BlueJay (Watercolor) By Zoe Campbell, 11 (San Francisco, CA) & published in the September 2021 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Emma Good morning, everyone! I’d like to thank William for his wonderful video celebrating the publication of Tristan’s novel last week. I have written about her novel a number of times—but in short, it is truly a wonderful read and an excellent book. I am so excited to share it with you and encourage you to go support this young author by buying your copy now. Refugee Project Fundraiser Overall, we are so thrilled at the response we’ve had to our refugee project fundraiser. Thank you to everyone who has donated so far! As further incentive, we’d like to announce that Spencer and Sabrina Guo—a former Stone Soup contributor and intern who was instrumental in launching the project—have generously offered to make a $3,000 matching donation. Thank you, Spencer and Sabrina! Classes Classes began today! Thank you to everyone who signed up and showed up. We are so exciting to spend this fall making art with you. For those of you who missed the initial call, please know that there is still space to sign up and that classes will be prorated accordingly. Weekend Project Right now, I’d like you to scroll down and read Benjamin Ding’s poem “Materialism.” . . . . . . Okay, welcome back. I love how this poem so perfectly pinpoints the absurdity of the world we live in—a world where we worry about our houses and work hard to make them livable while ignoring our larger home, the Earth, and all of its incredible inhabitants. Why do we spend money to repair an air conditioner, a machine that is itself contributing to the extinction of species like the Asian elephant, when we could get rid of the AC and donate that money to an animal conservation project? Benjamin calls this phenomenon “materialism.” Materialism is simply when our desire to buy and own things is greater than our desire to accrue experiences and strengthen relationships. In the US, we have a very materialistic society: many people work very hard so they can earn money and buy things. The time they spend working is time they cannot spend with their family or friends, or exploring new places, or reading books they love, or wondering about “species / on the verge of extinction.” While it is very hard to go against the current of mainstream culture, I urge you to try! As for your weekend project: I invite you to create a work inspired by a concept. This concept could be “materialism,” as in Benjamin’s poem, or it could be something totally different—maybe even one you don’t even understand, like string theory! It can also be something simpler, such as culture, family, happiness, love, time, reality, sanity, safety, or work. Try to think about what these things actually are to you versus what they are understood to be in our culture—and then write (or draw) around those ideas. Until next week, Back-to-School Sale Through 11:59pm Pacific Time, September 15th, take 25% all annual subscriptions when you use the code SCHOOL21 at checkout! Refugee Project Dear friends and supporters of Stone Soup, Since the launch of the Refugee Project, we have partnered with seven organizations providing on-the-ground support to children living in refugee camps, as well as those resettled in host countries. Through these partnerships, we have collected over 300 pieces of artwork and writing by refugee youth. These creative works are currently on display in our newly created web portal for the project, which you can explore here. As we have said many times before, the media so often portrays refugee youth as the subject of a narrative. The Stone Soup Refugee Project provides a platform for these young people to tell their own stories, in their own voices. To make this vision a reality, we need your help. We have set ourselves a target goal of $10,000 to pilot the program. These funds will go toward the development of workshops delivered to young people in refugee camps, the facilitation of creative exchanges between young people, and the work of collecting and publishing more material on the Refugee Project website. In addition, funds will be used to support our Refugee Project contributing organizations and the young people they serve in the ways in which they deem valuable, such as the purchase of supplies and possible scholarship funds. —Laura Moran, Refugee Project Director Contest News Flash Contest #35: Write a story about you, but in a parallel universe where you had a different life. Don’t forget to submit to this month’s Flash Contest, provided by contributor Molly Torinus, before tomorrow at midnight! To submit to this contest, please visit our Submittable page. Selfie Contest Since Stone Soup’s last selfie contest in 2017, the selfie has taken on a new form: the masked selfie. That’s why we’re enlisting you to participate in our 2021 Selfie Contest: With and Without Masks. As has always been the case, we want these selfies to tell us a story. Think about how masks can both aid and make more difficult the expression of thoughts and feelings. How can you show us who you are behind the mask, and how can you build off of that image once the mask disappears, or vice versa? Get creative! Try something you’ve never thought to try before! Surprise us, and—most importantly—surprise yourself! You may submit up to four selfies: two with a mask and two without. Deadline: October 3, 2021 To submit to this contest, please visit our Submittable page. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Young Blogger Sofie Dardzinski wrote two beautiful and inspirational poems: one, “The Common Worker,” in celebration of Labor Day, and the other, “Coming Together,” about addressing climate change. Anandi, 11, wrote a scintillating essay in argument against Idaho’s transgender sports ban, “Brain, Not Body.” From Stone Soup September 2021
