Post-4/27/17

APRIL 27 – VOL 19 – ISSUE 22

In this issue...

Poetry, Protests, and Princesses

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contents

editor's note Dear Readers,

features 4 an abundance of ivy 6 women hold half the sky 8 a half-formed thing 9 boldly brown 11 how to quiet your mind

lifestyle 12 13 14 15 16 17

fading the story teller spring nights one minute early fair weather friends an ode to my oaf, baba

arts & culture 19 voices carry 20 young and beautiful 21 emotions in the stars 22 young thug, empress of 23 princess nokia 24 cherry glazerr 25 alunageorge, erykah badu 27 trouble with the curve

staff

Editor-in-Chief Monica Chin Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Joshua Lu Managing Editor of Features Saanya Jain Managing Editor of Lifestyle Annabelle Woodward Creative Director Grace Yoon

Arts & Culture Editors Taylor Michael Josh Wartel Features Editors Claribel Wu Kathy Luo Lifestyle Editors Jennifer Osborne Celina Sun Art Director Katie Cafaro

I usually have trouble coming up with things to say in my editor’s note. Today, though, I have way too many.

My three years of Post- have been incredible. As a section editor, managing editor, and finally editor in chief, my Wednesday nights have been whirlwinds of pizza, various forms of alcohol, socializing, hilarity, commiserating about not getting into Intro to Creative Nonfiction, and occasionally doing some editing. I’ve met three generations of incredible writers and editors, who have really redefined the meaning of “my people.” I’ve made great friends who I wave to on the main green, and even occasionally meet for coffee.

In a college life that is constantly shifting from class to class, social group to social group, dorm to dorm, lifestyle to lifestyle, Post- has been a strong and beautiful constant. Wednesday night production has been cathartic—after weeks jam packed with mental health crises and dense packets of reading, coming to Post- reminded me why I spend time in class, learning to write. I do it for this—to be able to contribute to communities like this, communities that put out valuable content for readers to connect with and love.

Thank you Post-. Thank you all, our readers, for reading the fruits of our labor, and supporting us in the work that we do. And thank you for calling us out on our bullshit, and holding us accountable when we fuck up. It makes our publication better, and makes us stronger along the way.

And thank you Brown for an incredible, beautiful four years.

Best,

Monica

Copy Chief Alicia DeVos Layout Chief Livia Mucciolo Layout Assistants Yamini Mandava Elizabeth Toledano Assistant Copy Editors Zander Kim Alexandra Walsh

Staff Writers Sara Al-Salem Ameer Malik Spencer Roth-Rose Daniella Balarezo Anne Cheng Pia Ceres Sarah Cooke James Feinberg Anna Harvey Lindsey Owen Chantal Marauta Isabella Martinez Randi Richardson Ananya Shah Alex Walsh

Xuran You Sydney Lo Staff Illustrators Natasha Sharpe Jenice Kim Clarisse Angkasa Michelle Ng Soco Fernandez Garcia Doris Liou Cover Katie Cafaro

upfront

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features

an abundance of ivy

accepting a different university

JOSH WARTEL section editor As the weather warms up, a favorite American hero returns: the student accepted into all eight Ivy League schools. This year there are at least three new members of America’s most exclusive college club: Martin Altenburg of Fargo, North Dakota; Ivan Vazquez, from Boise, Idaho; and Ifeoma White-Thorpe, from Rockaway, New Jersey.

All three have become something of local heroes, interviewed by television stations and newspapers. Their resumes are, obviously, impressive. CBS News reports White-Thorpe is “student government president at her school, places high in her advanced placement classes and is known for her writing and poetry. Recently, she also won first place in the National Liberty Museum’s Selma Speech & Essay Contest.” CNN describes Altenburg’s schedule as a scramble between “cross-country. And swimming. And track. And orchestra. And chamber orchestra. And youth symphony. He’s the district lieutenant governor for Key Club. And he runs a Twitter account for his calculator.”

Further investigation shows that this Twitter account is named “Mr. Steal Yo Girl” and has 420 followers.

It takes a certain degree of vanity to go through the work of applying to these eight schools (plus “safeties”) arbitrarily organized into a marginal athletic conference, as well as a degree of privilege. You have to be able to afford SAT prep, do extracurriculars, read books from a young age—all the respectability of middle-class life. You also have to be willing to work hard, day after day, without spending too much time on Netflix watching 13 Reasons Why. As Vasquez put it: “Just believe in yourself; you can do it. Just get involved in your school. Colleges love to see that you’re getting involved, no matter in what way, as long as you push yourself and just do what you love.”

It’s easy enough to make fun of Vasquez’s sentiment. Does anyone think that most of high school is about doing what you love? At the heart of this rhetoric is a very American, very neo-liberal ideology that masks oppression and emptiness with buzzwords like “grit” and “personal responsibility.” In Silicon Valley, the epicenter of this kind of thinking, the teen suicide rate is four or five times the national average, and the CDC was called in to investigate the area’s high schools.

But I’m not here to criticize high school kids, which would be a waste of everyone’s time. I want to argue something else: that Mar-

tin Altenburg and Ivan Vasquez and Ifeoma White-Thorpe are very regular people. They’ve dreamt the fantasy of eight different college lives, and now they are waking up, realizing they have to go to school. This decision is inevitably a closure, a disappointment. Does it really have to be like this? **** A few weeks ago, my friend’s sister was deciding between two universities: Tulane, in New Orleans, and Amherst, in Massachusetts. My friend asked for advice, and I answered: Go to Tulane because it will be warm all year and the constant cold in the Northeast is depressing.

Whether my advice had any impact, I don’t know. The sister is going to Tulane.

Choosing a college based on weather may seem silly, but it’s a reflection of how little divides most colleges. Assuming the cost of attending or the financial aid given is similar (a very big assumption for many students), most of America’s top colleges provide similar educations. They all produce investment bankers, computer scientists, writers, and politicians.

Writing for The New Yorker in 2005, Malcolm Gladwell remarked: “Élite schools, like any luxury brand, are an aesthetic experience—an exquisitely constructed fantasy of what it means to belong to an élite—and they have always been mindful of what must be done to maintain that experience.”

I like that description—exquisitely constructed fantasy—not just because it encompasses the strange combination of dreams and staged performances that go into the tours, rejections, and accepted student days that take over campus in April, but also because it outlines the dilemma of of three teens accepted to all 8 Ives: Their freedom of choice is an exquisitely constructed fantasy.

If top-tier colleges are just luxury brands, similar educations beneath the advertising and marketing, then what are they really choosing?

The city? The weather? The dorms? All fine ways to break ties, these small differences, but not anything that has to do with why you would go to college in the first place.

But if you’ve been accepted to every Ivy League school, why must you choose?

Consider the story of Guillaume Dumas, the man who snuck into the Ivy League. From 2008 to 2012, Dumas sat in lecture classes at Yale,

Brown, and a number of other schools (Stanford and UC Berkeley, among them). He didn’t end up with a degree, but pieced together an education from everywhere. “I was just sneaking into classrooms in literature and philosophy and poli-sci and even psychiatry,” he told The Atlantic in 2015. “I just found out how to do it. When to hide. What kind of alibi to have or to behave with other students—what to tell, what not to tell.”

Beneath Dumas’ years-long deception is a clear case for affordable college and economic fairness. “I think of it as an act of political protest,” he explained to Fast Company. “I was angry at how university education excludes people who cannot afford it. What happened to the belief that sharing knowledge and great ideas should be free?” Dumas’ use of the word free takes on a double meaning here. Of course, he means free in the financial sense. Like the aspirational projects of the public library and parts of the internet (Wikipedia, Open Library), colleges build themselves up on the promise of a society transformed by valorizing what we know and can find out. Dumas’ gambit, which didn’t take anything away from other students, seems to just be taking these colleges at their word.

But when Dumas uses the word free he is also gesturing towards the possibility of freedom, a freedom that applies not just to ideas, but to students. In a way, the false promise of Altenberg, Vasquez, and White-Thorpe is that getting into the entire Ivy League is a kind of a freedom. However, simply choosing one college over another doesn’t embody any more of a productive choice than choosing Lyft over Uber for a late-night ride. What Dumas reveals is the possibility of a different design, a dream where every Ivy League school isn’t a choice but an accessible institution. This dream overcomes the narcissism of small differences and glimpses at a path to a greater academic freedom. It turns the private success of Dumas and these three high schoolers into something much more newsworthy than an acceptance letter. An Ivy League education has great value, even if the actual names attached to the degrees (Harvard, Yale, Brown…) are interchangeable. Let’s learn the value of that education.

