Rooted: Solitude and Solidarity by mitaai

SOLITUDE & SOLIDARITY

ROOTED

ISSUE TWO: SOLITUDE & SOLIDARITY SPRING 2021

A year ago, we released our first zine at the threshold of a global pandemic. A year later, we are still in its throes — uprooted not only individually, but also as a community. We’re experiencing a rise in anti-Asian sentiment that has not abated, from xenophobia to fetishization. Our most vulnerable community members are being targeted, attacked, and killed, as witnessed in San Francisco, New York City, and Atlanta. Unfortunately, this violence is not novel. This collection of entries reflects our fear, anger, and grief stemming from anti-Asian racism. But it also reflects the deep emptiness from isolation plaguing us this past year. Covering a variety of artistic mediums ranging from poetry to drawings to photography, the pages brim with unique stories that spill over into each other. Despite being geographically scattered across the country in the era of quarantine, we come together within these pages through our art, sharing a sense of unity in the unknown, of longing and loss, of beauty in the midst of tragedy. Each piece reminds us that there is solidarity in each of our individual solitudes. We hope that these stories help unearth the subliminal roots that connect us all. MIT ASIAN AMERICAN INITIATIVE

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR I want to use this space to express gratitude for the wonderful members of this year’s zine team. Last year’s zine was published just after the Asian American Initiative (AAI) was formally recognized as a club by MIT, with a mere membership count of about five. The former zine project was led by the talented Olivia Yao, and it was quietly completed as the two of us worked in our respective bedrooms in the solitude of what we would come to know as the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, the zine team is robust, outnumbering AAI’s membership of just last year. Club members stepped up to do everything from creating pub material for social media to dealing with financial logistics. Our monthly zine meetings on Zoom captured beautiful moments where we put aside our STEM coursework and focused on how we could convey the complex emotions we’ve felt as Asian individuals in the pandemic through art. My favorite memory of this project was when we got together on campus after the mask mandate was relaxed to decide the order of submissions within the zine. Each page of the draft was printed out and communally shuffled around like a thick deck of cards. Distant music, spring allergies, and laughter mingled with wind that fluttered the pages, held down with rocks collected from in front of the Stud. For the first time in a long while, I felt solidarity, unity, and wholeness moreso than solitude. Thank you to the amazing humans who worked tirelessly on making this zine happen. Thank you to those who submitted their moving artwork and stories. And thank you to those reading and taking time out of your day to hear us and sit with our stories. Alana Chandler 3

EDITOR ASSISTANT EDITORS

DESIGNERS

OUTSIDE & INSIDE COVERS FONTS

SPONSOR

Alana Chandler Catherine Lu Dechen Rota Elaine Wu Emily Huang Felix Li Fiona Duong Ishana Shastri Jason Li Nikasha Patel Alana Chandler Catherine Lu Dechen Rota Elaine Wu Emily Huang Felix Li Ishana Shastri Navid Abedzadeh Ohno Type Co. Google Noto Collectif We Open Foundry MIT Council for the Arts

CONTRIBUTORS

121 20, 34, 65, 81, 85 33, 82, 89, 92 16 44, 114, 120 41 99, 100 31, 43, 103, 117, 118 24, 38 27 106 59 63 126 23, 40 88 9 64 8 78 18 22, 62, 67, 91, 102, 109, 113 71, 87, 115, 128 10 45 14 111 7 108 79 124 36

Alisa Hathaway Afeefah Khazi-Syed Alana Chandler Cindy Xie Dechen Rota Demi Fang Elaine Wu Emily Huang Felix Li Fiona Duong Irene Zhang Jason Huynh Jason Li Jessica Ding Jessica Pan Kathryn Tso Kristine Zheng Leyna Duong Lisa Tang Lulu Tian Mydia Phan Navid Abedzadeh Neosha Narayanan Nick K Ning Nikasha G Patel Rihn Syamantak Payra Teresa Gao Tina Chan Victoria Dzieciol Yifan Wu Yiou Wang

[for anonymous purposes, I have replaced his name and have not included my own name] quaranTEEN love story: long distance edition pt. 1 Date: March 12 2020 Start Time: 7:24 pm I leave MIT soon because of corona. it’s gotten so bad to the point that I have to take online classes back in nyc. George just left. George updates: Him and I are dating <3 as in boyfriend/girlfriend He’s slept over at my place a lot and I honestly love it Today he told me he loves me My Response: “I think I love you too” I honestly find it so difficult for me to express my emotions even when I know how I feel. This morning, George and I decided to take a break and “pause” our relationship until we get back, but I think he realized that was stupid. And now we’re back to dating 6

End Time: 7:30 pm

ASCENDING They tried not to see the baby bird shuddering its broken feathers on the parched earth; they seemed not to know it had fallen, tumbling from its nest, then collapsing into a mound of splintered bones, and they pretended not to pity the bird cooing feebly from the ground like a spring blossom choked by frost desperate for hope; but everyone watched as the bird folded its wings and lifted its head above the dying leaves and whispered a melody that with every verse grew louder and louder until there was no fallen bird to pity, no broken soul to feel sorry for, only the music of a reborn heart carrying its song into the sky. ◾

Teresa Gao

ALLSTON MID-AUTUMN nightfall on an iron bench in a concrete park a lone red-orange streetlight like a paper lantern rising destined faraway up past tangled telephone wires bright against invisible stars the moon is full and my hands are cold cars passing on the I-90 outside my window leading up, up, over the hill my road does not turn homeward tonight no warmth or clamor awaits me with open arms and osmanthus wine just a half-eaten moon cake left on the table the circle sliced apart I am wishing upon the moon with my cup raised to the city lights I am wishing upon the tunnels beneath the overpass where I held my breath as a child I am wishing for simply this: less distance, and more time ◾

Lisa Tang

MESSENGER OF SPRING I open the window, Incoming the drifting snow. Falling into my palm, You melted like a charm. With a touch of cold spark, You seem to deliver a remark: You are the Messenger of Heaven! No, I am the Messenger of Spring! When I fall on the trees, I smear the branches with white velvet, Stretching out of pure joy. When I fly to the earth, I wrap everything in silver, Dressing up the festival cover. When I float on the windows, I paint your house with new color, Putting it into the fairy snow globe! When I pass your eyes, I dance the melody of snowflakes, Just for the smile of your singing lips. When I drop into your heart, I wash away all the foggy thoughts, Away with all the worries and sorrows. When I finally drift into the grass, I will give you my full body at last, Nurturing the Miao seedlings I grasp.

