Lockdown Creatives: Interview with Storyteller, Writer, and Gilman Alumni Sophia Burns

Surviving the lockdown has unlocked the creativity within a multitude of individuals. Restricted physical interaction, inability to travel, and sustained time within one’s own mind has led to a surge in baking, exploring new talents, and — in this case — exploring abandoned habits. This is the first of a creative lockdown interview wherein I interview artists and artisans about their craft and how they have been impacted by the tumultuous impacts of COVID-19, lockdown, and social unrest.

“Sophia Burns was born and raised in Southern New Jersey to an African-American/Cuban mother and an Irish/German-American father. She grew up with dogs, hamsters, fish, and a whole lot of books gifted by her veteran English teacher grandmother. After a stint in Catholic school and 10 years of public education, Sophia attended Vassar College. There, she began exploring activism and identity by helping build beloved communities among low-income students of color and rural immigrant youth.” Sophia is also a Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship alumna, having studied in Havana, Cuba during the spring of 2017. She was also a Humanity in Action fellow for the 2018–9 program in Detroit where she studied the city’s social, racial, and historical relations centered around the 1967 Detroit uprising. “She has since returned to the Philadelphia area, where she currently resides with her humongous and affectionate Akita, Kira. Sophia is a trauma-informed facilitator and youth worker as well as a yoga practitioner. A lover of languages, she has studied Spanish for 15 years and is currently learning Brazilian Portuguese.”

Sophia, who put her pen and notebooks away in middle school, has since reopened them in 2020. Her writing weaves storytelling, personal survival, and activism in a creative fashion. Matcha lattes are a synthesis which helps Sophia navigate long drives and long writing sessions; she is also learning to watercolor. Her most recent publication (the first creative nonfiction accepted for publication) is a short essay called “Weirdgirldom,” available via the print edition of Volume 2, Issue 2 Toho Journal.

Anesce: How was your interest in creative nonfiction initiated?

Sophia: I was an only child for almost seven years, and an introverted one at that. I was a strong reader by kindergarten thanks to my paternal grandmother, who was an elementary school teacher and principal. When both of my parents were working long days, I was reading books with my grandmom. Stories became my sanctuary, and I spent a great deal of my childhood engrossed in them. Around first grade I began writing short stories inspired by the events of my life or stories my family told me. There’s one about two teenage dogs who have experienced a loss in their family and fall in love. It’s hilariously told from the perspective of a first grader who listens to a lot of adult conversations. Suffice to say that from a young age, I took great joy in translating real, lived experiences into narratives that teach, inspire, or provide comfort.

Anesce: How have your (in)visible identities impacted your craft?

Sophia: As a multiracial woman, I have spent a lot of time explaining myself to others. Just like my interest in writing, this began early. I was fortunate to not be the only mixed person in my family: my mother has several siblings from a different mother who are mixed, so I never questioned my place in the Black community or diaspora. The outside world was different, especially in my predominantly-white schools. I quickly grew tired and annoyed with questions like “What are you?” or “Where are you from?” It always seemed like no matter how unambiguous of an answer I gave people (usually I’d lay it out: “My mom is Black and my dad is white.”), they still seemed unsatisfied.

I always took great joy and pride in reading literature by Black women authors; Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angelou were bright spots in my high school curriculum. Like the women in my family, I found that they were deft storytellers who wove meaning into each word. I became interested in race, ethnicity, and nationality as a student of various social sciences in college and found that the methods we used did not typically speak to my ways of knowing. When I began studying oral history my senior year, I made that connection between identity and practice: I realized that how I create must be in line with who I am, otherwise I’m going to struggle to fully connect to my work. I often ask, “How did my ancestors know things?” and move from there.

Anesce: How has your experience as a Gilman scholar in Havana, Cuba during the spring of 2017, affected you as a writer?

Sophia: I always refer to my time in Havana as “my best life.”

