CREATIVE WRITING

at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco

Welcome! CW develops the art and craft of creative writing through instruction, collaboration, and respect. This blog showcases STUDENT WRITING and how to APPLY to Creative Writing.

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  • A Literary Analysis on “Make America Great Again!” by Stella Pfahler

    “Make America Great Again!TM” is an newer rendering of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again,” and was Donald Trump’s successful campaign slogan in 2016. Trump patented the phrase, so it technically bears a trademark. It has appeared on campaign posters, shirts, buttons, and most notably the iconic red trucker cap. The phrase has been repurposed for the sake of parody and satire, such as on political commentator John Oliver’s television show (“Make Donald Drumpf Again”). Activist movements and individuals have coined the phrases “Make America Think Again,” “Make America Gay Again,” and “America Was Never Great.” Donald Trump created a distinguished popular culture phenomenon by using hubris, nostalgia, and populist diction to raise the collective spirit of millions.

    First and foremost, Trump uses hubris to create an impression of American dominance the world economy and political scene. The definition of hubris is “excessive pride or self-confidence.” Trump’s slogan contrasts that of Former President Obama’s campaign slogans “Hope,” “Yes We Can,” and “Change We Can Believe In” as well as Former President George W. Bush’s “Yes, America Can,” and “Moving America Forward.” Trump’s slogan is distinctive in that it lacks the ideas of change and forward movement, concepts that are central to most normal campaigns. Rather than suggest positive, modernist change, Trump is suggesting that America’s greatness lies in what it used to be, and that is what made him such a distinctive candidate. This idea of America having been “great” in the past reflects a certain amount of hubris on Trump’s part. Trump has pride in what his country used to be. He holds confidence in the perfection of Reagan’s trickle-down America and also believes that he is the only candidate that can achieve that sort of utopia. All candidates, regardless of ideology, have to hold themselves in some sort of high esteem in order to consider themselves worthy of office. Most, however, try to communicate a certain amount of humility in order to identify with the general public. Barack Obama, for instance, in using the slogan “Change,” bluntly admitted that America was flawed and had room to grow in many areas. He suggested himself as the best candidate to achieve that sort of growth but never acted like America had ever been perfect. George W. Bush was less humble in his use of “Moving America Forward” but still acknowledged that America could improve in a few respects. Trump, on the other hand, uses hubris by blatantly not admitting America’s problems, both past and present, instead promising to return the country to its former utopian state. The phrase also demonstrates Trump’s idealist notion that America should be the utmost dominant world power and deserves to be the ultimate decider of geopolitics, trade deals, and social change (or lack thereof).

    Another vital device that Trump utilizes is populist diction. Each word in the phrase “Make America Great Again” appeals to those who feel as though America used to be great, has somehow wronged them in its lack of “greatness,” and is the only country that can and deserves to be so. The word “make” communicates assertiveness and duty. The message of the phrase is not up for debate- “make” demonstrates that Trump’s supporters are ready to change their America by any means necessary. It is a call to action, an obvious assertion that something has to be done, and now. That call to action points towards the most obvious course of action, which is electing Trump. The next two words “Great Again” especially attract working class whites who believe that their “greatness” has been stolen by immigrants and refugees. The idea of America having to be “great” entices patriots who believe in “America first” values-people who don’t believe in a global, symbiotic economy, but rather in one that involves America mostly exporting and not importing, an economy in which America reaps most of the benefits.

    Lastly, Donald Trump utilizes a tone of nostalgia. He has been cited to point to the “late ’40s and ’50s,” during which “we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody, we had just won a war, we were pretty much doing what we had to do,” as America’s golden age. Trump, in saying “Make America Great Again!” is both admitting that America is currently in decline and proposing that he is the only candidate who can turn things around. Trump has raised controversy in believing that the ‘40s and ‘50s were a great time-while the economy was thriving, women and people of color were still being denied their basic human needs and rights as citizens. Trump champions the working white man. He plays on working class people’s ever-present insecurities and appeals to their sense of nostalgia. Most Trump supporters are working class whites who wonder why they work so hard and never achieve the American Dream promised to them. They wish to return to the Golden Age of their parents’ and grandparents’ lives, a time when the laboring white person was applauded for just being such; when people of color and working women hadn’t yet infiltrated their predetermined social strata. Trump plays on these insecurities, these “us versus them” ideals, by using the word “again” to connote an American golden age of white male supremacy.