If Martin Altenburg and Ivan Vasquez and Ifeoma White-Thorpe are prospective Ivy League students, others should ask for the same privilege. A chance to go to school wherever the sun is shining, wherever the head and the heart desires. illustration by Natasha Sharpe

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women hold half the sky translating chinese feminism CLARIBEL WU section editor I am fourteen years old, and I am visiting China for the first time in twelve years. A murky yellow light floods the train car, and I step gingerly down the narrow walkway, contorting my body to avoid the occasional jutted elbow. The train speeds through the countryside, and each time it dips into a tunnel we are wrapped in a velvety darkness. Passing lights illuminate the passengers mid-motion, and for half a minute we become a living phenakistoscope. As I dig my way past patterned chenille seats in search of the tiny uncomfortable bathroom, I feel something tug at the flounced edge of my dress. Then, I hear snickers and cat-calls, in an unfamiliar Chinese dialect.

I don’t even stop to look at their faces––I continue on my way, clumsily barrelling through with cheeks flushed and heart pounding. I don’t even stop to look because I don’t need to; their faces do not matter to me, because they are part of something larger. Something ominous and odious.

And this is just one relatively benign incident among a spectrum of issues that call for Chinese feminism. But to be a feminist in China is to put yourself at risk, and to engage in patriarchal resistance is to enter a place of personal and political vulnerability. *** Two years ago, on the eve of International Women’s day, the Feminist Five planned a protest to raise awareness of and bring an end to sexual harassment on public transportation. Li Tingting (李婷婷), Wu Rongrong (武嵘嵘), Zheng Churan (郑 楚然), Wei Tingting (韦婷婷）, and Wang Man (王曼): these are their names. But the Chinese government detained the Feminist Five for over a month, first under the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and then for “gathering crowds to disrupt order in public places.” The world was outraged at this arbitrary display of patriarchal power against a peaceful demonstration (i.e. handing out stickers, holding signs, wearing resistive clothing). In response, the #FreeTheFive Twitter campaign went viral, which brought them international visibility and eventually led to their release.

Although two years have passed, the struggle to find recognition for feminist issues persists.

After Trump’s election, Zheng Churan posted a photo on social media to show international solidarity against the U.S. President’s sexist and chauvinistic attitude, stating, “Watch out, the feminists of the world are speaking, and we’re watching you.” Zheng Churan also publically

supported this year’s International Women’s Strike on her account, Gender in China. As a result, the account was blocked for thirty days.

Feminist Voices is a high profile Sina Weibo account (a Chinese social media platform comparable to Twitter), which was also suspended for 30 days––Weibo (ambiguously) claims that the account violated Chinese laws, but the women suspect that the act of censorship is an authoritarian response to posts that featured controversial anti-Trump sentiments. Zheng explains that Trump supporters are surprisingly numerous in China because they share an aversion toward PC culture. She observes, “It feels like Trump fans believe if they copy his words, they’ll be as rich and powerful as him.”

These are the stories you will find when you Google “Chinese Feminism”––the narrative of these five powerful women and their public clashes with governmental authority is featured across the internet. But what does it look like for the people who are not making headlines? What does it even mean to be a feminist in China? *** A soft three o’clock light spreads across my friend’s dorm room, and the two of us sunbathe as we sit comfortably on her bed––a warm reprieve from the blistering cold wind we had just left behind. Mimi grew up in Shanghai, China and went to a public boarding school there through middle school before moving to California for high school and college.

In high school, Mimi was president of the Gender Inequality club, spearheading publicity campaigns that aimed to give feminism visibility. Even in a notably progressive area, many of her peers’ responses were negative. When asked to characterize a feminist, they would respond: “man-hater”, “woman who supports other woman”, “woman who thinks she’s better than a man”.

She pulls her face into a grimace as she mentions these phrases, because none of them sincerely define feminism––which is, in the simplest terms, a belief in fundamental human rights.

Mimi tells me that the concept of feminism was introduced to her in America, that it wasn’t even a subject of discussion while she lived in China. As a result, she has experienced two versions of feminism, two dialects of feminism. As we continue our conversation, we come to realization that language is pivotal to understanding the nuanced politics that surround the concept of feminism in China. Mimi tells me how she wasn’t

initially aware of the symbols hidden within commonly used phrases that now function mostly through a collective meaning. But once she broke these terms down, studying the linguistic building blocks, she noticed the many layers of meaning that often slip unnoticed into the subconscious. 女权主义(Nüquán zhuyì): feminism M: “Here’s the problem with Chinese feminism: they don’t think gender equality is a problem. The word feminist carries a lot of negative connotation as well––even in America.”

C: “Right, yeah, can you tell me more about that?”

M: “When you say you’re a feminist in Chinese, it sounds like you’re being aggressive and greedy about how much power and rights you want. Nǚquán zhǔyì literally translates to ‘female powerism’. In English, power is an ambiguous term. But in Chinese, when you say quán, it is understood more as the power a politician might have instead of personal empowerment. But it can also mean civil rights. I understand where the public misconception comes from––language-wise, feminism in China is not welcome.” 妇女能顶半边天 (fù nü néng ding bàn biān tiān): Woman can hold up half the sky M: “Communism is actually the reason why the notion that ‘Women Hold Up Half the Sky’ was introduced to China––they basically realized that they need women in order to support society.

Actually, Western feminism looked up to Chinese feminism because we were actually more progressive at that time. But right now, feminism in China has regressed. The biggest platform for feminism on Chinese social media is Feminist Voices, and it’s been shut down for I think a month and a half now. It’s a very small community.”

C: “Do you feel that, as China is becoming more capitalistic, feminism is getting weaker?”

M: “I definitely think so.”

Recent social media posts illustrate how, in China, International Women’s Day has “strayed from its origins” (chinadigitaltimes.net) ––rather than a day dedicated to pushing for human rights and equality, International Women’s day has been commercialized. Official social media accounts put an emphasis on physical appearances and material goods––women are encouraged to shop and take vacations. 国际三八妇女节 (Guójì sānbā fùnü jié): International Women’s Day M: “Many people in China don’t like the official name for International Women’s day. In En-

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glish, there’s woman, lady, girl, and female. And in Chinese, there are different terms too. Fùnǚ has the connotation of an older, married woman. The definition for this term though is a woman with constitutional rights.” 女生节(Nüshēng jié): Girl’s Day / 女神节 (Nǚshén jié): Goddess Day M: “So people have started calling it Girl’s Day, or Goddess Day. If you trace back the reason for that, it’s because they think that being young is one of the requirements for being attractive, and you need to be attractive in order to be valued.

And people say these terms without realizing this reason.”

C: “What do they think this day is for then?”

M: “People completely don’t know why there’s an International Women’s Day––they just think that this is a day where men spoil women. A lot of women at my age, who have received the same education I have––they want power, they want independence––but they don’t want to be called a feminist. I never even heard about the word feminism until I went to high school in America, it’s

just not something we talked about.”

Mimi talks about her experience in Chinese public boarding school and how the gender binary is strictly enforced, with little discourse about the spectrum of gender and sexuality between teachers to students, or even between peers to peers. The institution, as she experienced it, was overwhelmingly hetero and cis-normative.

C: “Were people allowed to date?”

M: “No, your teacher would get so mad at you if they found that you were seeing anyone. It’s based again in communism––you aren’t supposed to date your comrade.”

C: “How are adolescents supposed to fully explore their identities then?”

M: “Teachers will tell you how to behave properly as a girl or a guy, and it’s very publically taught.

It’s really difficult for anyone who is not cis or hetero, because of the whole Chinese cultural prioritization of lineage. America cherishes individualism, but in China you’re expected to stay with your family and produce grandchildren. Otherwise, you face pressure from your family.”

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One common policy in Chinese schools is that students are not allowed to wear makeup––at the same time, Asian beauty standards have become exceedingly problematic and unrealistic. A patriarchal power dynamic is evident in China’s societal depictions of beauty in media: women who look pale, skinny, innocent, and doll-like are glorified because men feel like they can exercise a protective/possessive power over them. 剩女 (shèngnü): Leftover women / leftover ladies M: “The Chinese beauty standard is so fucked up. You’re not allowed to do anything in school, but then in college all of a sudden everyone is doing it. You need to be super pale, super skinny–like unhealthily skinny. For some people it’s just their natural body type and that’s fine, but for most people it’s not––and people go after that shit. And it’s also popular to use phone filters make you look much younger than you are.”

C: “That makes me think of the Leftover Women issue. Schools police young girls about their appearance for years, and then the second they get to college, it’s a different kind of societal and self-policing. Like, there’s almost like a race to sell yourself before that late-20’s expiration date.

Sad.” 女汉子 (Nü hànzi): Tough Girl M: “There was a really popular phrase, Nǚ hànzi. Based on the meaning of the characters, it basically means ‘female dude’. For example, on a Facebook photo a family friend will comment nǚshén “goddess”, and I would reply “No, I’m just a nǚ hànzi” (“I’m just a female dude”).

Or, if I open my own water bottle or something, someone would say “Go, nǚ hànzi!” It was just a humorous way to make fun of yourself, but again, it’s the idea that power belongs to masculinity, and there is something embarrassing about being associated with masculinity.”

C: “How do people in your old social circles see you now?”

