Herman Chavez
Managing Editor
Identity is a concept that’s always sparked our interest. From our very first meeting, in a coffee shop right on the edge of campus, we knew identity was central to our message. We made a vision board together, listing everything we wanted to curate and amplify. And now, three issues into our magazine, it seems that our identity is finally taking shape.
We first selected identity as our theme for Issue 03 back in January of 2020. As a magazine originally based at Colorado State University, we noticed a marked uptick in racist acts on campus, from swastika graffiti to blackface on social media. Soon after, the Not Proud to Be movement was founded and put on several protests throughout the 2020-2021 academic year, including a demonstration at President Joyce McConnell’s very first Fall Address. Here at Cicada, we took notice.
Just two days after the Not Proud to Be movement presented their demands to university administration, Colorado State went remote. As the semester virtually progressed, the world became more and more responsive to the same issue that our on-campus movement was highlighting: racism. The pandemic gave rise to anti-Asian sentiments and was the backdrop for the recent Black Lives Matter protests—protests that are now being considered part of the largest social movement in the history of the United States. If anything, the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic have made it more important than ever to conduct dialogue about who we are, how we feel, and what the world looks like for us now.
Today, we debut Issue 03 of Cicada Creative Magazine, with brand-new pieces from fifteen undergraduate creatives. We asked our community: who are you? Who are we? In Issue 03, you’ll find 20 hand-picked pieces that each think through identity in their own creative ways. They show us how the self is constructed by its experiences, actions, and transformations—much like the identities in flux as a result of our global pandemic and the racial movements of this year.
We hope you’ll enjoy the undergraduate creativity of this issue’s contributors, from California to the Netherlands. We’ll see you in 2021.
Stay Creative,
CCM