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Brain, Not Body, an essay by Anandi Kulkarni, 11
Anandi Kulkarni, 11 (Sunnyvale, CA) Brain, Not Body Anandi Kulkarni, 11 When 19-year-old Lindsay Hecox was banned from running on a girls’ team by the state of Idaho, she decided to fight for her rights as a citizen. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, and she should have been eligible to run for her school. “I just want to run,” she said. Why was Hecox unjustly restricted from running track? Lindsay is a transgender woman, meaning she was born in a boy’s body but had a girl’s mind. After she transitioned, she was looking forward to running for Boise State University. Still, she wasn’t able to run on a girls’ team due to a bill that had just been signed by Governor Brad Little, restricting transgender girls from playing on High School and College teams that match their gender identity. Many states have followed Idaho’s discriminatory law, including Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. Eighteen states in the US have banned trans athletes from playing on the teams they belong to. Many other states are considering adopting the law. The Government should not pass this bill. It is hateful, transphobic, inaccurate, and one-sided. Not only that, it sets a bad example for future generations, and is harmful to transgender people. Governor Little and the rest of America should take back this unjust rule, as it is not factually correct. The Government proposed this law by considering the classic myth that transgender girls have more athletic ability than cisgender girls. People who believe this also may think that trans girls are stealing cis girls’ places, scholarships, etc. This is not true, as almost 80% of transgender girls take hormones or hormone blockers. This means their bodies will not or will stop producing testosterone, the hormone responsible for muscularity. Studies show that after two years of hormone treatment, trans girls and cis girls with identical training have the same athletic ability. Since the reason lawmakers have enforced this law is illogical, the sports ban should be lifted. Along with being inaccurate, this law being established across America is also harmful to transgender peoples’ mental health. Trans people already face bullying and harassment, which sometimes can cause problems such as suicidal thoughts. According to The American Civil Liberties Union, 10 percent of transgender girls were kicked out of school for being themselves. This harassment leads to mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression. According to The Trevor Project, more than 50% of LGBTQQIP2SAA+ youth have depression. Not letting transgender people play on their appropriate teams will worsen the harassment and discrimination, causing more and more mental health issues among trans teens. To protect our nation’s trans youth, we must withdraw this harmful regulation. Not only is the law disadvantageous, it is extremely discriminatory. According to the U.S. Trans Survey, 22% of transgender women were bullied because of their gender identity, and had to switch schools. As the ACLU says, “The idea that women and girls have an advantage because they are trans ignores the actual conditions of their lives.” Transgender people face problems like discrimination every day. Should we, as a country, make that harassment worse? Of course not! It goes against one of our values and morals as Americans, which is that everyone should be treated equally. Our government goes out of its way to stop discrimination. Is it right to enforce a law that goes against what we stand for as a nation? When you think about Governor Little’s law, consider the ethics of the American government. Why should we support this unjust law? We need to use our voices and fight for what is right for transgender girls everywhere who are being denied their rights. Will we choose to allow bigotry and ignorance, or equity and justice? We should not give in to this law, because it is counterfactual, unfair, and harmful. Transgender women belong on the sports teams that match their gender. Transgender women are women. Works Cited “Trans women targeted in sports bans, but are they really at an advantage?” by Ashley Schwartz-Lavares, Victoria Moll-Ramirez, Kayna Whitworth, and Anthony Rivas, published by ABC News “The fight for the future of transgender athletes” by Will Hobson, published by The Washington Post “Four Myths about trans athletes, debunked” by Chase Strangio and Gabriel Arkles, published by the ACLU “Trans People Belong in Sports: Lindsay” published by the ACLU “Trans girls belong on Girls’ Sports teams” by Jack Turban, published in Scientific American “COUNTER: Transgender women should be allowed to participate in women’s sports” by Sara Al-Yasseri, published in The Daily Nebraskan Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings
Stone Soup Refugee Project – 2021
