“The family is like the forest: if you are outside, it is dense; if you are inside, you see that each tree has its own position”. This Akan Proverb is the way author Yaa Gyasi begins her debut novel, a heart wrenching multi-generational story that follows the lineage of two sisters from Ghana in the…
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Illustration by Divyakshi Kedia My childhood memories of St. Patrick’s Day consist of my mom baking soda bread, decking me in plastic shamrock jewelry, and forcing me to wear green. “It’s the only way people will know you’re Irish,” she would explain. It was a holiday for celebrating a heritage that I knew next to…
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April of 2021 was an immense month for me. Overall, this entire year has been monumental, but April definitely had a lot going on. Between podcasts, performances, and my birthday, I also released my first book Corazón De Seda in April. And though busy feels like an understatement at this point, the sleepless nights have felt…
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TW: rape, eating disorders Surprise, it’s an exquisite, haunting metaphor. The Vegetarian, winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2016, is Han Kang’s first novel translated from Korean into English, by Deborah Smith. Originally released as three separate ‘novelettes’, Kang published them together for the first time in one volume in 2007 with Changbi Publishers,…
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Echo chambers have caused more miscommunication than productive discourse. Imagine an elementary playground where the only group of kids are exposed to what the leader says and does. They mimic the behavior and comments the leader displays. There are no other groups of kids playing except them. The kids start to bounce the same ideas…
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[Trigger warning: This writing contains material about sexual and dating violence.] No no no no No no no no no no No no no no no no no no no no no no She spreads her lips apart and then makes an o of it as she says the word, over and over. Her lips…
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We sit together in the companionable silence of midnight, and savior this slice of life before lockdown. For three months already, the novel Coronavirus has had us trapped in our four walls, with only each other for company, and we’re starting to go insane. I inhale the open night. The mountain grasses whisper warm perfume…
Read MoreVII. How do you deny patience? How do you dismiss respect? How do you reject unconditional love? I will tell you how. You like yourself so little that you find anyone who will give you those things a fool. Only a delusional, misguided pushover would voluntarily nurture you. That is how it was being with…
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can’t keep a journal so I track my mood thru monthly playlists When I want to remember where I was during a certain point in time in my life, I go to Spotify and listen to the playlist I created that month. A habit I can’t break, I’ve made monthly playlists since 2016 when I…
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I recently found myself purchasing a broken cuckoo clock on Ebay. But why a broken cuckoo clock, you may ask? And why a cuckoo clock in the first place? The answer to both of these questions is simple enough—it was Christmas; my partner’s father loves to tinker; and he has, of late, began restoring and…
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