826CHI Compendium Volume VI

By 826CHI

826CHI Compendium Volume VII contains some of our favorite pieces of student writing from across all of our programming from the past two years featuring a foreword by Jennifer Steele.

This anthology contains poems, memoirs, stories, and essays written by over 75 Chicago students ages 6-18. Together, the v

• Language: English
• Publisher: 826CHI
• Release date: Oct 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798868960680

826CHI

826CHI is a non-profit writing, tutoring, and publishing center dedicated to amplifying the voices of Chicago youth.

Book preview

The 826CHI Compendium V. 7

The 826CHI Compendium V. 7

The Students of 826CHI

826CHI

Contents

The 826CHI Compendium V. 7

www.826chi.org

FOREWORD by Jennifer Steele

Happy

I Know I Exist

Happy

The light isn’t for me

i tap my wrist & then touch the tips of my little fingers together before pulling them apart (or, acquisition of a heart)

When I’m...

The Worlds I Carry With Me

Feelings

My Own Personal Hairdresser

…and meet the young lady who fell from a star

Something I Always Wanted to Re-Do

Quarantine is stressful

Gold Coast

Summer in My City

World of Something

The Gulf Between Me and the Rich Girls

Down the Stairs

Chicago is a Family

Introspection

What Home is to Me

An Excerpt from the Poem that My School Censored

Dear Tamir Rice,

Dear Tamir Rice,

Dear Tamir Rice,

What’s it like to be a black girl during a pandemic, for those of you who aren’t…

Growing Up

One Night

Beach Flags

Shadowed Past, Brightened Future

Memory Lane

Sinner by Ric Wilson ft. Kweku Collins and Nick Kosma

The House That is Always Cleaning

Quarantine Depression

Sad

Bri, how’ve you been?

Home is Not Always Happy

Happy

II. Sunlight

Dear Mom,

Dear Father,

A Letter to You

I’ll Meet You on the Hemlines

Dear Weezer,

The Willis Tower

French Toast and Growing Up

A Room of My Own

Latine People and Lazy Writing: The Stereotype Epidemic

Where Are My POC?

Mental Strength

Chicago Needs Me…

Muslims in China

After Six Plus Hours

Eww, what's that on your head?

Antagonist

El Gran Cambio

Fresh Air

EVOLVE

Goldilocks

Female

Return to Karuna City

Mosh Pit Sisterhood

Step Out of Them Voices

The Bright Colors

The Talk

Retelling

The Beauty of Chicago

An Evening at my Dad’s House

The Injury

Arachno Home

Life Outdoors

Memoir of Experience in Chicago

Playing Roblox with My Cousins

Homecoming Chaos

The Chicago Life

Home is a Lot To Me

Happy

Summer Days

My Love of Step Dance

Determined

Last Year

My Home

At Work

A Letter to Green Day

Nothing Short of Ethereal

Home

Acknowledgments

About 826CHI

About the Wicker Park Secret Agent Supply Co.

Our Programs

Our Staff

The 826CHI Compendium V. 7

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Copyright © 2021 by 826CHI

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part of any form.

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This book is a work of nonfiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ personal experiences. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely intentional and emerges from the minds of these authors as truthfully as memory allows.

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ISBN: 978-1-934750-42-1

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Cover art: Caroline Liu

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Director of Programs: Asia Calcagno

Manager of Education: Natasha Mijares

Publications Program Coordinator: Joshua Bohnsack

Layout Designer: Fred Sasaki

Flipbook Animation: Allison Catuira

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Proceeds from your purchase of this publication support 826CHI, a non-profit creative writing, tutoring, and publishing center.

www.826chi.org

The views expressed in this book are those of the authors and the authors’ imaginations. We support student publishing and are thrilled you picked up this book!

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First Edition, 826CHI 2021 //

Printed in the United States by [McNaughton & Gunn]

FOREWORD by Jennifer Steele

Audre Lorde said: When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. To read Compendium VII is to be entirely consumed by the fearlessness and inhibited talent of 826CHI’s young writers, particularly as they have continued to be brave and bravely write their words into the world over the course of the pandemic. You will be surrounded by a symphony of young voices bursting with laughter, sorrow, happiness, whatevs-ness, fear, anger, and joy mostly from a time when all we’ve known is what it means to be indoors and away from so much of what we love. The voices within this collection are anything but quarantined. They are, indeed, daring.

