Q&A with Mi Gente. Aking Pamilya. My People Student Editors

We are excited to have released this year’s eighth-grade anthology at the 14th Annual Scholarship Benefit and for the opportunity to share the work of our students with you, our community, and beyond! We sat down with this year’s student editors, Katia and Karen, to chat about the project and their experience as editors.

Congrats to the both of you! You have published work. That’s exciting! How does it make you feel?

Karen: Having published work makes me feel official and it’s exciting because not many people our age have published work. It is a privilege that comes with the work that we put into our five years at De Marillac, and I am grateful.

Katia: I feel proud of the time and effort I put into co-creating this anthology. I am truly happy to be a contributor of this work of art. Karen and I spent much time as editors reviewing the poems of our classmates, trying to make sure it was perfect in the author’s perspective. I am proud of my classmates.

Tell me about the anthology project and the eighth-grade unit on poetry.

Katia: The anthology project was worked on by our class for a very long time. We put in a lot of dedication and hard work into the writing beneath the covers of our book. Many of the works in the anthology share meaningful and powerful messages that we all chose to share. We all shared a vulnerable side of ourselves by publishing our feelings, inspirations, and overall mentalities.

Karen: The work on the eighth-grade anthology came out of our unit of poetry. Ms. Bell would give us prompts daily and we would write for 15-30 minutes about these prompts. Some topics were lists poems, nature poems, vignettes, or couplets. These topics were where our flourishing and magnificent ideas started and now you find all these poems in our anthology.

What was your role as student editors?

Katia: As student editors, we went over our classmates’ work and made sure it was exactly as the author desired. We also suggested and made edits on word choice and grammar.

Karen: My role as student editor was to read through all my classmates work with my co-editor and make sure there were no errors to assure that the book was in ideal shape that we all wanted. The role as student editor also made me appreciate the hard work that my classmates put into their poetry. It was motivating and fun!

What does this project mean to you?

Katia: This project is a tradition of our school and it portrays generations of students. This project expresses the voices of this gifted group of students. This tradition is something we should all be proud of, for sharing our ideas and stories, as many previous DMA students have done before us.

Karen: This project is a huge accomplishment for me and my class. It is like a gift that we all gave each other without even knowing. After our time at De Marillac, we’ll always have our anthology to carry with us so that we have a piece of our classmates with us in high school.

Has this experience changed or influenced your future career aspirations? If so, explain.

Katia: This experience has only further pushed me towards my future career goals. I have always aspired to be an astronomer and I have no doubt in my mind that I will be able to achieve that someday. Writing poems for the anthology is a way to not only express my love for space, but to do it in a way that can be applied to life and religion as well. My poem Space Dust is an example of such, “For you are dust; and to dust you shall return.” There is something about poems that makes it easy to interconnect ideas and that is true for me. It’s easy to connect space to daily life.

Karen: Yes, I’ve always been passionate about writing but this project has really opened my eyes much more to what I aspire to be. My aspirations have changed over the years, but recently I’ve grown closer to art and writing. I believe these will stick with me and speak for me in different ways in the future.

Is there anything else you would like to share about this experience?

Katia: I would very much like to thank everyone who attended the Annual Scholarship Benefit or has purchased one of our anthologies. Thank you for supporting us and helping us reach our aspirations and goals. We are truly thankful for the ways in which you all have helped us. This journey of education has been made possible due to our generous benefactors and volunteers, or those who just support the school! May you be blessed with everlasting joy.

Karen: Though I will miss every one of my classmates, we’re close-knit and we’re family. I know this because we’ve looked after each other’s backs and that’ll never end after our time at De Marillac. This anthology has proved it because it’s filled with emotions that we all share in and with our writing and it shows that we’re meant to stay together.

Mi Gente. Aking Pamilya. My People is available for purchase by emailing felicia_torrez@demarillac.org or calling 415.552.5220 x401.