Archive - April 2017

By Gabrielle Moore, Editor-in-Chief

Lone Star College-Kingwood student and employee Clayton Huff said “Everybody’s got a story, regardless of what color they are, where they’re from, what they’ve experienced in their life and you can learn a lot from different people’s stories.”

These stories are literally and figuratively brought to life in an annual program called Human Library, hosted by LSC-Kingwood’s non-partisan organization Center for Civic Engagement. Participatory individuals near and far are invited by active members (faculty and staff) of the program to tell their stories and provide informational perspectives and voices for the student-body, essentially as “human books,” as CCE refers to them.

Reaching its fourth year in the program, the Human Library was hosted on March 28 and  March 29 in the Student Conference Center.

This program provides students an environment unfamiliar to them and exposes them to novel outlooks, ideas, and voices.

Every year, the human books selected come from characterized backgrounds and have individual stigmas of society that often marginalize and/or normalize their voices by either purposely suppressing or simply misunderstanding them.

Jennifer Boyd, a second-year student said, “I just went in for the grade not knowing that I would find out some interesting information, and it would open my mind to really think more on the issues.”

Second-year student Jennifer Boyd discusses “Alcoholics Anonymous” with participatory human book Cecilia M. on Mar. 29 in the Student Conference Center. After having discourse with the second human book she checked out, “Intersex”, she left the Human Library feeling “more aware” of realms that were once unfamiliar with her. Photo by Gabrielle Moore.

Boyd checked out two books during her visit in the Human Library: “Alcoholics Anonymous” and “Intersex.”

Through “Alcoholics Anonymous,” Boyd learned that the nonprofit organization “teaches people…how to help one another [without getting angry],…not making it a conflict and how to resolve issues when they arise and not try to change their person…to just let them be themselves and just be yourself.”

“Alcoholics Anonymous” was checked out by another couple of students–though with a different perspective and voice from Boyd’s human book–second-year students Michael Sodano and Jennifer Rickman, who found themselves–at first, feeling “awkward”–asking more questions than they could have preconceived of the experience.

“It was a lot like reading a book…but I thought this was almost better than a book because you get to ask them questions then and there; you don’t have to go Google,” Sodano said. “I felt like I got to learn a lot more than if I just read a book about dealing with alcoholism.”

Moreover, students started to open up their own books within themselves, as this was the case for second-year student Victoria Vargas who checked out the book “Do We Know What We Are Learning?”

Second-year student Victoria Vargas converses with Bradford Goodwin, the human book over “Do We Know What We Are Learning?” on Mar. 29 in the Student Conference Center. Although completely void of expectations of the Human Library experience, Vargas “wasn’t uncomfortable talking about the future…it’s life.” Photo by Gabrielle Moore.

“I felt very comfortable,” Vargas said. “Like, he started asking me about myself–my siblings, my family and all that, what I thought about doing in the next couple years, where I wanted to go.”

On the subject of her academic future, Vargas said that her human book left her with the advice to “always have something to fall back on” and “have it related to each other.”

As the program’s organizer for this year, Huff found that it “highly exemplifies what’s going on this campus” especially considering the “high majority of the same demographics” in the overall community.

“When you have a program like this, in an area like [Kingwood] with, essentially, one large demographic, you bring in all these demographics and all these different people and all these different religions and different ethnicities and nationalities, and different ideologies; I think it benefits that community as well, because these students here live in this community,” Huff said.

By Hunter Llenos, Reporter

Quoted in the letter from the editors of the 2017 edition of the student literature and art magazine StarBursts, Leo Burnett once said, “Curiosity about life in all its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” That is what this student-led publication exhibits of and provides for the students of Lone Star College-Kingwood.

StarBursts started with humble beginnings in 2011, but because of no funding it was dropped, until English Professor Darlene Beaman who then became department chair decided she “did not want it to die”; thereby, reviving the publication in 2015 with the creation of a student editorial team within the StarBursts Creative Writing Club.

The cover of StarBursts 2017 edition. Photo by Gabrielle Moore. Click here or on the image to view the magazine online.

English Associate Professor Cindy Ross, the advisor of the StarBursts Creative Writing Club, says that a lot of the selected submissions made are “based on…the quality more so the writing.”

The student editorial team, which consists of StarBursts Creative Writing Club Editor-in-Chief Sydney Buck, Managing Editor Bay Berger, Co-Editor Amber Barfield, and Secretary Gabrielle Moore, works with Ross and co-adviser and English Professor Peter Feldman in meetings to review all submissions for the magazine. The team also works closely with Art Professor Mari Omori on the visual art selections to StarBursts.

