“What’s The Story Behind My Nickname?” Jlo/Lbjc

From birth, we are given a name that sticks with us in some way. This name can be based off of things such as chubby cheeks, being grandma’s first grandchild, or even a miracle. My uncle nick named me “Jlo,” because I would always sing Jennifer Lopez’s songs as a baby. I am 30 years old in a few days, and he still calls me that same name, and it has stuck to the family, to where just about all my family calls me that.

Now, Literaturebyjessc has a great back story. As we know I was lost in life, too many things were happening at the same time. I got a disability at 19, and the day of a major event I was supposed to be in attendance to turned into the DJ in the hospital room with me. I’ve started writing to discuss my problems just so they’re out of my head, when that book was found, it was ripped up. Now that I sit back and analyze, I don’t think it was ripped with anger towards me, it was anger that I didn’t express myself to that person, whom I was supposed to be able to tell everything to. Instead I took that and shared that story in a different narrative and acted off of my own thoughts and emotions. Was it a good thing? Yes actually. It created an opening for me to be heard, understood, and for others to see the way I handled everything thrown my way.

It was actually someone I call my brother who noticed my writing, and my creativity with music that told me to go further. I did not come up with the name Literaturebyjessc, he did, and I love him for it. The breakdown starts with “Literature,” which was my main focus at the time, and then “byjessc,” signals “byjessicacharee,”. To me, it fit perfectly, and it stuck. It stuck in my community more than my actual “hood nickname,” did. That name went on to live in magazines, wikipedia, and google. It’s amazing how one small moment can have such a huge impact on your life, many look up to me as someone to look up to, I look at myself as a child of God, a regular human. I hold that with pride, the way the name Literaturebyjessc is known, and what came along with it.

• Literaturebyjessc ( Jessica Hunter )