Nick Ning

Miao, You are the Messenger of Heaven! The endless white snow, Laying over the boundless earth, Like a thick silver blanket, Resisting the bitter cold wind, Guarding you, comforting you. Miao, you are the vitality of everything! You are the Messenger of Heaven! No, I am also the Messenger of Spring! I am the source of all the beings, For the upcoming spring, Cultivating life in beginning. I will break out of earth, Turning on green for the spring, Calling for new livelihood upbringing! I will unite with sunlight, Releasing fresh air, Reliving you to breathe freedom! I will wake up birds and flowers, Implanting the live garden of spring, Right into your window of desire. I will take on a new mission, Infusing the power of resurrection, Right into your arm of vaccination. I will embrace the future of hope. For the incarnation of spring, With a new song composed. 11

Ah! The Messenger of Spring! You ARE the Messenger of Heaven! You fall from the sky up high. Enrich our lives That never dry up for life! You rise up from the ground. Flourish our tomorrow, To be fruitful all year round! You are Mother Nature! Years over years, Staying with us forever! I want to sing for you all! Messengers of Spring!

Scan to watch Messenger of Spring in: English

Mandarin

MY PARENTS VISIT THE GROCERY STORE ON THEIR FIRST HALLOWEEN IN AMERICA I imagine them in the fall of ’97, When they first spot the pumpkin mountain that sprouted in the grocery store overnight. I picture the shine in their eyes, gourds rolling down their checkout line for a few bucks a pop, Their giddiness like a child’s first birthday, Their first anniversary in Los Angeles. I wonder in what moment they realized those weren’t for eating: If it was in the steam of boiling water, where orange flesh refused to melt to molasses like the gourds back in China. Or if it was my mother’s bike ride to work, Spotting the jack-o-lantern left on her neighbor’s doorstep. Or was it when the children burst out in their costumes at night, Their giggles and foreign tongues careening down Sunset Boulevard? Was it their eager hands and cheap buckets held out For chocolate my parents didn’t know how to give?

Cindy Xie

My mother detests motorcycles, clicks her tongue at those people as they weave through the afternoon freeway jam. We both ignore the blood rush as they pass our window but I wonder if that’s buried jealousy in my mother’s narrowed eyes. Does she taste steaming pumpkin in the exhaust, or hear the ghosts of her wedding portrait laughing in the engine roar? After all, a motorcycle is the opposite of our home, whose foundations sag with each sigh of the refrigerator. A motorcycle is the opposite of our shelves that fight gravity against walls of cracking plaster. A motorcycle is the opposite of my father, quantum-physicist-trained eyes now eaten by the glare of his laptop screen. I wonder if growing up is meant to strip away your childhood imprints. Because Mother, your marks are still flush against my face, molding my red cheeks, snaking through my hair, Your hair—Is that why I still seem like a child? I press hands down the alleyway of your desires, Walls tinged with the 4 P.M. nightfall of winter, Walls that narrow to some plane on the sky, Until all that is behind me is a funnel of lost time. And Mother, I dream of the day Where you tie up towers of your fine china twenty at a time And we speed a motorcycle down Interstate 5, You in the driver’s seat as your best pots rattle in the wind. I twist to watch them slip, break, crunch under car wheels. The bone trail winks at me like first snow. ◾

A STATEMENT FOR THE CONFUSED I grew up with my heritage meticulously arranged in a crystal snow globe

Hum Saath Saath Hain and a warm bowl of Haleem alike Surrounded by endless fields of mango trees Framed by the piercing of a macague-filled mountain That gives way to carelessly paved roads of intricately adorned lorries and fresh street-side nariyals The quintessence of everything that’s good Pieced together in chunks of summer vacation Encapsulated in an orb That glistens in the sunshine But there’s something else in there too. A collection of pashminas and chiffons wrapped around A face whose forehead bows to the ground in namaaz In remembrance of God being one Mounted in front of a gentle night sky glowing in The light of a delicate crescent moon The essence of the breaths that escape Bolstered by early mornings at Sunday school Captured in between two palms Raised towards the sky This is who I am. pieces of wanna-be snow orbiting around the very things That make me who I am.

Afeefah Khazi-Syed

and yet you force me to grasp onto it all so tightly out of fear that someone will come by and shatter her Yanking street-side nariyals from collections of pashmina claiming that the two should have separated a long time back when my Nana was eight and his father knew better than a thousand educated men

Yeh log bhi hamare log hai

that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to walk into a room of people whose ancestors come from the same place as mine and not have to explain myself to raise my hands in group prayer at the local mosque and hear the name of my motherland alongside yours I grew up with my heritage meticulously arranged in a crystal snow globe. it’s a shame that it confuses you so much. But this is who I am. Indian. Muslim. Indian. Muslim. Indian Muslim. ◾

MARTIAN HANDS

Jessica Pan

MY HANDS ARE A BLANK CANVAS Fingernails cut close to the skin. Middle knuckle dry from the bite of the Massachusetts winter cold. A scab reminding me of my fall last week. Seven inches in length. Those are my hands. You know that thing that kids do where they compare their hands to others? I never quite understood that yet every time I stretched out my hand to another’s I felt the pressure to flex my fingers long and wide as if doing so would make my hands noticeably longer. Subconsciously compensating for something lacking in my hands? I never thought much of my hands. They’re not extraordinary. They don’t delicately wield a blade like a surgeon or masterfully shape wood like a carpenter. But when I do look at my hands I’m reminded of where they come from; they remind me of my parents’ hands. The hands of immigrants. Palms lined with calloused mountains that remind them of their past, decorated with scarred hills working as a restaurant cook and a housekeeper, aged with wrinkled valleys that tell a story older than me. Maybe it’s because I’m only nineteen and my hands have yet to feel the world. They have yet to hold my college diploma, cut into my wedding cake, hold my child, or unlock the door of my future home. I hope that one day my hands mean something to someone. That they shape up to be the landscape of my parents’ hands.

Felix Li

quaranTEEN love story: long distance edition pt. 2 by anonymous Date: March 21 2020 Start Time: 11:12 pm I have no clue what he’s thinking and the long distance is terrible. If George and I don’t work out for whatever reason, I’m never doing long distance again. I think long distance is hard tho b/c I actually really like George. He’s always on my mind. ALWAYS. It wasn’t like this with my ex. I miss George, I want to sit next to him and just stare out my bedroom window as the light from the sunset shines in our faces. I wanna hold him and let him know that I’m really falling for him and I don’t know what to do. I have no clue. I just want him all to myself. I want to know that he cares about me and loves me. Validation. It’s a simple human trait. We all need it in some form. Confirmation that we are important or even worthy. Special. that’s what it is. he can make me feel so special. I’m afraid that he’s just becoming a distant memory but I’m also afraid that he’ll forget about me. College already feels so far away and I just miss him. a lot End Time: 11:35 pm

we could hear their words

and they could hear ours

AS THIN AS SMOKE My first memories are of a family trip to Vietnam in 2006. I was four years old, exploring my parents’ hometown of Saigon for the very first (and only) time. Stepping out of the airport was an overwhelming experience. As a child who had only seen Connecticut suburbs until then, I found it surprising how many people there could be in a city. In Saigon, they filled the sidewalks and streets, crouching in front of street side vendors’ blankets and heartily having conversations with old friends. Meanwhile the roads, no matter the time of day, were always crowded by bright yellow cabs and faded colored scooters. One night, my dad had even convinced me to hang on terrified at the back of his motorbike while he weaved between cars, sending the blur of red tail lights and fluorescent neon signs flying past my head. But all these visual memories are not the reason that I can recall this trip so well. It is the smell that I remember most. While staying in my uncle’s home, there was nowhere I could go where this smell did not follow. In the front hall of his house, and in fact, of every house on the block, were ornate wooden tables adorned with vases of orchids and candles burning at varying stages of life. Photos of strangers’ faces were at the center of each altar. Plates piled high with fruits, gourds, and even hot meals sat before each of them, slowly cooling on their open doorsteps. However, this smell was not from the food or the flowers. It was from the thing in the middle of each of these arrangements: tall mustardcolored sticks burned upright in bowls of dry uncooked rice.