Although I was a foreigner by nationality, I felt very much like I “made sense” there. One of my great-grandfathers on my mother’s side emigrated from Cuba in the 1940s, and we’ve been curious about that heritage for a while. When I told this to people in Cuba, they would light up and tell me how happy they were that I was there learning the language and culture.

While I was there, I wasn’t great at journaling about my experiences or the way I felt every day. However, I took a renewed interest in other forms of expression: photography, poetry, and even audio snippets. Being disconnected from the internet most of the time, I felt no pressure to share my experience with anyone else. It was deeply personal.

In my Spanish class, we read a poem that moved me tremendously: “Balada de los abuelos” (Ballad of the two grandfathers) by Cuban national poet Nicolás Guillén. I had never read poetry that was so hauntingly relatable — my education had turned me pretty sour toward poetry, sadly. The way he communicates his struggle to mediate the oppression faced by his Black grandfather and the abuses committed by his white one demonstrated the importance of writing about one’s complicated identities. There is no shame in his poem, only truth. Guillén was named the National Poet of Cuba during the 1960s, and I felt a deep sense of pride knowing that his work is revered as central to Cuban patrimony (instead of relegated to an elective or secondary history).

I also basked in the knowledge held in Cuban book stores, where I came to own books of Indigenous poetry from across the Americas, Cuban-African relations, and some anti-imperialist comic books. So much inspiration stems from that time in my life.

Anesce: Tell us about your background in Spanish, why you pursued the language, and how the language has influenced you creatively.

Sophia: I began studying Spanish in kindergarten. I would repeat those same lessons — colors, family members, objects, animals — for about 10 years. My public education did not prioritize foreign languages, and I even spent my entire sophomore year with a substitute teacher for Spanish II. But I was enamored with the language from the start of my study, before I knew I had a personal connection to it. I loved the idea of being able to express myself in another language in order to make friends with people from all around the world.

I always had my sights set on travel and naturally found commonalities with immigrant and first-generation American kids. I took Spanish seriously in college, where I had to overcome the shortcomings of my K-12 instruction, in order to go to Cuba. I took four 200-level courses, which were all discussion-based. One included a conversation class, where I met weekly with a language fellow from Colombia. I also got feedback on my written work from Spanish-speaking friends and even my best friend’s mother, who is a professor in Puerto Rico. I was meticulous about searching up and making note of new words to build my vocabulary when I read books or articles. Ultimately, I never finished the minor because there weren’t enough classes on Latin America. Learning Spanish has opened me up to a host of literature and research that I not only relate to, but also that introduced me to concepts of indigeneity, transculturation, and solidarity.

Anesce: How are cultural and linguistic exchange experiences crucial in your role as an educator, storyteller, and activist?

Sophia: I started incorporating my language and cultural interests into my activism during my second year of college when I began interning for a budding youth leadership program in rural New York. I could understand Spanish well at this point but struggled with my confidence when speaking, so this experience was the push I needed to leave my ego out and just try. While I mostly was involved in tasks like grant writing and outreach, I soon learned that I loved helping facilitate the program. Most of the high schoolers who attended the program were children of farmworkers from Guatemala and Mexico, and I realized how important it was for them to have friends and acquaintances who at least made an effort to know their native language. I learned more about the pressures to assimilate and realized how that has impacted my own family.

Being multicultural and/or multiracial is a tremendous asset (and quite common around the world), but it is treated like a threat in the U.S. and especially in rural communities. In Cuba, I developed an interest in popular education, or the practice of drawing on students’ personal experiences and helping them connect those experiences to larger societal problems. These concepts were made popular by Brazilian educator Paulo Friere through his 1968 book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which I read during my study abroad program. I began to see myself as a budding community-based educator, and the multilingual youth program would be the space where I tested those skills.