M: “I’m considered a very aggressive and bossy girl, but I’m not apologetic. I’m really proud of how I present myself––but, again, that’s perceived as a negative image. Even though I do think Chinese women are becoming more aware and more powerful, I think they are only allowed to have power to a certain extent, to have self-awareness to a certain extent. They call powerful independent women nǚ hànzi and it’s like, I can be powerful and just be a fucking female. Why do I have to be a ‘female dude’? What does that even mean?” 直男癌 (zhí nán ái): Straight Man Cancer As feminism gains more visibility on the international scale, it becomes more and more important to define this term, to recognize the subtleties that follow it through different nationalities. But there is something universal about feminism as well, and there is opportunity for solidarity across countries against the common foe of those like Trump, who––according to Chinese terms––spread “straight man cancer”, a condition that can unfortunately be understood and translated into multiple conditions and cultures. illustration by Doris Liou

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a half-formed thing ANNA HARVEY

snippets from nineteen years staff writer

I. I do not know what I look like. Newly released from biology book diagrams, where do my legs fit?

How wide do they spread? My fingernails are probably the translucent shell-pink that doesn’t show up on ultrasounds. My grandmother looks at my skinny limbs, round body, and white tuft of hair and calls me “Little Chicken.”

II. A picture of me in an unknown garden. Brow furrowed, ensconced in pink fleece, ruffled hood framing my frustrated face. I look like a murderous daisy.

III. I hold hands with a girl with walnut-brown hair. Her bangs are uneven, as are mine, though I have not yet learned that the mirror is a place for picking out flaws. In fifth grade, I will write an essay about her. She is my first best friend.

IV. It is Friday afternoon at Jewish preschool. I dip soft challah into grape juice. We all wear kippot (girls too), and mine is the same shade as the juice.

Later that night, I will repeat this dipping at my kitchen table and wonder how my mother doesn’t burn her fingers as she lights the candles.

V. It is the annual Winter Sing-Along;my first.

I have had the flu for two weeks and missed every rehearsal. On stage, I look left and right; watch the movement of the other kindergartener’s lips. I do not know what to do with my own. My parents catch this on tape.

VI. My teacher makes gingerbread for the class. It is not shaped like a man; it is thick cake, eaten with a fork. It is an old-fashioned recipe, designed to teach us about life in the 13 Colonies. The other kids comment and complain, but I like it better this way. I do not have to eat the head of something I’ve only just painted eyes on.

VII. Every week, I participate in a spelling bee. I always get full points, I always get the “bonus list” for next time. My friends usually do not. The words are supposed to be harder on the “bonus list,” but secretly I don’t think they are by much. I still feel odd, separate. One week, I deliberately misspell “much,” I use a “t.” This week, my friends all get the “bonus list” and I do not. I think my teacher knows what I did, and I feel like a liar.

VIII. I sit in synagogue, wearing a black dress. A doctor stands at the front, talking about how she used to be a rabbi until she met a remarkable woman. My family sits in a line in the front row, all facing forward.

Lilies cascade over a wooden box. My grandmother is inside it. Later, I see my uncle sob. I am younger, and a girl, yet I decide I will not cry.

IX. I have become scared of everything. The berries in my neighbor’s yard are poisonous. The squirrels nesting in the tree across the street have rabies. My parents will die in a terrible car crash if I step on sidewalk cracks. My smiles do not reach my eyes.

X. My best friend (one I made in shortly before my first Winter Sing-Along) and I play “Static Wars” with her twin brother and his friends. We take off our shoes and skid on stockinged feet across her thick basement carpet, arms outstretched, trying to shock each other. Sometimes we use stuffed animals as conductors. The boys use batteries. I am the best. My best friend’s babysitter, with her red hair and her long patchwork skirts, tells me some people have powers.

She describes a time she opened a drawer and levitated a spoon with her mind. I believe I am magic.

XI. I get a bad haircut. I look like a soccer mom, and I am about to start middle school. I have just gotten my second round of braces. I do not look in the mirror much that summer.

XII. Sometimes after school, my friends and I walk to the bakery down the street. We buy a full loaf of bread, sometimes cinnamon raisin, sometimes white, sometimes chocolate babka. Trudging through the snow on the way home, we stick our fingers into the bag and rip off pieces to eat. There are five of us and few leftovers.

XIII. It is the school musical. Dozens of middle schoolers are packed into the gym. The eighth-grade boys flooded the locker room yesterday, and the floors are still damp. Word travels that a boy I know is going to kiss me after the show. I wonder what to do with my retainer. Later, his dad pulls him away before I can find out.

XIV. I walk into high school for the first time and feel small. I am glad to carry my backXV. pack around with me; its extra heft makes me feel more like I belong. The other girls boast the glowing tans of a summer spent beachside and mascara not taken from their mother’s dresser. My eyelashes blend into my ghostly skin. I feel like a child.

XVI. I sit at a chemistry lab bench, poking brittle litmus paper into vials and watching it change color.

The boys in my lab group wonder if our teacher can

cook meth. Probably, they decide. I smirk with recognition; I too have been watching Breaking Bad with my parents on Friday nights.

I work at a bakery all summer. It is different from the one my middle-school friends and I used to frequent. One day, I drop a cake and slice my finger cutting ciabatta. It doesn’t stop bleeding for two days, and I have to wrap my finger in paper towels fastened with a baker’s hockey tape so I don’t scare the customers. I still have a scar.

XVII. I spend two weeks in Iowa City. Finally, I am with my people. We write short stories, ride in buses through cornfields, and go bowling in an alley that is 13 Colonies themed. I meet some of my best friends there and learn that cereal is an acceptable finish to every meal. I weave together some of the best sentences of my life, and a friend from Colorado tells me I make her feel brave.

XVIII. I cut off all my hair before prom and wrap myself in skeins of pink tulle. One friend wears a tux with a blue floral tie, and I realize that she is the only person I want to slow dance with all night. In the early hours of the morning, we get drunk off punch made by a boy headed to Princeton, and I watch her cheeks flush and sweat bead at her temples. She also cut her hair this year. I wonder if she liked mine better long.

XIX. I am sitting in my pajamas in a dark dorm room, my laptop perched on my stomach. It is 10:47 p.m. The fan blowing in my face hasn’t yet dried my hair. Instrumental Irish music flows through my headphones, a remnant of this evening’s study abroad research. My first year at college is almost over. I do not know what comes next.

Note: The title is taken from Eimear McBride’s 2013 novel, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. I haven’t actually read the book, but the title describes how I feel much of the time. So I stole it. illustration by Clarisse Angkasa

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boldly brown building on prostests TAYLOR MICHAEL section editor

Black student protests do not happen out of nowhere. Students of color do not randomly decide that there are problems and walk out of classes. Protests are a part of a conversation that is ongoing from student to student, students to administration, students to the nation, and students to the world. These protests illustrate for the administration what no longer can be said diplomatically. The job of a protest is to create a potentially embarrassing situation for the university. It is a warning. For example, if the number of Black tenured faculty doesn’t increase at Brown University, then the administration risks a protest outing the university as uncommitted to the ideals of a liberal institution. The hope is that afterwards, the institution will make changes to accommodate the demands. However, for this to happen the institution first needs to be able and willing to hear the voices of students.

But what happens when students have been giving similar warnings for 30 plus years? ~~~ Before I walked onto Brown’s campus for a student of color pre-orientation program, I already knew a few things about Brown. I knew that you didn’t call the dining hall the Sharpe Refectory but the Ratty; I knew that you weren’t supposed to step on the Pembroke seal; and I also knew that the Class of 2017 had the highest percentage of black matriculation in history.

Alumni, administrators, and upperclassmen stressed this to us. Everyone boasted that 12% black matriculation and 45% student of color matriculation meant progress. We were special.

Special things were expected from us. Brown was supposed to be the magical utopia of liberalism because of this 12%. And because we were firstyears, we believed them. Something special was going to happen now that we had reached this historic marker as black students in the Class of 2017.

Two months after the Third World Transition Program, I found out that the Taubman Center for Public Policy had invited former New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly to speak as a part of the Noah Krieger ’93 Memo-

rial Lecture series. Ray Kelly was speaking under the framework that the NYPD has world-renowned policing policies. Students and community members of Providence did not understand how exemplary policing policies could include racial profiling and stop-and-frisk. A coalition of students of color tried negotiating to have the lecture cancelled, but the administration and faculty were unwilling to acknowledge the harm students felt Ray Kelly’s presence would bring.

On October 29, 2013, Brown students and members of the Providence community stood outside and inside of the lecture hall protesting both Ray Kelly’s policies in New York City and the university’s support of these policies by providing him a platform to speak about them.

Participants, especially the leaders of the protest, were brought before the disciplinary board afterward. Administrators argued that protesters were obstructing the right to free speech and that a collegiate liberal arts education has to allow for contradicting opinions to exist. Students argued that bringing the head of the NYPD, whose policies are used as a model for other police forces such as the Providence Police Department and to an extent the Brown Department of Public Safety, would adversely affect the lives of Black and Latino students on campus. That day, administrators could see and hear students of color demanding justice, but they did not want to acknowledge what they had to say.