Fiona Duong

My mom tried her best to explain what these pungent incense sticks were as we kneeled down on the concrete in front of my uncle’s altar. She carefully pointed out my long gone relatives on the stand. Among those displayed were my grandfathers. Others were older cousins and aunts. Some were young children who I have since passed in age. These thin sticks, which she carefully ignited with a plastic cigarette lighter, were the only bridges that connected us to the faces in these photographs. The thin wispy smoke was thought to rise beyond to the heavens, and with that smoke, we could hear their words and they could hear ours. However, as I closed my eyes and carefully pressed the incense between my small palms, I heard nothing at all. Raising them above my head, I desperately tried to mimic what my mom had done before: fervently concentrating as she moved her hands down towards her chest several times, before raising them once again. When she had opened her eyes, she had gazed deeply at the photos of my family members as if there was something beyond the paper, sighing as if just finishing a lengthy conversation. When I opened my eyes, I only saw black and white photographs. No acknowledgement from the blank faces that stared back at me. As I walked further along the streets with my dad later that day, that sharp woody aroma followed me. Something felt deeply wrong. Mom, dad, and grandma seem to hear people

just fine. Why can’t I? What was I even supposed to see? Were the faces even listening to me? Will anyone hear me later if I can’t do it now? No one can really hear someone with something as thin as smoke, right... How would that even work? Even as a naive young child, I knew these were not questions I should ask aloud near my older relatives. Streets that I had once fascinated me now felt oddly distant and foreign. That thin smoke drifted out from homes wherever I looked. Yet, despite how much that smell of incense lingered that day, and how it would burn in my mind for years to come, for at least a brief moment, it moved aside. In its place was the aroma of charcoal cooking smoke that had begun to float out into the streets as families began settling down for a meal around the table. Street vendors had just started up their grills, preparing for the night markets where neighbors and tourists alike could congregate and dine on local goods. Every now and again, the thick odor of cigarettes entered the mix, smoked by the friendly old gentlemen we passed, lounging on red plastic stools and happily playing cards together around a shaky foldable table. Long before I could worry about that foreboding prayer stand erected in my living room, or even knew the proper words for barbecues or cigarettes or incense back home, I would always joyfully say that “it smells like Vietnam.” ◾

THE WALLS I KNEW the walls of this house have been stealing from me a pin, a photograph, sometimes, very rarely, something big enough for me to notice, like a sock i really loved, or the screams overflowing from my pillow i think i should mind but i don’t, because i figure it’s just lonely like it has somehow sensed that we will be leaving it soon and so just as i take keepsakes from the house, the house takes them from me

one day, i will come back brush the walls, donned in a bright new suit instead of the old, tattered gray robes i knew and we’ll compare the keepsakes we stole here, the corner where i would listen to my grandma laugh there, the ring you got on valentines day from the boy you wouldn’t give the time of day and here, where i set flowers to face the spring breeze there, the piece of a bill you threw away when money meant nothing to you one day, these memories will fade, but it's okay the wall will keep them for me ◾

Emily Huang

Alana Chandler

FOUND POEM

Afeefah Khazi-Syed

REVERIE OF A DRINK OF THREE

Yiou Wang

two who crave to meet, finally meet 36

quaranTEEN love story: long distance edition pt. 3 by anonymous Date: April 2 2020 Start Time: 2:43 am I told George I loved him and I truly meant it. I love him and when I said it out loud it all kinda just felt right but now I’m scared and insecure. I just wish I knew what he’s thinking. Does he even miss me? Does he even think of me? Why doesn’t he text/call me more? Why does he take hours to respond to me? All those good moments now feel artificial. Some days I just ask myself why am I with him. I could easily tell him, “it’s over.” end it early before i get hurt. Am i not enough for him? Why do I feel shitty? It feels like everything he’s done so far has been for his convenience and just completely selfish. Like him saying “i love you” the day I left MIT. the phrase left me feeling trapped. He also doesn’t really say it. Did he ever really mean it? I’m just scared that I’m just a side piece in his life. I want to know that he loves me and cares about me. I keep asking myself so many questions. I fucked up my sleep schedule for that motherfucker. Am I over exaggerating? Am i being inconsiderate? Am I the one at fault? Why am i doing long distance for someone that couldn’t care less about me? I never have a clue about what’s going on. But I love him, wholeheartedly. I want him here right now so I can hug him. I want to fall into his arms and fully let him know how I feel about him. I want to love him but I just feel restricted like I have handcuffs on or something. But, everytime I see his face, my heart gets soft. It then feels frozen. everytime. End Time: 3:29 am

RESONANT WHEN STRUCK For as long as I can remember, I ate out of the same set of cheap Chinese supermarket porcelain bowls and plates. Adorned with traditional blue Chinese flowers and dragons, these bowls and plates were and are vessels of my memories. Every night they were filled to the brim with fluffy aromatic jasmine rice and topped off with steamed vegetables and roasted meat. These porcelain boats were what welcomed me after a long day. They’d hold the fruit that my parents would slice for me when I’d stay up late working on an assignment. They’d hold the traditional bitter Chinese herbal teas my mom would buy from Nam Bac Hong in Chinatown and force me to gulp down every time I’d get sick. They’d hold the 凉水 I would drink after I ate too much 热气 food like greasy American junk food. They’d hold the warm milk that my mom would make me drink every morning before I rushed to school. They hold everything my parents wish to give me, but are too proud to say. They hold the things that tie them back to their culture — to China. They hold love, nourishment, care, grief, sorrow, and pain. These fragile but strong ceramic vessels are a monument to my heritage, my parents, my Asian identity. An identity that has left countless attacked and murdered this past year. I’m constantly seeing photos and videos of people who could be my family being targeted and beaten. My heart has been aching and hurting seeing my community brutally attacked because of hate. I think about all the things being ripped from these families: love, nourishment, and care. And instead being replaced with grief, sorrow, and pain. I think about how these strong and resilient families are shattered and broken by hate. So I made this porcelain mask for the helpless. For the silenced. For my family. Because even shattered porcelain is strong, sharp, resilient, and resonant. ◾

