The Identity Issue Vol. II

THE IDENTITY ISSUE THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY NEWS-LETTER | DECEMBER 2019 | THE IDENTITY ISSUE

who am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am who a FINDING YOURSELF who a ho am i? who am i? who am who am i? who am i? i? who am i? who am i? wh who am i? o am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am who am i? who am i? who a ? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? ho am i? who a who am i? who am i? who a who am i? m i? who am i? who am i? who am i? who am i? am i?

finding yourself O

ne oF THe MoST CHAllenGInG and universal questions of humankind is, “Who am I?” It’s pretty obvious why. It’s the most common question someone could ever ask themselves. We’re constantly searching for answers to figure out who we are. After all, humans are naturally inquisitive. We’re full of curiosity, fascination and wonder.

It’s hard to conjure a solid answer to why we are this way. Perhaps we’re obsessed with figuring ourselves out. We might never figure out the meaning of life, or why we are capable of exploring that question. Discerning who we are, however, is a close alternative. In a seemingly perpetually changing universe with more variables than constants, it’s reassuring to know something definite about our lives. It gives us a feeling of control over our lives.

But figuring out who we are is difficult. We don’t need to be philosophers to figure that part out. Even what we think are the most unchangeable parts of ourselves are not completely static. We all have experiences where we challenge any beliefs we have about the most fundamental parts of ourselves. In this edition of The News-Letter’s magazine, The Identity Issue, editors and writers explore the most important facets of themselves and how their beliefs, ideas and identities have changed over time. After all, time changes everyone; who you were a year ago is different from who you are now. Sports Editor Brandon Wolfe, for example, writes about how college challenged his beliefs in who he was as a person after what seemed like many of his future plans and expectations went awry.

It can be difficult to pinpoint our identities. How do we reduce ourselves to a single headline, a page or a simple label? There is no one standard umbrella to categorize what we consider to be our most important aspects of our identity. Voices columnist Zubia Hasan writes about how she reconciles science with religion, while Opinions Editor Ariella Shua discusses whether she should identify as white. News & Features Editor Rudy Malcom reflects on the implications of painting his fingernails, while writer Keidai Lee writes about living at his own pace.

Perhaps what’s most important to us isn’t a physical part of us. Cartoons Editor Elizabeth Im writes about her definition of home and how that has impacted her way of viewing what is important to her.

We might not be able to figure out who we are, but in the processes of reflecting, exploring and thinking, we have the power to determine who we will be. We hope you enjoy these stories from our writers and editors about who they are, and how they grapple with the question “Who am I?” Happy reading!

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Stephanie Lee, Magazine Editor The Identity Issue is a special publication of The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, the student newspaper of Johns hopkins university. for general inquiries or information on how to join, email managing@jhunewsletter.com. for business inquiries, email business@jhunewsletter.com.

The News-Letter can be found online at jhunewsletter.com, in print every Thursday during the school year and on the social media sites below. facebook: Jhu News-letter Twitter: @jhunewsletter instagram: @jhunewsletter

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E OF CONTENTS BLE OF CONTENTS ABLE OF CONTENTS ABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENT TABLE OF CONTENT ABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENT ABLE OF CONTENTS ABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENT ABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENT TABLE OF CONTENT TABLE OF CONTENT BLE OF CONTENTS E OF CONTENTS 3 5

How college has changed how I’ve seen myself

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Reconnecting with my Korean roots in America

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Lessons I’ve learned as a transfer student

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How my familial ties shaped who I am today

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Reclaiming my Brasileira roots

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What home means to me

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What I learned from painting my nails

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Growing up in a rural area

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Finding pride through learning Mandarin

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Coming out once more in college

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My relationship with science and religion

Reflections on taking a DNA test

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Should I identify as white?

The fall issue

photo by STEPHANIE LEE

WANT TO PLACE AN AD WITH US? Contact Business at business@jhunewsletter.com

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CHANGING THE GAME HOW COLLEGE HAS IMPACTED HOW I SEE MYSELF art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

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uG. 11, 2016 wAS THe FIRST DAy I stepped on the Homewood Campus as a student. Like many 18-year-olds, I thought I had a good grasp on who I was and who I wanted to be, and I was so excited for what this new journey would bring me. I was coming to a top university to play football and to study to become a doctor. College was going to be the best years of my life, right?

Well, that feeling lasted about a month for me.

You see, I grew up incredibly attached to my family, and being from the Pittsburgh area — which is about a four-hour drive away from campus — I became quite homesick early on. The extroversion that had served me well in high school had been overtaken by a crippling feeling of intimidation and a lack of self-confidence, so friends were hard to come by. I began to feel incredibly alone and hopeless.

That feeling was only multiplied when my first round of midterms came and knocked me down several, several pegs. To add insult to injury came an actual injury, when I sustained a concussion during a football practice in mid-October.

At this point, I was completely and utterly lost.

I was away from my family and having trouble making friends; I wasn’t doing well in my classes; and now with my concussion I couldn’t play football, study or even go to classes.

When my concussion forced me to miss my first football game — an away game at Ursinus — I entered a dark place. A beautiful aspect of being on the football team is that you are immediately introduced to more than 80 other Hopkins students that you can relate to, but when all of your teammates are away and you know very few other people, Homewood becomes a very lonely campus.

Spring semester brought more of the same struggles with homesickness, school and loneliness, and when I spoke to my friends at other schools who seemed to have everything figured out, I began looking at other options beyond Hopkins. I was desperate for something to change, and I figured that the best move I could make was to leave Hopkins. I started filling out applications for other schools, not telling anyone in my limited social circle of my struggles and continuing to try and put on a brave face.

Mere clicks away from uprooting myself from Baltimore, it would be the late, great Jim Margraff who noticed

by BRANDON WOLFE, sports editor me struggling and asked some of my teammates to sit down with me and make sure I was doing okay. It was a conversation I desperately needed, and it was the first time I had let myself be truly vulnerable since I came to campus. My teammates helped convince me that I needed to be more open and more willing to seek help, as they had gone through similar situations and overcome them.

That was the first major change I had made.

The second would come when I sat down and really evaluated whether I wanted to be a doctor.

Throughout high school, I went back and forth on what I wanted to do with my life. There was a time that I wanted to be an engineer; there was a time that I wanted to be a physical therapist; there was a time that I wanted to be a teacher. However, one occupation that others kept recommending to me was pediatrician. They felt that, because I was smart and liked working with kids, being a pediatrician would be perfect for me, and that pushed me to make this my new dream.

What it took me so long to realize was that I wasn’t studying to become a doctor because I wanted to — I was doing it because everyone else thought I should — and that was reflected in my general disinterest and subpar performances in the classes I was taking. Once I realized this, I was able to look within myself and find what motivates me and where my interests lie, which is what led me to my new pursuit of public health and economics.

I was no longer studying to become a doctor, but I was still able to play football, right? Well, not for much longer. It was in early September of my sophomore year that I suffered my third concussion, and, after consulting my doctor and my family, I had to hang up the cleats and stop playing.

Within two years, I had changed my major, been forced to stop playing football and almost transferred schools. Not exactly how I imagined my first year and a half of college going, but it was also what I needed.

I had to do a lot of soul searching to come to grips with a lot of change in my life, but what used to

scare me became something that excited me. For the first time in several years, I was no longer just a football player who wanted to be a doctor, I was able to become someone else, and without the constant pressure of teachers or coaches back home, I was able to do become someone I wanted to be.

I consulted my parents and my friends a lot during this transition period, but one thing that my family emphasized to me was to make sure that, whatever I decided to do, I did it for myself and nobody else. They knew that I had been trying to appease everyone else and that this next stage of my life would be something I needed to do on my own.

Now here I am, a Public Health and Economics major who helps to coach football and I’m feeling the best I’ve felt. I talk to my friends and family from home frequently, but I’ve been able to break out of my shell and meet new people on campus. I’m not the same person that I was when I came to Hopkins on Aug. 11 in 2016, and that’s a good thing.

I’m happier now. I feel more fulfilled now. I’m me now.

Change can be something terrifying, or it can be something that allows you to find out who you really are, but you can only find out if you accept its inevitability and embrace it. It’s not the same for everyone. Maybe it’s a haircut or a change in perspective, but no matter what college — or life — brings you, be willing to embrace change and discover who you are.

The fall issue

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AT MY OWN PACE

HOW TO NOT GRADUATE “ON TIME”: TRANSFERRING FROM COMMUNITY COLLEGE TO HOPKINS

by KEIDAI LEE, for the news-letter art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

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oR MoST oF My lIFe, I THouGHT I wAS dumb. Or at least, incompetent. It felt like nothing I did was good enough, and the bureaucracy of semidecent public high schools didn’t help much. Additionally, as I was finishing up high school, I saw how expensive college was, and so I couldn’t take the idea of college seriously.

