Photos by Michael Piazza

Last year the students who took part in writing programs of the nonprofit organization 826 in the Boston Public Schools were thinking about food. For some, the work focused on the chemistry and math of recipe writing, cooking and nutrition as a way to reinforce STEM learning. But at the 826 Writers’ Room at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, the high school students who publish Rubix, a literary journal, let the lid off food writing. The result, Rubix’ Food Issue, is a buffet of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drawing and painting, interviews and first-person memoir. I wanted to meet the young writers who wrote and curated this delightful volume. Who they are. How they think. And where they are going.

826 is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting literacy and writing among public school students aged 6–18 across the country. The 826 mission is to “encourage the exploration of endless possibility through the power of writing.” 826 offers in-school programs, after-school programs, and out-of-school programs. All are free.

826 was founded in 2002 by Dave Eggers, best-selling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What among other books, essays, movies and more. 826 is Eggers’s homage to his mother, a teacher, and to his own public-school experience in San Francisco. 826 has spread robustly across the country with Writers’ Rooms in urban school districts like Oakland, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Ann Arbor/Detroit, New Orleans, Washington DC and New York City. 826 Boston was founded in 2007.

More than 4,500 Boston Public School students currently participate in an 826 Boston program. Six schools host permanent Writers’ Rooms inside the school. Over 150 teachers and 700 volunteers—many are professional writers, artists and editors—regularly devote their time to work one-on-one with the kids enrolled in 826 writing programs. The result is a published book, with all content written by the students. Imagine the sheer joy of a child, having an idea, writing it down and then the surge of pride when it comes to life as a professionally designed, perfect-bound book, complete with their byline for all to see?

The O’Bryant was the first in-school Writers’ Room in the 826 Boston firmament. I’d been invited to the school to meet the Editorial Board for Rubix, the student-directed literary magazine, published twice a year. Why Rubix? Like the cube? “Because high school is a puzzle and finally you figure it out,” says Marvin Valenzuela, a 17-year-old junior and member of the Editorial Board.

I’m hoping the students will talk to me about writing and their personal stories. As any dumb adult remembers, talking to an adult in front of your peers is not a popular high school activity. I sit quietly, eavesdropping on their conversation before I pepper them with my own questions. Here’s what I heard first.

“I’m afraid of cooking,” confides Alisha Marte shyly. She is a 16-year-old from Charlestown with roots in the Dominican Republic.

“Why? What’s there to cooking once you know how to turn on the stove?” retorts Alyssa Mascarenhas, a confident 14-year-old from Cape Verde.

“Well, there’s all the smoke. And the oil. Especially the oil. I worry I might burn down the house...” Alisha continues.

“Just don’t let any water get in in the hot pan, for god’s sake,” Alyssa shakes her head. “That’s how you can burn down your own house! Anybody can cook. If you can’t cook, you can’t really take care of yourself.”

And then they get back to the business at hand, huddling around a table in the cozy Writers’ Room, editing the spring issue of Rubix.

Heather Nelson supervises the Writers’ Room at the O’Bryant school. It’s a buzzy and colorful repurposed classroom. There is a small library of books and magazines at one end and a few well-worn armchairs. Feet are OK on the coffee table. The heart of the room is a series of long tables covered with laptops. At each laptop sits a student. Heather says the students chose “food” as the theme for the magazine because it was a topic “everyone had something to say about.” Of all the books published by 826 Boston, Rubix is the most student-directed. “The kids decide.” Other issues have centered on “The Future” or “Education,” wide open topics that invite creativity. Each issue is a “hodgepodge,” Heather says, “until it isn’t. Then it comes together beautifully.” It is considered cool to write for Rubix. Even cooler to be on the Editorial Board. Members of the Editorial Board must contribute to each issue and are charged with recruiting other students to submit a piece for consideration. “That’s the hard part,” Sally Phan says. “People say ‘Yes, sure, I’ll write something.’ And then you spend a month chasing them to send it in.”

Alisha Marte is a bubble of sweetness. Reading was her first love. Then it occurred to her, maybe she could write as well. She wondered in her Rubix essay, why does she hate Crab Rangoon? Everyone else in her family seems to love it. Is it the texture? The smell? “You bite it, you taste the crunchy outside of it and suddenly you taste something else. In the middle is white with pink and green little pieces of stuff poking out all over the place. It’s squished and squashed together looking like mayo with weird unknown things.” Alisha wrote to understand “why this dish doesn’t work for me.” Exactly on target with a food writer’s instinct: writing as a way to explain to yourself what you think.

