Colleen Hoover is an author who writes young adult fiction and romance novels. She has been trending on booktok (subcommunity on TikTok) for a while now and a lot of her novels gained high popularity from it. In April of 2022 I finally had the chance to read her novel, It Ends With Us. The novel follows the protagonist named  Lily, who marries a neurosurgeon named Ryle. Their relationship seems too good to be true until Ryle begins to surprise her with unexpected bursts of anger, jealousy, and aggression. The novel shines a light on social issues such as domestic abuse and violence. 

Reading this novel definitely had me on an emotional rollercoaster and I couldn’t put it down. There were times when I was swooned over Ryle and their relationship and other times where I found myself in complete disbelief and anger. The reason is that I was fooled for the first half of the novel. I, like Lily, didn’t expect the things Ryle did to her. One can argue that this is how many individuals find themselves in these kinds of situations. I believe this is one of the reasons this novel gained so much popularity on TikTok. Everyone liked how realistic Lily was as a character and how sensitive of a topic this was. 

Colleen Hoover has mentioned that she took inspiration from the relationship between her parents and her mothers own experience. She voices that it is possible to find yourself in this type of relationship but that it is also possible to be freed and healed from one. This is so important to get across because this issue goes unnoticed in some households and can be overlooked in others. This is a topic that should be talked about more and there should be more resources available. Colleen Hoover did a good job including a lot of resources for her readers on the back of her book. 

I once took an international relations class and ended up doing research for an assignment on social injustice. After reading several articles on people from the Uighur ethnic group in China being kept in concentration camps, I realized that government oppression is a prevalent issue in today’s society, across many countries in the world. When I first found out about the injustice the Uighurs faced, I also realized that not many world leaders or people, in general, were speaking up about this issue, but I thought it was my duty to speak up about it if I could. I was so compelled that I made a blog post different from the normal content I posted, to address this issue.

The Uighurs were treated as prisoners of conscience (people imprisoned for holding political or religious views that are not tolerated by their own government) for being Muslim, and faced atrocities such as imprisonment and being separated from their families, forced organ harvesting, and different types of abuse. I backed up my blog post with facts, citing sources, and checked it more than once for accuracy. As a person who writes poetry to help myself and others understand the world, I recognized that words have power once again. My research enlightened me so much that I wanted to address the issue myself apart from getting my assignment done. Since then, I can’t help but look closely at how the different governments that make up our world may impede on the rights of the people existing.

When I can, I continue to read up on current events. I recently found out about the death of yet another innocent black man due to police brutality. His name was Tyre Nichols, and he was a young man with a family who cared for him. The people meant to protect him failed to do so. While being disappointed, I was reminded when reading news articles about this tragedy, that police brutality continues to be an issue in the US. It helps to know about what’s going on around you no matter what.

Learning about different issues faced around the globe and in our own communities may seem like an inconvenience when we’re busy with our day to day lives, and even in instances where you might feel like a certain issue doesn’t affect you, but if every person on the planet says “Why should I care?,” then who will be there to help pick up the pieces. Even having knowledge about an issue and being able to tell your family and friends about it is power. Knowledge is power.

One thing I know about New York City and almost everyone who either lives here or doesn’t know is that NYC will take your wallet out of your hands. Recently I read a New York Times article titled, “Why Black Families Are Leaving New York, and What It Means for the City” by Troy Closson and Nicole Hong. The title speaks for itself. While reading the article I couldn’t help but feel numerous emotions coursing through my veins, especially negative ones. I feel sad that the city is changing before us and the group that has created the most culture for NYC is now being shifted away from here. The article mentions the rising prices of NYC are what is sending Black families in NYC to shift down south, the percentage of black families in NYC from 2000-2020 has gone down by 200,000 (Hong, Closson 2023). That number is only growing. While, on the other hand, the increase of Hispanic and Asian families has increased within that time. As a fellow Asian myself, I am glad to see our numbers grow but I still understand how gentrification can be caused by other POC*. Upon further research on the topic due to my own personal interest, I have found that Asian Americans are moving to East Harlem, a Latino neighborhood according to a Bloomberg post by Amy Lee. This made me think about how living in NYC there is only so much space to host certain groups of people at a time. The city may be huge, but it truly is a man-eats-man world and one group will eventually kill out another in cycles. We see this all throughout NYC history and each neighborhood changes from culture to culture throughout the decades. NYC is a melting pot, but with rising prices and limited space, the pot might just stop melting.

Citations:

Closson, Troy, and Nicole Hong. “Why Black Families Are Leaving New York, and What It Means for the City.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 31 Jan. 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/nyregion/black-residents-nyc.html.

Yee, Amy. “Why Asian Americans Are Moving to NYC’s East Harlem.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 3 Feb. 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-03/why-asian-americans-are-moving-to-nyc-s-east-harlem.

