Inquiry
Sidechat Inquiry
It’s easy to focus on scooters and mascots, easy to ignore the conflict simmering below the surface of certain posts as you scroll, and scroll, and scroll.
Dying Lotus
I don’t want my sexuality to be socially meaningful or my pleasure to be politically important. That feels so laborious.
To Revel in An Asian Body
As I reflected on my own relationship to racial fetishization, I discovered that it was overwhelmingly forged through ambiguity: ambiguous interactions, ambiguous responses, and ambiguous feelings. The instances that prompted my immediate, visceral disgust felt secondary to the instances that left me uncertain, on the precipice of being shoved into a tired cultural script but clinging to the hope that I’d hold my ground.
Why Sidechat Matters
Sidechat allows us to imagine an institution more socially coherent than the insular circles we traverse daily.
Trap On Trial
Still, several questions remain unanswered: Do the supposed “traps” of trap music outweigh its value? Can you evaluate the “right” way to musically reconcile with injustice? How should Black Americans communicate exasperation and emergency and unrest?
Harvard and Me
I was the only person I knew of coming to Harvard from South Africa, and, in turn, I was to everyone in South Africa the only person they knew going to Harvard — which is to say, I became Harvard.
Paulson Cover
Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named for John A. Paulson, a Business School graduate who donated $400 million to the University in 2015.
A Pathetic Aesthetic
The aestheticization — dare I say fetishization — of female pain reaffirms the conditions that made girls sad in the first place. Simply put, the Sad Girl reeks of complacency.
Mayi Inquiry Design
My shame of being found reading Colleen Hoover stemmed from a culture of intellectual snobbery – feeling superior and prideful about the type of culture you consume.
Learning to Fail
Is it vulnerable or honest about the reality of being at this school? Or is it playing to an aesthetic standard of what a Harvard student is supposed to be: personality, friendships, and academic success, all in one? These performances feed into a perception, however misguided, of students at Harvard and other elite universities as universally capable and flawless super-students, without even the possibility of failure.
In Defense of Colleen Hoover: Intellectual Snobbery at Harvard
My shame of being found reading Colleen Hoover stemmed from a culture of intellectual snobbery — feeling superior and prideful about the type of culture you consume. It’s the person who prides themselves on their knowledge of “classical” literature, listing off the last names of authors such as John Milton, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen as if they are family friends.
Zadie Smith Saw This Coming
Yet as I read “On Beauty,” her wonder of a 2005 novel, I couldn’t shake the one central mystery it posed: does Harvard by any other name sound as sweet?
This Pride Month, Postmates Wants You to Eat with Shame
Postmates, the food delivery app owned by Uber, announced "The Bottom-Friendly Menu" in 2022 Pride Month campaign. Though the project was conceptualized team of BGLTQ employees, it fails to scrutinize the terms we use for ourselves.
A Story of Unlearning
People wanted to hear the story of a white, conservative, evangelical woman from the South publicly endorsing vaccines, especially in the wake of a global pandemic that could be put to rest if those millions of “crazy evangelicals” just got the vaccine. But this, I soon realize, is not the story that matters most — at least, not to Katherine.
Unlearning Inquiry Image
A photo of Katherine's laptop as she opens "Is it Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage: A Christian Woman’s Guide to Hidden Emotional and Spiritual Abuse," by Natalie Hoffman.
A Form of Hesitation
What happens when the lost object speaks; when, given these material and psychic limitations, we do try to express our malaise? What forms exist to communicate and grapple with Asian Americans’ public and private racial grief and outrage?
Ever Nestled
Do other people still snuggle with their parents? Is that normal? I decide to talk to some people, maybe find some answers. I start by talking with the experts: professional cuddlers.
We're Really Not That Nice
Finally, one of them broke the heavy silence and asked me, in all seriousness, “Do you not have racism in Canada?”
A Diversified Debauchery
Final clubs were made for white men. Now, people of color — who were never supposed to step through their gates at all — are carving out communities inside them. They’re drinking their alcohol and smoking their cigars. They’re reveling in these spaces, instrumentalizing the white men’s mansions for pure fun.
The Justice of Writing: Kelly Yang’s Story of Survival
Now a New York Times-bestselling author, Yang’s numerous “about me” blurbs online simply say she gave up law to pursue writing, but they don’t tell the whole story. Yang herself experienced sexual assault when she was a first-year student at HLS. She lost faith in the legal system after the Law School, which she had viewed as a symbol of justice, declared her assaulter not guilty and investigated her instead. “Parachutes” is the culmination of the 17 years she spent rebuilding her identity and courage after the assault, she says.