Signs Of Exit
Signs Of Exit: Stories From Elsewhere was written by the students of 826LA's Write On After School program in Spring of 2024
Introduction
“Saturn in Bloom: Imagination Over Consumption”
As I write this, the Los Angeles Times just published an article in which they asked, “Are these kids already doomed?” The kids the article is referring to—as “awful” and “a whole generation of failure”—is Gen Alpha. They include the kids—the authors—who wrote this book.
Unfortunately, there is nothing new about media outlets stoking prejudice against our youngest generations. And while it is frustrating that it is necessary to state—generation after generation—these kids are alright.
No, even that old saying is outdated and diminishes them. These kids are more than that. They are bright, curious, and creative.
Yes, they are on social media. But they are more aware of its pitfalls, and less likely to use it to tear each other apart than some other generations. Instead, they are using it to build previously unimagined forms of community.
Yes, they play video games. But they use those games as fuel for their imaginations, not as substitutes for it.
Within this book alone you will encounter the work of athletes and pet lovers, artists and gourmets. Their cosmopolitan interests range from k-pop to aerial arts to sour candy. They are aspiring musicians and entrepreneurs. They are proud of their families and where they are from. They are loyal and kind friends.
And of course, they are all storytellers.
Given the invitation to imagine and create freely, these students thrived. The book you hold in your hand is the longest one ever produced in our Write On! After School program. Even the most reluctant writers engaged in the process and created stories they could be proud of. But more than that, they created stories that really matter.
Within this book you will be taken on journeys from the local park to a volleyball universe, from an unassuming farm to an underwater school, from the back alleys of suburbia to an abandoned hotel.
You will discover worlds in conflict, but also ones full of beauty, healing, and growth. There are worlds with dragons and one with interdimensional jewel thieves. In some worlds, our very existence is threatened by monsters, aliens, or snakes. But in others, beautiful ecologies bloom from the tenderness and care of one person. These are worlds in which familial bonds, powerful friendships, and even romances are forged under the most unexpected circumstances.
By their very nature, these stories require a radical shift in perspective, a break from the status quo. Whether it is a portal or shrink ray, a magical painting or a fast food meal, the true means of transportation to these worlds are the authors’ brave imaginings of something new.
And what’s more, we desperately need these stories.
Far from a generation of failure, these students are representatives of a generation of hope. Through their acts of imagining they offer glimpses of a future better than the present.
To creatively imagine and explore new ideas that shift us out of our set ways of thinking is not only a skill fundamental to the future success of these students, it is a skill essential to creating a better future for us all. For how can we create a better tomorrow, if we are not able to imagine it first? And who better to do that imagining than those who will inherit that future?
Within these stories are the seeds of the ability to think critically. Seeds that will flower into the means to challenge those assumptions we take for granted, that will in time reveal what we previously believed to be impossible is attainable.
Writing is a form of alchemy. It is literal magic. The stories we tell have the power to change perception and beliefs. Those in turn shape our choices, and in doing so can change our actual reality. What we imagine, we create. What we create, we become.
There is hope for better tomorrow. It is emerging from the active imaginings of the authors of this book. The next generation.
Our future.
- Mike Dunbar, March 26, 2024