Unmasked
Unmasked: Distance Writing Through A Pandemic was written by the students of the Academic Leadership Community in Fall 2021
Introduction
What follows are the stories of high school teenagers. Stories of love and heartbreak. Stories of family, friends, and enemies. Stories of life and death, joy and sadness, light-filled dreams and shaded-gray realities. Stories crafted from our imagination and from our truth. Stories about beginnings and about endings––where people come from and where they end up.
We wonder if readers will relate to our stories. Do they think similar thoughts? Do they feel our feelings and experience our experiences? Do they laugh and cry with us? Do they understand who we are?
In this COVID-19 pandemic, we wear masks to protect ourselves and our community. It’s a simple task that society can make complicated. One of the few good things about distance learning was that we could safely remove our masks. We could breathe a bit better, communicate a bit easier. Feel some relief.
As we read and edited all of the pieces for this book, we realized that writing them, for many of the authors, must have been like removing a mask.
By telling these stories, we breathe a little easier. We feel less hidden, less constricted, less conflicted. We understand each other and ourselves more clearly. In the act of writing, we have unmasked our true selves. A very appropriate metaphor for times like these.
—THE 2021 ALC STUDENT EDITORIAL BOARD