The issue of free speech emerged again a few years later in October 2015. A student wrote two opinion pieces in the Brown Daily Herald entitled “The white privilege of cows” and “Columbian Exchange Day.” The first piece argued that systems of power and oppression, such as racism and imperialism, were products of evolution and chance. They were “natural inequalities.” They could not be dismantled “at whim” because they were a part of the human condition. The second article argued that Brown should not have renamed “Fall Weekend” as “Indigenous People’s Day” because the benefits of the Columbian Exchange warranted celebration of a man who also had caused the genocide of native civilizations.

Students were outraged at the campus newspaper for publishing articles that ignored the way imperialism and colonialism destroyed various native cultures. However, students were even more furious at the response from the university. Like the Ray Kelly protest, administrators claimed that freedom of speech and the function of a collegiate liberal arts education allows students to say, write and publish anything that’s under the guise of opinion, no matter the real life harm and violence those words could create for communities of color. Just as this controversy was circulating in campus conversation,, a Department of Public Safety officer tackled a Latinx student from Dartmouth during the Ivy League Latinx Conference. Police claim they were acting in the line of duty, but students of color know that brutality against black and brown bodies is couched in the language of being in the line of duty for officers.

Right now, I am sitting in the library writing this, wondering whether anything has actually changed. Why does it matter that the Class of 2017 has such historic numbers of black students if those students of color are not valued or listened to? ~~~ In 1981, the number of black students at Brown reached and surpassed 100 students.

This was the first wave of large groups of black students coming to Brown. One hundred does not sound like a lot if one considers that Brown’s undergraduate class typically numbers around 5,000 students. But together, 100 students were a critical mass. There were enough students to fill Kasper Multipurpose Room. It was also enough for the students to have a significant voice in the university. In a phone interview, Melissa Nobles ‘85 said she felt that 100 black students was enough to make their presence felt.

It was about a week or so after orientation weekend in the fall of 1981. Melissa Nobles and her friends were walking home from a party. They were still new to campus and walked in large groups because first years wanted to be friends with everyone. Some of these students

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were first generation, others came from families with a college education, but all of these students were black. A few weeks earlier, they had finished the Third World Transition Program and were trying to assimilate into Brown’s predominantly and historically white institution.

Suddenly, another first-year, a male lacrosse player, approached Melissa and her friends and threw a glass bottle at their feet. Even though the incident was reported and the student faced some consequences, the incident affected the way those black first-years saw the university.

It took time for seemingly small and random incidents to accumulate so that trends became apparent. When Melissa and her classmates were seniors, a white first-year assaulted his black roommate in their dorm room. After the incident was reported to the administration, a hearing was scheduled for in late February or early March of 1985. However, the day before this hearing was supposed to happen, the case against him was dropped. The student faced no disciplinary action. The administration’s lack of response outraged students, particularly, the class of 1985. They saw the connections between the confrontation with Nobles and this situation. This time, something had to change.

No longer were they eager first-years learning about Brown. Instead, they were seniors familiar with the ways that universities, especially Brown, tend to sweep issues under the rug when they involve race and difference. The seniors were not confused as to how to handle the situation. Instead, students like Richard Gray ’85, one of the leaders of the 1985 protest, started asking, “What’s going on on campus if there is this dynamic that allows for these kinds of things to happen?”

In 1985, black students at Brown understood their relation to previous protests. There was a seventeen-year difference from ’68 and only a ten-year difference from the Black Student University Hall Takeover in 1975. Something needed to be done to demonstrate clearly to the university the urgency students of color felt about changing Brown for the better. For this reason, 1985 was a key time. April 1985 would be the 10-year anniversary of the 1975 Takeover of University Hall. A coalition of Black, Latino, and Asian American students were going to publicly ask the question: How has Brown changed in 10 years?

First, Black students looked to the Walkout of 1968 and then to the Takeover of University

Hall in 1975. The Walkout, as the first major protest, set the pace for future discussion of diversity, representation, and inclusion at Brown.

The women of Pembroke College and the men of Brown University demanded first and foremost that the university increase the percentage of black students at Brown from one or two percent to the national percentage of black students: eleven percent. Students felt that for meaningful change to happen to the university, black students needed to be visible. The Takeover of 1975 was a recommitment to this demand of increased black student enrollment.

However, additional concerns about minority faculty hirings, financial resources for students of color—including but not limited to financial aid, the Third World Transition Program, and other supportive services for students of color— were added. In the 1985 Takeover of the John Carter Brown Library, students again had to recommit the university to the demands of 1968 and 1975 for increased minority enrollment, increased financial aid support for low income students of color, and support services for students of color (the Third World Center) but increased their focus on minority faculty hirings, curriculas and inclusion of diverse histories and perspectives across disciplines.

Throughout these years, students from ’68 to ’85 understood something similar about their positions as black students in their present moments. Despite having 100 students, black students still felt invisible on campus. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison informed the way they understood being black in a predominately white institution. Harold Jordan ’85, primary drafter of the letter sent to the administration listing their demands, used this novel as an entry point for thinking about responding to the University’s lack of responsiveness to the needs of students. He said, “The purpose of the protest was to show the university that we were sick of being treated as invisible people.” ~~~ This past fall semester students of color at Brown University staged not one but five protests in the span of three months demanding the university pay attention to the real-life harm and concerns of students. Black Lives Matter, the BDH controversy, and student uprisings at the University of Missouri and Yale University created a crucial moment upon which students of color at Brown University could capitalize.

Black students could magnify their voices and

frustrations with the voices of black people at other universities and in other areas of life saying the same thing. Now several groups were saying the same thing: Black undergraduates, graduate students of color, alumni of color, and faculty from Ethnic, American and Africana Studies.

Something has to change at Brown immediately or else the last 50 years of protest have done nothing but increase the number of students of color experiencing an unsupportive campus environment. A critical mass in 2015 meant every person of color and every person invested in supporting students and faculty of color speak up and speak loudly. No one could afford to remain silent.

All things happen in a context. For those at Brown in 1985, the national climate of conservatism, deindustrialization, and backlash against the gains of the Civil Rights Movement influenced how students understood their role in making change. Brown, similarly to the nation, was making cuts to the budget that would directly affect students of color. Black students had to push the university to follow through on the promises made in 1968 and 1975. However, for Brown students here in the fall semester, there was a strong sense of disillusionment and annoyance. There was a Black president in office, and more Blacks than before were in the middle class and had access to college education.

All of this should mean progress. But then issues like the Prison Industrial Complex, police brutality, and voter ID laws showed my generation that, in fact, what seems like increased visibility and mobility is only an illusion. My peers did not want to hear about the progress that’s been made when reality showed them that Black people are valued just as little in 2015 as in 1985. illustration by Jenice Kim

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how to quiet your mind an instructional piece CLARIBEL WU section editor Do you feel trapped within yourself? Are these thoughts / feelings racing through your head: I am incompetent, I can’t do it, I want to give up, my heart is beating so fast, it feels like I’m breathing through a straw that is getting smaller and smaller with every breath, it feels like my body is permanently sunk into my mattress, I’m much too familiar with the details of the ceiling above my bed, I can’t even get up for water, time feels fake, my hands look fake, existence is heavy, living is weird, thinking is weird, being outside is weird, being inside is weird, everything is weird, please just relax, I shouldn’t be thinking this way, I’m stupid, this is dumb, I’m so ungrateful, just be happy, stop being like this, why are you like this, stop, stop it, I am incompetent, I can’t do it, I want to give up, I’m just so tired you know, I’m really tired Well, then here is How to Quiet Your Mind.* *Not all of these tips are possible or practical for everyone, but I encourage readers to modify parts of this exercise to suit individual needs and comforts* Find someplace safe and comfortable, like the couch in your lounge or a sunny patch of grass outside, because right now your bed feels like a black hole. Breathe, please breathe––take the outside in,

breathe the inside out. Breathe in through your nostrils and out through your mouth. Be gentle with yourself if you can. (pause) When you feel your heart rate slow, start paying attention to the way each breath travels through your body––your stomach expands, your ribs spread like two swan wings, your chest protrudes, and as you exhale, feel your body sigh, wings closing with tender grace. (pause) Now, listen. Listen, like you are an ocean and each breath is the far-off, foamy crash of a wave, or a passing gust of salty sea wind. Listen to the sounds around you, and let them filter in without judgment or identification. Try to just listen to them as pure sounds. (pause) Turn your attention to the surfaces that are touching your skin, like clothes, other parts of your body, the ground or air. Then, try to filter these sensations in without judgment or identification. Think about how it feels to feel anything at all. (pause)

Wander through your body, like a loving groundskeeper. Start from the very top of your head, as if you had a wand of bright healing light. As you wander, bring your mind’s attention to any tensions or pains or aches––surround them with light and love, breathing in the healing and breathing out the hurt. (pause) Explore every inch of your body, from that lovely cranium you never really get to see, down past your eyebrows, moving over every surface of your body, down to the tip of each finger, past your hips and knees, down to the tip of each toe. (pause) Wrap every part of yourself with light, breath it in and breath it out, breath it up and breath it down. Fill yourself up to the brim with this love, and just keep breathing. Repeat these steps until you decompress, until your mind has reached a quiet place. illustration by Claribel Wu

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fading the middle of nowhere SARA AL-SALEM staff writer It’s only in these moments that I have something to say, but these moments say the same thing every time. I don’t have anything new to tell you, and I wish I did, but in these moments I fade so quickly I lose the words to describe how obliterating they are.

