cheddar, and a hard boiled egg on a crisp white table cloth. Before I can ask the couple I’m serving if they need anything else, they throw the pickly concoctions back in my face. I imagine if I tried to sell my middle school list of cinematic moments to MGM I would be met with a similar fate.
When I’m hungry, eating babaganoush in bed with my fingers or polishing off a jumbo box of Flavor Blasted Xtra Cheddar Goldfish satisfies my hunger but I wouldn’t consider serving it at a dinner party. It’s just for me.
Good writing, much like a good meal, comes out of tons of experimentation and failed attempts. The first time my grandmother made her famous Salmon and Risotto it probably wasn’t perfect. It took some trial and error to get it just right.