Felix Li

THE WINNER when you were born, the world ripped apart at its seams, torn like the bursting of a limb. the river pure turned into bitter rain. in the violet bleed of the skies, and the infinity of that crystalline pool, i strengthened that devil inside me against your cruel dance hands clasped, and blood struck wounds with its arrow, and words entwined with the wind and halted you in its wake. your flowers bless and bow in false promise. time takes one more cautious step towards the precipice, yet i still long for dusted fields in summer. i will be the winner of this story— even if you don’t want me to be. ◾

Emily Huang

MAY MONDAY MADNESS My heart is POUNDING through my chest and taking OVER. my eardrums. AND ITS COMPLETELY OVERSHADOWING THE NOISE OF CARS BEHIND ME. THERE HAVE BEEN AMBULANCES AND FIRETRUCKS ON MY STREET ALL WEEK AND I CAN’T EVEN HEAR THEM BC all i can hear is my the sound of my stupid heartbeat. the FUNNY thing is that i can’t even feel Date: April 3rd 2020 Hear THem My Breath Right Now, Where: MY BeD My Heart is coMPLETely goINg When: 6:43 pm OUt OF ConTRoL but it’s also FROZEN RIGHT now. i can’t corona has become really serious really breathe AND i have here in nyc currently 1 million cases A LUmP in my THROAT. i can’t worldwide. Families are being told that TALK OR THINK STRAIGHT if their family members have corona + and i am just losing a heart attack they shouldn’t call the police and just let the person die. Also, if they try to bring the person back to life they could spread the virus more. I also don’t understand why more people aren’t freaking out or nervous, they’re just making jokes. I understand that some people get it and some don’t. There’s an ambulance that drives past my house at night and I try to avoid it but the flashing lights just shines through my curtains and shades. December 28th 2020 11:56pm I leave in a month and a half and I am scared. I feel like my parents depend on me for a lot emotionally and I’m scared to leave them. I know I’ll be okay but I really hope they’ll be too. I just feel so uncomfortable. ◾ Dechen Rota

Nikasha Patel

WALKING ON THE FINE LINE I’m sitting at a desk, in the middle of finishing a problem set for a GIR. I find myself losing interest in my work and decide to take a break. I think to myself, What makes me stand out? Well, I am known to stay up past three AM on some nights, drinking a bottle of Kombucha because part of the day’s energy went to trying to wade through verbal mudslinging in the social deduction online game Town of Salem. If I was not as worried about meeting deadlines, I would most likely be reading about either current and ongoing world events or improving my Mandarin literacy by spending time on this app called Tencent News. Like most of the MIT community around me, I struggle to keep a work-life balance, and hope to make a societal impact, either through research or social work. As a frosh, I also am struggling to choose how I will contribute to MIT research while I am here. But personally, what makes me stand out the most is that I try to thrive in the space between boundaries. I take the position of having neutral views toward both the United States and Chinese governments.

Jason Huynh

Despite having a lot of ideas, I struggle to connect them into arguments. While I try to carefully consider how the way I present my ideas and opinions can affect different kinds of audiences, sometimes my mouth goes too fast for my head to keep up. I grew up in Hawaii. It’s located in the Pacific Ocean, geographically between the Americas and the Asian continent. Receiving a Western-style education has made me believe in the existence of absolute truth. My Theravada Buddhist denomination has taught me that the full truth can be complicated and very fragmented, like the Indian parable of the blind doctors arguing over what an “elephant” is. Since my not-so-rosy online encounters still unnerve me sometimes, among other bad memories that I find hard to “accept and let go of,” I end up trying to avoid situations that can easily frustrate me, including digesting criticism and asking for help. Even if these are the parts of myself I choose to emphasize, they might not be the parts that others focus on when they think of me. Just like this world I was born into; even if MIT is a peaceful university campus, my mind drifts, one way or another, to the empathy I feel, in common solidarity with humanity. I never asked for the United States to elect Donald Trump in 2016, but he was elected and damaged the reputation of his country. I never asked for guns, much less nuclear weapons, to be developed; but now we all have to live with the tensions that come with them. I never asked for Sinophobia—and with it, racism against AsianAmericans—to spike and result in these mainstream headline shootings, along with much more incidents that are not reported.

But here I am, fighting not to have to pick a specific side in a conflict, and to thrive on the fine line. Fighting to be assertive, while at the same time considerate of how sensitive others can be. Recognizing the United States government’s role in destabilizing global order by continually pushing for democracy instead of cultural and personal human rights. Reminding myself that though there are people and political entities who have done bad deeds, punishment and exerting superiority will not be the best ways to reach a better shared resolution. Even trying to string my thoughts together to form coherent trains of thought—because let’s face it, you probably might not completely understand why I’m going from one place to another— All to find resolution, because of the following line from a Buddhist sutra I took to heart: “Disenchanted, [one] becomes dispassionate. dispassion, [one] is released [from mental taints].”

Through

I shake my head, fidget around in my seat for a little bit more, then finally finish that homework I was working on. Apologies if this didn’t make much sense, because I’m struggling to keep my emotions at a safe simmering level. ◾

LINES Day by day, we watch the line Snake up, down, and increase. A vicious serpent claiming lives 3 million worldwide, at least. And this line gives birth to other lines Each its own unique beast. A tired, poor, and huddled line To the food stamp, overrun. Families walking the treacherous line between having income and none. Voting lines, bickering party lines whose goals just can’t align And lines of protestors line the streets. The world watches from the sidelines, in unease. Even when hate and violence have crossed the line This country can’t draw the line? The invisible, 6 foot health guideline Makes every meet and eat a walk. Between fogged up lenses and muffled voices I can barely hear you talk. But that’s nothing to the red, blistered, and itchy lines Cut behind ears and into cheekbones on the front lines. A small red line through the mic icon Because classes, friendships, are all online Deadlines, headlines, add to these “trying times” Is a long weekend supposed to be a silver lining? And always that same, old, greeting line: “We hope this email finds you well.” “I’m well,” I’ve always said. But how long has it been since I didn’t have to lie? ◾

Jason Li

TOGETHER AND APART Planes Flew away in their own lanes Away from the home we once knew Or for some the home that has yet to be true Homes Alone with noise of those that are the same as us Singly sitting with the silence we feel we can’t discuss Or is the world any better outside the distance that keeps us apart? Locks In the plane of Zoom wondering why the sky is so gloom Refusing to pay attention to classes and people who just say Things will get better soon Life is grim, a pinned note felt all June Divides Us. Loneliness can overwhelm a mountain At times we forget the age we live Before those planes flew away Away in their own lanes There were others That kept us whole and grounded When life made us feel unsound Same Us. We struggle with difference That is what is happening now But never bow to a world faced with change You stand amongst one of many ready to face the world Together, at a range ◾