Dear friends and supporters of Stone Soup, As director of the Stone Soup Refugee Project, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks for your support of this innovative, empowering endeavor as well as of Stone Soup’s broad aim to provide a platform for creative young people across the globe. The Stone Soup Refugee Project was inspired by Sabrina Guo, a Stone Soup contributor, prolific writer and extraordinary activist, and the collaboration she pioneered with Another Kind of Girl Collective, a non-profit which provides an artistic outlet to displaced Syrian girls. Since the launch of the Refugee Project, we have partnered with seven organizations providing on-the-ground support to children living in refugee camps, and those resettled in host countries. Through these partnerships, we have collected over three-hundred pieces of artwork and writing by refugee youth. These creative works are currently on display in our newly created web portal for the project, which you can explore here: https://stonesoup.com/refugee-project/ Our vision for the project: “Will be the next day better.” A drawing by a Syrian refugee child of her idea of a good future. Over the course of the past year and half, we half successfully overcome the limits of the Covid-19 pandemic as we forged relationships, through the help of Zoom, with organizations serving refugee youth in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, as well as in Turkey, Lebanon, and Greece, and even along the Syrian refugee trail to Western Europe through the Balkans. In the next phase of the Refugee Project, as we continue to collect creative works by refugee youth for display on the Refugee Project portal of our website, we are also working to expand and deepen our collaboration with current Refugee Project contributors. Our central goal for these ongoing collaborations is to facilitate a substantive, ongoing engagement between our broad Stone Soup audience and the artists and creative works displayed through the Refugee Project. We hope to achieve this goal through several endeavors, including: 1) Delivering creative writing teaching content to young people in refugee camps and those resettled in host countries. This content will be developed by members of the Stone Soup team and designed to help young people to share aspects of their daily lives and experiences that they wish to share; and 2) To facilitate collaborative learning experiences, such as the exchange of creative writing and artwork, between our Stone Soup contributors from refugee backgrounds and our broader audience. As an example of this type of expanded collaboration, planning and logistic development is currently underway between myself and key stakeholders at Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, for me to deliver a portion of my Anthropology of the Everyday summer camp (which I have taught over the past two summers) to young people living in Kakuma Refugee Camp. I will deliver this workshop initially through mobile phone exchange via Whatsap, and once Covid-19 protocols allow, through interactive video conference sessions. The initial delivery of this workshop is set for this coming September, after which we hope to facilitate a creative exchange of the writing and artwork produced by young people who took the workshop in Kakuma Camp, and those who signed up through Stone Soup. Afghan girl, age 10, in a Serbian refugee camp in Bogovadja. Support the Project: To make this vision a reality, we need your help. We have set ourselves a target goal of $10,000 to pilot the program. These funds will go towards the development of workshops delivered to young people in refugee camps, the facilitation of creative exchanges between young people, and the work of collecting and publishing more material on the Refugee Project website. In addition, funds will be used to support our Refugee Project contributing organizations and the young people they serve in the ways in which they deem valuable, such as purchase of supplies and possible scholarship funds. As we have said many times before, the media so often portrays refugee youth as the subject of a narrative. The Stone Soup Refugee Project provides a platform for these young people to tell their own stories, in their own voices. Please donate toward our goal and help us to empower these young people. Thank you for believing in us and our mission. Your continued support has made this project possible. Sincerely, Laura Moran Refugee Project Coordinator Donate to the Stone Soup Refugee Project Recent Work by Refugee Children Mixed media, paper mache using old exercise books, tissue paper, paint, glitter, pen Hala was in Greece for almost 3 years with her father and sister. Her mother was waiting for them patiently in Germany. She loved to draw more than anything. They were living in a squat when Love Without Borders met them and placed them in a house. They used art as a way to heal as well as to pay for basic necessities during their time in Greece. They were finally transferred to Germany to be reunited with the rest of her family. Now Hala is studying German and sends photos of his paintings from time to time, as well as leaving sweet voice messages in German. Khalid recalls: all his friends say something nice about him, that he helps people. He offers friends food, or anything they need. He jokes with his friends. Sometimes during the activity he forgets himself and starts to sing. He is a very natural, grounded personality, very instinctual. He does things without thinking. When asked about the painting, he said it is about nothing. He said, it means nothing. He said, black is for scariness, and red is for blood. Ezgi asked, is this a painting of a monster? The boy said, yes. Ezgi said, let’s talk with this monster. What you want to say to him? The boy said, I am not afraid of you. Ezgi said, what did the monster say to you?The boy said, the monster says, no, you are afraid of me. Answer him, Ezgi said.The boy said a loud, laughing voice, I am not afraid of you!