Since then, I’ve gotten to work with our colleagues in El Salvador and Guatemala on the international #WeAreNotAtRisk campaign, a youth-led global campaign that seeks to dismantle oppressive language (words like at-risk, minority, delinquent, etc.) about youth and create spaces for youth to write their own narratives. I was able to write subtitles and translate documents for my Central American colleagues, and in 2020 they invited me to facilitate a virtual media literacy workshop for some of their program participants. Being able to speak Spanish with them added another layer of community and belonging to my work in that campaign, and I’ve learned a lot from their organizing. I hope to continue having experiences of exchange for the rest of my life.

Anesce: How do social criticism, creative nonfiction, and activism interconnect for you?

Sophia: For me, all of my work is rooted in my beliefs in radical self-acceptance, solidarity, and collective liberation. My activism and social criticism/social science have taken priority in recent years, and as a result I am always reflecting on those experiences. I find a lot of writing about social change to be dry, didactic, and formulaic. Where is the fun? Where is the experimentation? Where is the silliness and mistakes and interpersonal drama that exists in the spaces where student organizers get together to dream out loud? I believe that finding space for creative expression is absolutely critical for unlearning the toxic lies that oppression tells people about themselves. Telling your own story on your own terms is a human necessity that many people have stolen from them. As a young person, I spent a lot of time having to divulge my trauma to adults and institutions to try to get them to help or support me. Now, creative nonfiction is how I am taking my stories back and humanizing myself through them.

Anesce: How do your anti-racist and trauma-informed trainer backgrounds influence your writing?

Sophia: As I’m growing in that work, I’m realizing the tremendous possibility of my writing practice. At Creative Praxis, my colleagues and I are always working to develop new art-based activities for trainings we offer educators, youth, and community members at large. As I’ve reengaged with my writing, I have realized that I have so many ideas for how to help others discover the writer within them. We believe in working with your “growing edge,” or the areas in which you are uncertain or feel nervous expressing yourself. For example, I’m not a great dancer. I’m barely coordinated. But I’ve taken dance classes for fun and to undo the perfectionism that I’ve learned. So, I love helping others do that with their writing.

Anesce: How did your experiences as a Humanity in Action fellow influence you as an individual and your craft?

Sophia: Humanity in Action made me fall in love with Detroit, first of all. It’s high on my list of places to live. During my fellowship, I had the honor of meeting long-time Detroiters: activists, artists, urban planners, authors, and community leaders. I had recently earned my degree in Urban Studies and was already sorely missing talking about cities, social dynamics, etc. I sharpened my skills as they pertained to learning in the field.

One of the most profound experiences I had there was visiting the Motown Museum. The tour begins with a short video about the history of Motown Records. As the Jackson 5, Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye danced across the screen, I felt my heart skip a beat. There I was, in a strange city feeling as though I was in my living room or in my mother’s car, joyfully swaying and resisting the urge to clap my hands. I was alone among strangers, but I felt welcome and at home in Berry Gordy’s little house-turned-music studio. I wiped tears from my cheeks as the lights turned on. The pride that swelled in my chest was something I had felt before, but was doubly powerful because I was there alone. People in my international cohort had many questions about the intricacies of Black culture throughout our program. Whether it was about music or language or anything else, I took it upon myself to provide context and ensure that my peers walked away with a fuller, more complicated understanding. It was especially powerful to exchange with my peers from Africa and the Caribbean in this beautiful midwestern Black mecca.

In Detroit, I witnessed Black culture and history being revered and built upon. I also saw a disturbing amount of corporate opportunism and exploitation. I realized how moved I was by the work being done in Detroit by and for its people, and it attuned me to social transformation as a living process. As a student, things are supposed to move quickly and individually. However, when you are working in a community with others, it is necessary to decenter yourself and understand that your work is a reflection of the collective. In Detroit, I saw the process of rewriting a city and a community’s history from the ground up.

Anesce: You said that you rediscovered your love of writing in therapy last year. Tell us about that process.

Sophia: This was the greatest gift of 2020. I started working with a new therapist in May, who is my first therapist who shares parts of my identity, works with creatives, and is a yoga instructor. She has helped me change my life in ways I never imagined possible. I stopped writing for pleasure once I was in middle school when my mother’s mental illness started taking a serious toll on my life. I felt lost, scared, alone, and didn’t want to remember any of it. Indeed, I have forgotten a lot from those years of my life. I didn’t even keep a journal anymore because I felt so ashamed of my life.

