Many students get a day off from school for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  What students do with that day is entirely up to them. While most might sleep in and have a “lazy” day, others are off writing about Martin Luther King Jr.

Entering the competition held by the Martin Luther King Memorial committee of Manhattan was a requirement for some English classes. For other students, they want to get their opinions out in the open.

One such example is junior Addy Stone. Stone wrote “Black Without Apology: One Day I’ll Find the Words.” Her poem won first place and she received a $25 prize.

One might expect someone winning this competition to have first-hand experience being African American, but such is not the case with Stone.

”Well I have gotten a lot of backlash from the writing because it’s from the point of view of a black female and I actually sat down and had a lengthy conversation with somebody about their adoption process and how they felt about it because I wanted to write something from a different point of view.”

Stone also said although she is not African American she still tries to understand. Stone is representing an African American voice in the competition by interviewing an African American and putting the perspective of an African American and what they feel, into the competition in the form of a poem.

“I never really try to edit my writing I just kind of like I will have a muse and from that I will expand on it and just try not to stop writing until it’s finished,” Stone said. “I just go with my instincts.”

Although she received backlash for her stories, she didn’t let that stop her from putting her opinion out there. Stone also refuses to let other people’s opinions or views on her writing, stop her from being the best writer that she can be, or writing about something she believes in.

“Everything I write is for other people, I never write for myself. I write only to educate other people about issues I feel strongly about or to like make people feel something so that way they have empathy,” Stone said.

Stone doesn’t focus her writing on herself, she instead focuses on writing for other people to help them understand more about what they go through and the struggles they may be facing. she also writes to make outsiders understand what certain people may be going through or have already gone through.

“Right now I’m focused on the upcoming poetry slam for the school’s Black Student Union and I think for that I’m going to write a piece about the whole joke ‘I’m going to kill myself’ or I hate myself stuff like that or people joking about that,” Stone said. That’s kind of what I started on recently.”