I didn’t understand financial aid, and my non-English-speaking parents certainly did not either. It wasn’t like I felt like I was learning much in high school anyways – how could college be any better? I was always just so tired all the time. What was the point? Was I just doing it all for a piece of paper?

Yet suddenly, four years have passed since I graduated high school, most of my high-school classmates are graduating and I’m just taking my first step onto the Hopkins campus, ready to formally enter into the four-year university environment for the first time in my life. Thanks to a mysterious man named Bloomberg, I was not in any debt. And apparently, I’m not dreaming.

I guess I won’t be graduating “on time” anymore. I guess attending community college will always have its place on my resume. I guess I still won’t go into life-wrecking debt. And I guess my story is not finished being written.

If I attended college straight out of high school, I would have been a mess. I was so lost. I hated myself so much and nobody seemed to disagree with how I saw myself.

My junior year was the first time I thought seriously about my life as something beyond a manufactured instrument of capitalism. I had just gotten kicked out of my student exchange program abroad, it was February and snowing up past my calves, and for the first time in my life, I had to wrestle face to face with ideas of racism, sexism, sexual assault, classism, political power dynamics and injustice. It was also the first time in my life I thought seriously about actually not being a doctor like my parents wanted. I was so angry. So angry that I refused to communicate much with my parents. So angry that I said little to nothing to them.

How drastically my life has changed since community college. I never could have dared to dream of today. Now that I’m here at Hopkins, I knew I’d immediately feel a bit out of place.

A little too old. A little too loud. A little too blunt. A little too

different. Then again, I held these fears as if my life has ever been lived any differently.

Attending community college, dropping out of college for two years and meeting people during my journey all taught me the beauty of being different. I wish to carry these lessons with me for the rest of my life. After making a variety of new friends, including returning adult students, students in poverty, single mothers, ex-convicts, veterans, Deaf friends and others who were not like me, I learned that learning happens both with and without textbooks.

Talented students in these situations have always had to come up with creative ways to get through their lives. They hold unique expertise over their arenas of society, presenting valuable perspectives addressing hidden societal problems and successes.

Additionally, being gifted with a scholarship to study Chinese in Taiwan allowed me to write Chinese at an academic university level, which ironed out miscommunication between me and my parents. I finally had the tools to access contexts across oceans, across time and across perspectives. These tools made me capable of advocating for my personality when interacting with my parents. I suddenly had the words to gradually bind the gap between their expectations and my integrity to who I am.

How strange that there was a day where I would be preparing to attend Hopkins, knowing that I almost gave up on myself. Never did I imagine a day when learning would become more than grades, ego or going through the motions. Never did I imagine a day when the details would roll off textbook pages, walking by my side as mentors, leaders, lieutenants, servants, enemies and friends: knowledge that was suddenly brought to life, illuminating the world around me. Never did I imagine a day where I would love learning again.

Never did I imagine becoming less alone, less misunderstood. Never did I imagine being in a place where fully explaining my thoughts is seen as clarifying and reasonable rather than intimidating and arrogant. Never did I imagine being no longer ashamed to become better, no longer ashamed to see the world through my own lights, no longer ashamed about the shape of my eyes, no longer ashamed to be myself.

I remember one day during Hopkins orientation week, I heard that a company was giving out free pies. I asked my friend Charice for one single slice. She came back with a whole bag. I had dessert for the rest of the week and even a bit of breakfast.

Every other resource I encountered here seemed similar: I would ask for one thing and suddenly get the world in return.

Compared to how under-resourced my high school and community college were, I was amazed.

I was amazed by how I would ask one question and get answers for questions I didn’t realize I had originally had, from Alayna with my resumes, to Tracy with research opportunities, to Bri and Eric and Denise with my advisement, to Sara and Ali and Milad and Claudia and Kelly and Justin and Chaz and Dr. G and Dr. Taylor and Dr. Huang and Monsieur Tribotté with their office hours (so many office hours!).

I know this school can be overwhelming at times. And I know that not every single thing at Hopkins is like Charice’s bag of pies — there are definitely people who bureaucratically dismiss people as if they were problems rather than humans. There are definitely people who take more than they give. But I know that in comparison to the abundance of resources, those who steal away from the light can have it — they need it more than I do. I have more than enough stars illuminating my skies, more than enough light to live just momentarily.

Too many students today are blindly shuffled into college while still lost and bruised by society’s handcuffs. Not everyone magically hits their stride when they’re 18. Everyone has their own timeline.

Even here, at Hopkins, I met other people who also chose to stay true to themselves rather than adhere to an expected timeline. I met someone who didn’t learn English until three years before they transferred to Hopkins, studying books and movies by herself, alone in America. I met someone who escaped a cult that didn’t believe in education, and then had to take the next seven years obtaining a GED, an associate’s degree and a new set of life skills appropriate for a completely different society. And then I met people like me, who were just left behind, but demanded to be heard anyway, with or without a pleasant voice.

Hopkins and other elite institutions should accept more community college students and students of non-traditional age. We remind the world of a beauty to life that can be found beyond what is socially expected. We remind the world that school is about learning with joy and making the world better, not about social status or just a stamp of approval for our next biggest career move.

Our community college is a piece of my story that will never leave us, despite how much shame we were forced to swallow. Proudly, we will never forget that there is more to life than the tracks littered with applause and pre-approval. We will never forget that there is more to life than a piece of paper. We will never forget that no one deserves to be left behind simply because they are different.

We will never forget that there are rich libraries hidden behind the ugliest covers.

And our stories will speak when the time is right.

“There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under the heavens... and everything is made beautiful in its time.” (Ecc 3:1–11)

The fall issue

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BRASILEIRA PRIDE

STRUGGLING WITH VALIDITY IN THE LATINX COMMUNITY photo illustration by NIHARIKA DESIRAJU, webmaster

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AM lAÍS. I AM HISPAnIC, I AM Latinx, I am Brazilian, I am a woman. These are all my “identities,” and I accept these identities now, but that wasn’t always the case. I know in my heart I’m apart of the Latinx community, but why do I feel like because I have white skin and European heritage, that I’m not a valid member, even when it’s the identity I fit into the most?

Let’s take it back a few years. At the beginning of each school year, the teacher stumbled over my name while taking attendance and asked: “Where is it from?”

“Brazil.”

At that point, the teacher would raise their eyebrows and exclaim, “Oh, very cool!” as if to reassure me that, although difficult to pronounce my name isn’t something to be ashamed of.

For 12 years, I disliked my name so much that I told people to pronounce it like the English word “lies,” or, “an intentionally false statement.” I thought it was a great idea for teachers and coaches to write an English word next to my name so they didn’t forget. I seemed more American, even though I’m originally from São Paulo.

My name is actually pronounced with two syllables, an accent on the i, and a fiery delivery: La-ees. I was living a lie, literally and figuratively, with an intentionally false name and persona.

by LAÍS SANTORO, for the news-letter

I thought I blended into the American suburbia that surrounded because I didn’t really have opportunities to talk to other Brazilian or Latinx people in elementary or middle school. As a result, I worked to blend into what was around me, a very different culture than what surrounded me in Brazil.

At least I thought I blended in. Thinking back on it, my ideas of what was culturally inappropriate suffocated my Brazilian background: I made myself culturally appropriate, normal.

Returning from trips home in Brazil, I noticed I could never talk about my adventures with my friends because they’d only be confused. How could I explain Rio, Carnaval, butt lifts or bikini waxes to a third-grader without getting called down to the principal’s office?

Then, after visiting Rio one summer, seeing millions of people all smiling while living and breathing Brazil, I was a bit stunned and even disappointed at myself. Why did I try to behave like everyone else in the U.S. just because I lived there? Why did I succumb to social norms telling me to act “American”? Why did I hide such a colorful and exotic side to me from everyone around me for 14 years?

I wasn’t fake, but I was trying to be.

I then knew that this wasn’t who I wanted to be anymore, because my true self was there all along, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions and inaccurate conclusions I drew as a kid that became my beliefs about who I was.

I returned to myself before the world got its hands on me: a Brasileira.

I spent so much time trying to suffocate my voice and culture that now it’s taking me so much more time to embrace it. And now, I don’t struggle with my Brazilian identity, but with my Latinx one.

The question I’ve received so much in the past year, from people and from several college questionnaires: are you Hispanic or Latinx? Are Brazilians Hispanic or Latinx? Honestly, I think I’m both?

I still don’t know how to answer that question, but since my body originated in Latin America, in Brazil, and regardless of what language I speak, I am Latinx.

I’m in college now with a diversity I was never able to experience before. I didn’t realize how well I fit into my Latin American roots until coming here. However, in my organizing work in the climate justice

movement, I wonder if I am the right person to be up there, on a stage, speaking to people about an issue that hasn’t affected me as much as others, as much as minorities in my new city of Baltimore and around the world.

I worry that I am taking up space that isn’t mine and isn’t meant for me because yes, I am Latinx, yes, I am a woman.

