AP Spanish Literature Creates Literary Magazine

The students of AP Spanish Literature decided to conclude the year on a creative note for their final. The five students of the class worked together to create an inaugural magazine called Cinco referencing the five contributors of the issue, dedicated to Doctora Bernath. The magazine was a collaboration combining the group’s strengths including analytical and creative writing, artwork, and editing by Milo W., Caitlin H., Maggie G., Ella O., and Madelena R., all class of 2021.

As the class title suggests, the group has been focused on writing analytical essays about Latin American and Spanish literature, but this project allowed the group to write original short stories in Spanish as well. “For the majority of the year we’ve been reading works of others,” said Madelena. “For me, I wanted to write short stories and create our own works.”

Some of those stories include a story about a fisherman who falls to the bottom of the ocean drawing on themes from the Vanguardismo literary movement by Madelena, a poem exploring identity and self that took inspiration from Jorge Luis Borges by Ella, and a story exploring surrealism through an immigrant mother’s struggle to share her native language and culture with her daughter by Caitlin. The issue is comprised of one essay and one creative piece from each writer. 

“We have a lot of practice with analytical writing in Spanish, so writing the essays and editing was second nature,” said Caitlin. “We had guidance from Doctora Bernath. Creatively, it was a lot more challenging because of turns of phrase you don’t think about in English and wondered if it was directly translatable. That was more challenging.”

The group is excited to showcase what they’ve learned this past year and share their work with the school. The magazine will continue in future years as the capstone project for the class. Those that participated are also excited to continue their language-learning journey in the future.

“I do want to pursue language in college and continue Spanish,” said Ella. “Amazingly enough, my school has American Sign Language. I have no idea what I will do in the future but do want to include a multilingual aspect in my work.”

Check out the magazine here.
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