Javiera Green

Reflections on a Mad Course

On the first day of the second semester, I remember it being extremely cold outside, which heightened my anxiety around meeting my last class of the day. Up until this point, I had only ever taught writing courses to first-year and upper-class students. These students were going to be different. The majority of them would be English majors, and by default, would be looking forward to the content. Maybe, I thought. Once I entered the room, I let out a half smile as I noticed all 20 students. I was met by many with the same kind of half smile.

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Sofia Stremlin-Adams

Maed

At five years old I had an impressive resume: aspiring coven leader, professional frog wrangler, and avid Michael Jackson fan. Absent from my curious resume was the ability to spell my own name. Even though I would be repeating kindergarten in the fall as a result of my creative spelling, I was in no hurry to uncover what seemed like an impossible cipher.

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Gina Fournier

Child Witch

Summer of 1975. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was released. Elton John’s Philadelphia Freedom manned the top of the Billboard Charts.  Michigander Gerald Ford was president, succeeding Watergate- disgraced Richard Nixon. My favorite jeans were vertically striped in white, yellow, green and brown. 

It wasn’t Levittown, but it was similar.  Livonia was a once new-ring suburb of Detroit, where I was born.  Our little burg was called Devonaire Woods and carpeted with post WWII brick ranch homes. All were designed and built alike: three bedrooms, one bath, living room, kitchen and basement.  If kids visited someone else’s house, you didn’t need to ask where the bathroom was.

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Angelina Pacholczak

A Queer Feminist Ethics of Eros 

A Chapbook of Feminist Poems 

The following works inspired this chapbook of poems: Transforming Carceral Logics: 10 reasons to Dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex Through Queer/Trans Analysis and Action by S. Lamble, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action by Audre Lorde, Are the Lips a Grave? by Lynne Huffer, Educating a Women: A Feminist Agenda by bell hooks, and Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (“Towards a New Consciousness“) by Gloria Anzaldúa.

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Jessica Lowell Mason and Melissa Bennett Speak at Williamsville Board of Education Meeting on District Gender Policies: October 2021

My sister, MITA Co-founder Melissa Bennett, and I spoke together at a Williamsville School District Board of Education Meeting, in October 2021, in support of two gender-inclusive policies that were being voted on by the district’s BOE at the time. One was Policy 7554: Student Gender Identity, a policy aimed at inaugurating and declaring publicly and in writing the Williamsville School District’s promise to “[foster] a safe and supporting learning environment for all students, free from discrimination and harassment on the basis of sex, gender, gender identity, gender non-conformity, and gender expression.” The policy also promises that the District “will assess and address the specific needs of individual students on a case-by-case basis.” The second policy, Policy 5634: Gender Neutral Single-Occupancy Bathrooms promises that the District is “committed to creating and maintaining an including education and work environment” and “will ensure that all single-occupancy bathroom facilities are designated as gender neutral.”

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N/A OPARAH

Sell a bit

If You are reading this it is because I have

—————————————————————

                                    Imagined

                                                            and for that

I am not sorry Continue reading “N/A OPARAH” →

The Therapist and The Two Realities of Power

There is a difference between a ‘fabricative realist’ (one who invents a reality for the purpose of manipulating or holding control over another) and a ‘deluded realist’ (one who believes in the reality that a person with more power convinces them to believe).

Neither fabricative realism nor deluded realism is realist realism: it is a situational realism that forms between two parties in a relationship that is built on a significant power differential, a power differential primarily based on access to information.

A perfect example of this might be found in the traditional therapist-client relationship. Continue reading “The Therapist and The Two Realities of Power” →

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