I’ve spent so many years pointing my finger at everyone and everything saying, “You are the reason for this.” But sometime last year, I had run out of directions to point. So I pointed back to myself, digging my nail deeply into the center of my chest. “Now deal with this.”

For a little while, that worked. For a bit, I started to rearrange myself. I got rid of some habits, and some people too, and I began to look and feel a little differently. But 43 minutes ago, I dug through all the new progress to find my old habits, and I binged on them. What I spent a good year recycling, I had taken half an hour to unearth.

I wish I could tell you in a new way what I have been trying to put into words, but it always sounds like this: some vague, mediocrely written

expression about what it feels like. I can’t tell you what ‘it’ is. I only know it’s dull and rusting like cheap iron.

Have you ever closed your eyes during a song when every instrument crescendos ‒ all-consuming ‒ and you see this blackness that bursts in sparks? It’s like every part of your life flashing in short, pathetic instances, and you can’t see anything and you can’t hold onto anything, and it feels like a bad firework show? My entire life has been spent trying to describe what that feels like.

I’ve spent my entire life not knowing how.

Whiny, pitiful, self-indulgent ‒ yes, these are the words I know that describe this piece. I can only shrug in response. I’ve never claimed to be anything else. I’ve never claimed to be anything at all. Even now, I’ve lost what I wanted to say because I got caught up in what I don’t want to be seen as. While I was knee-deep in my old habits, there were a thousand ways to tell you what fading feels like, but now that I’m here and you’ve asked me, I only want to reassure you I know I’m not able to.

I think of the word “nowhere.” That’s what it feels like. I am nowhere. I cannot find myself in people, in friends, in passions, in talents, in hopes, in blank and in blank and in blank and in blank and in blank. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” you ask me, and I can only think, “Nowhere.”

I’ve written about small houses, about escapes, about losing and trying to ignore those losses, about hoping and hoping and hoping, so this isn’t new, you tell me. And you’re right, but this is nowhere. This isn’t supposed to be new. If it were new, it wouldn’t feel like nowhere.

I can only understand that in this nowhere, I am looking up, and it is that black sky with those black fireworks, and I open my mouth to say something, to point to one of the bursts of non-color and ask to be taken with it, but it is too quick and it cannot hear me.

illustration by Jenice Kim

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the storyteller a fairy tale AMEER MALIK staff writer You might have heard about me and how I saved a kingdom. How I volunteered to marry the king, a cruel, vicious man who would have killed me the morning after our wedding, as he had done to all his previous wives and as he planned to do to all of the women in the kingdom. For three years, I told him stories every night, stories that I ended every morning at the greatest point of intrigue so that he would keep me alive. In this way, I changed the king’s mind and convinced him to end his slaughter of women by teaching him compassion, decency, and justice through my tales.

If you have not heard of any of this, you can easily look it up. Had I known people would be able to learn stories so easily, I probably would not have agreed to do what the sage had asked me to do at my husband’s funeral.

Many years after my thousand or so nights of storytelling, my husband passed away. I cried, and my heart ached. We had built a life together and had grown to love each other. We had shared the duties of running the kingdom and had governed side by side. We had turned to each other for guidance and support. In this way, we had found happiness together.

After the funeral, a woman I had never met before came to me. She told me that she had heard about what I had done to save the kingdom. She said that she was a sage and that she wanted to grant me eternal life.

I was horrified. There was not a single story I could remember in which someone was happy to live forever. Life was not easy, and everyone welcomed death eventually. But the sage said that I was needed—that my tale-telling abilities were essential for future generations. Also, to ease my fears, the sage assured me that she could give me a potion that would end my life if I ever decided I no longer wanted to live.

After pondering her words for many days, I agreed. I thought, I could possibly serve as the holder and teacher of humankind’s stories and, through this, help people understand each other better. Looking back on this now, I realize how ridiculous this belief was.

When I told the sage that I accepted eternal life, she gave me one elixir to drink and one to keep. That was hundreds of years ago. To this

day, I travel the planet, forever frozen in the physical age I was when I accepted eternity. I have been reading and listening for all these years, learning more stories and sharing my tales with all who want to hear them. But now, I have come to doubt my place in the world.

I have seen many wondrous things in the centuries that have passed, but many horrible things, too. I have witnessed genocides. I have seen people’s lives upended by wars and crimes.

I have come across people who would not think twice before destroying others in order to get what they wanted. I once thought I had seen the extent of the monstrosities that humans are capable of in my husband before he changed his ways, but I was wrong.

People have a capacity for cruelty that is greater than I could have ever imagined. Today, when people have the ability to learn about each other, to read and listen to what others have to say more easily than ever, so many people still hurt or refuse to help each other. When people suffer, those who can help too often shrug their shoulders and look away.

Furthermore, truths are becoming harder to tell apart from lies. Men with flag pins attached to their lapels stand in front of large crowds and spout nonsense. People who have devoted their lives to discovering and sharing the truth are finding it difficult to sustain themselves, while others who spread malicious falsehoods receive fame and adoration. In such a world, where do I belong?

These thoughts plague me, and I sometimes feel fed up with the world. I fiddle with the vial of death in my pocket and wonder if this is it for me. But then, I remember the good things that have come from telling stories. A few weeks ago, I came across a young girl sitting by herself on a swing in a park. Her face was lowered, and tears dripped from her cheeks and hit the ground. I asked her what was wrong. She told me her home country was plagued by chaos and war. She had found safety now. She was living with distant relatives. But her parents had not joined her yet.

The girl was scared for her parents and for her own future. I told her a story that has been told many times. The version I told her went

like this: A young boy was born during the last days of a dying planet. His parents loved him so much that they sent him away on a ship to find a new home. Their act was one of great sacrifice, courage, and faith. This child found a new planet to call home. He was raised by a loving family, who taught him what was right and what was wrong. Equipped with their lessons, and with the gifts he had received from his parents by birth, he devoted his life to helping everyone on his new planet.

The young girl found some comfort in this story. She sensed that a bright future was possible for her. Moments like this remind me that my job is not over. Maybe one day I will truly have nothing more to do. But, despite how bleak the world seems now, that day has not arrived. So I will continue to wander this world and share the stories I know. illustration by Clarisse Angkasa

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spring nights a periwinkle that grounds me NICOLE FEGAN staff writer

Spring nights beg oxymoron: a windchill waxing, disturbing the 80-degree heat. My skin transporting into summer as the dark sky whispers tender memories of winter. I cannot tell if the sky is cloudless or composed of one giant, incoming blue-gray thunderstorm. The wind blows tears into my eyes as Elliott Smith’s “Between the Bars” plays on repeat, and repeat, and repeat into my ears, tearing apart a space in my universe—something akin to a gut feeling—a place that lacks explanation.

These college streets have never felt as silent as they are right now with you not here.

Today is the first full day I have spent without the person who has come to define my second semester, and I have chosen the wrong day to begin listening to Elliott Smith. It was a lonely night, and I was quickly skimming

through scenes of Stuck in Love, a movie I can no longer watch to completion. It sparks within me the memory of the first time I watched it: huddled in a humid basement in summertime with my best friends, as we watched a girl named Kate overdose on cocaine, manipulate everyone around her, create endless pain, all of us knowing we could be this girl if we did not play our cards right. That night, my throat caught on every inhale and every exhale, and that movie is now a feeding ground for anxiety.

And yet, this somber college night, I managed to muster up the courage to watch some of it, until my body told me to listen to the movie’s soundtrack right that moment or spontaneously combust.

So I listened, got through some songs on the soundtrack, and “Between the Bars” start-

ed playing. I swear my heart stopped for a second. I knew this voice. I knew this song. I have cried to this song on countless evenings while watching Good Will Hunting, my favorite movie, which I revisit every few months as a kind of reset button for my life. That movie is laced with Elliott’s songs, and it was not until right then, that moment where my life-changing media intersected, that I was able to put voice to name.

Elliott Smith’s music is salvation, is pain, is heartbreak. I hear his voice and become a 14-year-old girl one day before her 15th birthday in her parents’ room, trying to suppress sobs while watching Will Hunting break down and confront his past. I hear his voice and remember every quiet midnight when the only thought in my jumbled brain was, “It’s a Good Will Hunting kind of night.” I hear his voice and recall every time I have been reminded that I do not have to be grand or important—I simply have to be. His voice is everything that hurts and everything that inspires.