“We have a wonderful student body here,” Ross said. “We haven’t faced [problems with censorship and inappropriateness of content] yet, even with the poetry–usually it’s really good quality, usually not politically charged; it’s nice expression. But we are looking for things like that when we choose.”

Regarding the future of the student organization, Ross envisions certain revisions to it that will, essentially, benefit both the students submitting their artworks and those working on the editorial team. She is looking to organize “editing events, and I am hoping that people would want to come to work on their own poems or their own short stories to have some time to get some feedback.”

The publication is currently located on the LSC-Kingwood website as well as available in hard copies. Although the magazine is meant for campus readers, the future of StarBursts relies on its ability to grow in ways that don’t limit the search-ability of certain publications, which English Professor Darlene Beaman hopes for StarBursts.

“Having it online I think is good, that way it’s more searchable, but I think it would be nice if the works inside the StarBursts were searchable,” Beaman said. “Right now if someone searched their name I don’t think it would show up so I think it would be very nice if it were searchable in that way.”

There is also means to get the word out more to students other than what has been used (i.e. fliers, Club Rush) to get more student involvement and accessibility.

The magazine–with the help of the visual art and creative writing faculty members–is centered around students showcase their published works of literature and art.

Second-year student Bay Berger reads a passage from her short story “The Before” during the StarBursts Reception in the Music Recital Hall, Apr. 4. Photo by Hunter Llenos.

On the evening of April 4, students, faculty, and their family and friends came together to celebrate the magazine and all the students published within it. Many of the published students got the chance to present their work on stage of the Music Recital Hall.

Stephen Garza, a student at LSC-Kingwood, published his work, “Almost Like Hope,” inspired by “the idea of someone trying to cope.”

The short story tells of a young widow learning to cope with the loss of her husband’s life. Within this life lesson, she tries finding ways of moving on until she comes upon a “chance encounter” that gives her that little hope she needs for the future, Garza said.

“I like to write about pain; it’s something that we all experience. We all experience things that are terrible, and through all that there’s still hope,” Garza said.

Cy’ria Walker, who published her artwork “Twin Trouble,” drew her inspiration from somewhere much her own. Walker said, “The objective of my piece was to find similarities between my sister and I, things we hate and things we love. So I decided to do the things we hate; washing dishes.”

“Twin Trouble” by first-year student Cy’ria Walker, published in Lone Star College-Kingwood’s StarBursts: 2017 edition.

An aspect that was refreshing was her take on what inspired her to center her work on things she hated. “I wanted to challenge myself, to create art out of something that wouldn’t normally inspire me. I started thinking about my art piece having a deeper meaning than just myself, so I combined the viewpoints of myself and my sister.”

Walker is currently working on two art pieces: “one is a conte piece focusing on the human form,” and the other is “a mixed medium to draw details of a car through the windows or mirrors.”

“StarBursts to me means a head start in my career, which ever I may choose. It is a chance to get my name out there quicker without having to jump through so many hoops,” Walker said. “StarBurst can give us the proper start we need to get our careers going.”

Magan Porter shared multiple photographic works in StarBursts. One of three of her published works can be found on the cover of the magazine titled “Alice in Wonderland.” The inspiration for this work came from “the idea that in this world of black and white she is looking for color and adventure,” Porter said. Porter finds that in wonderland, “this [is a] place of art, music, creativity, and color.”

“Alice in Wonderland” by first-year student Magan Porter featured in Lone Star College- Kingwood’s StarBurst Magazine: 2017 edition.

Regarding Porter’s other two works, “Reflection of The Soul” points to how what “we see in a mirror are different than what we see if someone showed us our soul,” and “Child’s Play” is similar in thought, but in the guise of innocence where children “color in a world of black and white.”

First-year student Magan Porter speaks on her piece “Child’s Play” in the Music Recital Hall during the StarBursts Reception on Apr. 4. Photo by Hunter Llenos.

For this magazine to show such appreciation to the students and their works is paramount to universities that strive to expand their students abilities in ways that also encourage them.

Jim Stubbs, Dean of Fire Science, Letters, Arts, and Kinesiology, and supporter of the StarBursts magazine, said that StarBursts provides him “the opportunity to really understand, level with our students” as well as “[give students] the chance to express themselves.”

Lone Star College-Kingwood students (left to right) Stephen Garza, Iris Varianti, Judith Kirkeeide, Kimberly Koltcz, Cy’ria Walker, Amber Barfield, Magan Porter, and Gabrielle Moore sign StarBursts magazines on Apr. 4 outside the Music Building. Photo by Hunter Llenos.

“I got the opportunity to put my work out there and that is an indescribable feeling that I can’t express in words, and as a student it gives us…[the opportunity] to share our passions and what we love, not only to share it with ourselves but all of Lone Star,” Porter said.