As a substitute for the podcast team project, I have been making a dystopian journal. With this, I’ve started writing journal entries using real world dystopian events to depict the life of a black college student trying to find their way. While it may seem rather personal, I’ve pulled in events like the January 6th insurrection, social surrogacy, and even war crimes into the journal. These topics among others will help me research real world incidents to pick apart and use to create my dystopian world.
The Journal is set during the time President Barack Obama killed known United States terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. I picked this time because while for most, their dystopian reality had ended with justice, others were experiencing a whole new level of dystopia for society. I’ll be using dystopian effects of race and segregation to support this theme. While some details are of course fabricated, the underlying events that take place and how are not and were researched immensely before I began writing the fiction portion. The goal is to show different sides of dystopian aspects, like the five faces of oppression, one can face in society using real world events. I want the reader to understand the non-fiction part and be able to differentiate between that and the fictional portions of the text. For instance, the timeline of killing Bin Laden and having group face time don’t mesh in reality, but for the flow of the plot, it can.
I think this project will be really interesting. Not only do I get to talk about issues that, at the time children were to young for, but also have full creative control on how I want to do it. As it comes along, I want the reader to understand how major events are true, but not to put too much stock into the timeline or miniscule details as those most likely will be fiction.