But I am also white. Not a white American, but a white Brasileira.

I have immense privilege in all aspects of my life because of that. People see my face, my skin color, they probably don’t think that I’m an immigrant and they treat me as they would any other white person. Yet others from the same country, from the same continent that I’m from, do not have the same fortune. They’re turned away at American borders, struggle to find safe spaces for their families, face injustices every day of their lives. Mostly because they have darker skin than me.

And I continue to worry that I’m taking up too much space.

Do I have the right to speak for those people who are struggling each day?

Do I have the right to speak for indigenous communities in Northern Brazil who are losing their homes, livelihoods and cultures due to white supremacy, greed and lack of human decency? Should I be the one to talk about that?

I don’t know. But I’m alive, I’m young, I have a platform and I think I ought to use it. I think speaking up is better than staying silent. I think speaking up helps us learn that basic human rights should exist in this country and are not a controversial topic to be avoided, but encouraged.

I hope that I can elevate those voices so, in the future, we won’t have to speak up for others, but they can speak up for themselves; it was wrong of us to take that right away from them in the first place.

I’m slowly starting to stop worrying about how I should use my privilege and instead, just using it. Time’s running out, the climate crisis is becoming more and more irreversible as we speak and people are dying. Are we going to be complicit in these injustices or are we going to act?

I’ve been challenged with lots of questions, brought on by myself and society around me. But isn’t the whole point of “living in the present,” enjoying our human lives, to not be questioning the future? I’m using my privilege to do what I can today and encouraging others to do the same.

I am Laís. I am Hispanic. I am Latinx. I am Brazilian. I am a woman. I am many things, and human is the best one.

And I continue to worry that I’m taking up too much space.

BEYOND THE POLISH

WHAT I LEARNED FROM PAINTING MY FINGERNAILS

by RUDY MALCOM, news & features editor art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

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nlIke MACkleMoRe, wHen I was in the third grade, I didn’t think that I was gay. During my childhood, I was instead a mouthpiece of heteronormativity. While in kindergarten, a friend declared that she would one day marry a woman. I argued to her that this was impossible. Even earlier, when a boy in my preschool class showed me his navy-blue fingernails, I insisted that his hands resembled a girl’s.

Lately on campus I’ve noticed an abundance of queer men sporting painted nails. “I’m not like other gays,“ I’ve told myself, straightening out my fingers — literally and figuratively — in front of me.

This semester I haven’t been too preoccupied with my sexuality or how others perceive it. Why might this be, you ask? Firstly, I actually had a (somewhat) healthy summer fling to whom I admitted, “Aside from any unrequited love affair, you’re the person I’ve liked the most.” No longer being turned off by guys who like me — that’s self-growth.

Secondly, upon returning to this hallowed campus, The News-Letter has essentially become my beloved boyfriend. I used to worry about people pigeonholing me as the gay guy; now I worry that people see me only as an overzealous editor and reporter.

I haven’t had much time or energy to think of romance, and the closest thing to love that I’ve encountered so far this semester is when a stranger offered me her phone charger in the Reading Room at 3 a.m. (I don’t know how she knew that I needed it. I think she was my soulmate. Should I crawl back into the closet?)

On the eve of fall break, having almost completed a particularly demoralizing week, I confided in my friend Milly — you may know her as Editor-in-Chief Amelia Isaacs — that I desired some sort of change, perhaps a wild haircut.

Ever the voice of reason, Milly suggested painting my fingernails, knowing that I’d been contemplating the idea. A dramatic hair makeover would be unoriginal, I decided, and schlepping to the barber shop seemed like a great deal of effort, whereas Milly could paint my nails that very night. I, ever the advocate of instant gratification, accepted her generous offer.

She presented me with a spectrum of nail polishes. I first chose matte black; I imagined myself myself wearing my cherished pleather jacket, exuding sultry angst from every lacquered fingertip.

Alas, I depersonalized a wee bit after Milly applied the coating to the fingernails on my left hand; it didn’t feel like my left hand was my own.

Let’s gloss over (ha) certain details, like me being compulsive about the order in which Milly painted my nails. Ultimately, she painted my right hand fingers gold and my left hand fingers a dark blue-gray — a melancholic periwinkle, if you will. I was quite pleased. “Is this self-care?” I asked myself.

The next morning, I decided I hated the gold and obtained some nail polish remover from another friend to get rid of it. For one week, I kept the paint on my left hand fingers. At first, I buried my hand in my pocket, but I quickly overcame my internalized homophobia. Contrary to what I’d expected, only a handful (I’m sorry) of people mentioned anything about my painted nails. And the offhand (I hate me, too) comments I received from peers were all positive.

I’d been looking for a change, but having painted nails wasn’t doing much for me. It didn’t provide me with much attention or somehow help me type more quickly, and it didn’t make transcribing interviews any more enjoyable. Shockingly, not one person praised me for deconstructing gender.

Eventually, the polish on my left middle finger chipped, causing my entire hand to become absolutely hideous. I began scraping the polish off all my nails while sitting in A Century of Queer Literature. How apropo! Later that night, I finished the job in the shower and emerged from my bathroom the pinnacle of masculinity once more (In case it isn’t abundantly clear, I am entirely kidding).

I feel compelled to write something profound, to proclaim that by painting my fingernails — really by having my fingernails painted (I have no agency) — I unchained myself from the confines of toxic masculinity.

I don’t think that I was dismantling the patriarchy, but perhaps I was. My painted nails didn’t allow me to better express my gender or sexuality; they just looked nice. I wasn’t trying to make a statement. Why should five or even 10 dollops of nail polish have to be political?

Ultimately, though I briefly worried that people would pigeonhole me, no one seemed to really care that my nails were painted. For the most part, we are too busy worrying about ourselves to give a damn about relatively microscopic changes to others’ appearances. People didn’t see me any differently because my nails were painted; only I did.

For now, I’m relishing in the restored nudity of my fingernails. But who knows? Perhaps I will one day have them painted again. Perhaps I will even paint them myself.

Why should five or even ten dollops of nail polish have to be political?

The fall issue

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I

OUT

(AGAIN)

QUEERNESS, CLOSETS AND COMING OUT IN COLLEGE

by SOPHIA LOLA, copy editor art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

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T’S Been oVeR A yeAR SInCe I FIRST arrived here at Hopkins, full of hopes, fears and vague expectations for my college experience. That arrival entailed much fanfare from overenthusiastic FYMs and even more awkward introductions and icebreakers between me and my classmates. I expected that, and I’ll even admit that I loved it in its cringyness.

I also expected that being a queer- and specifically bisexual-identifying woman in a new place would be something I’d have to carefully navigate.

I’d no longer be living in progressive New York City, and I’d be surrounded by peers from all over the country and world; I couldn’t assume that everyone accepted queer folks. I honestly was nervous about possible negative interactions. In my bio for the roommate-matching questionnaire, I had written, “Looking for someone LGBTQfriendly,” and eventually settled on someone who labeled herself “liberal,” figuring it was a good enough sign that she’d be okay with my identity (spoiler: We became best friends and still live together!).

What I didn’t expect, however, was feeling forced back into the closet, all on a big technicality: heteronormativity. In all my worrying that people might treat me badly or differently for being queer, I hadn’t realized it would no longer even be a given that I was queer at all. But that’s what wound up being the most difficult part of navigating my queer identity on a new college campus — I had to come out again.

Coming out is something necessitated, at worst, by a culture that is heteronormative and assumes everyone to be cisgender and straight until proven otherwise, or, at best, by a culture in which people are aware that assumptions are often wrong and thus settle on openminded uncertainty until someone shares how they identify.

There was no way people could know for sure that I was queer, which I did want, unless I explicitly told them.

Because of that, once I arrived at Hopkins and realized this situation, I constantly felt anxiety and in-

ternalized pressure to tell my new friends, but it was still accompanied by fear of how people might react. Coming out was a choice to be honest about my identity, but that also meant I was choosing to give others the opportunity to say or ask whatever they wanted about it, which gave me pause. I hated that coming out could be construed as “bringing it on myself” in this way. I also had the option to not come out, to remain in the closet that the blank, heteronormative slate of freshman year had forced me into. But I didn’t really like the option of staying closeted; it seemed inauthentic and probably overcautious.

I wasn’t even that used to being closeted — at least, not among my friends and peers (my family is another story). In high school my coming-out process had closely followed the self-discovery that I was queer. My friends, many of whom were also queer, were just around for that natural part of my teenage development, like they were for many others.

This made being closeted and, eventually, coming out in college feel new and unnatural in comparison, and the many instances of coming out went a variety of ways. My roommate was probably the smoothest. A few days in, we were talking about our proms, and I mentioned going to my ex-girlfriend’s prom — my first direct mention to her of being queer despite the small pride flag hanging on my wall.