Online social media discourse over this term has exploded in recent years and I see it all the time regarding entertainment media that possess an inkling of diversity. Once defined as being aware and informed of social issues and mostly associated with black social activism (BLM), “woke” has become synonymous with “bad” where diversity and inclusivity is involved. Specifically in entertainment media, the mere inclusion of a single POC or LGBTQ+ lead or secondary character (or virtually anything outside of the status quo) is considered “woke”, why is that? Different demographics exist in the world and if including different groups of people in entertainment media is so heavily considered “pandering” then why isn’t the default considered pandering? “Woke” has also often been associated with terms like “forced diversity” which seek to interrogate writers in order to justify why the inclusion of people of different race, sexuality, and gender is in “their” entertainment media. Arguments that are anti-”woke” often stem from wanting to distance social issues from entertainment or wanting to coddle oneself from the reality that the world and its people are not homogeneous. 

It seems unnecessary to cite a credential but as an advertising student who has created content for actual clients, most everything in media has a target audience in mind and most every piece of media, no matter how small, is “pandering” to someone.

Another example of THAT definition of “woke” being pushed around in media is with Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, allowing parents to ban books in schools and seeking to remove an AP African American Studies course at a Florida public high school. The Stop W.O.K.E. Act is a direct attack on historical truths and is a blatant form of censorship in the interest that students be less “brainwashed”. It seems once again, “woke” is just another word for “different” and “different” isn’t “good”.

Perhaps one of the most common issues with the modern-world is the presence of Climate Change. I’m certain that term does not require any explanation to any person who is reading this, but perhaps one thing that can be explained is that Climate Change is not just an environmental issue, but also a social one as well. This idea was new to me at one point as well. Sure climate change causes ice to melt, the sea to rise, or some places to get hotter. But it also effects people as well (duh). But what truly makes this a social issue? The effects of climate change hit poorer people harder than rich people. Its harder for people who can’t afford high electricity bills to keep an A/C on through a heat wave or long summer. Or with droughts happening around the world, the only way to access clean drinking water is by purchasing it with money. And flooding along with these droughts in certain places make it harder to grow food, so the prices go up.  There are many more reasons that can be looked into, but those three are the pretty big ones. But as I said earlier, this concept was unknown to me at one time. So how did I find this out? The answer is simple: research.

Throughout my career as a student, I have written many papers for various classes. One thing that I was always told was “it’s easier to write about something you already know”. So, being from California’s Central Valley, an area ruled by agriculture and struck by drought, I knew plenty about Climate Change. So that was always an easy topic for me to write about. The Effects of Climate Change. What Can We Do About Climate Change? Man-made and Natural Causes of Climate Change. All of these are papers I have written, along with a plethora more. But each time I wrote about it, I changed the viewpoint of climate change. And with this change in view, I researched more and more. I started learning about all the different aspects of climate change, such as global warming, drought, flooding, rising sea level. But then, I started coming across pages that talked about how a certain group of people were affected even more by climate change. The lower class struggled more than the upper class from the effects of climate change. I read more and more and it became apparent to me that the well being of people depend on the climate change crisis. All of these new ideas and opinions were opened up to me, and all because I needed to write some papers. So in that way, literacy opened up my eyes to the social aspect of climate change.

While I’m a bit unsure of whether this could be considered a social issue or not, a while ago I found myself more aware of how social media has allowed the flourishing of artists from all around the world. Recently there was a trend on twitter that was sort of started by an account called “Culture Critic” in which they tweeted “A 23 year old sculpted this. What’s your excuse?”  and under they posted an image of the Rape of Prosperina sculpture made by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Now this post would go on to receive countless replies, some pointing out the fact that this person was trying to compare very different time periods, however something interesting would eventually happen. Many artists began to retweet this same post, attaching art that they’d made themselves with the captions “I made this when I was…”. I certainly had reservations regarding this practice considering it’s focusing on the age of these artists as though they were saying they’d surpassed Bernini in some way, but it did get me to think more about art and what’s given value in our society. The literal juxtaposition of these images made it clear just how far art has come considering that while statues like the one shown are still certainly held in high regard, they’re rivaled in popularity by works produced by artists from all backgrounds illustrating how diverse the art community in America has become. Paintings like those of Kehinde Wiley and digital pieces that have been produced by people of all ages from all walks of life.

