Freedom to Live Without Fear: Written by Twelfth-Grade Students at Mission High School with a Forewo

When National Book Award winning author Nikky Finney was asked about her piece, The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy, and how it came to be, she stated, "I wanted to write a poem that traveled from the horror of one day to the lifting of our chins the next--that paid homage to how we keep moving; keep stepping forward; inventing whatever is next to invent; constructing, fashioning iron chains into wings; how we continue to fold and shape into a future what has been kept from us, regardless of the brutality that still chases us." It was with this in mind that we asked the twelfth-grade Ethnic Studies students of Mission High School in San Francisco to read and analyze Finney's libretto and create their own narratives, letters, or poems that explore histories of oppression and imagine paths to freedom. From reflections about the ability to move freely in space, to thinking about the attitudes, mindsets, and thought processes that shape peoples' behavior, to the reimagining of systems of injustice, these young authors meditate on the many restrictions they face--and the ways they push beyond them to feel true freedom.