Marcela Ventura

Bio: Marcela Ventura is a graduating John Jay Honors student with a Criminology major and both English and ISP minors. She is a part of JJ’s Critical Interdisciplinary Research Group and a Vera Fellow.  She’s very passionate about writing, social justice, and cultural knowledge and hopes to one day become a lawyer. From Eng 101 to Eng 201 to Life Stories to Creative Nonfiction to her recent capstone project, Marcela has really appreciated how much her instructors have challenged her become a better and better writer throughout her time at John Jay! Her original work has been featured on the Life Out Loud podcast, and her recent capstone project was nominated for the Outstanding Capstone Award. This work, entitled Clash: A Docudrama Featuring the Women In-Between, attempts to present the complex everyday experiences of young first-generation and generation 1.5 women (those who migrated at a young age and still needed a parent or guardian here) through docudrama because of one key question: Does the ideal audience for this really read research papers? Marcela’s final product is the careful composition of over 16+ voices found in over 150 pages of first-hand interview transcripts as well as from over 120 pages of scholarly source material, including case studies. True to docudrama form, the script is composed entirely of found texts.

An excerpt of a short staged Zoom “reading” is coming here soon!