Introspection
From Me, in Cambridge, with Love
Letters sent by mail are outdated, yes. But they are snapshots of time, the culmination of a friend’s life between the day they mailed their last letter and the moment they sat down to write this new one.
Are We Home Yet?
At the time, everyone thought the virus would pass in two months. I thought I’d get home by July 2020. It’s September 2021, and I haven’t been home for 20 months.
The Big Blue Unknown
There is something captivating about the freedom of the clouds — the way in which they trust that they will somehow float wherever they need to go, if they need to be anywhere at all. They seemed so unlike me, someone always tempted to plan and prepare for the next semester of classes to take, activities to join, or careers to pursue.
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?
Twenty Minutes in My Empty Mind
Over the past year, during the months living in my childhood bedroom, I often found myself taking aimless drives – canyon, freeway, shortcut to nowhere – discovering and rediscovering my favorite music. It is the only place where a spontaneous two-hour drive feels less like a chore and more like a gift.
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?”
Vision: "both and"
KNR sets out to explore the tension of “existing both within and beyond the projection of Otherness" through self-portraiture.
Welcome to the Club
How could I have felt complimented when I knew I was being denigrated? As the entire ethnicity group to which I belonged was being effectively erased, how could I have felt, however briefly, seen?
Unpacking the Baggage of Hawaii's Tourism
The portrayals of Hawaii as a party paradise for slender college kids holding beers or backflipping into blue water rubs me the wrong way. I find this kind of vacation porn reductive: It erases the state’s complicated identity.
How Things Fall Apart
I left later that night, relieved that I wouldn’t have to see Gayatri until the next winter but also wondering whether I had said too much. And sure enough, that one genuine moment came back to bite me.
To Love a Stranger
The silence was in no way uncomfortable; most times, it was pleasant, even relaxing. But underneath was a low thrum of pent-up frustration, which I only became aware of every once in a while. There was so much I wanted to tell her — about my high school track meets, the school paper, later my college roommates — and so much I wanted to ask, that I simply could not.
Corner Pieces
What is the organizing of a Zoom vigil supposed to look like? What kind of advocacy work are we expected to perform while we grieve? How do we protect bodies so tempting they seduce bullets?
Humility or Humiliation?
We are not all comedians, and we don’t all bear the same burden of trauma that Gadsby does, but her set made me realize that we are all capable of hurting ourselves through our remarks about ourselves, even when they are diffused by the intonation of a joke.
Reading My Way Back To Myself
I read because I remember everyone before me who shared a piece of themselves through books.
A Ride with Hatred
I am only half-surprised when a man spits in my face on the bus. What surprises me is my response, or lack thereof.
Mutation
This version of myself looks up and sees my mom’s shoulders heave up and down. I’m looking at my father’s back, and I don’t need to see his face to know that it is tearless, like mine. Only when I read these words does the memory float back to me. I described it as half-grief. Stuck in the wrong places, like sweat.