Meet Our New Intern: Jahmayla Pointer

Language and storytelling. Analyzing it, creating it, and sharing it with others. I truly believe it is the reason we are all here. To experience, perceive, imagine, and record. Those are my bread, butter, oats, and OJ. I am the individual toaster that seals everything into place. A hearty Literary Breakfast to carry along wherever I go and remind me that life isn’t always so scary, and when it is, I just have to write about it or read a good book.

To say that my passion for storytelling began with just one book or just one author would be an overstatement. on January 27th, 2001, I was born to two beautiful people with big dreams. Their dreams were so large that they had to take a backseat for their baby girl. My mother had her sights on journalism. This is something I truly admire: her desire to know and share vital information, and shed light on the news of the world that maybe the next journalist wouldn’t.

My father, however, taught me the beauty of writing, and storytelling through his music. My dad wanted to make it as a music engineer and lyricist. He taught me all about the structure of a story within a song and letting your heart and soul craft a melody. For that reason, for me, the processes of creating music, creating literature, and even analyzing it go hand-in-hand. 

The first time I was unable to break myself away from a book, I knew I wanted everything to do with them. I was seven years old, and it was a biographical title on the Titanic. It was the only book in the house, and I was determined to read it cover-to-cover. The next time I got that feeling, I was nose-deep inside a Barbie book. I forget the name of it, but Barbie and friends go to summer camp and hilarity ensues. It was a glossy hardback with about sixty pages. At least it felt like sixty back then. 

The two titles that have most influenced my tastes today and my writing overall have been Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter.” Being introduced to those masterpieces in the eighth grade, I thought, “Yes… this is where I want to live,” so I moved in and I never left. Sure, I thought that giving praise to these titles made me edgy and that somehow made me feel better, but I know there was something more than my teen angst powering that feeling. 

I see my journeys with writing and reading as markers for where I am in life. For example, when I first began writing as a preteen I wrote from pain, and as a form of escapism. Now I write because I have such beautiful visions in my head, and I want to make them real. Now I write and read because I may have something important to say or to learn.

My perspective changed when I was about seventeen, during a shift at my barista job. I was finishing Frankl’s A Man’s Search for Meaning during a lull period, and the next person who came up to buy something got an earful of analysis and praise for the book that he didn’t ask for as I frothed his latte. I expected him to engage but he didn’t… rightfully so. I probably seemed like a crazy person. He simply took his coffee, gave me a “You have a good day now,” and left. 

I could only laugh at myself at that moment and forgive myself for being so moved by something that I would talk to a stranger like I’d known him for decades. Everything has been kind of light and airy since then, more or less, and I find something ethereal to fuel me in everything I read, and I try and put a strong message in everything I write.

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Jahmayla Pointer is a three-time National Goofing Around Award winner and specializes in consuming gothic literature and horror films. Jahmayla’s playful and observant nature, and deep love of horror, magic, and literary thrills led her to pursue an English and Creative writing degree four years ago. She began taking creative writing workshops in her senior year of high school and fell in love with working with others on various projects. During her sophomore and Junior years at Southern New Hampshire University, she’s also done Men-tee and beta reading work for authors local to Cincinnati, most notably Victor Velez, author of A Triduum of All Hallows. Jahmayla was an ACES member briefly through which she received several beneficial developmental opportunities including courses through the Poynter Institute. During her downtime, she likes to spend time with friends and family, dance, write short stories, and read in copious amounts. Something that means a lot to Jahmayla is grassroots work and helping people directly through mutual aid and acts of service, she puts this passion into action by working with a group of good friends to develop education tools and encourage high literacy in her local neighborhoods.