    Donald Trump used populist diction, a nostalgic tone, and aggressive hubris to create a popular culture phenomenon while simultaneously raising the collective spirit of millions. He uses diction and nostalgia to demonstrate that America must return to its former greatness, and that he is the only candidate who can achieve that. He also uses hubris to convince supporters that America is the only nation capable and worthy of becoming an almighty, reigning world power. His campaign threw out the rulebook of traditional politics and transformed the trade into a firebrand race to victory by way of “alternative facts;” ugly, uncivilized debate, and unfounded policymaking. Most impactful of all, perhaps, Donald Trump’s campaign successfully divided a country of 318.9 million people that had formerly prided itself on being “united.”

    Stella Pfahler, class of 2019

  • Procrastination, by Kenzo Fukuda

    I love procrastinating. I do it all the time. I bet that everyone does it, excluding those mutants who have the willpower to finish their project as soon as they get the assignment. Procrastination is the action of delaying or putting off with something. For example, waiting til the last day to start a five page story that you had two weeks to do.

    The way I rationalize putting homework off is through deciding how easy/useless/tedious the homework is. If I think the homework is tedious and won’t help me in any sort of way, I procrastinate. If I think the homework is easy then I will either do it right away of it’s in front of me, or I’ll save it for later. For example, when I put off my spanish homework due the night before, I immediately start to think about when I would have the time to do it before I have that class. I start to think in my head things like: “Let’s see, I can do my homework at breakfast, no it’s too early for that. I can do it in Physics class because we’ll have a sub… Oh! I can do it at the break. Yeah, I’ll have twenty minutes to do it. Alright back to YouTube”

    Procrastinating sprouts when people begin to rationalize the amount of time it takes to complete a certain task. And we normally think about the minimum amount of time it would take to accomplish this task. Knowing that the task we have to do takes a small amount of time, we end up choosing to do something we want to do, over what we have to do; thinking that we can do both.

    Kenzo Fukuda, class of 2020

  • Where I Get My Inspiration, by Max Chu

    Where I Get My Inspiration, by Max Chu

    There’s something about holding a cold glass bottle that makes me feel sophisticated. When you pinch it by the rim with two fingers, how the glass on my finger somehow feels exactly like when I first perfected me card shuffle bridge. Suddenly I’m on the deck of an ancient house in the middle of the midwest (middle of the middle of the west) at sunset. Some jazz record is playing on the record player back in the house, and I can faintly hear it. I got one arm back on the railing, and you’re not afraid of splinters because I;m too cool for that. I got a cool bottle of something delicious in my hand. Nothing can flip my groove. Now I’m not talking about any alcoholic beverage here, folks. I’m talking about the pure stuff. The ginger ale at BiRite that costs $1 for ginger ale and $4 for feeling cool while I hold it. I’m talking about the cream soda that goes down like a freshly laminated comic book. I’m talking about the Trader Joe’s 100% Pineapple Juice, the acquired taste of acquired tastes.

    One year at summer camp there was a girl with sunglasses that had reflective lenses. They shielded her eyes from the sun while at the same time concealed her motives. They had pastel blue frames with nearly perfect reflective lenses. She looked mysterious as she protected her eyes from the harmful UV rays of the sun; the ultimate victory. At the time, my own glasses paled in comparison to hers (red wood frames with rainbow lenses) and so we traded. An hour later, I sat on mine. Four months later, she lost hers.