Sally Phan’s essay in Rubix is about the first food that she remembers loving and craving, bành kem, a Vietnamese egg-custard pineapple bun. “Having the big custard in my tiny baby hands was like holding a big golden egg. So creamy and delicious.” She writes, “This one single treasure brings back memories of fun celebrations, long road trips and warm hugs.”

Marvin Valenzuela chooses words the way an artist might paint a tree, one leaf at a time. First Class Food, Marvin’s poem in Rubix, was inspired by an opportunity to fly first class back and forth to Japan. He writes, “Flying in the air like the king, I am sitting in first class where everything is served in an instant.” Marvin’s brother works for the airline and arranged for the two of them to fly for free. “It’s a 14- hour flight! It was an opportunity to realize how food can be such an important part of any experience. Food is essential, for so many people, it is a daily struggle.”

Alyssa Mascarenhas writes because she “found herself lost in long random stories” that she “needed to share.” Her Rubix essay, titled The Ways of a Food Hider, describes hiding “a really good meal” in the fridge in order to save it for tomorrow.

“The next morning it’s gone. I’d scan the fridge once more, then again and again, growing in irritation and hunger. The thing I held so close to my heart has been stolen from me during my slumber, Oh! How will I go on knowing that there’s a cruel thief amongst my own blood? They ravaged the fridge for what isn’t theirs, such malevolent scum.” Alyssa’s family is from Cape Verde and she says, they are “all about food.”

Food defines Nely Silva’s family too. When Nely first came to Boston at age 7, she couldn’t speak a word of English. “But then I learned to read, and the world opened up for me. From reading I knew I wanted to write.” In the conversation, Nely and Alyssa realize that they both come from crazy, food-obsessed Cape Verdean families, and one can’t wait to top the other with crazy food stories from home.

Nely begins. “Food is never just food in my family. It’s fuel. It’s a necessity. It’s an offering. It is community. Food means being connected to nature. Food is surviving in this world. Food is grateful.” A waterfall of words. All heads rotate to Nely. She is just warming up. “Our house is basically one big kitchen. We farm. My father fishes. We cook something and swap it with other Cape Verdean families. We don’t want to forget the food we grew up with. I’m 16 and I’ve already been cooking for nine years,” she says.

Alyssa is locking on to Nely. They’re on a roll. “High five! It’s exactly the same at my house. In my house, the expectation is that you need to learn to cook. Or you’ll starve. When my friends tell me their parents make lunch for them, I’m, like, ‘What? Your parents make you lunch? You don’t make your own?’”

Nely takes up the baton. “My mother is always cooking. She could be sent to the hospital in an ambulance and she’d check herself out and say, ‘I gotta go home. I have to cook.’ She’ll make nine different things if she thinks people are coming over for dinner. And if they forget to show up, she’ll be waiting there until 2 in the morning at the table with the food ready to go. Don’t ever tell my mother that you are coming for dinner and forget to show up!”

Alyssa: “Same at my house. Always food for anyone who might just show up. And the food is good. Really good. Why eat food that is, excuse me, crap?” she says. “Recently, I heard something ridiculous. One of my friends told me that dinner at her house is rice with hot dogs in the rice. That is crossing the line for me. They call that dinner?”

So many words in such a short time in front of a strange adult with a notebook. Everyone is talking now, talking over each other. Interrupting each other. Telling me who cooks what in their families. Where they go to eat and what they order. Why eating at McDonald’s is so insane but they do it all the time. Alisha says, “Look, $5 doesn’t buy a lot of groceries. But at McDonald’s it buys a whole meal. How is that possible? Something is very screwed up about food in America.”

Earlier, I’d asked the students if writing about food for Rubix had changed the way any of them thought about food. It was as if I’d asked who’d seen a moose in the hallway. Now, Marvin rocks back in his chair when I pose the question a second time. “What I think now is that food is a force that shapes society.” The other students nod in agreement.

And I think to myself, it doesn’t get any better than this.

To learn more about 826 Boston, visit the 826 retail store, The Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Institute at 3035 Washington Street in Roxbury, or visit 826boston.org.

This story appeared in the Spring 2020 issue (and was written before the Covid-19 outbreak in the US).