Endpaper
Big-City Blues
When I see New York again, we’ll reacquaint ourselves. I’ll tell the corners that used to know my secrets a few new ones. And then we’ll say goodbye, and I’ll be on a train north — missing home, but glad, for now, that I left.
Acceleration
I am afraid to carry the weight of other bodies, of other lives, with unflinching speed.
Stripping on Sundays
At the beginning of my sophomore year, I was on the phone with my grandmother when she asked me if I’d gotten a term-time job. “Yes,” I answered her. “I’m stripping at CRG.”
On Bearing Witness
When faced with uncomfortable displays of grief or jealousy-inducing accomplishments, bearing witness is the bravest act of love.
How Not to Be a Big Sister
Looking back, I realized that because I had tried to be the perfect long-distance sibling, I had turned myself into someone unrelatable and distant. I thought that because they looked up to me, I should only show the parts of myself that were worth admiring. Instead, I wondered if the best thing I could do for them was to be totally honest.
Daye: A Woman Who Untangles Roots
To this day, hearing her switch between languages — her mother tongue, Sorani Kurdish, and Arabic — reminds me of the melding of cultures I’ve always hoped to embody. Yet I find myself replying to her in Arabic. Mama longed for me to learn Kurdish, but I was pressured to embrace my Arab half at the expense of my mother’s tongue.
Asian Non-American?
Categorization can help us feel a sense of belonging to a certain group. But what happens when these categories become exclusive? What happens when these categories instead entrap and ensnare us?
Birds Chico Photo
A photo of birds that the author took one day as she lay in the grass at the park by her house.
To Pay Attention
I never thought I loved Chico. But that December day as I lay curled up in my childhood bed watching the interaction between Christine and Sister Joan on my iPad, I realized that I had paid attention to it. And if I really hated it, why did I spend so much time telling other people about it?
Elane orders of magnitude endpaper graphic
It is late spring, and Eomma is teaching me how to make rice. “It’s simple, watch,” she says, her Korean soft and gentle. A little unfamiliar in its slowness.
brandon endpaper
Other kids studied hard to impress their fathers; I did it so I could get away from mine.
What It Means to Lead The Harvard Crimson
In a way, you take an oath when you are elected to this presidency, even if you don’t realize the depths of its demands at the time.