Leyna Duong

AN EXIT SIGN FOR MY IMPOSTER SYNDROME yesterday i cried to my professor about every little insecurity steeping inside of me in a silent kettle if i seep too long in the stillness will i forget how to be anything? i’m told that graduation does that to people

today i watched a 23 year old black woman claim her throne on national tv in the most powerful way possible what we are doing here: poetry spitting out succinctly spun words like a rhythmic paladin i’m told that change is coming

for the first time in weeks i let my body feel my smile today threw out my Caulfieldesque snowball unafraid of being discovered as this masked trickster bumping from one accidental blessing to another in a retro pinball machine smeared with good fortune the universe whispered to me:

you have searched for Its excuses for far too long but there is no extended dictionary or guarded repository these are the same words legends speak in

real poetry, goosebump-giving soul-grazing poetry is not made through some accidental blessing it’s made when pen is put to paper and scratched all over and through hours of repeating words until they sound right between middle-of-the-night aha’s and early-morning ephemeras scribbled into tattered journals and hurried typing on long drives through the country with folklore exchanged over coffee and the slumber of staring at different ceilings and the squiggling of toes in textures of the earth it’s marinating in the world that is inside of you knowing that the way you see this world is unlike anyone else’s that behind your pupils is an entire universe unheard and in that is the potency of your word soul-grazing goosebump-giving poetry is no retro pinball machine so then how could Imposters ever exist? ◾ 65

Afeefah Khazi-Syed

quaranTEEN love story: long distance edition pt. 4 by anonymous Date: April 12 2020 Start Time: 11:23 pm I truly believe that my love for George is inevitable. was inevitable? It makes me think about there being alternate universes/dimensions out there with key moments that stick in life. My point is that somewhere else in this world/universe there’s another George and I and they probably met some other way. Regardless, we were meant to meet. The path was irrelevant. Our love is path-independent. Like a Conservative Force. End Time: 11:30 pm

BASTARDIZED TAMIL

என் ஊர் Amherst, Massachusetts. ஊர், “ooru,” means “origin” or “village” in Tamil, the oldest living language in the world, spoken by 68 million people in South India and Sri Lanka. I am sitting in my parents’ guest room in Amherst, Massachusetts, which I have converted into my bedroom. I catch sight of my disheveled, puffy-eyed appearance in my webcam and chastise myself for having woken up five minutes before the first class of the semester. My professor has welcomed us each with a hearty vankkam! for each student whose box pops into the Zoom room. Now we are introducing ourselves along with our hometowns. Los Angeles, California. Portland, Oregon. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But with each brown student, that utters en oor in halting Tamil, I grow more and more aware of the silliness of what we are saying. None of the students here originated in LA, or Portland, or Philadelphia. And even though I have lived in Amherst, Massachusetts my whole life, it is not my origin, and in the language of my ancestors, rooted in the other side of the globe, it feels wrong to say that it is.

Neosha Narayanan

I am hungry, and not just because it is 9 A.M. and I woke up too late to eat breakfast. Without having to say anything, I know that all of the students in the class, all but one of whom are Indian American, are hungry, too. We all saw the name of the professor in the course catalog and we signed up for the class anyways. We all feel the heat of humiliation when a white man corrects our pronunciation of the language our ancestors in India uttered every generation for the last five thousand years. We think it should be genetic, inherent, natural. After hundreds and hundreds of generations, why have we had the rare luck to have been transplanted, to be mute? To my professor, a man with an undeniably English surname, Tamil is beautiful and foreign. It’s romantic. Like someone who has just converted to a new religion, he announces, “I have been studying Tamil ever since I went to India for a study abroad in college; I am so excited that you have decided to study this beautiful language with me!” The TA, a Ph.D. student in the South Asian Studies department and one of the palest women I have ever seen, also started learning Tamil during her study abroad in college. My mind is reeling, first at the bizarre sound of my father’s voice coming out of a white person’s mouth, and then at the thought that they have spent more time in India than I have. They can speak to my grandparents and cousins better than I can. They know more about my culture than I do. They know more about me than I do. For them, learning Tamil is a decision, a novelty, but for me, it is anything but. I turn off my camera. I have always loved language. The first word I ever spoke, as my parents proudly tell me, was “book,” although they say I pronounced it a little more like “buck.” I was reading by the age of three and learned to write by tracing letters in a huge textbook my dad had used while he was in graduate school, entitled “The Fundamentals of Physics.” By the time I was in kindergarten, I could write in cursive and did not read chapter books so much as consume them. If America was the garden of paradise, I was the seed my parents planted in their tiny, hard-won plot of soil. The water they poured over me was love and the fertilizer was English. I cannot imagine how proud they must have been to see their daughter, their first seed, 72

prospering in her first stages of life. She was going to do everything that their poverty and circumstances had denied them. Her perfect American accent would never be the source of discrimination. No doubt would ever be cast on her intelligence or her competence. English, the language of success and opportunity, would always be on her lips, and her head would be uncluttered. Bengali and Tamil, my mother’s and father’s respective native languages, were set aside for bedtime lullabies and for phone conversations with family back in India. As I grew older, completely steeped in American culture, I watched movies with white people in them, read books written by white people, and believed that I was the same as white. One day, I told myself, I would dye my hair auburn, like the heroines in my books. I hoped that my eyesight would deteriorate like my dad’s did from reading on bumpy buses in Chennai so that I could wear colored contacts and make my eyes green or blue. I went through elementary school thinking I was just an uglier, clunkier version of all of my white friends. We didn’t see our relatives very often. To me, “family” had always just meant the five of us – my mom, my dad, my little sister, our dog, and me. My friends talked about seeing their cousins and their grandparents every weekend, but to me, the idea of an extended family was far away, defined by grainy video calls over Skype and my parents talking for hours on the phone in languages that sounded familiar, but I didn’t understand. My mother’s uncle, whom we called Chottomama, or “little uncle” since he was the youngest brother of my grandmother, used to visit every couple of years. He would take my sister and me on his lap and spin stories of Emperor Akbar, the great Mughal ruler, and India’s Golden Age. Then he would ask my mother whether we had learned any more Bengali since last time. She would say, “No, they’re too busy with school,” and he would shake his head sadly. One year, my dad’s parents came to visit for a few months. I didn’t know how to act around them. They would wait patiently at the edge of the driveway to greet me and my sister as the school bus dropped us off at home every afternoon. I would hurry past them into the house, hoping the boy who got off at the next 73