I have never experienced such a pure moment of shock and recognition firsthand.

I have witnessed this before; often my best friend stops in her tracks while walking, sniffs the air, and pronounces that she knows this scent, and even though I only smell suburbia, her demeanor is changed for the rest of the day.

No one piece of art has ever left me stunned to the point of confusion, so I feel compelled to keep listening. I keep listening despite the inexplicable pain in my chest every time I hear his wispy voice. I listen and I see Will Hunting and Skylar heartbroken, I see Kate from Stuck in Love slyly saying, “I think you’re going to be very good for me,” I see the blonde boy from Lit class with gentle eyes, because he breathes this music.

The walk down Brown Street has never felt so foreign.

I do not believe in fate, or destiny, or anything of the sort. I do not believe it is possible for someone to discover something “at the right time.” But my particular introduction to Elliott Smith feels like nothing short of a stroke of magic. My mental health exists in waves; brief periods of hyper-happy are followed by introverted seclusion, the corners of my lips pulled down by anchors. Weeks of hopelessness are soothed with some teenage cliche of finding

lifestyle

inspiration in the stars. When my heart overflows with love, it finds despair to counteract it. I have been suspended in a welcome cloud of cherry-red euphoria, having more fervor for life than I knew was possible. And upon hearing the first few notes of Elliott Smith’s album Either/Or, a familiar shade of blue sets in my

heart—a periwinkle that grounds me. His music is not comfortable. It reminds me of every single one of my bad nights. But maybe that’s why I love it so much.

I find Elliott Smith at a middling place, in spring. Where summer and winter meet, Elliott Smith exists. His songs are warm and cold

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and tingling and chilling. There is a soft, secret tone to his distressing words — a perfect oxymoron — that I don’t think I will ever be able to listen to comfortably. And yet, I don’t think I will ever stop listening. illustration by Jenice Kim

one minute early i’m going to tell you a secret DANIEL MURAGE contributing writer

I am going to tell you a secret. It is a secret because it is not the kind of information that I would normally go spreading around; it is not the kind of information you will go spreading around.

On June 1, 2016, I went to board a plane at Boston Logan International Airport destined for London. My flight was to leave at 9 p.m., and I arrived at the check-in desk at exactly 7:59 p.m. I know this because I checked the airport clocks. I know this because, up until a month ago, I wore the same Casio watch on my wrist for four straight years. I know this because my watch beeped on the hour, and it beeped right when I was speaking to the airline agent, when she told me that I could not check in to board the plane. This I know, and I want you to know that it’s the truth because it happened and because my watch had been running for four years and had never skipped a second nor ever needed a new battery or rewinding.

Do you know what the airline agent said?

She said that I was late and that she needed to go help passengers aboard the plane. She was hurriedly packing her bags to leave and did not stop to greet or speak to me, as most airline agents do. I asked, kindly, for her to check me in. I asked her colleague to check me in, and the man placed his stuff on the chair beside the computer and started to attend to me.

He greeted me and asked for my travel documents. She forbid him to check me in. He

looked at me then at her. Me then her. It was then clear that she was his boss, for he abandoned checking me in and decided to turn off the computer instead. He did not speak to me.

He did as he was told—he handed over my travel documents and prepared to leave.

“What should I do?” I asked, when I realized that I was being left on my own at the check-in desk.

“Can I call your boss?” I asked the lady. As she walked away, she said that I should call the airline and reschedule a flight. She said that she would not give me her boss’s number and that she had received clear instructions not to check any passengers in after one hour to departure.

This she said even though I was on time. I wondered whether she was just having a bad day, or if my sagging trousers and tattered shirt made her not take me seriously; she didn’t smile or call me sir or even young man. She was just cold. But even if these presumptions might be the case, I was one minute early. My now dead watch knows this, and you know this too.

When she left, I approached the guards who were seated by the opposite desk and asked them for help. They asked what had happened, and I narrated to them the happenings of the last fifteen minutes. They shook their heads and sympathized with me. They said that airline agents never refuse to check passengers in, even if they show up, be it one minute early or 15 minutes late. They apologized, explaining that they didn’t have the number for the airline—they worked for the airport as security agents. One of the guards agreed to lend me her phone so that I could look up the airline’s customer service numbers and call them. I spoke with an agent who told me that I had to pay $350 to reschedule my flight. She said that I had to do this 30 minutes before the plane left, or I would lose my return ticket as well. I told her of my misfortune; I pleaded, I asked to make a complaint. She listened and told me that she could do nothing.

The guards wished me luck and said that I could sleep at the airport. They sympathized with me and shook their heads in disgust. This they did, and then they left to go home as their shift was over.

I was so angry that I decided to finish playing Hitman: Absolution on my computer.

For one hour I took out my anger by strangling club bouncers and shooting enemies and non-enemies alike. I was agent 47, and I was meting out my anger and frustration on innocents, not worried about progressing in the game. This is what happened, and I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw down my laptop and scream. I wanted to hit the wall, but I was in an airport, and you know how the security is in airports. All I could do was play Hitman: Absolution.

To tell you the truth, I wished the airline lady bad things. I imagined how nice it would be if I got the $350 refund and opted to buy her a ticket to the countryside, say Idaho, where she would plant potatoes and surely be unhappy. She is not fit to interact with people, I thought. But then, I was worried that even the potatoes would not be able to stand her, and the potato harvests would diminish.

That is my secret, and I have held it for many months. I could go on telling you about the outcome of this unfortunate incident, which I did pursue with the airline, but to cut a long story short, justice was not served.

The lady got away that day for I did not take note of her name, and the airline did not care enough to find out who she is. Now that I have told you my secret, I hope that you understand that I was one minute early, and I missed my flight to London and had to pay a $350 fee to reschedule my flight. I hope you now understand why I wished the airline agent the fate of farming potatoes that would never grow. I hope that this secret of ours remains between me and you.

illustration by Clarisse Angkasa

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fair weather friends “i was being replaced” ELIZA CAIN staff writer I dipped my spoon in the purple dye, searching for my egg to check its hue before letting it sink back into the vinegar concoction. I attempted to pass the utensil to Emma, but she was still immersed in her phone, eyes glued to the screen as the seconds ticked by on yet another Snapchat selfie from her boyfriend. When she was ready to leave, she refused to take home any of the dyed eggs that we’d just spent hours creating, as if the whole thing had been a silly waste of her time. We were freshmen in high school, continuing our tradition of dyeing Easter eggs together for yet another year. But this time it was different. That was one of the last days we ever spent together.

Emma and I had been inseparable since kindergarten—the kind of friends who had weekly sleepovers, went to summer camp together, and bought each other every cheap, jewel-encrusted Best Friends necklace we came across. At my house we played Polly Pocket and Dance Dance Revolution and baked chocolate chip cookies. At her house we watched Disney Channel, walked to the pool, and talked for hours on her hammock.

We promised that we would stay friends forever and be bridesmaids in each other’s weddings. We had crushes on the same boys and complained about our parents. We never kept secrets from each other.

But there was another facet to our relationship that complicated what should have been a simple childhood friendship. Emma was a social climber. She was always perusing her options, yearning to join the ranks of the popular crowd. Her discontent quickly led to a pattern, one that I didn’t truly grasp until high school: Emma would befriend someone new, someone she perceived as cooler than I was, and then she would forget about me until the new friend forgot about her.

The first incident occurred in first grade, when Emma started hanging out almost exclusively with another girl in our class named Maya. While Emma and I had always been a duo, I saw no problem letting Maya join our group. But I still remember walking across the playground one day during recess, hoping to join the two of them up in a tree and being told there wasn’t enough room for

me. Suddenly it didn’t feel like Emma and I were adding another friend to our group, but rather that I was being replaced. Weeks later, when Emma finally got tired of Maya’s negativity and irritable moods and returned to me, I was so glad to have my friend again that I hid my feelings of rejection and acted like nothing had ever happened.

We followed this pattern for years, with Emma periodically tossing me aside for someone better. In second grade it was Claire, in fifth grade it was Chiara, in sixth grade it was Chloe, and so on, until Emma decided to go to a private high school. Our friendship essentially fell by the wayside as she was absorbed into a clique of preppy girls who all straightened their hair every day and shopped at the same stores. In a move that I now realize was a mistake, I never made much of an effort to make other close friends, instead choosing to put all my eggs in one basket. And even when I did reach out to other girls, they always seemed like placeholders for Emma.

If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. I lost my best friend, the one person I could talk to about absolutely anything. That realization hit me the day we were dyeing Easter eggs; Emma’s life—with her boyfriend and her new friends from private school whose faces were plastered all over my Facebook newsfeed—didn’t include me any longer.

Our little traditions like egg dyeing were now meaningless to her.

For me, the end of our friendship felt like a breakup, a drawn-out one full of bad communication and unspoken emotion. Thinking of her brought on a wave of nostalgia, a longing for the past when we used to giggle in tap class or choose the worst rated Netflix movies to watch together. My inability to let go made me feel pathetic. She had moved on; why couldn’t I? I spent the next four years tentatively exploring new friendships, never throwing myself wholeheartedly into the social sphere, imagining how things would have been different if Emma had stuck around.

