Throughout the first months of quarantine, Philadelphia-based non-profit Mighty Writers encouraged their students to explore their thoughts and fears in writing. Now the organization has collected thirty of the most powerful essays and poems in the new book Writing From Quarantine: In the Words of Mighty Kids, which will be released on Giving Tuesday, December 1st.
“Through spring and into summer, our Mighty kids kept writing,” Mighty Writers founder Tim Whitaker writes in the forward. “And often their stories focused on how they were feeling and how they were dealing. Some of those stories have landed in the pages of this book, which was guided respectfully by Kyra Spence, the book’s editor. It’s been a tough time, for sure. A lot for all of us to process. But in these stories you can feel the power that writing holds.”
“Secrecy, confinement, and loneliness are now my daily usual,” 11-year old Anushka Dar writes. “Although I have adjusted to the new world around me, I am scared out of my mind,” writes 15-year old Gavriella Perez. “The coronavirus is going to find us. I feel like it’s right behind us,” 11-year old Samuel Wright writes.
As spring turned to summer, police shootings and Black Lives Matter began to dominate the news, and the kids’ writing reflects that too. 15-year old Kiamuya Mazama writes, “What do you expect me to do? How you gonna claim a country that does not want you? Don’t call the cops. They probably gonna hunt you. You don’t want to hear it, but it is the sad truth.”
Pre-order Writing From Quarantine: In the Words of Mighty Kids here: https://mightywriters.networkforgood.com/projects/114907-pre-order-wfq-page
