About the Young Writers Project
YWP, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, Vermont, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power and to gain confidence and skills for the workplace and life. YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: Be respectful. For more information, please contact YWP executive director Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org.
Liana Lansigan, of Hanover, New Hampshire, and a seventh-grade student at Crossroads Academy in Lyme, writes about realizing that life isn’t always fair and that there is discrimination in the world, including against her family because of their Japanese heritage. She writes about the bursting of her bubble, including her disappointment over the 2016 presidential election.
My Big, Beautiful Bubble
By Liana Lansigan
[I] live in a bubble
called Hanover—
where the population is mostly white,
where a lot of people are well off,
where there is little suffering to be seen.
I float above the world in my bubble reality;
translucent walls
filter out
shield me
from the world’s problems.
I’m
oblivious
ignorant.
I’m—privileged
private school
science and math clubs
piano and dance lessons
summer camps
vacations in Hawaii and Italy.
For a while, I didn’t know
how lucky I am
and how very few children
have the life I have.
When I was little,
my mom would show me pictures of starving children,
sadness would wash over me,
but just for a few moments.
Never experiencing poverty—
in my bubble of a home—
La La Land—
I had a hard time
accepting poverty as a reality.
Too few times
my bubble has
popped.
Me—
falling –
crying out, hitting the hard pavement—
a harsh landing in reality.
When you’re little,
you think life’s great
and fair,
but it isn’t.
Kindergarten Recess, December 7, 2009:
A boy in my class asked me,
“You know what day it is today, Liana?”
“Monday? I don’t know”
“Well you should know because it’s your f a u l t.
It’s Pearl Harbor Day and it’s you and your family’s f a u l t the day exists,”
he said and walked away.
Me?
Me? And my nice, normal family?
He didn’t know my family!
I was confused.
I didn’t do anything wrong that day—
well, except yell at my sister that morning.
My family?
Pearl Harbor?
Oblivious.
Ignorant.
Then I realized the meaning and hate behind those words—
My bubble burst into millions of tiny particles.
I’m half Japanese.
I’d never been so ashamed of being Japanese before.
I didn’t do it—
I didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor!
Don’t you know that?!—
I don’t kill people!
I’m not the monster here!
Screaming, crying on the inside
but it was time to go to class
and so I went inside just like everybody else
and into the classroom
where classmates are supposed to treat each other with respect—
where it’s supposed to be fair
but isn’t.
Christmastime, 2010, age 6
Waiting at a crosswalk on the streets of Manhattan:
“Liana, stop staring!” my dad scolded.
“Liana…”
“Who’s that, Daddy? Why’s he here?”
“He’s homeless, Liana. He doesn’t have a home.”
“Oh…”
I couldn’t stop staring.
A man
with a fluffy red hat
curled up and shivering on a flattened cardboard box
trying to sleep with no blanket, with only a thin coat
while people like us—
enjoying our holiday—
walked all around him
and cars and taxis beep beeped their way along—
the drivers wrapped up in blankets of their own lives
while the man was trying to survive on the streets.
Us—
Oblivious. Ignorant.
The man was invisible to most people
The white walk signal flashed.
I forced myself to look away from the man.
Once we crossed the street
I had forgotten—
the man with the red fluffy hat—
gone—
my six-year-old brain too busy
with other things—
like “Would I miss my TV show if we didn’t walk fast enough?”—
and carrying along with my life—
just like everybody else did.
London, July 2014, age 10
The first time I saw a drunk person,
a man
with shabby clothes
kneeling over a sewer grate
wailing down into it,
his voice slurrrred—
“Cooomme baaack, Saaammy!”
over and over again.
“Who’s Sammy?” I wondered.
“No one will hear you down there,” I thought.
Then…disgust
disgust?!!
What?! why?!
why was I so disgusted?
I didn’t know the man—
I didn’t know what he’d been through—
but he’s drunk and drooling—
in the middle of the sidewalk—
calling for a person who’s obviously not coming!
Disgust again,
this time not for the man
but for me,
spoiled brat!
Oblivious. Ignorant.
“Feel some compassion!”
my conscience was screaming at me
but I couldn’t feel a bit of compassion.
I quickly walked away.
Earthdance, July 2, 2015, age 11
Radical culture shift
My parents love to dance—
Not the structed kind of dancing
but contact improv—
a freeform dance
with no leader
listening to others’ movements,
a conversation.
At first, it was weird to watch—
then
it looked very natural—
beautiful, even.
Earthdance—
a dance family and community
in the middle of nowhere
so different from my lovely bubble.
You hug for several minutes—
just to say hi.
At lunch
I saw two men kissing.
I didn’t think twice about it.
Not so oblivious
or ignorant anymore.
A man
in a pink tank top
and a flowy blue skirt
with long feather earrings
twirled by. He seemed so free
and full of life.
I liked that.
The open-mindedness of the people there—
kids included—
the acceptance of who you are—
I liked that, too.
Early morning after Election Day, 2016, age 12
I’ll be honest, I cried.
Each speech, each rally, each debate—
pop pop pop
was all you could hear.
Each painful pop
hurt me
and millions of others, too.
The truth of Trump becoming 45th President of United States of America—
that painful truth—
was enough to keep me from sleeping.
His rhetoric against Mexicans, Muslims, the LGBTQ community, President Obama—
and most people in general
filled the sky with bursting bubbles
like farewell fireworks to progress and equality.
now, age 12
The sound of my bubble
pop pop popping
happens more often now.
I live in a beautiful cage.
I’d fooled myself into thinking that the whole world was like this.
I must free myself from it
to know the truth—
the reality—
not the distorted version of it.
To fix a problem,
you must know the problem.
There is no fixing to be done
if the truth is shielded from you
by a big, beautiful bubble.
Check out the February/March issue of The Voice, the Young Writers Project monthly digital magazine. Click here.