I left high school determined to make more connections in college, to be receptive to a variety of relationships. While there is a special place in my heart for memories of

Emma, I’ve realized that I don’t need her anymore. I don’t need one friend whom I tell everything to and do everything with.

I should have a wide array of people in my life, who all fulfill different roles.

Emma and I still Snapchat, now and then, when we see something that reminds us of the other. She texted me in September to wish me a happy birthday, and I did the same for her in November. We unenthusiastically attempted to make plans to meet up over winter break that I knew she would never follow through on. I don’t know if we’ll ever reconnect or discuss what happened between us, but I’ll always remember her as my best friend. And even though we probably won’t be bridesmaids in each other’s wedding like we once hoped, maybe we’ll at least still invite each other, if only for old time’s sake. illustration by Katie Cafaro

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an ode to my oaf, Baba on loving fully CLAIRE SAPAN staff writer You gallop toward me, tongue hanging sloppily out of your mouth, hair tousled by the harsh wind. With each stride you become more jubilant, beginning to zig-zag playfully through the gravelly sand. I laugh and follow you as you bound joyfully into the cold September air. You are faster than me, but you look back every couple of seconds, checking to make sure I’m still there.

I knew we would be best friends from the moment you clumsily skidded into our apartment— and my life—when I was seven. Your paws had grown faster than your body, so you looked like a four-legged Bigfoot, your claws unable to gain traction on our wood floors. You were confused— you had grown up in a small world of cows in rural New York, until a four-hour van ride transplanted you into a confusion of concrete and skyscrapers.

I’ll be honest: You weren’t exactly a looker. Your fur had been shaved, showcasing your strangely eggplant colored skin (hence your name, Babaganoush). You were clumsy and nervous, but so was I. That night when you rested your massive, wet snout in my lap and sighed, I felt an uncontrollable desire to be near you. You exuded love that day; you still do.

Don’t get me wrong though, you came into yourself quickly. Your fur soon masked the purple as it grew into a curly golden coat, and as your body caught up with your paws; you became undeniably handsome. My mom insists you’re regal-looking; I contend that you’re goofily adorable.

You quickly gained the adoration of the neighborhood—it was, and still is, impossible to go on a walk with you without being stopped. Coos of awe and excitement escape from children and businessmen alike, and you always stop and let them admire you. You stand patiently as the timid toddler approaches you, and allow him to yank your tail, accidentally step on your tender paws, and hug you just a little too tight. Sometimes I wish you weren’t so insanely loveable, just so I could walk at least one city block without interruption.

My dad has always insisted that you hold your own, saying “nobody messes with Baba.”

And it’s partly true. With dogs you’re certainly no pushover—in the dog run, the other dogs scurry anxiously behind you as your lean body strides confidently around the perimeter of the park. And if one of those brave dogs ever tries to mess with you, you mess back. You use your bark sparingly, but when you do, it instills fear in anyone and

anything around.

But Baba, you must admit you are no Einstein. You bump your head on tables, you eat the cat food every night despite the stomach aches, you always look for the ball even when you clearly saw me hide it behind my back. But it’s this lack of obvious intelligence that informs your contagious lovability. You trust everyone—my family always jokes that if murderers came you would greet their guns merrily at the door with a tail wag. Your naivete is one too honest to exist in humans: It makes you that much more special. Despite your surface stupidity, you have a unique gift of understanding human emotion. You know when we’re getting ready to leave the house—you crawl into your bed and sulk. You know when you’ll be coming with us—you wait eagerly at the door. You know when I’m upset—you rest your snout in my lap. You know when I’m happy—you dance through the kitchen with me.

For the past 13 years, you have seen me grow up. Watched as I’ve transformed from a bucktoothed seven-year-old into a 21-year-old college junior. You saw me through braces, through my

Avril Lavigne obsession, through the death of my two grandparents, through the SAT, through my tearful departure for college. You were always there—a goofy, happy, loving, silly, marvelous ball of fluffy golden fur. My friends bypass me to find you when they come over. My boyfriend asks to talk to you on FaceTime. You are part of me.

Anticipating grief is a strange concept. It’s the disconcerting spot between loving and appreciating you now and knowing you’ll soon be gone. And I do know this. I can see you start to hurt—the bounce in your step has diminished, you dance with me less. I just don’t know how to prepare myself for life without you, because it will undoubtedly be far less magical. For 13 years you have been there, tail thumping on the floor in the morning, panting at night. I can’t begin to know the endless ways I will miss you. But for now, you continue your rhythmic panting, tongue hanging sloppily out of your mouth, looking back to make sure I’m still here. illustration by Kathy Luo

springtime section 18

Illustration by Jenice Kim

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voices carry can slam poetry still inspire?

NICOLE FEGAN staff writer “You took my heart like a thief in the night, placed it in the iridescent colors of your soul, put it in a box.

Locked it with a key, and kept it. That’s how you start it, with a deep ass line.”

This is how Daisy Armstrong begins her 2011 spoken word poem “This Shit Looks Deep”: with a deep-ass line. For four and a half minutes, she goes on to mock, comment on, and most importantly, utilize every slam poetry cliché that has ever emerged. Her dynamics change even when the content of the poem does not. She fabricates emotions to gain the audience’s attention; she uses a fake New York accent because everything sounds good in a New York accent; she lets her body control what happens, not the words. Daisy points out everything that was wrong with slam poetry trends back then, and we are still seeing the same trends today.

The first time I ever experienced spoken word poetry, I was sitting in my eighth-grade writing enrichment class as a prose writer terrified of verse and all things related to it. My teacher put on a performance from a Def Poetry Jam, Shihan’s “This Type Love,” and it was unlike anything I knew. It had the passion of acting, the lyricism of prose, the energy of a stand-up comedy gig. It was the combination of my favorite kinds of art, and I fell instantly in love with its originality and creativity. I discovered Andrea Gibson, a spoken word poet who lies on the softer side of the genre; Patrick Roche, a mentally ill college student who leaves his entire heart on stage; Kai Davis, a black girl with more passion than I could ever fathom; and Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye and Neil Hilborn and Alex Dang and countless poets who have their own unique styles.

Around the time I was discovering the genre, it started gaining popularity. The revolutionary show Def Poetry Jam was off air, but the Brave New Poets competition was in full-swing. The YouTube account Button Poetry began in 2012 and quickly became one of the biggest sources for spoken word online. Individual Youtube pages were started, and more people than ever were able to share their art.

I discovered poets whose words and voices transformed and inspired me.

Yet now, I’m finding poets who sound almost like them. Their words are different, but their inflection sounds familiar. I’ve seen their mannerisms before. They’re conforming to an unspoken formula that has been created throughout the formative few decades of the genre, and now, Button Poetry is riddled with poems which accomplish nothing other than compliance.

“Poet Voice” is something that has been written about for years. It is this insufferable airy and performative tone that most poets (including myself,

on occasions) use when reciting a poem—always a few steps away from what their actual voices sound like. Every other syllable is stressed, the lines always end on a down-note, and for some reason, poets adopt a voice that is not their own. I should not be hearing the same exact voice when watching Rudy Francisco, a romantic, passionate black man, and Sam Flax, a white guy walking on some train tracks with one corner of his lip upturned to create an accent and a façade that he does not have any right to maintain. Poems lose their authenticity and heart when they are performed in the way that has been laid out for them by prior poets.

Poets come out the door with a mission: to make the audience feel what the poet feels. What many don’t understand is that just as respect has to be earned, the audience’s emotional response is not a given. I have no reason to feel for a poet from the get-go. Sure, there is a sense of human connection and natural empathy, but the second a poet comes out swinging loudly, proclaiming something mundane with an overdramatic voice, they have lost me.

I already know that they are going to be using just their body and their voice to tell me their story, as opposed to their words. Poetry slams are not merely a space to see who can yell the loudest.

This brings me to my final point. Slam poetry is a fascinating genre because it is one of the only

spaces that is primarily occupied by marginalized and minority groups. Because of this, the platform has become increasingly politicized, and for good reason. A queer woman standing and demanding a platform is a political statement; a mentally ill person putting issues into the spotlight is a political statement; a black man taking back power on a stage is a political statement. Spoken word poetry is a political art for unheard voices—but it is still an art, and I have observed a lack of original art recently. A small yet noteworthy portion of slam poems focuses more on the message than the poem itself, as if the destination is somehow worth more than the journey. This ideology turns poems into speeches, poets into politicians, and poetry slams into rallies. Politics and slam poetry can and should coexist in the same space, but not at the expense of a poem still having validity as a poem.

Over the past five years, I have found solace and love and inspiration and knowledge in writing and listening to slam poems. I know no better way to share my story, and to hear stories that do not get told as often as they should. But the art cannot continue to thrive if it is being dictated by clichés and trends that mar originality and creativity. I want to leave a punch, an impact, but my way.

