Haiti is a humble country seated in the Caribbean, its outskirts bordering those of the Dominican Republic. Before it was called Haiti, it was known as Saint-Domingue, a French colony in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola from 1697 to 1804—when Haiti finally gained its independence, breaking away from its captors and freeing self-liberated slaves from French Colonial rule. Since then, the world has deemed my people free, finally deserving of humane treatment. Since then, my people have evolved and grown into the civilization that still obstinately works to filter them out. Since then, my people have moved, they have migrated, and they have fought to build a life in America where it is required to know the language. My parents dragged me to America and shoved me into American schools, where the writing on the walls appeared as foreign to me as I was to them. I could not speak the language; therefore, I could not read, write, or understand. And still, I grew to love writing. The letters on the classroom walls, though still unfamiliar, allowed me a great sense of momentary calm, where my melanized cheeks would lift into a cheeky smile at tracing the letters with my eyes. I began to write them down, every letter, one by one. I constructed words that developed into sentences, which gradually revolutionized into paragraphs. Then, my interest in books sparked—the combination of both reading and writing fascinated a younger me and raised a gifted youth. I recognized this fascination and considered it each time I picked up a new book, each time I read about a character without a sense of self, each time I fixated on the author's logical perception, each time I analyzed a sentence to get the most out of the experience, and each time I woke up with the open novel sprawled out beside me on my pillow. Yes, I adored reading. But something was amiss; I felt like there was more to consider, something that inspired the hollow ditch in my chest. The stories that I read were wondrous—they dragged me to bizarre and unfeasible conclusions. But they weren't my own. These authors were making an impact; people read their stories because it was worth their time, consideration, and effort. I realized that I wanted the same expressed for me. And so I wrote. I read my stories again and again, editing lines of dialogue, reconstructing scenes, and encountering new errors each time. I stayed up most nights, my eyes fighting sleep to squint down at the glaring screen below my weighed blanket. The more I wrote, the further I fell into the pit of expressive creation. I realized my love of the activity was definite when I would lose motivation, not accessing any of my drafts for several weeks, even months, only to return and add to them as well as edit them arbitrarily. I am fully committed to the art of writing, and nothing so far has disproved that theory. That, of course, is only part of why I wish to pursue further education in creative writing. Principally, it would work to make my family proud. Having grown up in Haiti, as well as being an immigrant who, before migrating here, was not even aware English existed, and now being able to write like it's nothing, I admire the challenges that millions of my ancestors before me have faced and can only hope to make them proud today My background and my writing define me; hopefully, I can one day share that definition with the rest of the world.