Do you ever dream?
Donation protected
I write to live. Now that may be a simple sentence, but it is more powerful than a broadsword. I grew up middle class, with all the trappings of such. Vacations to exotic locals every summer, more spending money than I knew what to do with, diamond studs in my ear before most people learn to spell diamond. It was beautiful, it was inspiring, it was all a glossy facade meant to glamour the world into thinking my family was a Norman Rockwell painting.
My father was an abusive tyrant that ruled his small kingdom with swift justice and an iron will. My father was in the army with a skill set more useful in guerilla warfare, and without the benefit of foreign nationals to practice his craft on he turned his deadly gift on his family. 17 years me, my little sister, and my mother suffered under tortures that the United Nations have brought down entire countries for. Beatings, sleep deprivation, lack of food, blistering temperatures, physiological and verbal abuse just to be blunt. Embracing death offered a sweet relief to my tortured life.
My senior year of high school I signed up for Advance Placement English with a writing intensive marker. On the first day my professor stood in front of the class and changed my life. She said "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." as quoted from Ernest Hemingway. Quiet as the grave she passed out composition books and told us to bleed. Never before had I been given permission to pour my heart out. Never had I been asked how I felt, truly felt. For the hour class period I figuratively severed my cardioid artery and I bleed on those pages. The only thing that could have been more earth shattering was if my professor shouted 'Release the Krakon'. She gave me the tools to share my pain. She brought me to life. I was on the precipice of Tartarus, ready to jump and writing saved my life. I write to live and now I live to write. I want to pay what she did for me forward into the next generation. I want to save someone else's life. I want to be that professor in the front of a class, giving someone the tools to frame their world with the written word.
My mom finally found the courage to escape my father's brutality. We ran under the cover of night with nothing but our clothes and the car I bought with some money from my college fund. Our lives changed drastically, and for the better. Even without all the things that I grew up with, the money the vacations we had freedom and that was worth more than all the vacations in the world.
I grew up in Germany as an Army brat. Europe was my first home, my first love. The United States has never felt quite right to me. When I studied abroad at MMU in 2010 it was love at the first order of fish and chips. Manchester offers all the trappings of a large metropolitan city without the price tag to match. With the convergence of dozens of nationalities Manchester is a proverbial melting pot of inspiration for any writer. MMU is not only one the best programs in the world it cuts through all the red tape of traditional American master programs and it gets right to the heart of writing. It gives its students the chance to focus on bleeding on the page.
Well we all know the high cost of an education going to school and even more so when you are going overseas and the exchange rate keeps going up. So I am asking for your help in funding my dream, funding my chance to pay it forward. To repay what a English professor did for me.
My father was an abusive tyrant that ruled his small kingdom with swift justice and an iron will. My father was in the army with a skill set more useful in guerilla warfare, and without the benefit of foreign nationals to practice his craft on he turned his deadly gift on his family. 17 years me, my little sister, and my mother suffered under tortures that the United Nations have brought down entire countries for. Beatings, sleep deprivation, lack of food, blistering temperatures, physiological and verbal abuse just to be blunt. Embracing death offered a sweet relief to my tortured life.
My senior year of high school I signed up for Advance Placement English with a writing intensive marker. On the first day my professor stood in front of the class and changed my life. She said "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." as quoted from Ernest Hemingway. Quiet as the grave she passed out composition books and told us to bleed. Never before had I been given permission to pour my heart out. Never had I been asked how I felt, truly felt. For the hour class period I figuratively severed my cardioid artery and I bleed on those pages. The only thing that could have been more earth shattering was if my professor shouted 'Release the Krakon'. She gave me the tools to share my pain. She brought me to life. I was on the precipice of Tartarus, ready to jump and writing saved my life. I write to live and now I live to write. I want to pay what she did for me forward into the next generation. I want to save someone else's life. I want to be that professor in the front of a class, giving someone the tools to frame their world with the written word.
My mom finally found the courage to escape my father's brutality. We ran under the cover of night with nothing but our clothes and the car I bought with some money from my college fund. Our lives changed drastically, and for the better. Even without all the things that I grew up with, the money the vacations we had freedom and that was worth more than all the vacations in the world.
I grew up in Germany as an Army brat. Europe was my first home, my first love. The United States has never felt quite right to me. When I studied abroad at MMU in 2010 it was love at the first order of fish and chips. Manchester offers all the trappings of a large metropolitan city without the price tag to match. With the convergence of dozens of nationalities Manchester is a proverbial melting pot of inspiration for any writer. MMU is not only one the best programs in the world it cuts through all the red tape of traditional American master programs and it gets right to the heart of writing. It gives its students the chance to focus on bleeding on the page.
Well we all know the high cost of an education going to school and even more so when you are going overseas and the exchange rate keeps going up. So I am asking for your help in funding my dream, funding my chance to pay it forward. To repay what a English professor did for me.
Organizer
Letitia Jones
Organizer
High Point, NC