One topic that has been continuously discussed on social platforms and apps is the American educational system; the falsities like Christopher Columbus discovering America and what has been purposely omitted, like black history and its place in American history. Recently, this topic has been at the forefront of political and social conversation, due to various states banning the teaching of critical race theory, black feminism, and African American studies. In January of this year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially banned an AP African American Studies class to prevent “Pushing an agenda on our kids.” (The Real Reason Florida Wants to Ban AP African-American Studies, According to an Architect of the Course). Reading and having been a part of these conversations always left me frustrated with the educational system; however, after reading the essay A Talk to Teachers by James Baldwin in my AP Language class in high school, I recognized elements of America’s educational system are not meant to teach an all-around experience for everyone. (A Talk To Teachers)

In 1963, the Saturday Review published A Talk to Teachers in the essay, Baldwin thoroughly expresses that the intended reason for education is to influence and teach a person to analyze and question the world for themselves. However, he further acknowledges the inconsistencies within the education system when it comes to teaching African American children. Baldwin confronts and criticizes his audience, stating that the system and curriculum they teach does not teach African Americans to think and live freely for themselves because they were never intended to do so in the first place. One thing Baldwin pointed out that has stuck with me is his metaphorical use of schizophrenia to describe how being black while living in America is like living in a social paradox. The American educational system teaches black children a white American lifestyle which guarantees “liberty and justice for all,” while black children grow up in a black reality that tells them their past is “a record of humiliations gladly endured.”

Words are not innocent; they have meaning and are presented for a reason. Words are the very essence of our society, and if society is not working for everyone in it, it is broken and has to be fixed. We have to rearrange and reconstruct our words, phrases, and meanings to understand and include everyone. Baldwin had a simple solution that resonated with me: teach African American children reality and not a lifestyle; educate them culturally and emotionally. Baldwin wrote his essay in 1963; we are now in 2023, sixty years later, when states have banned Baldwin’s solution to the problem within the educational system. Instead of being frustrated with the educational system I think it’s now time to question it, “Why?” “What’s the bigger picture?”

A Post-it Note. Seriously? It’s all you gave us for “validation” that you know what has happened today. But do you all really care? Or just want people to know that you put in the effort of acknowledgment. On this day we should be mourning the loss of a fellow student, but instead, we are just putting up sticky notes. No moment of silence, no offer of help or acknowledgment that it’s ok to ask for help. All you gave us were sticky notes around the school. One day passes by and; the notes are gone. It’s like we have forgotten about what happened hours ago to a friend, classmate, or group mate on a project. They are now just gone without a trace. This is one of the problems with our society. I hear time and time again to reach out for help if you need it but, when reaching out for help doesn’t work and the inevitable happens, we go silent. We tell our peers and ourselves that “it’s ok” or “I would never do that” but we soon just forget about what happened in a few short days. That’s how we get rid of our problems though right? It’s just easier to wipe our problems under the rug rather than talk through them to resolve them. This is why we aren’t ready for this conversation of actually making a difference. It is time to talk about the severity of suicide more often so that our next classmate, does not become a part of the forgotten.

I think that a time where I felt as though my perspective has changed due to literature was reading about the homelessness problem in New York. As of late, our new mayor, Eric Adams, has enacted some measures to ensure that homeless people do not actually receive the help they need. Having initially been in favor of him (I’d never voted before then, read his blurb and thought his ideas sounded great), his leadership has been pretty ineffective. Whether intentional or not, it seems as though these ideas hurt homeless people rather than “solve the problem” of them simply existing. His recent move to forcibly put homeless people into psychiatric/health clinics via police seems counterintuitive. “…If you stop and think about it, it makes sense, right? People who are disoriented or having atypical thoughts, they’re not in a position oftentimes to comply collaboratively with a police officer,” he said. “And given the fact that police officers are carrying weapons, you have sort of a recipe for bad outcomes.” (via  Ryan McBain, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, CNN) The truth is that the problem with homelessness in New York and in many other places, is more complex than one might think. On the surface, you look at the stats of housing in NY and realize that there’s so much free space, and yet so many people on the streets – why not just place these people into housing? That’s how I thought initially. But then you realize, a lot of these people are on the streets not only because they were kicked out of their old homes, maybe they lost a job, maybe they couldn’t afford the upkeep of rent, but also some of these people need assistance with their health. With mental health only in recent years becoming less stigmatized, it’s no wonder that people are still of the mindset that these folks are “unhelpable.” And when these people are having uncontrollable outbursts and impacting other people’s lives, it’s easy to paint them as the “bad guys,” or not treat them humanely. If you’re struggling with mental health, and the government is expecting you to pack all your belongings off the street, get a job, and take a shower to support your home, it seems almost impossible. While Adams’ intentions are in good faith, he keeps going about it the wrong way. Placing police in certain stations only and yanking people off the streets into psych wards so that New York doesn’t have to face the reality of our homeless population, hiding them away, is not the first step to solving the homelessness problem. If you want to fix the issue of homelessness in America, you need to look at it from multiple perspectives. There’s no easy fix for a big problem that has been marinating in NY for years. It’s going to be expensive, difficult, and time consuming. It’s not just mental health and housing, but those are important places to start.