    There’s a stall in a market in Bangkok that sells the most revolting shaved ice in the world. Shaved ice, for those who don’t know, is easier than scrambled eggs. Shave some ice into a bowl and throw some sickly sweet syrup on top and boom! Perfect shaved ice. The criteria for shaved ice is rather low, so a “perfect” shaved ice isn’t that difficult to come by. This place obviously didn’t get the memo, because their product tasted like greek yogurt, peach cough medicine, and a salty D- on a test you studied for. How they’re still in business is beyond quite frankly every living being above the mosquito. The locals obviously know to stay away, so they must have to apply even more goat intestinal fluid to attract the unsuspecting tourists with the colorful chemical green hue. Oh, “It’s a local delicacy” my ass! The omelette my sister forgot to eat but still put in the fridge five weeks ago has more culture and is more appealing.

    I suppose what I’m trying to say is that everything has a story, it just needs to be drawn out. And if drawing a story out means lying face first in a couch for twenty minutes to an hour listening to local news, then so be it (although my mom say the best way to draw something out is to soak it in hot salt water but I think she was talking about splinters).

    Max Chu, class of 2020

  • Why Everyone Should Reread Children’s Books, by Anna Geiger

    Why Everyone Should Reread Children’s Books, by Anna Geiger

    In the last few months, I have endeavored to find and read all of my favorite childhood
    books. This began on a family camping trip over a long weekend where I read my younger brother Matilda next to our campfire in the evenings. I enjoyed doing this so much that I continued to read to him after we’d come back home. We finished Matilda and then moved on to James and the Giant Peach, then A Series of Unfortunate Events, which we still have yet to finish.

    After two and a half years of trying to broaden my horizons with literature, I’d read Austen and Tolstoy, Neruda and Dickens, Hemingway, Proust, and the Brontes. Those authors and their books stretched and molded my mind, rooted themselves firmly in my psyche. I believe in the power that great literature can have for emotional and academic intelligence, but I found myself wanting to escape from the rigid realism and convoluted language which I couldn’t escape from in the books on my bookshelf. I found a quote by Emerson printed on a bookmark in a bookstore one day reading “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” This idea he proposes, of the books he has read “making” him, stuck with me. I have come to the conclusion that I am not content with this idea; I want to remember the books that have made me.

    I began finding and reading the books I loved from my childhood in linear order. I started with Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree and his poems from my copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends. I read Stories from the Ballet and the entire Little House on the Prairie series, then Eva Ibbotson’s Journey to the River Sea, The Star of Kazan and The Dragonfly Pool. I am currently reading The Hobbit and am nowhere near the end of this journey, but already I have experienced a vivacity of language, freedom of plot, and idealism of life which I have found sorely lacking the books I have read in recent years, and the pieces I have been writing. It is my hope that reaching back into the past to rediscover, as Emerson wisely said, the books that have made me, will allow me to become more knowledgeable of my literary self and point my creative self in a new, uninhibited direction.

    Anna Geiger, class of 2018

  • Julieta Roll reads onstage with California Poet Laureate

    CW’s own Juli Roll, as San Francisco champion of the annual Poetry Out Loud competition, is appearing onstage tonight at the Mechanic’s Library with California’s Poet Laureate, Dana Gioia, at an event celebrating National Poetry Month.

    From the Mechanic’s Library Website:

    Mechanics’ Institute is honored to welcome consummate poet and arts advocate Dana Gioia as guest of honor to celebrate National Poetry Month. He will read and talk about his latest collection, 99 Poems: New and Selected. He will share his experiences traveling to communities and schools throughout California’s 58 counties to engage people of all ages in the pleasures and inspiration of poetry. Book sale and signing will follow the program.

    Dana Gioia will be joined by Julieta Fuentes Roll, Poetry Out Loud Champion for San Francisco County and a student at the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts; and Margo Perin, San Francisco County Poetry Out Loud Coordinator.

