My Reality
By: Nahum Efigenio
The purpose of the shadow box is a virtual representation of someone’s dominant and counter narratives. The dominant narratives are on the outside of the box and counter narratives are on the inside. To simplify, the dominant narratives are stereotypes about me and the counter narratives represents My Reality.
My shadow box represents what I am proud of and negatives that come with those options. For example, I am proud of being from San Bernardino, and to represent that I have a picture of a bridge in San Bernardino. The reason I am proud to represent being from San Bernardino is because I have many family members that are from San Bernardino. I also have a lot of cousins I enjoy being around. But negatives that come with being from San Bernardino is people thinking I am somehow involved in gang activity, in addition to those people thinking I’m somehow involved in any type of gang activity is when I say I live in Oakland. And some people think I’m in the gang they will assume that most people in game games are illiterate but for me that’s wrong because I like to read and write, and the book “There There” is the first book in a long time that I enjoyed reading.
Dear Nahum,
Hello my name is Nicole and I am a child development student at San Jose State University. I thought that you did a wonderful job on your shadow box. I loved how you talked about the positives and negatives of important things that make you who you are. I especially enjoyed this part “ The reason I am proud to represent being from San Bernardino is because I have many family members that are from San Bernardino. I also have a lot of cousins I enjoy being around. But the negatives that come with being from San Bernardino is people thinking I am somehow involved in gang activity” I love that you are proud of where you came from even though the stereotypes about that area are negative.Thank you so much for sharing your shadow box.