“The Next Exit” (2021-2022)

When I initially watched I Am Not Your Negro, it was a deeply emotional experience for me. I think the initial composition and outlining of this essay came from exploring why I was so moved by Baldwin’s words. All roads ended up leading to my father and my experiences with his incarceration as I was growing up. I struggled with communicating this while remaining in line with what I found most interesting about the film–namely, the specific notion of an “American sense of reality” and the consequences that come with it. The tension I felt within this idea is what ultimately propelled and shaped my argument as a whole. It was at times difficult to find my voice while I was drafting this essay, but I found that this course gave me a space I’d never really had before: a space to express what I felt and naturally allow my argument to spring from my emotional experience of the work and of my own life. For that reason, this essay didn’t change dramatically from first to final draft; once I had an outline and some ideas in my head, there was an ease and a flow to writing this paper that I largely owe to this course and my wonderful professor. My professor gave me the confidence to foster the more emotional and poetic side of my writing, and I owe a lot of what I was able to build in this essay to that confidence and that style. 

I also owe so much of what I wrote to the amazing men whose lives were explored and documented in Peck’s film: Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. These men’s legacies have helped me to understand my own life and world in incalculable ways; there are not enough thanks in the world that could adequately repay them for their service to their communities and to our country. This essay was, at its core, me paying a very small sum of my dues to them, and to my community.

Ayslin Exum (CAS ’24) is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Science studying psychology. She was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, home to a specifically cruel carceral system and one of the most violent police forces in the country. As she observed this system and its many failings, she became interested in the intersection between criminal justice, psychology, and American politics. Her essay reflects those interests, and also explores Ayslin’s admiration for the pioneers of the Civil Rights Era and their legacy. Above all, her essay is a reflection on the darker elements of American culture and the profound ways these elements impact our lives and communities.