stop hadn’t seen my grandmother in her green saree. They would ask me how my day was, and I would say “good” and hurry off to another room in the house. I felt some inexplicable discomfort at having to do this ritual of repeating myself slowly, using different words, simplifying. Perhaps, like my parents, I was distancing myself from anything Indian to mask the sadness of India being so far away. In high school, I learned Latin and French. I took French because I thought maybe one day I’d go to Paris, the pinnacle of culture and sophistication. I took Latin because I loved how logical it was, how it appeared in so many English words, and because it was so old. My mother would sometimes look over my shoulder at my homework. “That word comes from Sanskrit,” she would say, pointing. “Do you know that Latin, Bengali, and Hindi all comes from Sanskrit? You should learn Sanskrit instead.” I did know, but my school didn’t have a Sanskrit program, and besides, I didn’t see why I would ever need to know it. My Indianness eventually began to catch up to me. One time, a white friend came over to my house for curry dinner and remarked to me afterwards, “Your parents have really strong accents.” I dismissed him, saying he had heard wrong. But I went back home and listened as hard as I could, and there it was. The accent. Suddenly, I began to view all of the interactions my parents had with white people with suspicion; I learned to identify the ever-so-subtle shift of tone in their voices when they spoke to my parents. Their words were slower, their phrases simpler. I was reminded of the story my mother told me about how my dad had been turned down for a faculty position at the University of Colorado because the committee looked at his resume and thought his English wouldn’t be good enough. “This man might be from India,” his white graduate advisor had told the hiring committee, “but he speaks better English than I do.” That might have been true, but every day, my dad strained to be seen. He puffed out his chest too much, laughed just a little too loudly when he talked to his white colleagues. He worked twice as hard, sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week, just to be seen, to prove he deserved to be there. I wished I could scream at my parents’ white “friends” in my American accent and make them understand, somehow, that my parents were not stupid just because of the way they looked and spoke. 74

It became harder and harder to think of myself as no different from white. I would listen to Indian classical music, the sounds of my childhood, on repeat trying to understand what the lyrics were saying. I tried wearing a bindi on my forehead to try and assert my identity at school, but I stopped after a few weeks because I felt like an imposter when other students asked me about it. I found a YouTube video on how to write the Bengali script, hoping that my mother’s books would magically come to life if I copied the letters enough times. But feeling whole, knowing who I was, was like the horizon, and no matter how fast I ran, I was never getting any closer. We returned to India as a family in last December after not visiting for fifteen years. We went to Chennai first, where my father grew up. We took a family photo that had twenty people in it. Our younger cousins spoke English fluently, but it was much harder to talk with my Thatha, as it had always been. Two of his children had moved away and established families in the United States, and the third was living in Dubai. Paatti, who had been his link to the rest of the family, had passed away the year before. His sadness wafted through his apartment as soon as we walked in. One of the first things he said to me was “You should learn Tamil.” I wished that I could tell him everything. I wished I could tell him how much I loved him, but I felt awkward and incapable. I did not want to tell him in English, the language that represented colonialism and America and the separation between us. The next week, we went to my mother’s hometown, Kolkata. My mother’s cousins did not speak English, so my sister, my dad and I sat on the couch and ate mishtis while my mother chattered away with her old high school friends in Bengali, the most beautiful language in the world. She was happier than I had ever seen her. We visited older relatives who had watched my mother grow up. They raised their frail speckled hands to my sister’s and my faces, touching our cheeks and foreheads. Tumi ki bangla kotha balo? We would shake our heads, looking to our mother for assistance. I had always been the strong one, protecting my sister, leading the way. I hated for her to see me so vulnerable, like a child. Before we left India to go back to the US, we met Chottomama in a beautiful hostel in the center of Kolkata. He had become especially frail; his lungs were rotten from a lifetime of smoking, and the chemotherapy for his metastatic cancer made him especially tired. 75

He seemed even more sentimental than usual. I think he knew that his time in this body was ending. He gave me a book of Bengali love poems he had written to his wife, along with English translations. He wrapped a woolen Kashmiri shawl around his shoulders and began to talk once again about the Great Partition of India and Pakistan, nearly seventy-five years ago, when he was a toddler. He began to weep after only a few sentences and couldn’t finish. I took the poetry and made a vow to myself that I would learn Bengali. That was the last time I saw him; he passed away two months later. My own existence stems from the South Asian diaspora, a response to the rape of India by the British. My family has transplanted itself because of the devastating impacts of this colonialism. The world thinks of India, once the greatest civilization on earth, as a child, a “developing” country. We are characterized all at once by poverty and backwardness, but also by our culture, which white people have this strange obsession with, which they have appropriated and profited off of. The hatred I once had for my hair, my eyes, my skin, my body, is the result of colonial, Eurocentric beauty standards. If I think too hard, I begin to see my white Tamil professor as somehow representative of the British viceroys planning the forced displacement of millions of Hindus and Muslims, or the TA with a German last name as the eugenicists who defiled the swastika, a Hindu symbol of peace, turning it into a symbol of genocide and hatred. I know that this is wrong, that they are good people, but until they acknowledge the yanai in the room – that they are white people teaching displaced Indian people their own culture – these thoughts will never abate. My Tamil professor says, “The Anglicized version of Tamil is a bastardized form. I want you all to focus completely on the script.” I take extra time to learn the Anglicized spellings of Tamil words, because that is how my relatives communicate on WhatsApp. In class, I repeat colloquial greetings that I have heard my father saying on the phone for years, and I am reminded to instead use the formal version of the language. Occasionally, my professor tells us the “inside scoop” on some aspect of South Indian culture, his voice lowering as if confiding a dirty secret. No one tells him that we all already know, that telling us these things is like telling us that our skin is brown. 76

I think of my two grandfathers, Thatha and Chottomama, when I attend my Tamil class every day. I haven’t told Thatha yet that I’m taking this class. I am scared of disappointing him, and I can barely say anything yet. Chottomama is not in this life anymore, but I know he would be happy to see that I am learning about my heritage, even though I have not found a Bengali class yet. My body is in front of my screen, attending class, but my mind is in Chennai, smelling the early morning rains and the jasmine flowers Paatti has brought home from temple and is braiding into my hair. I’m only four years old, and I want to tell her how much I love the smell and that I want to go to temple with her, but I’m scared because the streets where my father grew up feel foreign and uncomfortable to me. I’m sitting on Chottomama’s lap listening to his grand stories. I want to ask him about his life, how he managed to survive when he had nothing, how he came up with all 100 of his patents. I don’t have the words, and now I’m twenty years old and Paatti and Chottomama are both gone and I’ll never be able to ask them all the things I wanted to ask, or express my love. I am in this class being taught how to talk to my relatives by white people. This is my only hope. I am desperate. ◾

