XOXO,
Lady Liberty
SAMORI COVINGTON
YEARS AS MENTEE: 4
GRADE: Senior
HIGH SCHOOL: Millennium Brooklyn High School
BORN: Brooklyn, NY
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: I got accepted to my first-choice college.
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: As Girls Write Now comes to an end for me this year, I have realized that my writing has come a long way. As a freshman I always tried to make people laugh, but as I got older, I wanted to write more about social issues. I am a four-year mentee, and looking back, I remember spending a whole year being obsessed with writing science fiction. To me, this piece ties everything together—the science and the social issues.
BROOKE BOREL
YEARS AS MENTOR: 4
OCCUPATION: Journalist and Author
BORN: Topeka, KS
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: My second book published in 2016, The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking (University of Chicago Press). I also had a year-long fellowship with the Alicia Patterson Foundation.
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: When I first started Girls Write Now four years ago, I was paired with a freshman—Samori! Our time together has flown by. I am so happy to see her moving on to college, but it’s also bittersweet for me because I will greatly miss our weekly meetings. Every year, Samori has explored new genres: from humor writing to science fiction to socially conscious essays and poems. In this last piece, she wanted to combine all of these interests, so we tackled futuristic political satire.
This piece is about a dystopian society in the near future that speaks to my misgivings about today’s government. I wanted to experiment with satire this year while also acknowledging the ignorance in society.
“And now, presenting the President of the United States. Ladies and Gentlemen, Donald Trumpitron.”
The president took to the podium, his orangeness glowing on my television screen. “Good evening,” he said. “Here are new rules for the Extended Constitution. Because people have not been behaving. Rule #171: The new curfew is 7:00 p.m. Rule #172: Failure to pay taxes to the government will result in deportation.”
“Cheezy Trumpitron,” I muttered, and turned to Miranda on the couch beside me in the shelter rec room. But she wasn’t there. I’m still not used to it. I thought back three months ago when she was deported to her home country, Israel. According to the government, she broke curfew too many times. Miranda is actually lucky that she still had her life and she was not thrown away at the edge of the Earth like some who broke some of the rules, which changed all the time. She came to the United States for a better life, when Israel was in the middle of a fifteen-year war. At that time, the U.S. was the only place left in the world that had not been breached by war, chaos, and fear.
Ever since Trumpitron won the election, as Trump robots have for the past sixty-some years, our economy has been declining. We no longer have any resources or allies. The fresh water from Maine to Texas has dried out and the cattle from the farms down South have died. And what does Cheezy Trumpitron do? He closes the borders, making sure no one can enter and no one can leave. Unless they’re thrown out. But I’m starting to think that something else is behind most of these ridiculous ideas. Ever since the new Bannon chip released last year, every country is against us and we have no one to turn to.
I have been working since the age of five. Our last human ruler, the first Donald Trump, thought he made the country perfect. But in order to create perfection there is usually a lot of control. He, and now his robot spawn, own every building in America. I repeat Every Building in America, from the Empire State Building to the gated community down the block from where I work. US citizens work in these buildings; “Trump Towers” as he likes to call them. The upper echelon live in Trump Towers while the poor and unfortunate, such as myself, go home to dark and dingy alleyways. The elite are the ones who agree with everything Trumpitron says. They support him throughout his speeches of nonsense, they are the ones who do not have a curfew and fly around in fancy cars with robot drivers. The little money we do receive goes straight to Trumpitron.
I’m tired of living like this. Working to provide for the people above me. I work sixteen hours a day and I can’t even see a penny of it. Sometimes I wonder how the people around me are okay with this, but I think maybe they’re just oblivious like I once was until I opened my eyes. I’m a grown man and yet I have a curfew. I have to be asleep in my bunk in a shelter, for crying out loud, by seven o’clock. That’s when the wolves come sniffing. Every adult in this country is treated like a child and the children are treated like adults. I slide off the couch, shake off the pain of missing Miranda, and head to work. Today, I have a meeting with one of my coworkers. Julian also started off as a factory worker, and now we work as electricians and ensure that Trump Towers functions at all times. Some of us are trying to develop a group to escape. I’m hoping Julian will join us.
“How exactly do you plan on convincing people to join this ‘said’ group?” says Julian.
“Well, we obviously can’t broadcast our ideas to the public, you ditz,” I say.
He squints at me and says, “You always have something smart to say.”
“And you always have something dumb to say. Anyway, back to the point. I really cannot live here anymore. I stayed because I thought that one day, things would get better for Miranda and me. As you can see, things did not work out too well.”
“I know it’s hard because she is not here right now,” he said. “But you know what? I’m in. Let’s go to Canada.”
A week later, my heart was thumping. It was 5:00 p.m. and the time had come. “Guys, come on. We do not have much time, the wolves will be here sooner than you think,” I whispered.
“Relax, we have two hours,” Julian said, as he fumbled with the electrical box.
“Wait, why are the alarms going off?”
“I hear the wolves coming! Cut the lights!”
It went dark. And I started running.
The Press Conference
BROOKE BOREL
I was inspired by Samori’s satirical dystopian science fiction, which shows a future of a robot-ruled America. I used elements of her story as a starting point to imagine the press conference that would accompany a new announcement by the robot government.
“Thank you for coming. First order of business: the new rules.”
Spicerbot