  • Poetry Reading Fundraiser at Alley Cat Bookstore

    Join the Creative Writing Department on February 23rd at 6PM for a night of poetry and fiction at Alley Cat Bookshop in the Mission. We will be reading till we drop as we raise money to travel to New Orleans this spring and attend literary festivals while creating new artistic connections to NOLA’s writing community. But we need your help! Donations are encouraged, but the event is free! Refreshments will be served. Help get us on that plane!

  • syn·es·the·sia by Arin Vasquez

    Written in response to the CW trip to the new SFMOMA

    a confusion of the senses. the painting looks like a song called taxi cab, like the sound of metal clinking against teeth, like what I wish I looked like from the inside.

    splattered. new. it’s art in its most basic form – as many colors as will fit onto a single canvas, smudged and smeared and blown together and apart, a paintball fight, someone shutting their eyes and relaxing. color is an exceptional thing.

    I sometimes meet colors that are anxious, sometimes ones that are angry. I have noticed that colors on their own are never happy. I think, maybe, my brain is trying to tell me something in that confusion, in that sensory experience.

    don’t let yourself be alone. you will be so much alone, but never quite happy. that’s what the colors say.
    calm, yes, excited. but never joyful.

    that comes in patterns, in the way the paint is splattered onto this canvas, in the way my imagination sees joy in one hundred complementary colors that dance together, in the way a hummingbird’s wings sound like the smell of baking brownies.

    home lives in color. that’s what entrances me most about art.

    in the end, all it is is music on a canvas

    all it is is a place to live in brightness

    all it is is childhood and paint-smeared fingers and color, color, color

    color everywhere.

    by Arin Vasquez

  • Spring Poetry by Dalia Harb

    For the past month, Creative Writing has been in our poetry unit. In this unit, the sophomores have each taught a one-to-two day lesson surrounding their culture. This unit has been enchanting and delightful. Each new theme has been refreshing and taught me something new. I have been able to explore new cultures and writing originating from it, and my own writing has evolved with each new style. The sophomores give us poetry prompts at the end of their unit, a way to extend the lesson past the classroom and allowing us to experiment with writing on our own.

    These units have helped my poetical voice develop. Through workshopping and reading new pieces, my writing has improved immensely.

    Being able to explore the different poems from multiple cultures has opened my eyes to the different styles of poetry. With each unit, my eyes have been opened to exciting new voices and forms of poetry.

    If I were to teach my own mini-unit I would bring in some poems surrounding Middle-Eastern culture. I would bring in some poems, such as ones by Mahmoud Darwish and Naomi Shihab Nye.

    This unit is different from our previous unit, fiction, because in our poetry unit we have a larger range of diverse writers. In our poetry unit it has been much more personal and, while teaching us plenty about the culture, it has taught us about the person teaching the unit too.

    My favorite has been Solange’s unit which was focused African-American culture. Solange brought in poems and showed us music videos by artists like Solange Knowles, Beyoncé, and Todrick Hall. These were significant because she was able to compare contemporary African-American poetry to older works, and how both still combat the same issues.

    We get weekend prompts as well from Heather Woodward, our department head. One of the prompts was to write a poem having to do with a conspiracy theory. This was our first one given therefore the weakest of my poems this unit.

    When we turn in the prompt to the sophomore who assigned it, they read over and edit it. Then we fix the edits they had made. We’re to edit all of our poems from this unit and hand them in as a portfolio.

    We will be able to use the poems we have written for our upcoming poetry cafe. The poetry unit has been my favorite thus far. It has given me the opportunity to delve into different cultures and enhance my knowledge on certain topics, such as Native American dances and the history of Tagalog. I look forward to see what next year’s poetry unit holds.

    Dalia Harb, class of 2020

  • A Dip into New Waters by Eva Whitney

    A Dip into New Waters by Eva Whitney

    The beginning of the school year was filled with outings, such as going to the Museum of
    Modern Art and the San Francisco Bay. These were to bring us closer together and build friendships between the Creative Writers.

