Undergraduate / UVa Supplement on Challenging Piece of Work- Need Critique Desperately! [2]

The prompt is
1. We are looking for passionate students to join our diverse community of scholars, researchers, and artists. Answer the question that corresponds to the school you selected above. Limit your answer to a half page or roughly 250 words.

-College of Arts and Sciences: What work of art, music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised, unsettled, or challenged you, and in what way?

Here is my answer:

In an attempt to silence mama's heart-wrenching sobs, my sisters jump wildly in front of the screen, arms flailing, trying to crack a grin. It's fiction, they say. She shouldn't cry like that; it could hurt her heart.

Who knew real estate speculation could be so brutally dark? So painfully honest?

Wrongfully evicted from the seaside home is relapsed alcoholic Kathy Nicollo. Desperate for upward mobility, the exiled Iranian colonel, Massoud Behrani, snatches up her foreclosed property. The story is simple yet profound. Each has a claim to the American Dream.

Each claim, however, slowly unwinds to the point where our ideals are left shattered. During the quest for the Dream, we see murder and suicide. We see gross negligence and adultery. As "The House of Sand and Fog" unravels in a way reminiscent of Aristotle's Poetics, we are left with visible proof of the nonexistence - or at least, utter failure - of the American Dream. The narration though, refuses to partake in any categorization of [villain] and [victim] forcing us to either: be the judge or accept the characters as real people. The second, in this darkness, proves much easier.

My sisters lied; it's not fiction. Their attempts to derail us fail. I shriek at them to let us be. Frantically rewinding the last moments, we search for some closure on the screen: a glimpse of hope; the "it will all be all right scene." We don't find it.

Undergraduate / Not a Kumbaya - UVa Supplement Essay for My world [2]

I wrote an essay for UVa's supplement question:

Describe the world you come from and how that world shaped who you are.

And am not sure if I completely answered the question. ALL advice would be appreciated (tone, grammar, etc.). This is due tonight. Oh, and it's supposed to be half a page but this is a bit longer. Any way to shorten it?

Here it goes:

Charlottesville isn't the typical southern college town. With the downtown mall simply a path of bricks rimmed with rarely heard-of stores such as Sticks - Kabob Shop and the seriously coltish Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, the city is home to great diversity - taste-bud wise as well as racial, economic, and faith-based. There is an eclectic charge evident across avid student discussions in a day and age where multiculturalism is all the rage. As a young woman in high school, I remember awakening to my own background in Charlottesville, discussing opportunities for South Asians while waiting for a ride at the Corner or grousing about the innate chauvinism of politics following Hillary's loss. I remember sifting through countless brochures advertising provision for higher education programs for minorities (as well as the heated debates under florescent lights, sputtering through tuna and rye over the actual benefits of affirmative action). But though we discussed equal opportunities for women and blacks or - even at times - lesbians, what I do not remember is discussing religion. Though our religious identities warred abroad, we made peace between those same systems of beliefs. Not by engagement, but by sterilizing ourselves of their any mention. As violence seethed between Jews and Christians in Jerusalem or Muslims and Hindus in Delhi, religion was effectively excluded from the diversity discussion in fear of breaching a territory taboo to our secular state.

But the problem was: our world is not secular. It is religiously diverse. And the existence of this diversity - of people of different faiths, and without, living closely in districts - has driven my idea of what I want to change in this world. It drives who I want to be.

There was something I knew about religious diversity but could only relay miserably until a few weeks ago, when I heard it (quite simply) articulated at a workshop for leadership scholars in Evanston. Religious diversity is conducive to three ends. We can only let it be a means to one: pluralism.

Pluralism is the path between the Scylla and Charybdis of interfaith work: the Scylla being the belief that inter-religious dialogue is a kumbaya in which theological, political, and ideological differences don't exist and the Charybdis being the dangerous - often violent - belief that those differences prevent us from attaining a common good. Pluralism is the shift from coexistence and conflict to cooperation. It fulfills the challenge of working together and being unique by allowing communities to work towards a universal goal in a manner particular to each distinct community.

Pluralism is not a revolutionary ideal and the healthy engagement of religiously diverse communities, therefore, already has the resources needed for it to become a cornerstone of American communities - and a model for those abroad. We see communities of faith coexisting in the United States. We have administrations - educational and non-profit - eager to see proactive work between them. And we have established service learning programs, which are pivotal for pluralism because they provide a medium through which distinct peoples can work towards a shared common good: bettering their community. What we need now are the right partnerships.

Over the past summer, I've been building the partnerships - collectively (and oh so creatively) coined the Interfaith Young Adult Corps of Charlottesville - that would provide a medium through which local students, both high school and college, representative of Charlottesville's distinctive diversity could tackle social justice issues using their faith as a basis for their drive. By establishing that liaison between campus ministries at the University of Virginia, local non-profits like IMPACT, and community service establishments, I am a part of that hookup which redirects our youth's energy into something productive: perhaps, a change in the pathetic conditions of some our city's - our world's - hidden communities but more significantly, a positive discussion between members of various faiths. This religious diversity has shaped me as a leader unafraid of piercing isolation and building bridges. It has forced me to lead the step towards a truly religiously plural world.