“Wait, so you just said ‘girlfriend.’ Are you lesbian or bi? Either one’s fine; I’m just curious, if you’re okay telling me,” she said, or something to that effect.

“Bi,” I told her.

“Cool.” And that was that. She had latched on to my purposely nonchalant statement like I had hoped, and we got it out of the way.

Another instance was funnier. Over dinner at the FFC, it had somehow come up among me and a couple of guy friends, one of whom I thought was kind of cute, that I like women — but not that I also like people of other genders, including men. Afterwards, I totally overanalyzed how I had probably messed up my chances with him (like I had any at all in the first place!) by making him think I was a lesbian. How was I supposed to suavely inform him of my true identity and availability now!?

Yet another instance was more difficult. This time was with some friends who I had already told, but queerness was still a new point of discussion and understanding between us. One day we were talking about it, and they

What I didn’t expect, however, was feeling forced back into the closet, all on one big technicality: heteronormativity.

were confused by something I said. They started talking over each other, bombarding me with questions about how certain identities are defined and why I identify how I do. Feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and othered by this seeming demand to explain and represent my queerness and all queerness, I walked out. We later talked it out, but the experience still left me shaken up and wary.

And though I’m now a sophomore, these coming-out moments haven’t just stopped. Hopkins is a big place; you can constantly be getting to know new people, so the need persists.

This isn’t to say I want people to stop asking or that I want to stop talking about it. I want to be open about who I am, I’m fortunate to have always lived in communities where being open is safe and the anxiety I felt when I first came here has mellowed. But it can be tedious in that my queerness will always be more of a thing when someone’s getting to know me, even someone accepting, than another person’s heterosexuality will be when getting to know them. There might be confusion and questions or even just someone feeling the need to say, “Cool!” in answer to my unspoken question, “Are you okay with that?” This won’t change until we as a society get to a place where queerness is more normalized (though perhaps it will never be fully normalized because we objectively are a minority in the population) and less controversial than it is now. And that will probably still take some time, despite progress.

Beyond coming out, heteronormativity made me self-conscious in another way. After asserting my queerness, it sometimes felt like I had to keep proving it but wasn’t succeeding. In an attempt to find queer community last year, I had gone to Diverse Sexuality and Gender Alliance meetings at first, but then my workload got heavier, and I couldn’t find the will to leave my comfy dorm for late-night Monday meetings, so I stopped going.

Basically all the partners I’ve had since coming to college have been male, leading my friend to one day comment, “For someone who talks about liking girls all the time, you sure seem to be on a dick kick.” (I should note this wasn’t said with intent to actually undermine my identity. And let’s be real: “Dick kick” is hilarious.) I started comparing myself to who I’d been in high school — I was president of my school’s gender-sexuality alliance, dating a girl, out to my friends and classmates. Then I compared myself to one of my best friends here, who’s on the board of an LGBTQ student group, has a girlfriend and makes even more gay jokes than I do.

So sure, I had some pride stuff in my room and talked about being queer and I kept identifying as

queer, but I questioned whether I was outwardly acting queer enough to be “allowed” to identify that way. I felt like I was maybe straight-passing or simply just straight because I wasn’t proving myself otherwise.

But then, on National Coming Out Day a few weeks ago, I got a text from my brother, saying he was proud of me for being a fierce and strong queer person of color and also honored that I’d trusted him enough to come out to him a couple years ago. It was so affirming.

And it shifted my thinking. I remembered that my sexuality is a constant pillar of my identity in that the way I practice it can vary, but only I get to make the overall choice of how to label and define it — it’s always my sexuality. Despite feeling insecure about whether I should or could still identify as queer since my outward expression and behavior had changed, it still felt right for me to identify as queer.

So I arrived at a new question: Am I doing enough, as a queer person, for myself and my community? Being queer is something I love about myself, and I love the queer community. So that’s why I should do more than just make gay jokes with my gay friends and hang pride flags on my wall: not because it makes me straight if I don’t, but because I love it and should be involved. That’s why I’m writing this article, why I’ll keep coming out, and why I’ll find more ways to be vocal and active going forward.

GOD, PHYSICS AND I MY RELATIONSHIP WITH RELIGION AND SCIENCE art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

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oMeTIMeS THe THInGS I SAy sound like the babbling of a romantic idealist. My motivations for physics are too far removed from reality, my reasons for loving the subject too “soft,” and so I don’t know if I have ever really fit into the straight-back mold of an algorithmic physicist.

This is interesting to me: The idea of what a physicist should be like is somehow so ingrained in the pop culture and traditional narratives of our society. As a Muslim woman of faith, I don’t feel like I’m ever part of these narratives.

Physics and my relationship with God are perhaps the two most defining aspects of my identity.

Physics is a relatively new one. Ever since I was young, I wanted to be a writer, but it wasn’t until the end of high school that I discovered physics was just another way of writing about the world.

Since then I haven’t looked back. Through the confusing derivations, the exhausting problem sets, the technical jargon, I have loved physics because I love the way it describes the world. I love that it is trying to get to some truth — any degree of truth over how this world works, and that is beautiful to me. That is worth the torturous exams and the crippling self-doubt.

But God? Hmm. My relationship with God has been as long standing as my birth. As far back as I can remember, I have always had a relationship with God — not always a very good one, but one nonetheless. To me God was like this omniscient invisible friend who had all the power. So through the sluggish nights and the even more sluggish mornings, I would wake up and have some sort of conversation with this invisible being. Sometimes I would be angry about the way things had turned

by ZUBIA HASAN, for the news-letter out, sometimes I would be grateful and sometimes I would be indifferent. Whatever my emotions, I made sure to convey them to this invisible being I believed in.

But here is where my dilemma lies. A girl who believes in a higher all-powerful being is not the cookie-cutter definition of a physicist who demands to see how things work the way they work.

I don’t have an answer, I don’t know how God works, I don’t know how God exists, I don’t know why there is sadness in the world if there is a God who can make the sadness go away. I don’t have a reason for why I believe and I don’t have any logical justification for my faith other than it makes me feel better.

In my mind, physics and faith aren’t inherently irreconciliable. Being faithless does not automatically put you in the ranks of physicists, just like having faith does not mean you lack that certain skepticism that makes a physicist. But I have somehow always been told to some degree or another that they are inherently irreconcilable, two opposing sides and that I have to pick a side.

As far as I know, everyone in my physics department is tolerant and respectful of my faith.

Then why would I never feel comfortable praying in Bloomberg? Maybe it’s because while the majority of people are respectful there have been a few incidents which remind me that this is not the most accepting place for faith.

For example, in my freshman year, while doing a group project with someone, I was told that there is a direct correlation between intelligence and belief in God. When I replied that there have been lots of Nobel Prize winners who have had faith, such as Abdus Salam (my personal hero), he

proceeded to tell me that Salam would have probably been smarter and achieved more in his life if he didn’t believe in God. Faulty and completely illogical reasoning aside, there is more to this. While I believe faith should never be used to explain science, there should be no problem deriving inspiration from faith. Salam, the man responsible for the electroweak unification theory, would say that the harmony in the laws of physics demonstrated the harmony in God’s creation. He was inspired by God to see the way the world worked through science. During his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he quoted from the Quran and connected it to what he sees in physics: “‘Thou seest not, in the creation of the Allmerciful any imperfection, Return thy gaze, seest thou any fissure? Then Return thy gaze, again and again. Thy gaze, Comes back to thee dazzled, aweary.’ This, in effect, is the faith of all physicists; the deeper we seek, the more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze.”

Honestly, that is physics for me. It’s wonder at the laws of this universe. It’s amazement, it’s dazzlement, it’s belief and disbelief that such a world exists. But mostly, it’s feeling grateful that I am lucky enough to be able to study such a world.

I don’t know if everything I have said right now is the antithesis of how a physicist thinks. I don’t know if I have completely missed the point of studying physics. I don’t know if I’m drawing connections that aren’t there. I don’t know if my romanticization of physics is going to lead me into big trouble one day. But for now I am happy sitting in my quantum mechanics class and being utterly confused about this wondrous, wondrous world.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS RECONNECTING WITH MY KOREAN HERITAGE IN AMERICA photo courtesy of SARAH Y. KIM

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HeRe IS A CeMeTeRy In koReA whose name I do not know, far away from Seoul and deep in the mountains, where my maternal ancestors are buried. Apart from my grandfather who passed when I was eight, I do not know their names or faces.

When my grandfather was alive, we visited the cemetery regularly. Each grave consists of a grassy mound framed with stone, a marker bearing hangul and hanmun, a small altar where visitors place food and drink for their dead and a stone vase for flowers.

While living in Korea, I didn’t think much about this cemetery. Since coming to the U.S., however, I’ve been thinking more about it.

I think more about it because I’ve realized that I have not been there in nearly a decade and may not be there again for a long time. I think more about it because I’m realizing that while I’ll continue to visit Korea, I may never live there again. I think more about it because I lived in Korea for 12 years but did not take enough time to understand it.