Once I got to college, I assumed that everyone else (who was richer, whiter, better educated, etc.) was a better creative writer than me and didn’t attempt to explore it. In therapy, I realized that I was imposing this narrative on myself; no one told me I was a bad writer, and no one even knew I was a writer. But I knew I was and I was imploding. My therapist asked me, “What would it take for you to start writing again?”

Time, space, energy, and maybe some cute supplies. I filled three journals last year. In my journals, I found my voice again and discussed my trauma in a different, more compassionate light. I remembered that my writing doesn’t always have to be good! It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to share it but I do have to write as a practice of loving and caring for myself. As a result, I’ve been walking in my power in every aspect of my life: work, relationships with others, and my relationship with myself.

Anesce: How do you process traumatic shame and combat the impostor’s syndrome as a writer and survivor?

Sophia: Writing has been a great space for me to understand my triggers and explain them to myself compassionately. It’s all part of that process of owning my narrative. I am not defined by my traumas, but I am responsible for my own healing, which at first was absolutely daunting. I think for a long time I didn’t want to heal. I was scared to look closely at things that had happened to me. I also internalized a lot of the narratives society tells about people with trauma: that we are unworthy of happiness and love, that we somehow deserve what happened to us. I needed someone to walk with me on that journey and to tell me that I can look at my trauma, cry about it, understand it better, and then put it away.

Creating new experiences and memories of my strength and creativity is helpful in this. Even if no one reads my work, I love the process of writing and it brings me closer to myself. My inner child thanks me for it. As a survivor, showing care to my inner child and validating my interests from different points of my life is especially therapeutic. I’ve found that once I stop judging myself, I care a lot less about what anyone else thinks of my work; ultimately, I am not my work, and all I am doing is being myself. I can’t possibly be an impostor at that.

Anesce: How has your writing process (routine, objectives, editing, etc) changed during the lockdown?

Sophia: Well, first of all, it exists! I’m still working on getting a routine together. I journal every single morning. My journals are not usually very creative (I’m not a morning person), but they help me get grounded. I find that when I’m not writing, I feel disconnected from the world around me because my thoughts just circulate in my head. My favorite time to write is the evening, after dinner around 8pm. In regular times, I’d be out and about after work, or just exhausted after commuting. My evenings are for my creative endeavors now, and I’m trying to commit to just getting words on the page. One new thing has arisen: I’m letting writings go unfinished. It’s part of moving away from perfectionism, and a commitment to the long-term. If I ever feel stuck but I want to write, there are now several projects on my computer that I can revisit. A mainstay for me is writing offline, and I have continued that practice so I can be truly alone with my words.

Anesce: Your website encourages individuals to contact you for collaborations. What collaborations have you worked on in the past and what sort of collaborations are you seeking going forward?

Sophia: In the past, I’ve edited a book of poetry and creative nonfiction (Conversations with Harriet by the amazing Jeannine A. Cook, owner of Harriet’s Bookshop in Philadelphia, USA), assisted in conducting interviews, and generally provided writing guidance for others in a variety of genres and fields. I’m interested in collaborating in two ways: creating new, interactive works with others (i.e. workshops, virtual conferences, written work) and providing writing and research services. I have yet to actually lay these out (so consider this exclusive access, haha). I love imagining with others, and hope to support individuals and collectives in their creative explorations.

Anesce: What can readers expect from you in the future?

Sophia: I’d definitely like to expand on my short stories. I’m releasing a free newsletter that will include one short story each month beginning in February, so that’s something to look forward to. I’m planning to post on my blog regularly about my yoga practice, teaching, and travel. I’ve got a few pieces coming out over the next few months over at Floresta Magazine on urbanism and sustainability, and I highly recommend checking out all of the great work (all written by women) there.