Introduction To Jewel

What a wonderful way to start off this project. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure just how much she would have to say regarding the issue of Proposition 8. She, having just graduated from the local high school (that I attended myself), didn’t seem like someone that would have any experience with the LGBTQ community. What’s interesting, is, she didn’t think she had any experience with the topic until she began answering my questions.

Being the young girl that she is, after the interview, she mentioned to me how interesting it is to realize that she actually had opinions of her own that were separate from the way she has been brought up. Her brown eyes have seen more than I think she was even aware.

Her pieces in this collection of monologues helped me to form questions for the interviews that came after. She needed a bit more prodding than others, but the moment she realized what it was I was looking for as the interviewer/ researcher, she was incredibly generous with the stories she had to tell.

She offered me such great groundwork for this piece of literature that I find so important to our community, local as well as state wide. Seeing this issue through the eyes of the youth, who too often get looked over, passed by, and dismissed, was essential. It is through the youth, after all, that shows us as a society, what we are passing down from our traditions, our culture, and our public policy.