I call myself Korean, but I have little to no relationship with my family’s dead and an increasingly tenuous relationship with those left behind.

Maybe this was all inevitable. My father is American, and I have always been American.

My legal first name is Sarah. In Korea I attended a K-12 U.S. college preparatory school for 12

by SARAH Y. KIM, editor-in-chief years. I always planned on going to college in the States.

English was always my first language. As a child, I would blather loudly in English in public till my parents scolded me. I could not write or read hangul until I was six. Even then I didn’t have the patience to read Korean books; I found them too difficult, and besides, I was apparently too busy with my English homework.

From time to time, my father warned me that I may completely forget my “mother tongue” and roots. To seven-year-old me, this meant nothing.

As I grew older my Korean deteriorated. I began to struggle to make conversation with my extended family. In high school my classmates and I spent holidays at hagwons (cram schools) studying for exams.

I began to regret neglecting my heritage. My poor Korean was a constant source of shame. I was constantly told that I was not a “good Korean,” and I wanted to be. But that required time and energy, which I told myself I did not have much of. I could not vote in Korea. I was going to live in America. I rejected blood purity and nationalism, particularly ethnonationalism. I wondered whether “being Korean” was really just a nationalist construct. Did being Korean — let alone a “good Korean” — really matter?

When I came back to the U.S. in 2016, I thought I would experience a sense of homecoming. Instead, I spent my first few months at Hopkins with crippling homesickness and an oncoming Trump presidency. I did not feel like an American or want to be one.

To cope with my homesickness, I watched Korean films. I surfed Youtube for clips of 2000s K-dramas I watched with my family when my maternal grandfather was alive, when family gatherings were larger and more frequent. I kept a book of unfamiliar Korean words.

I imagined what my life would have been like had I been born in Korea and gone to a Korean school. I had friends from Korea who found community in Korean Student Associations. With my broken Korean, I could not enjoy that same security my high school friends found.

I’ve spent the past three years trying to learn more about Korea than I have in the 12 years I lived there. That I’ve been able to learn what I have in the past three years makes me hopeful. But it also makes me realize what I’d taken for granted, what I’ve lost and what I may have yet to lose.

At times I feel embarrassment and guilt. I’ve

learned much of what I know about Korea not from living there or engaging with family, but from my classes, the internet and (shame) white people. At Hopkins, I’ve taken courses on the Korean language, literature, art and history. I learned Korean recipes not from my mother, but from the YouTuber Maangchi. I improved my Korean and my understanding of Korean customs watching “Korean Englishman,” a YouTube channel where white British men speak better Korean than I do. I learned about han from Anthony Bourdain.

I tell myself that I have ties to my Korean identity. It’s where my family is and was born, where I’ve lived for 12 years. I call myself Korean because I harbor resentment — the han — that many Koreans share for the traumas their families endured generation after generation: Japanese colonial rule, the division of the peninsula, the Korean War, the pain of diaspora and assimilating in places where — no matter how hard you try — you will always be “othered.”

Yet I’ve only read about or imagined most of these traumas, or heard details here and there from my parents. I know more about Baltimore than the community I grew up in. I know little of most of my extended family, of my late grandfathers and my ancestors. I can’t remember the last time I partook in jesa.

Can I call myself Korean when I know so little of my family? Can I call myself Korean when I have almost no relationship with my family’s dead?

I’ve spent most of my life working — to excel in my Americanized school in Korea, to get into an American college, to get a job in America. In working, however, I’ve also been forgetting.

I’ve had less time for my family. I continue to forget the Korean I have struggled to learn since coming to college. I cannot remember the names of some of my relatives, or the sound of my maternal grandfather’s voice. After graduation I will continue to work hard, and I may continue to forget.

In spite of all my confusion, ignorance and distance from my heritage, I cling to my Korean identity. I cling to it because of what generations before mine have endured: colonial rule, the Korean War, totalitarian governments, coming to the U.S. as first-generation immigrants. They were forced to endure these because they were Korean. They endured so that I could have a more privileged life.

That, in the end, must mean something.

And while I will never truly know those who have passed, perhaps one day I will resume paying tribute to them. Perhaps, as I grow older, I may learn more about them, find new ways to remember them.

And there is still time with the living.

The fall issue

13

MY PARENTS AND I

HOW MY FAMILY HAS SHAPED WHO I AM TODAY art by NIHARIKA DESIRAJU, webmaster

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HIS olD HeART oF MIne Been broke a thousand times” plays from the speaker on my desk as I finish up my homework for the night. I fall down a wormhole, and I’m back in the passenger seat of my dad’s Ford F150. The heat is blasting, and the “heater seat,” as we call it, is on level three. It’s the middle of winter in Valdosta, Georgia, so it’s about 45 degrees. We hot-blooded country folk can’t handle it.

Passing over the Suwannee River, I put my feet on the dashboard to hold them up like I have done for 12 years. My dad told me to do it because his father told him to; it’s a tradition, a superstition. Cousin Brucie announces it is 60s on 6 and it’s time for Percy Sledge’s hit song “When a Man Loves a Woman.” And my dad belts it.

I plug my ears as I try to prepare for his wailing. His fingers excitedly tap out the beat on the steering wheel as we pass over the last part of the bridge. I can finally put my feet down. I focus on everything we drive by even though I’ve been riding by them everyday for years. A gas station is being rebuilt on my right, but behind it are dirt roads and horses roaming in pastures. Pine trees and deer still own more of the land than people do. We pass some of my classmates, and to embarrass me, my dad lifts my arms like I’m a marionette and wiggles them around in a sort of dance move.

As he serenades me, he doesn’t forget to mention that this is his and my mom’s song. He tells me every time, but he’s never the one to remind me how they got married; that’s my mom’s job.

They went to Las Vegas. And no, they didn’t have a drunken wedding that they didn’t remember when they woke up. My parents were actually on vacation, and one morning, my mom started worrying about how she was 35 and unmarried.

They had been dating for 13 years at this point.

When my dad asked what she wanted to do, she said she wanted to get married. He said, “Ok, let’s go sign the papers,” and that’s exactly what they did. They went to a courthouse, signed the marriage papers and had a cop take their “wedding photo” in front of the 99¢ shrimp cocktail billboard.

Finally, the song and memory lane come to an end. A classic Beatles hit starts as we pull up to my middle school, the one-hall brick building next to my elementary school, and Dad is still singing at the top of his lungs.

I’ve been on this same campus since pre-K, and I will move to the next brick building for high school. My classmates are more like siblings because the 40 of us have grown up together. We have graduated from dress up games to football games where we cheer on the high school team

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JhuNeWsleTTeR.COM

by ADDY PERLMAN, for the news-letter and dream of being older. The high schoolers park their cars, and without even glancing our way, they head into their territory. Dad and I patiently wait in the drop-off line, and then it is finally my turn to run inside.

“Be careful, you don’t want to ruin everyone’s morning,” I say as I slide out of the warm incubator and into Antarctica. As soon as the words come out of my mouth, his fingers are reaching for the volume, and the number skyrockets from a mild 16 to a headbanging 30.

I’m not embarrassed; he has done way worse. He slid down the hall on his stomach in front of the whole school when I was in third grade, knocking a few kids down along the way. I actually like how he jokes around and doesn’t care what anyone thinks, but of course I’ll never admit that to him. And, I can certainly never tell him, but I want to be like him.

Even if I did, he would tell me, “No, don’t be like me. Be like your mom,” and he would mean it.

I know everyone says that their mom is cool, but mine really is. She left the Southern Baptist Church at a young age because the preacher yelled about suffering from Hellfire and Eternal Damnation if you did not strictly follow the rules of the Bible. Then she shocked the world by converting to Judaism after practically proposing to my father.

Converting was huge, especially in such a small and very Christian town. She’s a trend breaker, and that’s why my dad hopes I take after her. But the best part is that she owns an exterminating company. Not only did she develop the one in Valdosta, but also she expanded it throughout Georgia and South Carolina.

My mom was the business owner, and my dad retired when I was born. I had a stay-at-home dad.

I also had Pearl. She was my nanny, but she was really a second mother. Pearl had two jobs to raise her children and she never stopped working. She is the most incredible woman I have ever known, and she taught me how to see the world.

Without Pearl, I wouldn’t be the strong and determined woman I am today. My mom showed me how to be confident and how to take charge with a smile and a kind heart. My father taught me that there is no point in getting embarrassed in life because it is too short to worry about what people think. These three people, especially my mom, have shaped who I am.

My mom has never drawn attention to her success. She has never once bragged or boasted. She is not only humble but also down-to-earth. She’s genuine, and this is a characteristic I feel is disappearing from the world. She does not know how special she is. Growing up with a woman like her as my role model is the only reason I am the person many of you know. Without even realizing it, she has shown me the woman that I hope to be one day. So, when my dad says, “No, don’t be like me.

