By Leah Dewey
The Communicator
Ann Arbor Community HS
1st Place Division 4, News Writing
Personal Narrative
JUDGING CRITERIA
- A first-person account depicting a personal experience
- Lead captures attention, arouses curiosity
- Topic relevant to interests and/or welfare of school or students
- Effectively combines basics of good news and feature writing
- Effectively organized with smooth transitions; carefully outlined
- Sentences, paragraphs of varied length; written clearly, concisely and vividly
- Proper diction/grammar
- Should have byline, which could include mug shot of writer
Gomes Eanes de Zurara created racism in 1453. Or at least he was the first to articulate ideas of racism — specifically the inferiority of the black race. Zurara was hired by Portugal’s king to write a biography about the king’s uncle, Infante Henrique, the first major slave-trader to enslave and trade exclusively African people.
Zurara wrote, “They lived like beasts. They had no understanding of good, but only knew how to live in bestial sloth.”
In 2016, a black Ford F-150 slowed to a halt. My step-dad strode from the truck and walked into the hotel. Driving through Tennessee, I struggled to locate other people of color. It was off-putting: the lack of people who looked like me — black and brown like me.
Both of us standing at a quaint 4’11”, my mom and I leapt from the running board. My weary, drooping eyelids were met with a wall of thick, moist air. I sauntered to the truck-bed to get my bags. I glanced at the car behind us; a couple stood behind their white station wagon.
The man put a consoling hand on the woman’s shoulder. The woman’s eyes darted from the man’s face, down to her frail, shaking fingers. I opened the tailgate and reached for my luggage. Accessing the trunk was a challenge with my height making my suitcase appear to be a New York skyscraper. I turned around to see the woman nodding and whimpering to her husband. She peered over his shoulder; her blue eyes connected with mine. Her eyes tread through my thick curls, scraped down my arms and along my brown skin. A shudder crept up my spine. Suddenly, she turned and sprinted into the hotel, drawing eyes from everyone in the lobby.
Heat lightning flashed in the distance. I began to scramble for my bags. Heavy footsteps approached me from behind. I heard the beep of the car locking its white doors. One beep for safety, two for good measure. The man now stood in front of his white station wagon, arms crossed, feet planted firmly on the cement. My hand slowly dropped from my bag and my stomach sank to my knees. I felt him. His eyes penetrating my flesh and bone. I stepped carefully to the side of our black truck. My heart sat in my throat and the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. I felt a finger interlace with my pinkie. My mom laid a reassuring arm on my back and led me into the hotel. The man’s eyes followed until the doors shut behind us.
Our room was on the first floor, just a few yards from the front desk. We walked past the concierge and his sympathetic eyebrows, as he gently pushed complementary sweets to the edge of the desk. I spotted an old-fashioned loveseat decorated with a floral pattern. The pattern was to mask the blotches and blemishes that time had gifted its knackered cushions. The air reeked of a perfume that was trying far too hard to hide something. The hallway wallpaper seeped a thick, brown ooze. The carpet was frayed and stained with substances now embedded in the physical composition of its stitching.
I pushed open the resistant door and stumbled into the hotel room. Nausea swaddled me like a newborn baby. My feet followed behind me as I swayed into the bathroom. My reflection glared back at me. I stared at my caramel skin. My coiled, frizzy curls. My deep brown eyes.
I thought about the man and woman and how they made me feel.
I hated how she feared me — how even her husband’s meaty arms and broad shoulders couldn’t protect her.
I hated how he watched me, how his eyes stuck to me like tar stuck to a fence around a plantation garden.
I hated how they painted me with their broad brush as dangerous, savage, bestial.
But what I hated most of all, as I stared back at myself in that drab, smudged mirror, was the feeling that I should be afraid of my own skin.
C