    On the Friday of the second week of school, the Creative Writing Department ventured to the tip of the city take a ritualistic dip into the water. We crowded on to the bus, huddled next to our new friends, towels and bathing suits stuffed into our backpacks. At the waters edge, we scrambled out of our clothes and barreled into the frigid bay. I was tentative, dipping my toe in at first to test the temperature of the water before fully submerging myself. I could only bear the water’s bite for a minute or so and then rushed onshore to join my peers. The freshmen stayed close to each other, whispering about the weather while the seniors balanced sophomores on their shoulders and splashed at each other. I reclined on the beach and watched as my new classmates rejoiced in the water. It was then I realized how fortunate I was to be surrounded by these people, not only as writers but as allies.

    We parted ways, leaving on separate buses. I got on to my respective bus with new friends, and thought of the next four years of my Creative Writing journey. The first month left me feeling optimistic about what was in store for me. I could not wait to obtain the same confidence the seniors had, both with each other and with the world. On the Friday of the second week of school, I took a dip into the new waters of the Creative Writing department.

    Eva Whitney, class of 2020

  • Chanukah and Kwanzaa by Lena Hartsough

    My family celebrates Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanzaa over the winter holidays.

    We’ve taken to calling this mix match of holidays Christmachanukwanzakah, and I haven’t yet encountered another family who celebrates all three. In fact, many of my friends don’t know what Kwanzaa is. It is an African-American holiday not affiliated with any religion, and I’ve met people who think it’s a Muslim holiday from northern Africa.

    Recently, I was able to go up to Yosemite for three days to take part in a teen winter retreat at a Jewish camp I go to. The two nights I was there were the fifth and sixth nights of Chanukah, and also coincided with Ujima and Ujamaa, two nights of Kwanzaa. I had been planning to bring some candles or electric tea lights to light, but in the rush that occurred the morning I left, I forgot. I remembered once we were already in Yosemite, and asked a few staff members if they had tea lights or black, red, and green candles. They didn’t.

    So, when bedtime came around, I slipped out of the cabin to celebrate Ujima, the principle of “collective work and responsibility.” I ran into the counselor in charge of our cabin, who asked if everything was alright. I awkwardly told her I was celebrating Kwanzaa, which felt a bit odd after we had just lit the Chanukah candles. She nodded, and went back into the cabin.
    My family always celebrates Kwanzaa by singing a song called “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as “The Black National Anthem.” I imagined a black candle for Umoja, the
    first night, a red one for Kujichagulia, the second night, and a green candle for Ujima. Then I sang the first verse of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” quietly and a bit nervous that someone inside would hear. When I went back inside, the counselor asked if I could tell her about Kwanzaa the next day. I agreed.

    The next night, before we went off to bed, all forty-one of us (plus some of the staff members) participated in a guided meditation that was about spirituality. I mostly thought about my Jewish identity, and realized almost for the first time that I am very proud of being a Jew. Later, just as I was getting in bed, I remembered that I had forgotten Kwanzaa, and got back out of bed. That night, Ujamaa, represents cooperative economics. As I was leaving the cabin, my friends asked where I was going. I told them I was going to celebrate Kwanzaa, and they looked a bit surprised. So when I came back in after imagining the candles from the previous nights and another red candle for Ujamaa, then singing the first and last verses of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” my friends asked me questions about Kwanzaa. I explained what I knew of the answers, and was again proud of my identity.

    Celebrating an African-American holiday at a Jewish camp was interesting, to say the least. When I was considering spirituality, I left out Kwanzaa, and focused mainly on Judaism. Kwanzaa is, however, a big part of my spirituality, and my identity as an African-American is just as important as my identity as a Jew. Although I’ve been celebrating both Kwanzaa and Chanukah for as long as I can remember, and we’ve even combined the names to speak of our winter holidays, I’ve always thought of them as separate. After celebrating them both on the same night, but one with a large group of people and one alone, I have a new perspective on the two holidays.

    Lena Hartsough, class of 2019