Be like your mom,” I always want to say, “That’s all I want.”

I’m pulled back to my life at Hopkins as Steppenwolf sings, “Like a true nature’s child / We were born, born to be wild.” I can’t help but think that my mom was wild in her day, so I’m going to say that’s the first, maybe second and third, step to becoming like her.

These three people, especially my mom, have shaped who I am.

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photo by EDA INCEKARA The fall issue

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HERE, THERE, WHEREVER MY DEFINITION OF HOME AND HOW IT HAS CHANGED

by ELIZABETH IM, cartoons editor

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JhuNeWsleTTeR.COM

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HAT DoeS IT MeAn To Go home? What, and where is home?

To most, physical roots are important to our identities: where we were born, where we live and where we come from. Sometimes, I’ve seen people get offended when someone from just outside of New York City say that they are from New York.

I understand the indignation; I also have the urge to call out people who claim they are from Seoul when they aren’t. But why do we have this urge? Why does it bother us when someone who is not “really” from your hometown claims to be from there?

Growing up, various physical places have continuously gained and lost the title of “home.”

I spent half of my life away from Seoul, where my family lives and where I was born. This mere fact gets either sad reactions or admiration. However, if you ask me, I don’t regret a moment of my upbringing, nor do I think it was a grand act of bravery to be so far from home.

Everything was natural to me and I made the decisions. It wasn’t about leaving, but about discovering new places and new perspectives.

When I was seven, my mom took me and my sister to Toronto, Canada for a global education. The 14-hour flight felt like forever and I hated plane food. Even while I was on that dreadful plane, I didn’t fully realize what it meant to move to a different country. But I knew something was different as we drove to our new home from the Pearson International Airport.

When I stuck my head out the window of the back seat, the evening air that blew against my face was somehow different. After three years of building snow forts during recess and many other amazing memories that I cannot describe all in this one article, we came back to Korea. Then at age 14, I declared to my parents that I’d like to study abroad — again. This was how I ended up in Mercersburg Academy, a boarding school in Pennsylvania, for the next four years of my life.

Looking back, I am surprised at my own certainty of leaving home. Perhaps it was because I had already practiced leaving home when I went to Canada — the second time is always easier. Mercersburg changed everything.

I learned to share a room with a stranger, who soon became as dear to me as my own family. I learned to deal with difficult situations by myself: One time, I couldn’t figure out how to pay phone bills, and Verizon almost let loose a loan

shark on me; I broke down crying on the phone when a Verizon employee couldn’t figure out what I should do either. Thankfully, I think the lady felt bad and cleared the record because I didn’t get another phone call after that. More importantly, it was the first time I lived in one place for four years straight. Soon, Mercersburg, the 300 acres of land with numerous state-of-the-art buildings, became a dear place to me: another home.

But when I go back now, after having graduated, it’s not the Mercersburg I know. A physical place loses meaning without the people there. Sometimes, I envy those who can go back “home” and find their entire family and friends waiting for them in that one place. Those I care about are scattered around the globe, and it takes weeks of planning to meet in one place.

Once again, another place has lost the badge of “home,” and now I am on another mission to find a new home, here at Hopkins.

Having parted from physical locations several times, I am now wary of planting my roots deep. No matter how strong I pretend to be, it hurts everytime I uproot from a familiar place.

So, I adapted: I learned to build stronger ties with people. When someone asks me where home is, I reply, “Seoul.” Yet, if my family decides to move to another place one day, it is no longer “home” and what’s left are the remnants of memories. Our roots, our home, is not with a physical location; rather it is with the people we love.

I acknowledge that it is difficult to build deep relationships in college because of the fast-paced, goal-oriented life we individually lead. Even though I am still in my third semester at Hopkins, I can feel the end approaching.

Already, some of my friends are talking about graduating, eager to move on to the next step in life. I want to remind them it’s okay to go slowly. The end is unavoidable anyways; the day we stand on the graduation platform will come much quicker than we think.

More importantly, I value my friends and I want them to really connect with me, with others and with what Hopkins has to offer for the next couple of years. It is easy to think that the meaningful place Hopkins will become by the time we leave will stay the same forever. After all, it has been firmly standing in the center of Baltimore for decades. However, once we leave, it will not be the same. The memory and the connections are all that will be left of Hopkins after 50 years.

THE FORGOTTEN LAND MOVING TO A CITY FROM RURAL MIDDLE AMERICA

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InCe MoVInG To BAlTIMoRe AnD being at Hopkins, I have realized more and more the ways in which my upbringing in essentially the middle of nowhere influenced me. I spent as much time as possible during my childhood years outside, running through the woods and jumping in the lake with my little brother. The gravel road we lived on had virtually no traffic and we knew our neighbors well, so we had free reign to explore the acres of forest surrounding our log home. This may sound incredibly primitive, but one of the favorite activities of my siblings and I was to patrol the woods for dead trees and knock them down. Yep, it was a blast.

Another dominant aspect of my childhood was exposure to agriculture. My family would go to our farmland and clean up brush, pick rocks and perform other maintenance to the fields in their off-season. I’ve spent a larger-than-average amount of my life looking at dirt. In elementary school, I started riding horses and eventually got my own. I did competitions and was part of a 4Hsponsored drill team (a performance horseback group). Weekly practices in town are some of my favorite memories with my dad, who had the wonderful job of cleaning up my horse’s poop when I was riding. Living in the Midwest gave me an increased exposure to dirt and poop compared to most people I know.

Of course, this lifestyle sounds glamorous.

I know people who hunt for their food, and I have eaten meat that my brothers shot, though I’ve personally never hunted. My trek to school was about 25 miles on the highway, and the only public transit we had was a single bus for the county that you could call to have come and pick you up. Perhaps the most astounding part about living in rural America is the isolation – the nearest Panera and Ikea were 70 and 120 miles away, respectively.

by LAURA WADSTEN, science & technology editor art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor Now that I’ve horrified everyone who has lived their entire life in a major city, there are some things you should know about rural America and the Midwest. The environment is super important to us, not least because of how heavily our economies depend on it. My hometown of Brainerd, Minn. is supported by seasonal tourism to our gorgeous lakes and beach resorts. Most of the smaller towns near mine depend on agriculture, and all the best high-school football teams were full of farm kids who had built their strength working on equipment, with animals and moving crops.

In my unbiased opinion, the landscape of the North Shore of Lake Superior is the most gorgeous place in the world, especially in the fall. While we may not have been the people to start the metal straw trend, nor do we have recycling services everywhere, we have a unique appreciation for the Earth because of our close relationship with it.

While I will never tolerate anyone else’s disrespect of my home, I inevitably have some gripes with small towns. Less populated areas in the center of the U.S. have minimal exposure to diversity, so my high school’s graduating class was overwhelmingly white and disproportionately blonde (almost everyone I know had Scandinavian ancestry). Another issue I confronted growing up was the fact that most of the industries I was interested in pursuing were ones people in my town had never considered or sometimes even heard of. People still don’t know what or where Johns Hopkins is, and it is rare that the “s” on either Johns or Hopkins is included. Another fact I can’t ignore about my hometown is that it’s Trump territory. Without getting into politics or defending their stances, I’ll say that my hometown is not filled with bad peo-

ple. It often feels ignored or forgotten by the rest of the country.

I always knew I wanted to get away to a city for college, because I longed to experience things I saw in pop culture and on the news. Some probably could not imagine having never tried boba, but there was nowhere to get it near me. I never felt like I really fit or belonged in my hometown, especially since certain beliefs of mine and aspects of my identity made me a minority.

Coming to Hopkins has given me a new community — one where people share my passions and ideas — and taught me a whole lot about what it means to be from the rural Midwest.

During a service project for my pre-orientation program last year, our community partner admired my capacity for manual labor, which I credit to the farm work I did as a kid. While I had previously hated how my upbringing had put calluses on my hands, I began to appreciate the discipline I’d developed.

The differences between the natures of Brainerd and Hopkins mean I have played both the most leftleaning and right-leaning person in the room without changing any of my stances. I always had to be prepared to defend my positions in a way that would make sense to someone who completely disagreed with me. In our highly polarized political world, I like to think this has helped me be able to see multiple sides of a story, and to anticipate counterarguments to my stances. While I spent 18 years planning my escape from my small Minnesota town, moving away has made me realize how fundamentally I’ve been influenced by where I’m from. While I do NOT plan to move back to Brainerd in the future, as the job prospects for me would be incredibly slim, I am so proud to be from the rural Midwest.

I never really felt like I fit or belonged in my hometown,

The fall issue

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RECONNECTING I WITH MY ROOTS HOW I REDISCOVERED PRIDE FOR MY CULTURE BY SPEAKING MANDARIN

by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

’Ve neVeR ReAlly THouGHT oF myself as a rebel. Stubborn? Sometimes. Difficult? It depends on the person and the situation. But a rebel? Not really.