ROOFTOP IN BEIJING

Lulu Tian

MY TWO CHARACTERS This is a story of two characters bouncy cheeks gleaming of childhood youth hidden in two towns unknown somewhere A boy, four feet tall carrying pieces of twine five times his height wrapped around plastic pots brimming with water dragged the entire mile to a century-old home awaiting his return A girl, hair twisted into braids tied into perfection with strips of bright red ribbon jumping out of a moving auto rickshaw an act of defiance a refusal of going to that place where children learn to grow This is a story of two characters, wrinkle adorned foreheads within four walls filled with the life they live here A man, antique mustached pieces of cotton lanyard wound around on 5 am mornings of fighting through 40 miles of rush-hour traffic away from home A woman, hair pulled back tied hastily into a bun jumping into the front of her Odyssey an act of selflessness an assertion of going to that place where children learn to grow

All hidden in the pieces they sacrifice For two new characters who don’t know these stories at all ◾ 81

Afeefah Khazi-Syed

DEAR KASHMIR You and I, we’re not that different The colour of our skin traverses across the same paint palette at Home Depot October Sky to Dark Camel And everything in between You wake up to the warmth of sunshine I wake up to the warmth of sunshine But yours fights through the Kunlun Mountains And mine through the Boston Skyline We both know the smell Of the air just before it’s about to snow But you know some other smells too Of sweaty crowds Chanting in the streets Of mortal shells Dissolving into thin air Of flesh Rotting into the very earth it comes from I know it’s hard to believe But we both have the same Monsters creeping in our closets

Afeefah Khazi-Syed

Patterns of electric fences striped borders So held up on the You and I that they forget We both have the same monsters creeping in our closets

Hum Sab Azaadi Chahte Hai

Although the world rarely hears the words I have to say because of the cashmere around my face that somehow pushes me closer to You than I, I’m sorry. That you and I couldn’t be more similar. And that while the sun sends to you its warmth, From 92.96 million miles away India, the country of my ancestors fails to do the same From a few footsteps away ◾

INTERGENERATIONS

Neosha Narayanan

BETWEEN THE SHORES

Inspired by “The Magic Fish” by Trung Le Nguyen

Kathryn Tso

quaranTEEN love story: long distance edition pt. 5 by anonymous Date: December 4 2020 Start Time: 12:03 am I hate you. I hate myself for thinking about you everyday when I know you don’t think about me. You don’t even care about me. I hate you and I don’t even want to get back together with you. I hope you get heartbroken by the next girl. You don’t deserve another girl. I hope you never fall in love. I hope you never feel happiness again. I hope you feel as bad as I do. I’m NOT getting back with you. You are a terrible person and have done nothing but cause me migraines. I hope you peel off your big toe. I love you so much, I can’t believe you don’t even want to talk to me. End Time: 12:15 pm

Alana Chandler

THE NIGHT AFTER CHRISTMAS I remember all the nights, four bodies cramped in the tiny prayer room with the mahogany floor under the roof. I watch the wisps of smoke travel out into the world, flying, not just coldness. warmth, and flowers, and fruit. fire and honey melting. I watch the incense burn and the ash fall off. we wait for the past to touch down on the earth, for my grandmother’s pale blue gray eyes from a golden gate somewhere in the clouds, for a saintly man I have never met. my father and I sit together at the top of the stairs, looking out at my childhood home. he has fallen before the infinite and asked for a job so long it seems to me a tired, empty chant. his feet, tired, blessed, covered in stitches half a century old are still here. they are still here, straight, after crossing an ocean without room to stretch. ◾

Anonymous

THE END Fetishization. To me, the word looks intimidating. Fet-ish-i-za-tion. Misogyny. To me, the word looks sad. Mi-sog-y-ny. Objectification. To me, the word looks simple. Too simple for what it means. With every passing day, the world carries another, another, yet another victim. I cry out, but my words are spat out. Spat out by violent institutions, spat out by others’ comfort, spat out by this country. Terms swirl through the air. Fetishization, misogyny, objectification. Yellow fever, white sexual imperialism, white supremacy. Policing, assault, rape. The air is thick with these violent words, yet there is nothing I can use to cut through it. I grasp at the air, filled with pain and guilt, but come up with nothing. My cries join the thick fog, stuck, nowhere to go. My mind, filled with their faces, struggles to concentrate. My eyes, filled with tears, struggle to open. My stomach, filled with fear, struggles to keep down food. But there’s no time to rest. Attack after attack, followed by empty consolations, followed by requests, followed by deadlines, all leading to one question: When will it end? ◾

Elaine Wu

MY SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

A million things to finish... A million places to go to...

Elaine Wu

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Wishing to disappear.

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Navid Abedzadeh

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TWO LOVERS WATCH THE APOCALYPSE the world blazed one day and turned on its head stars fell. forests screamed. i held your hand. as the fires raged, lit by the stars, there we sat in silence. “i don’t want to go,” you said, and i nodded, pressed my hand deeper in yours. the dust blue roof caught the falling stars in its gutters, and despite everything, we wished the world drowned one day and sank to the depths stars fell. oceans churned. i took you swimming. as the currents cut chill straight to our cores, you stroked your hand across my face, tucked my hair behind my ear, and the water stilled. it sighed, and i sighed with it the world hushed one day and succumbed to the quiet stars fell. silence swallowed. i wrapped your body in mine, and we slept ◾

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Emily Huang

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DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH. 105

TO THE WOMAN AT 541 BARNETT PLACE Do you speak English? she asked me. I was twelve years old, backpack on my shoulder, walking the dog after school down the street where I had lived for five years. I was her neighbor. She did not know that I was born in New York City. I remember walking across the concrete lot the concrete playground of the public school where we were all immigrants or their children. Walking to advanced Reading class with the other Chinese kid in my grade the only ones in advanced Reading. We only had each other in the classroom where I read about the first people to reach the North Pole they were white men walking in the footsteps of others before them not white men. Do you speak English? I wish I could have said Robert Peary said he reached the North Pole first but he was with a Black man and four Inuit so who reached it first? I wish I could have said I was born and raised in America I say the pledge of allegiance every day at school just like you did. I wish I could have said anything but I only smiled and nodded. ◾

Irene Zhang

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Do you speak English 107

TIRED I want to escape. I want to be alone on an island. I am tired of living in fear of being harassed or attacked based on my race and gender. I am tired of living in a country where I am judged based on my race and gender. I am tired of being mistaken for a colleague. I am tired of having to prove that I belong. I am tired of being microaggressed. I am tired of being stereotyped. I am tired of being targeted. I am tired of being invisible. I am tired of being tired. ◾

Tina Chan

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Navid Abedzadeh

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UMBRA

[Houston, February 16, 2021]: A photograph I took during the power outage in Texas In the city, dusk does not equal darkness. This is the road next to my high school. When it's not bustling with buses, it's bathed by light from the buildings, from the streetlamps, from the cars. This road is never dark. But it was, this Tuesday evening. It was like this, all across Texas. Enveloped by the dark of the night, pervaded by a faint rumble from the generator sustaining one bar of cell service. A few dogs barking somewhere in the distance. 111

