Editor’s note: Young Writers Project, a Vermont nonprofit dedicated to helping students write well, will be sharing several exceptional pieces of best student work each week at VTDigger.org for special display over the weekend. We hope you appreciate the young writers’ viewpoints, imagination and experiences. Please let us know what you think.
Alexandra Contreras-Montesano, an eighth-grade student at Edmunds Middle School and a page at the Vermont Legislature, wrote this piece in response to Indiana’s religious freedom legislation that has been widely criticized for being discriminatory and anti-gay.
Indiana Has Disappointed Me
By Alexandra Contreras-Montesano
[I] thought the world was getting better.
When I was born I thought the world molded itself into the place it is.
The debates on racism and gay marriage were over in my mind.
I looked back on those conversations as history.
How they were a problem is still a mystery.
I laughed at how mean people had been,
not accepting people in their own skin.
I was taught in school that we are not divided by
our sexual orientation or the things that we do.
I realized how there were still problems, as I grew.
I was a little angry, but just thought of it as another layer to cut through.
What I didn’t realize was how deep these roots were planted,
that the thoughts of people being sick or wrong were still implanted.
I just fought harder because I wanted to win
a world where we could all stand up and grin.
No matter how hard things got, or how frustrated I was,
I always just thought that we would keep moving forward because
there is no way we can put our successes on pause.
Until the other day when I heard a whispered word,
that Indiana had passed something absurd.
I thought, no way! This could not be right,
We are not supposed to be scared of the light.
Just when I thought things were better,
that same-sex marriage is not a scarlet letter.
Just when I thought that we were all getting along,
Indiana took away the basic right for us to be strong.
I thought we were supposed to be moving forward, not back!
That it didn’t matter if you liked girls or were black.
The state gave the power to the people who judge,
to say or do something just because of a grudge.
I am left speechless at what they have done,
I am just hoping for a day when we accept everyone.
I thought we were doing well;
I didn’t think that our wheels ground back in reverse.
I didn’t think the world was getting worse.
About YWP
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in 19 newspapers across Vermont and in parts of New Hampshire and on Vermont Public Radio. It runs an online teen writing community, youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: be respectful. It works with teachers in 63 schools who use YWP’s unique, free digital classroom platform and provides many with ongoing professional development mentoring and other teacher training. And it is developing NxN, a writing center at its Burlington headquarters. For more, go to youngwritersproject.org or ywpschools.net.
If you are a youth or you know a youth who is passionate about something and works hard at it, be it building models or flying or playing the drums or climbing cliffs, please contact Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org and tell him something about the youth and how to get in touch with her or him.