I was raised by two traditional, strict Asian parents. As a child, everything they said was law. I loved them too much, and I understood that they loved me very much as well. So, no, I never rebelled against my parents.

Regardless, I felt trapped and isolated. In more traditional Asian families, people don’t talk about their emotions and issues. Growing up, I dealt with most of my emotional issues by myself. As years passed, I went from trying to survive relentless bullying in elementary and middle school to developing generalized anxiety disorder surmounted by my ever-increasing academic and social pressure. I felt so much guilt; guilt that I couldn’t tell my parents what was happening, and that I was hiding so much of my life from them.

I didn’t think of myself as a rebel, but I wanted to change myself.

So, I rebelled. Before eighth grade, I rebelled against my culture, my heritage, my race. I changed the way I dressed, the way I spoke, the way I presented myself. I thought that fitting more into mainstream culture would help me feel more accepted. Even growing up in a town with a sizable population of Asians, I felt a subliminal need to whitewash myself. American culture is predominantly white, and if you were anything else, you were treated like an outcast.

All the cool kids either were white or acted like it, and if you weren’t either then you wished you were. The standards of beauty were whitewashed — you either had to be white or act and dress like it in order to be acknowledged as pretty.

I wanted so badly to fit in. And the easiest way was to pretend to be white.

That’s when I started trying to erase my culture. I only spoke Mandarin whenever I made my annual visits to Taiwan and I withdrew enrollment from Chinese school. I’d never talk about my culture and looked down on fresh off the boat Asians (recent, unassimilated Asian immigrants).

When my classmate told me she thought I was adopted because I acted “white,” I grinned and laughed. I glared at my mother for embarrassing us by speaking Mandarin in public — it always drew looks of disgust from others. I stopped wearing the jade necklaces my grandmother gifted me, stopped caring about Chinese holidays and traditions, stopped associating myself with the land that had funny accents that sounded like pots and pans crashing on the ground.

My language skills deteriorated. That was fine with me. To me, Mandarin was the most physical, tangible thing about my culture, the thing that American media made fun of most in movies and TV shows. I wanted to get rid of it.

My Mandarin took on an American accent and I forgot how to read and write. Taiwan became less a place where I would visit my relatives and

heritage and more so one where I would go to take Instagram photos and eat delicious food.

In America, I wasn’t like the other Chinese people; I didn’t speak an ugly language. It felt so good to rebel. I finally felt like I fit in with the mainstream American crowd. I was convinced I was no longer isolated and lonely.

Things changed the summer before I started senior year of high school. I was visiting my grandmother on one of my annual Taiwan trips.

She looked small as she fumbled to get a bottle of medical pills open. She set the cap aside and just stared blankly ahead. Although the TV’s blue hues only illuminated the ends of her frazzled hair, I clearly saw the roots of the dyed brown curls growing in ghostly white. I hadn’t remembered her looking so old.

“I don’t know why I’m alive anymore,” she muttered in Mandarin. “I don’t have anyone here.

My friends have all passed, my daughter is so far away in America and I hardly see my son.”

I was silent. I wish that the reason why I didn’t say anything was because I didn’t know what to say. But I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I realized — with a crushing, heavy shame — that I just didn’t know how to say it in Mandarin.

I couldn’t even tell my own grandmother that I loved her very much and that she mattered to me.

I didn’t even know how to tell her to stay. I desperately wished I could tell her that I should’ve called more often, and that whenever I did call I was capable of speaking more than broken Mandarin to her; that even though I was in a foreign land an ocean away, I would always be there for her.

But I stayed silent. I remember how intensely my cheeks boiled with guilt and shame. I’d never felt so much pure disgust at myself for spending the past few years purposefully pushing away my culture in order to feed a false sense of happiness, to feel like I was going to be much cooler and a better version of myself. I don’t think I fully realized that the only people I was hurting were the ones that loved and cared about me the most.

Maybe I did, but it was something I was trying to ignore all that time.

So I began trying. My self resentment helped propel me in the direction of change. I tried desperately to make up for the time lost, the words unspoken. I grasped at every moment I could to reclaim the Chinese part of me: asking for menus at Chinese restaurants in Chinese, speaking Mandarin with my mother, visiting Chinatown in San Francisco for the first time in over a decade after actively avoiding it for years. I began educating myself on the history of Asian immigrants and diaspora in America and I tried to begin reading Chinese again. The despair I felt at my having abandoned my heritage slowly turned into pride.

I called my grandmother more often, working to expand my vocabulary every time I spoke.

The next year I returned to Taiwan, I forced myself to interact with others as much as possible. I sounded out words I didn’t know repeatedly, trying to spit out the years of American accent that grew on my Mandarin speech. I spoke with everyone around me; aunts, uncles, my mother, my grandmother. I talked as much as I could, telling them about how excited I was for college, how I was going to take Mandarin classes in college. I saw how everyone was brimming with pride.

I felt warm. By the time I came to Hopkins, most of my accent had worn away.

When I first came to college, I was afraid of falling into the same trap of attempting to re-whitewash myself. Instead, I met Asian Americans from all over the country, not just from Asian-majority towns like mine. The people I met were so proud of their culture. They embraced festival dancing, traditional foods and ethnic languages. My desire to be reconnected with my language and heritage was reinvigorated; I no longer the need to culturally fit in. I felt pride in my culture, which was something I had barely felt growing up back home. I began working hard learning to write and read Chinese once again, and I took all the classes I could about China in order to learn more about my own history.

I joined Subtle Asian Traits, a Facebook group of over two million people sharing memes about Chinese school, Asian pop media and slipper spankings. People talked about losing — and regaining — their pride in their culture, about mental health in the Asian community, about feeling isolated from the rest of society. I remember realizing that people were like me. I was overjoyed; I finally no longer felt alone.

Maybe the reason I’ve felt so much pride in my language is because the sounds remind me of my childhood. To me, it was a way of communicating with my history and a reminder of what my parents and the rest of my family sacrificed to get me to where I am today. It’s a way of acknowledging and honoring their endurance as immigrants in a strange land to leap over obstacles of discrimination, language barriers and feelings of isolation so I could have a better life. And with that, I finally came to a full realization and acceptance that I can forgive my attempts to erase my cultural identity.

My attempted erasure was a product of my whitewashed environment and societal pressure to fit into the mainstream, but I’ve realized that acceptance never comes by bowing to pressure. Sometimes you need to rebel so you can do right.

So, yeah, maybe I’m not a rebel, but it sure feels damn good when people shoot me looks for speaking Mandarin in public.

My desire to be reconnected with my language and heritage was reinvigorated; I no longer felt the need to culturally fit in.

The fall issue

19

23ANDME, MYSELF AND I THE NON-PHENOTYPICAL IMPLICATIONS OF A DNA TEST art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

I

JuST Took A DnA TeST, TuRnS ouT I’m 100 percent that b—. Well, not quite, but love you Lizzo. I took a DNA test in January, got the results a month later and found out that I’m not 100 percent anything. Don’t worry, it wasn’t some shocking turn of results — I knew my DNA would prove to be a multicolored pie chart.

For Christmas last year, my lovely mum went against her better judgement and bought me a 23andMe kit (#notspon).

After harping on at her for who knows how long about how interesting I thought it would be to see an exact breakdown of my ancestral composition, she got me the kit with health services so that I could see how likely I am to get certain diseases.

I also learned that I’m likely to consume more caffeine (I’ve never drunk coffee, and yes that is something I am very proud of and yes I do drink tea); I’m likely to be lactose intolerant (dairy is one of my many allergies); I’m unlikely to flush when I drink alcohol (I turned 21 in October so obviously only recently confirmed that one!) and tons of other traits related to diet, exercise, appearance, senses or sleep. Apparently, by looking at over 450 places in my DNA that are associated with being a morning or night person, it was calculated that I’m likely to wake up around 8:53 a.m. The more you know.

Far more interesting though — at least in my opinion, for all I know you’re really interested in finding out whether you’re likely to have a fear of public speaking (I’m 50/50 just in case you’re wondering) — was my ancestry. I wanted to find out who I am, at least from a genetic point of view, not a 24601 Jean Valjean.

I think that any result you get from a DNA test is interesting. If you’re 100 percent one thing, that’s interesting. And no, that’s not because no one is really and truly one ethnicity, but because within that one country, you could be from all over. Yes, you might consider yourself to be fully British, for example, but are you English? Welsh?

Cornish? What does that breakdown look like?

How interesting is that for hundreds of generations, none of your family has married outside of the country?

If you’re 50/50 between two ethnicities, that’s interesting. That means that up until your parents, each side of your family was pretty insular and kept within one group and that your parents are the first to break that trend.

by AMELIA ISAACS, editor-in-chief

If you’re a mix of a whole bunch of different things, that’s interesting too — and I’m not just saying that because that’s what I am, I swear. It means that when you look at the map of where you’re from, there are countries all across the world that are colored in. It means that you will have so many different relatives from so many different populations if you look way back. It means that there are traits you’ve inherited from all over, even if there isn’t always an obvious box to tick when you have to share your identity with others.

