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YCM Story of the Week

  • Reintroducing Myself to the World

    Changing my name was the first step in acknowledging my trans boyhood.

    by Marlin Xie

    As the first semester of my sophomore year of high school came to an end, I stared into my bathroom mirror, and a speck of doubt began to devour every thought I had about who I was. A fog swallowed my mind, and I realized I couldn’t recognize my reflection.

Recent Stories

  • Love Creates Music

    by Jinx Morrison

    Right after I was born, my father wrote a short guitar piece that he played for me every night. He called it “Music Box.” When I was a few years old, he recorded it and uploaded it to iTunes, so I could listen to it before bed even after he stopped tucking me in.

  • Seeing My Pain

    by J. Huang

    One spring evening in 10th grade, my parents asked me what should have been a simple question: “What do you want to eat?” But I had planned to purposely skip dinner. I told myself I’d gain the endurance to skip more meals if I skipped this one.

  • The Quiet Library of My Mind

    by Arina Limarieva

    When I was 5, my family had to move from Luhansk, Ukraine, to Kyiv to escape the 2014 invasion by the Russians. From my earliest memories, there has been chaos, which I got used to. It’s taken me years to figure out that I prefer calm—and to find ways to achieve it. 

  • Spring 2025 Contest Winners

    Since taking office, the Trump Administration has effected change at a dizzying pace–cutting the funding of many government agencies and programs; pursuing undocumented people; declaring trans and nonbinary people nonexistent; making diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts against the law; upending the U.S.’s

YC Magazine publishes true stories by teens, giving readers insight into the issues that matter most in young people’s lives.

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Represent Magazine

Stories by Teens in Foster Care

Rejecting My Role Model

I became the best of my father, but I had to separate to protect myself.

by Anonymous

I was a daddy’s girl. In elementary school, whenever someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “I want to be like my dad.” He worked hard, and he was my role model.  He didn’t tell me or my siblings about his childhood.

Youth-written stories in Represent give inspiration and information to teens in foster care while offering insight into those teens’ struggles.

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More Recent YC Magazine Stories

  • How I Became a Confident Reader

    by Anonymous

    In elementary school, I had an experience that nearly turned me off reading.  My teacher, Ms. W., selected me to read aloud to the class. I took out a book about various forms of light, hoping the images I found fascinating would also entertain my classmates.

  • Lift Every Voice

    by Enoch Naklen and City Council Member Rita Joseph

    YC writer Enoch Naklen and New York City Council Member Rita Joseph collaborated on this op-ed in conjunction with the passage of two resolutions that CM Joseph introduced. Those resolutions mandate that all NYC high schools support a student newspaper and provide ongoing data about those journalism programs.

  • Finding My Own Christianity

    by Anonymous

    Names have been changed. My parents both emigrated from South Korea when they were young and met during college at a Pentecostal church in Queens. They took missionary trips to Africa and Guatemala to spread the word of God and got married at the same church where they met and we still attend all together today.

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