Letter From the Editor
Dear reader,
Welcome to The Love Club: a small (and late) Valentines gift from all of us here at Sunstroke. The Love Club is about youth, love, and childhood. We wanted to meet between the digital webzine we have rolling and the print issues we traditionally make. We wanted to push the boundaries of media and try something new— no cost, no advertisements.
In no way are we discontinuing our print issues, but we wanted you to take a step into our digital space on one singular page, without Instagram or any traditional social media. Rather, we’d prefer if you played an Elliott Smith album and scrolled through this digital series with the reflection of our theme.
“The Love Club”, of course named after the Lorde song (hinting to nostalgia), is specifically related to our generation.It’s all about the hazy memories of our past (something we touch on a lot at Sunstroke) and a sense of community between each and every Gen Z-er through art, words, and activism.
The Love Club is about us. It’s about the times in class when we all connected our Tamagotchis, when we danced to Dynomite in middle school dances, and it’s about the future we hold as a digitally based, music/art reliant, bad-ass youth community.
Thanks for scrolling with us today. We can’t wait to share more art with you soon.
XO,
B
Mud Pies
By Zoe Howard
Mud pies in the front yard of our little house
On Afton, gravel driveways and one road.
You could always hear the blast of gas compressed when
The cars in the junkyard blew
If you stayed quiet.
The older boys chased me with sticks and toads
The neighborhood alive with kids
Choreographing stories in places
Beyond the woods and the field
You never run through. Dad warned me about guns --
All those years I just couldn’t wait to move
Into a bigger house, my own bathroom.
Main street. City limits, even.
We’ve been out five years, and going back
Tastes like what I lost.
They cut down the woods where
We painted turtle shells.
There’s a house in the field, and the
Big white dog died in the fall.
Those days flashed like lightning and we
Never went inside before they whistled us home.
Not one of us.
In the big house, the neighbors call the cops
When my dogs join the chorus.
They still don’t wave.
I want to run.
Forwards or backwards,
I’m not sure.
“It was when Trump was mentioning that ‘illegal aliens’ are trespassing our nation and the idea of the wall was being brought up. I was on a trip for my high school art class to California and we were just having lunch ar the District Market in Los Angeles when my photo teacher and I heard that there was a march/protest coming our way. We rushed to order our food and had some other students pick up our food while we weren’t present. We rush out and I could know believe the amount of people that came together to protest against Donald Trump and ICE for their family members who were not legal citizens but were trying to be and who are very hard workers.
I grew up in an area in my city where there was many Latinos in my area and at my school. I would hear that a lot of the kids who were at my school talk about how their grandparents were not legal citizens but came here with hopes to give their family and future family a better life here in America. I know that many immigrants come here with high hopes of having a better life for themselves or their family. It’s very expensive to just to manage to come over to the country and so some people have to do what they need to do and cross the boarder in secret. It honestly breaks my heart knowing that people are risking their family’s and what the have just to come to America to have a better life and to seek life changing opportunities that could benefit them. So many people around the world dream of coming to this nation while we take it for granted. I hope that in the future our country can help people from all around the world and from countries that are in poverty or in serious and frightening control to come here and to live among everyone else and for them to proudly call themselves an American Citizen.”
Savannah Smith
Photography
Irlanda Trujillo
Ellie Connor-Phillips
Hunter Sax
Emma Mutch
Carly Jump
Savannah Smith
Artwork
Saige (Jo) Taylor-Bernier
Kelsey Marek
Jessie Pectol
Augusto B. M.
Chloe Bruderer (Calligraphy)
Childhood Photos
Talia Corcoran
Haley Stoffers
Miabella Brickey
Jordan Murphy
Keeley Joe-Tashro
Curated by Birdy Francis