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They advocate for change in media and human rights. They LOL at the small surprises they relive and recount of fun summer days at Navy Pier and the small kindnesses from strangers. They reinvent a story we’ve known and love, but do not know in their unique telling. They fist pump through a finish line when they weren’t sure they’d make it through their first one-mile run, and the joy we celebrate through tears yielded together as we cross the line with them through their eyes, minds, hearts—their stories.

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Compendium VII reverberates the hum of the heartbeats of our city, our young people. We are asked to pause and hear the beauty and the heartbreak and we are reminded that we are born into the stories of ourselves. Our young people contain multitudes, and not only are we called back of this part of our humanity as we read their words, but that more importantly, they know this to be intimately true for themselves.

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Dear Students: You are stories upon stories within yourself. Not only are you courageous and brave, you are teachers of that courage, bravery, and vulnerability. You have opened up to share your stories with us. You have let us in and put a fire under us. We honor you. We are grateful for you. As your humble readers, we thank you for allowing us to be a part of the journey of your magnificent story.

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Jennifer Steele is the author of the chapbook A House In Its Hunger (Central Square Press, 2018). She is a Howard University alum and received her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and is a Callaloo Fellow and Poetry Incubator Fellow. She is the Executive Director of 826CHI, a writing and publishing center amplifying the voices and stories of Chicago’s youth. She was featured in NewCity’s 2020 Lit50 and is the inaugural recipient of the 2019 Lucille Clifton Creative Parent Award from Raising Mothers Magazine. She is an Ragdale alum, and  her work is forthcoming and has appeared in Hypertext Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Callaloo, Columbia Poetry Review, and others. She is working on a full-length collection of poetry entitled, Belt, and developing a collection of creative nonfiction.

Happy

Malachi M.

Grade: 3

Program: After-School Writing Lab

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Me

Strong like an ox

Stout as a mammal

You’re a firework

Because I’m cool

I’m a mammal

Super nice

I Know I Exist

Anna Z.

Grade: 12

Program: Teen Writers Studio

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i know i exist because of my craving for coffee and a grocery list given to me by my dad.

we wouldn’t have chores if we weren’t alive. i stare into my morning’s brew as though answers are written in the ‘half & half’ swirl. each sip, a desperate search for clarity. a search for the items on my list: a loaf of bread, two lemons, the secret-keeping half & half. maybe tea leaves would make better fortune tellers—i could decipher their meaning like a connect-the-dots coloring book, a painting stuck to the bottom of the teapot like stars glued to the night sky.

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maybe, if the stars came out after a 4pm sunset i would have some more insight. lack of vitamin D would be replaced by wonder and false UFO sightings and exclamations of look up!—nights spent stargazing to remind us of how small we are in relation to everything else. to master celestial navigation in our daily routines.

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is a sense of direction too much to ask of my coffee? a positive outlook, a new perspective, how many cups does a revelation take? maybe my mom is in the coffee aisle and i am six years old again, struck with panic because i’m lost somewhere between the neon-crowded shelves and aisles with a vanishing point. between the cereal and the ice cream. the tampons and the shaving razors. the isolation disguised as headphones glued into my ears. my small body absorbed into a kaleidoscope of blurred routine, washed out by the fluorescent lights and a voice behind me asking excuse me, could i squeeze past you? the list is now crumpled in my hand as i approach the checkout. i brought my own bag, i say.

Happy

Adrian P.

Grade: 2

Program: After-School Writing Lab

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Curious, fun

When I get what I want

I am happy

When I get candy

When I feel comfortable

When I hula hoop

When I watch fun cartoons

When I go where I want to

When I get to duct tape my gym teacher to the wall

When I get to silly string my principal

When I get to drive the car

When I get to do my homework

When I get to watch The Nutcracker

When I get to watch it in real life

When I get to be called cute

When I get to see my nine horses, nine chickens, nine goats, one beaver, and twenty fish

I have twenty turtles and thirty dogs in Michigan.

The light isn’t for me

Hinisha M.

Grade: 9

Program: Young Author Book Project

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The light isn’t for me but I make it for me so I can see what they don’t want me to

I’m a blind bat in a world full of eye opened thieves who are right in our face

We walk around with wicked flesh worried what will take the last whisk of breath away from us

Since when do we give up

Since when are they on our side

Since when have they let us see the world for how it is

Since when have they not