Thank you to Raymond McDaniel, for being an orb and helping me construct a thought playground that my hivemind could run wild in. I would not have been able to think all of these thoughts without your support and I spent a lot of time on this project just sitting and thinking and feeling. I would also like to thank the members of the ‘hot mess’ group Nikolai Kesson and Nealie Silverstein for continuously reassuring me that I was making sense and not just spinning out of control.

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Chee, Alexander. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. Bloomsbury, 2019.

My gateway instructor, Julie Babcock, suggested that I read this book after reviewing my gateway project that also touched on the topic of identity. It has influenced my writing style immensely because it sounded like me but a professional author when I first read it.

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“Keep Your Identity Small.” Paul Graham, 2009, www.paulgraham.com/identity.html.

This essay served as a touchstone for me when I would get tangled in the words I was trying to write and lose sight of what I was actually trying to say. Its simplicity in idea and similarity to my demand of the reader helped keep my prose on track when I felt my inner writing dialogue was going off the rails.

 

Rogers, Matisse. “Biraciality.” Biraciality: a Personal, Historical, and Empirical Account of Navigating the World through a Biracial Lens, 2017, matisser.wixsite.com/capstone.

This came recommended by my capstone professor, Raymond McDaniel, as one of the all-time greats to read when we first fully fleshed out my topic and what I wanted to accomplish in my project at one of our initial meetings. It was almost eerie when I first read it because of how similar our conclusions both were and also gave me some faith that what I was writing about wasn’t just a pointless thought experiment. It gets even eerier considering I had randomly found and spoken to her just weeks prior to this recommendation and now I will be working at the same firm post-grad.

 

says:, Brian Zhu, et al. “The Rise of the ABG.” The F-Word Magazine, 10 Oct. 2020, upennfword.com/2020/03/07/the-rise-of-the-abg/.

I came upon this article when I was trying to break down what it meant to perform a cultural identity. It helped me identify patterns and characteristics I couldn’t initially see because they felt so second nature to me that I couldn’t separate them from myself.

 

Tolentino, Jia. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion. Random House, 2020. 

I first read this book two summers ago and was reminded of it when I determined I wanted to write a collection of essays because of how distinct each essay was but also how fluidly they melded together. I wanted to create the same unified effect without sacrificing each essay’s quirk.