No matter what your ethnicity, I can guarantee there are a multitude of stories there.

And it all comes from a tube of spit. Crazy.

So before I took the test, I had to tell the website what I expected. I thought this was funny because if I knew what to expect with any certainty, why would I be bothering to pay to find out the results? That being said, I went off of what my parents had told me. For my dad’s side: Jewish.

For my mom’s: some combination of Indian, Portuguese, British and Irish.

There were two main things I wanted to find out from the DNA test: where my Jewish ancestry comes from and exactly what the breakdown of the half of me that comes from my mom looks like.

Growing up I always said I was half Indian.

Even though my mum had always told me that I was probably closer to a quarter Indian, with an eighth Portuguese and some mix of British countries thrown in there too, it was far easier to just say “My mum’s Indian,” or “I’m half Indian.” It was the easiest way to explain why I look tanned and to let people feel like they had figured out some secret I wasn’t hiding.

When I got my results back, I asked my parents for their predictions before I told them. My mom guessed that I would come up as twenty five percent or less South Asian. When I first checked my results, it told me I was 43.7 percent South Asian. Since then, my results have updated and apparently become more accurate with more and more people sending in their DNA, and I am now 44.4 percent Central and South Asian. My Portuguese, which started off as a measly 0.9 percent,

No matter what your ethnicity, I can guarantee there are multitude of stories there.

has since disappeared. So it turns out that saying I was half Indian wasn’t such a lie, but the results are so far from what any of us expected.

So now I want to look through my family tree and the ancestry timeline on the website, and figure it all out. For example, I am 5.8 percent Southern Indian and Sri Lankan (at least until more data comes in and then it switches again), and there is strong evidence that my ancestors were specifically from Karnataka and Goa, and apparently my most recent generation who was 100 percent from the Southern Indian Subgroup is somewhere between 1880 and 1940. That makes sense and is something I could probably track. Apparently, though, I also had someone between a third-great-grandparent and a seventh-great-grandparent that was 100 percent Filipino and Austronesian which is so interesting and something that I know absolutely nothing about apart from the 0.2 percent trace ancestry that I have that is Filipino and Austronesian.

The one constant has been my 49.9 percent Ashkenazi Jewish. I don’t see that changing around any time soon, though I am keeping my fingers crossed that a few years down the line they’ll be able to tell at least roughly where in Europe that’s coming from. But what’s interesting about that is that my siblings and I are the first people in my dad’s family line that are not 100 percent Jewish. My dad’s brother-in-law is Jewish and so my cousins are still 100 percent Jewish, but my three siblings and I are the only people in his direct line that are not entirely Jewish.

So, like I said, I took a DNA test. I learned about myself. I learned what ice cream flavor I’m likely to like and what diseases I’m likely to inherit, that I’m likely to experience motion sickness but that I likely can’t smell asparagus. I learned that I am — at least for now — 54.2 percent European, 44.4 percent Central and South Asian, 0.2 percent Filipino and Austronesian and 0.1 percent Broadly East Asian and one percent undefinable, which is something I will definitely hang on to.

And I know that taking this test means that I’ll probably be cloned in the future (cool) and that I’m handing the government all my data (less cool), but Facebook already knows me so well that they prompt me to look at the latest posts from the Cool Dog Group or the Humans of New York page whenever I miss a post. I figure they might as well have my spit too.

When I got my results back, I asked my parents for their predictions before I told them.

JOiN THE NEWS-LETTER! Email Katie and Emily at managing@jhunewsletter.com

photo by NEHA SANGANA The fall issue

21

BEYOND RACIAL LABELS BEYOND RACIAL LABELS BEYOND RACIAL LABELS ON WHETHER I SHOULD IDENTIFY AS WHITE

by ARIELLA SHUA, opinions editor

22

JhuNeWsleTTeR.COM

art by ELIZABETH IM, cartoons editor

W

ell, you know you look… different.”

So said one of my friends during a casual dinner conversation one night. We noted that we were the only non-Asian people in the Japanese restaurant. The talk turned to race and how we ourselves identified. Both of us are Jewish, and both of us identified as white.

At least, that’s what I’d assumed when the conversation began. But as I tried to argue for my whiteness, my friend pushed back.

Because of my Middle Eastern heritage, he said, I was not white. And if I did identify as white, I should know that I didn’t look the part.

I do know I look different. As someone who is a descendant of Iraqis, I don’t appear to be white on sight. But I’m also not sure that I can identify as a person of color, even though I feel that I should.

Growing up, I assumed that I was white. Race was simply never questioned. The Jewish school that I attended from kindergarten through 12th grade was predominantly made up of students who appeared to be white. None of my teachers implied that we were part of a minority race.

But as I got older, I began to notice differences among Jews. Some look white without question, while others look brown. Often, differences in appearance correlate with differences in one’s family’s geographical background.

Jewish people originally came from the area of ancient Israel. After being exiled, they slowly spread around the world. As they took root in other communities, they developed customs that related to the cultures surrounding them. Today, most Jews fall under one of three ethnic categories, defined by where their ancestors came from. Ashkenazic (meaning Germanic) Jews have a Central or Eastern European background.

Sephardic (Spanish) Jews are Spanish and Portuguese. Mizrahi (Eastern) Jews are Middle Eastern and North African. Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews are often grouped together, as many of their prayers, foods and cultural traditions resemble each other.

My mother’s entire family comes from Eastern Europe, from the blurred line that existed between Poland and Russia in the early 1900s. My father’s parents, on the other hand, trace their history back through the Iraqi Jewish community for generations.

According to tradition, they have lived in Iraq since the Jewish people were exiled from Israel to Babylon over 2,000 years ago.

My background, then, is 50 percent Ashkenazic Jewish, and 50 percent Mizrahi/Sephardic Jewish. Among Jewish people, I’m considered to be essentially mixed-race. My Mizrahi background implies that I’m not white, under

the assumption that Middle Eastern people are not white. My Ashkenazic background is unanimously concluded to be white. As my mother explained, “Your grandparents weren’t Christian, but they’re as white as you can get.”

But when my other side comes into play, it’s my Iraqi appearance that is noticed first. I’ve been told that I look Israeli, Middle Eastern, Arab, Greek, Mediteranean, Hispanic and Native American (the last one is objectively false). Just weeks ago, while eating dinner with a Chabad Jewish family at another college campus, the wife asked me, “So, is your entire family Persian?” She was surprised to hear that none are, but nodded along upon finding out that yes, I am Middle Eastern.

When it comes to checking off a box for race, I, like most Jewish people, feel compelled to mark off “white.” It most closely aligns with who I appear to be physically and my background. I may not be sure of my percentage of whiteness, but I know I’m not Asian or African American or a Pacific Islander.

In recent years, however, I’m gravitating toward the “other” option, in addition to marking off “white.” If there is an option for Middle Eastern,

I don’t appear to be white on sight. But I’m also not sure that I can identify as a person of color, even though I feel that I should.

I check it off as well. Both of my parents’ backgrounds contribute to my race, do they not?

Eventually, I decided that the best answers will come from those who are like me — those who have a Mizrahi background, but don’t live in Middle Eastern communities anymore. The Facebook group “sounds ashkenormative but ok” exists for this purpose. It is an online community for Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews to rant and joke about being part of an “Ashkenormative” society, in which most popular Jewish culture ignores our customs and traditions.

I asked two questions in the group. Are Middle Eastern Jews white? And more broadly, are any Jews white? Several minutes later, I added a third question: If Jews are not white, what race are we?

I was overwhelmed with responses, but as I’d expected, I didn’t receive any clear-cut answers.

“Too white for some, not white enough for others,” one commenter wrote. “All Jews are Middle Eastern, there’s no such thing as a white Jew,” began another response.

The best response, though, is one that I never considered before. One commenter wrote that Jews are an ethnicity, not a race.

Once the idea crossed my mind, I realized that it’s the best possible explanation: I can’t be defined on the basis of race.

It doesn’t actually matter whether I am whitepassing or not. It never did. The concept of race was not designed for me, for my unsureness and questioning of whether I fit in the right spot or not. The concept of race assumes that everyone fits neatly into their designated category, not that there is confusion behind the categories in the first place.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter whether I identify as white or not. As one response put it, “Know thyself... no one can put us in a box,” accompanied by a smiley face.

For now, though, I will continue being asked to check off boxes designating my race. And until I get a more permanent answer — in the form of an ethnicity question, or a definitive understanding of what race actually is — I will continue to answer the way I see fit.

I am white, but I am also a Middle Eastern Jew, and that should not be ignored.

One commenter wrote that Jews are an ethnicity, not a race.

23

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