Syamantak Payra

That's what solitude feels like, often. You know there are others there, all around you, close yet so far away, shaded over by an omnipresent cloud. You're alone, on an indeterminate journey, jumping into the darkness. You don't know when it'll end, when the lights of the world will turn on and beam into your eyes, plunge you into an ice bath saying "welcome!" Our headlights were like a puddle, yellow-tinged moonlight splashing, spilling out, as if to say: Don't worry. Don't forget: The earth beneath you is still here. The same earth that we all stand on, no matter how far apart. The same earth where decisions and phenomena hundreds and thousands of miles away touch millions, tangled masses inextricable from the world around them. That darkness united us all, briefly: When the sun set, tendrils of shadows crept across the roads and fields, entwining fingers and outstretched arms into a crisscross tapestry, the uninsulated blanket of night smothering us in its bitter cold. There was struggle, and silence, and huddled, echoing voices that cried out for warmth and compassion and solidarity as jagged icicles froze and fell. For a fleeting moment, it was dark everywhere, A city united, frigid, flooded, waiting to be bright once more Joined together in the umbrage of the dawn. ◾

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THE FIVE DANCING LADIES Five ladies ran off into the mountains, they say, Five perfectly respectable ladies, With their lips dip-dyed rouge, And their thick black hair corralled into submission on their heads, And their faces red like the qipaos they donned when they Ran away from the weight of their lives. Five ladies danced in the mountains, they say, I can attest, the old river says, They spun in circles more wild than the froth on my waves. I can attest, the spry grass says, Their feet stomped louder than thunderfall above me. I can attest, the wise sun says, I beat on their backs from morn ‘till dusk and not once did they break from their frenzy. Five ladies can be found in the mountains, they say, They circle round ceaselessly as if bound to the tides. You can find them too, they say, If you dare go up the mountains one day. ◾

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Emily Huang

LUNCH POEM often during these days of quiet in the lull that stretches between classes i find myself easing the window open to see what the window holds here is my collection for today, the window says, and it shows me noise; people a runner on their last lap, the bass bleeding from a car, a delighted laugh ringing from nowhere, the rush of water and the rush of sound there, i crawl into the windowsill and let myself be cradled by the crystal wind i tilt myself towards sun and she pulses, seeps into my bones, as i watch the moon hide like lace behind her shadow on quiet days like these, i press my fingers into mesh, i wish for a salt garden beneath my feet, i miss my parents, terribly, i taste the fallen snow, i dream up different lives for myself, i slide the window back down, and let silence take me back into her arms on quiet days like these, i take my lunch; and i write to the sky ◾

Emily Huang

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FERMENTED SOYBEANS: THE GATEWAY TO CULTURAL ACCEPTANCE When I was 5 years old, I became a student at my local Japanese Saturday School. Asahi Gakuen(朝日学園) was a place to learn or reinforce one’s knowledge of Japanese, and the school ranged from Kindergarteners to High School Students. On my first day, I pranced into the classroom with my bright pink roller backpack, excited to learn about my cultural background and make new friends. At first, it was phenomenal! I learned origami, read plays, and ate homemade lunches (picnic style on adorable foldable mats) with a few girls that were in the same class as me. The assigned homework was slim to none, and I looked forward to Saturdays when I could hang out with my new friends. Gradually, some things began to change. Looking back, I should have just been stronger. A rock, firm in my beliefs — but I was more like limestone. The first comments were about my appearance. I’m not too sure why it really got to me. I must have known that my green eyed, extremely pale, and blonde haired self, did not truly ‘fit-in’ amongst a herd of Japanese children. I stood out, just like Marlin, swimming alongside Crush and the other sea turtles. Once a fellow classmate pointed out this obvious difference, the switch flipped in everyone’s minds, including my own. Even if I spoke fluent Japanese like all the other kids, I would never truly belong.

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Alisa Hathaway

It was downhill from there. I stopped paying attention in class, so my knowledge of vocabulary (especially 漢字, kanji) declined, and consequently I failed the majority of my written tests. I despised attending Saturday school; I began blaming my Japanese background. If I wasn’t born half Japanese, I wouldn’t need to spend 8 hours every Saturday, sitting at a wooden graffiti’d desk, daydreaming about what my ‘normal school’ friends were doing. Disassociating from Asahi Gakuen translated to distancing myself from anything related to Japan in my weekday life. In my “American” Elementary School, I barely had any Japanese friends, because I felt that I couldn’t resonate with their interests and conversations. I tried really hard to not wear ~Japanese~ looking clothes, even though my mother had gifted me some adorable skirts and graphic tees. This continued for many years, until... One morning during my freshman year of high school, I woke up and followed my daily routine — washed my face, put on jeans and a t-shirt, sang a few songs, and sprinted over to the kitchen. I plopped myself down onto swivel chairs that line our counter, and my mother brought out some breakfast. My dad was eating Honey Nut Cheerios, so I expected the same — looking down, I was thrilled to see that I would be eating something else, one of my favorite dishes. Fermented Soybeans (納豆, natto) with rice.

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It’s exactly what you’re imagining. It’s sticky. It has strings that attach onto your face. It also has a very strong, unpleasant smell that radiates off of it. The taste lingers in your mouth for a LONG time. And I love it. In that moment, staring down at my sticky beans, I realized a lot of things. I realized that I hadn’t done as good of a job at avoiding my culture as I had imagined. I realized that, even if I don’t look Asian, Japanese culture will always be a part of me, from the manner of my speech, to the way that I behave. I realized that I need to appreciate the little things more, and most importantly, to not be ashamed of the things that make me who I am. Just because of this small Japanese bean, I ended up taking Japanese classes in my high school, which I thoroughly enjoyed. In college, I am a proud member of the Japanese Student Association, and help out with making たこ焼き (takoyaki) or selling sushi during our festival events. I also attend a weekly “Japanese lunchtime table” where I meet up with many students and teachers and we practice our Japanese together. It’s definitely been a rollercoaster to get to this point, but with the help of a magic bean, I can now accept what makes me, me! ◾

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Yifan Wu

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NEW YEAR APPLE

Jessica Ding

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quaranTEEN love story: long distance edition FINALE by anonymous Date: March 21 2021 Start Time: 10:00 am I wish you the best George. I thought what you and I had was quite special. We had some great moments and obviously some less great. As every couple does. I do think that some of the things you did to me was kind of unfair. “I love you” I don’t think you ever actually loved me. That’s not easy for me to say but I really don’t think you did. I think you were just playing house with my feelings for 8 months. Which especially hurts because you knew how I felt about you. You had two explicit letters from me telling you how I completely felt about you. I had nothing. I will never know how you felt about me. And honestly I don’t even think you know. I wish you a good life George, Anonymous End Time: 10:30 am

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Neosha Narayanan

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The MIT Asian American Initiative is a studentrun organization for Asian American advocacy, allyship, and civic engagement. Contact us at aai-exec@mit.edu or on Instagram @mit.aai

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SOLITUDE & SOLIDARITY