Spare Parts Author Joshua Davis Visits St. Luke's

The Sentinel's Arts Editor Mary Zeck '17 shared this story in The Sentinel today:

It’s not everyday that one gets to hear about arm wrestling, sumo wrestling, and stances on immigration reform in one neat presentation. Spare PartsAuthor, Joshua Davis, came to St. Luke’s today to share some of his philosophies and life experiences with students. Although arm and sumo wrestling may not seem like beneficial experiences for students to hear about, Davis highlights the importance of stepping out of one’s comfort zone to reach a higher understanding of the world around us.

To show the students the benefit of giving new things a try, Joshua said, “By suddenly putting myself out there, I become a nationally ranked arm wrestler.” Joshua Davis is a contributing writer to Wired Magazine, and also is co-founder of Epic Magazine. Epic Magazine is primarily about finding interesting stories from around the world that no one else is telling. Davis did not actually intend to be a journalist; he studied economics in college and became a data entry clerk. His curiosity for excitement led him to magazine writing through a series of coincidences.

Davis’s serious writing career began when he wrote a piece about the war in Iraq for Wired Magazine in 2003. “I didn’t know anything about journalism,” Davis said, “but I went to the editors at Wire and asked to write a side story about the war and they explained that no one was actually covering it. I don’t think they had anyone else, so they sent me.” This experience resulted in him being considered a journalist, and receiving emails from people around the world who had stories to tell.

In Spare Parts, he writes of four students who risk it all to get their story out there. Although they knew that exposing themselves as illegal would put them at a serious risk, they went through with it because they believed the story was important enough to tell. “Oscar said ‘I think this is a Rosa Parks moment, “this is a moment where we can’t not speak up, and we want you to write it’ so I did,” said Joshua Davis. From that point on he devoted himself, spending his time researching and interviewing to get what he needed to write his article. “I spend years camped out in their living rooms, their classrooms, I spoke to their parents, their teachers, I spoke with them on the phone. Any writing problem is a reporting problem, so if you are stuck then you need to do more reporting.” Davis’s devotion to the topic shows how passionate he is. He questioned our student body, “is there something in your life that you feel so strongly about that you would risk being sent to a country that you had never really lived in?”

“My personal evolution is from a personal entry clerk, to someone who goes around and tell stories,” Davis says, “what I love to do is to find stories that people don’t pay attention to and then I tell them.” Joshua Davis inspires us to find whatever ridiculous hobby we are passionate about, and try all the ridiculous hobbies that other people are passionate about. By doing so, we can create a wider mind, one where we are able to put ourselves in someone’s shoes to understand different cultures. “I went through my own journey of moving beyond the clique… If all you get is messages that say one thing, then all you think is that one thing. Part of my process was pushing myself beyond that. I think that’s something that journalism helps us do–to push ourselves beyond the assumptions.” Whether it be scrabble, tree climbing, or lion training, Davis pushes us to explore everything the world has to offer, to learn about others and maybe something about ourselves.