C. Syl’violet Smith climbed the class ladder to graduate school. But she grappled with how her working-class background differed from other Black students in an elite space. 

Bare-assed on Ma’s brown suede couch, I spread my salty, dimpled legs in front of the fan. The fan whines and rocks in the window frame, pleading with the Jersey wind on my behalf, but no cool breeze ever passes through its wings. It only throws the musty funk between my inner thighs back into my face. There’s a buzzing swarming around my shower cap, thumping violently against the pollen-dusted windowpane, but, today, the high sun beats the brow harder than any fist so I don’t have the will or the energy to hunt it down. I’m counting through my breaths and tracking the cool spots on the couch. 

Ma knows I have a thing for rugged, old couches, which is why, she supposes, I crawled out of her bed late last night and burrowed into the love seat. My toes nestle into the cushions as I teeter my whirring laptop on one thigh and then the other, bouncing its heat. I’m writing a letter to Columbia University’s MFA Writing Program. I just got accepted three months ago. First-semester tuition is due in a few months, and I’ve raised nearly $1,000 with a GoFundMe video. For nine whole minutes, the video whines on about the Black ghetto and generational poverty and the longing for communal healing through art. But I’m still $21,079 short. I don’t think it too early to debut my trauma to the program directors for a bid of sympathy.