Introspection
What Cannot Be Said in English
My salangai, red anklets with three rows of bells, chimed through our apartment as I danced Bharatanatyam, anIndian classical dance. Nearly every day for the past 16 years, I practiced rhythmic tattu mettus until my feet became calloused and our downstairs neighbors filed a complaint about the “incessant basketball thumping.”
Vision: “Sunset”
In the first installment of our new Vision content category, a digital illustration from Vicki Xu.
Under the Sea
Digital illustration, 1080 x 1350 pixels. An exploration of how spaces and shapes carve each other out.
Vision: “Year of the Metal Ox”
This year, the pandemic altered Lunar New Year under celebrations across the globe.
Kitchen Table
Exhales, but not his own, even and mechanical, as if from inside a spacesuit as he hurdled alone through the vast expanse of black. Sedated. Intubated. Alone. Only the beeping intervals of his heart monitor for company.
The South from the Outside
It is a privilege to write about the South the way I do, as a mythical world of wise old ladies and muddy creeks and velvet-antlered deer. Yet I try to complicate this world: I write about struggling with spirituality amid devout Christians and growing up with three sisters in a society permeated by patriarchy. Still, there are topics I’m afraid to touch.
Half-Asleep
Repression doesn’t take away just the bad memories — it snatches the good from my grasp, too. I don’t remember first meeting my friends; I don’t remember how we got so close. I don’t even remember most of the time we have spent together.
Drive Home to Me
Sometimes, when I roll down the window to smell the ocean, I dream I’m on a different road, headed to see her again. I pretend she’s still alive.
Another Vampire, Please
This wasn’t how I expected to spend my 21st birthday. But it was October, and given the lockdowns, pickings for a venue were slim. I’ve never been good at making decisions, and I certainly wasn’t going to start now — so I searched “restaurants near me” on Google and chose the closest one. My friends and I loaded into the car and drove off into the night. We got on I-195 and pulled up to our destination. Masks covering our faces, we entered Applebee’s.
The Lines We Will Not Cross
It was strange to experience this grief thousands of miles away from my mother or my uncles or my grandmother. There were no cousins to hug, no uncles who stood outside my door to guard me, no mothers to wipe my tears, no aunts to crack a joke to cheer me up. Truthfully, I didn’t really process much of that day. That’s another part of grief. Still, when I look back, I remember one thing clearly — my mother’s question to me before she hung up the phone. Did I have someone here?
The Price of Independence
As much as I’d like to call myself innocent, I benefited from the housing crisis that has — and will — cause thousands of people grief. I realized that I had tried so hard to see only the parts of the community that might make people stay — and ignored the ones that might push them out.
No Really, Let's Grab a Meal Sometime
“Let’s grab a meal sometime.” How many times did I hear this phrase last year? A benevolent proposition anywhere else, at Harvard, it’s become a nicety at best, and a symbol of everything wrong with social life on campus at worst.
Breaking Up with My Google Calendar
When my parents suggested we take daily walks together as a family early in the morning, I leapt at the opportunity — here was another chance to fill up my day. But as the walks swung unpredictably from 20 minutes to a full hour, as we wandered from one end of the neighborhood to the next, baking under the hot Jersey sun, the walks became more than just another invite in the Calendar. Life was expanded to include the routes between.