“Remember to always fade your Last. Three. Words.” illustration by Michelle Ng

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arts & culture

young and beautiful brown queerness from a brown alum DANI BALAZERO staff writer Fatimah Asghar ’11 steps onto the middle of the stage of a lecture hall in BERT. Brown, small but standing tall, with a wide, shining look in her eyes, Asghar takes a microphone and begins to read aloud from her iPad. She is on Brown’s campus to perform poems from her first-ever and upcoming chapbook, AFTER. Six years have passed since she was taking classes as an International Relations and Ethnic Studies double concentrator and I, a Political Science and Ethnic Studies double concentrator, am in awe of her career’s trajectory. Hours before the performance, Asghar led a small poetry workshop, where she shared details about her initial interests when coming to Brown (working to “help people” via the United Nations), and how she ended up a spoken word poet and screenwriter. Asghar’s art is political, precisely because of her identity as a queer Muslim woman of color. During her poetry performance, Asghar takes a moment to share two episodes of her new popular web series, Brown Girls. A body of work as political as any of her poems, Brown Girls has launched Asghar into the webseries mainstream.

The series (available at http://www. browngirlswebseries.com/) focuses on the lives of two women of color (WOC), Leila and Patricia, in their mid-20s. Leila, a queer South-Asian writer, is played by the charming Nabila Hossain, while the effortlessly cool Sonia Denis plays Patricia, a sex-positive Black-American musician “who is struggling to commit to anything: job, art, and relationships.” The two live in the South Side of Chicago, where they scramble to make ends meet as they attempt to launch their respective artistic careers.

The series opens to a phone conversation between Leila and her auntie. The camera pans around Leila’s room, unveiling the intimate little details that let us in on just how youthful, how messy, how artistic Leila really is. Will Leila be joining her auntie at the mosque? Is Leila having… sex? We only see and hear Leila conversing; her curly hair and accent become the focus of our attention, and we are reminded that this is not the identity of the leading ladies we are used to seeing.

“I am not having sex,” Leila tells her auntie, frantically. In a skillful comedic move by director Sam Baily, the camera slowly pans to a big, beautiful, naked, curly-haired WOC, whom Leila clearly had spent the night with.

The two girls stare at each other longingly.

Then the theme song and credits flash into a tune composed by Jamila Woods ’11, Asghar’s close friend and the inspiration for the Patricia character.

This introduction lasts a little under two minutes, yet, in this short timeframe, Asghar showcases a lifetime’s worth of “representation.” Where else can we see a brown Muslim queer girl with an accent sleeping with a naked fat femme WOC while she discusses mosque attendance with her auntie, as the camera pans over a packed bowl?

So, yes, Brown Girls has representation.

Lots of it. Every episode packs a new punch, reminding its viewers that these characters are keenly aware of their race, ethnicity, and sexuality, and that these identities affect their lives in everything from their careers to their social and love lives. For example, in a particularly tender and hilarious moment, Leila and Patricia’s queer black friend, Victor, confesses he, like many a millennial, is tired of being forever single and alone: “I want love,” he says. “I want that shit. I want that shit that you wake up in the morning and you go to work and deal with racism because you know you can go to bae at the end of the day. You know what I mean? That’s what I want… I’m too young and beautiful to be single forever.”

Leila and Patricia nod encouragingly. They’re too young and beautiful, too.

Both Leila and Patricia deal with deep personal issues in this first season. Leila is figuring out her queerness (and how to tell her family about it) and her relationship with a girl she has been seeing (whose name is Miranda), while Patricia deals with her parents divorce, her stagnant singing career, and “not being good at being alone.”

And while all of these take up about equal screen time and are of equal importance, there are a few moments when Leila is dealing with the public aspect of her sexuality that exemplifies why I think Brown Girls is the kind of show that deserves our viewership.

Leila confesses that she is queer to an unsurprised cousin, Mussarat. Leila seems almost offended that her cousin knew. Mussarat tells Leila that it doesn’t matter, that she is proud of Leila, and that “all this hiding is going to kill her.” Leila replies, “I know” and within a beat collapses onto Mussarat in tears.

Later, toward the end of the season, when Leila reunites with Miranda, Miranda

tells Leila that, if she wants to be in a relationship, Leila needs to “quit hiding.”

This is what Asghar achieves with her work in Brown Girls. She does not hide. Rather, Asghar brings to the limelight these very real (semi-autobiographical) stories, and not in a way to reach a “diverse” audience, but, simply, as a way to reflect the reality of the lives of girls like Leila and Patricia. Or the lives of women like Patricia’s mom, who is going through divorce. Or of people like Victor, who gets pink eye from sex with another man.

Sam Bailey does an incredible job as well in capturing the intimacy between these bodies and in capturing the care and warmth that comes from these (queer) communities of color. From my experience on Brown’s campus, Brown Girls quite literally looks like the queer POC scene here on College Hill.

From the Black fashion, to the fairylight-lit basements, to the beautiful and unapologetic myriad of ethnic hairstyles, scenes from Brown Girls may look like your Instagram feed on a Friday night. Their struggles—love, racism, careers—may be the same as yours, and the dialogue reflects it. And though the comedic timing can be worked on, and the story could be fleshed out further, Brown Girls has so much room to grow and be one of the most illustrative examples of brown girlhood, brown queerness, and brown friendship.

Leila tells Patricia in the last episode, “We’re going to make this work, I promise.”

Brown Girls works, and it’s just a matter of time before Asghar follows in the footsteps of other “DIY millennials” like Lena Dunham or Issa Rae. I recommend watching the show now, before HBO or Netflix or whoever buys it. It’s only a matter of time before it’s the next big thing. illustration by Soco Fernandez Garcia

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emotions in the stars reading my sister’s horoscopes TAYLOR MICHAEL section editor Horoscopes are not a hobby for my older sister.

Lindsay does not fill empty hours of the day flipping through the horoscopes on the back of the newest Cosmo. For her, reading her “scopes” means assembling a tool belt for dealing with the day’s problems. If the alignment of the moon means that there will be tension in her interactions, she puts more compassion in her tool belt. If her charts show she might be frustrated with work this week, she puts in patience. In her life, horoscopes mean routine, pre-planning, and order.

Understanding the stars is like planning out meals for a diabetic. Everything must be charted beforehand.

Weeks, days, and hours all must be accounted for.

If the day, week or month has not been charted correctly, the effect is immediate. My sister is more reactive, frantic, and more off-balanced. Surprises can be handled only when she understands the current position of the planets and moons. However, this is not necessarily because she knows exactly what will happen and when. Often times the answers do not matter as much as the process of preparation. The tool belt must not be unbalanced. All weights must balance on her hips comfortably, all the tools within easy reach.

My sister has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). According to my mom, the signs have been recognizable since middle school. Lying about school assignments, frequent screaming matches with both my mother and father, and weird mood swings on random days were apparently not just growing pains.

Lindsay did not want to believe my mom when she said that she had a behavioral disorder. According to my sister, she couldn’t have ADHD because she was smart and normal. People with mental disorders are supposed to be stupid and unable to function normally in society.

They were those people under the overpass on the Major Deegan Expressway who walked along the highway with a cat attached to their shoulders. They were the people our father hospitalized. The girls who killed their parents or burned the dog. That was not my sister.

Left unaddressed, ADHD does not simply go away with puberty. Transitioning from middle school to high school was rough for my sister, to say the least. In middle school, she was used to being the smartest person in her class without much effort. I remember lots of arguments going well into the night about grades and studying, particularly about geometry. My sister was originally placed in the honors geometry class. Because of her difficulties in class, half way through the year the teacher placed her in the regular geometry class half way through the year . Her decrease in confidence and motivation directly correlated with her drop in grades. Unfortunately, my sister did not understand that she was brilliant but just needed help managing her behavior. This issue of her disorder came back with a vengeance in college. Because she decided to take

five classes and never learned to manage her behavior disorder under stress, she began to have problems passing classes again. Only this time the issue was a lot more serious. My sister was at risk for expulsion in the middle of her junior year. It was at this point that I can remember my sister taking psychostimulants.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fifth edition (DSM-5) divides criteria for ADHD into two categories: inattention, and hyperactivity or impulsivity. Within the inattention category doctors look for signs that a child has trouble paying attention to, following through with, or remembering tasks, activities, or work. In the hyperactivity category, doctors look for the inability to sit still, excessive talking, and impatience both with other people and with themselves. However, research often forgets the ways that these signs also affect emotional behavior or self-esteem. Children especially may become easily frustrated, worried, excited, angry, hurt, or impatient. While all these emotions are normal for children, those with ADHD find it harder to process emotions if they do not understand why they cannot do things like other children, or if others do not understand or respond to their feelings immediately.

Even though they can be about different topics or problems, most arguments between my mother and my sister are the same. Either my mother or my sister has failed to meet the expectations of the other. When she was younger, sometimes these arguments happened because my sister didn’t turn in a paper or failed an important exam. More recently, it means that my sister and mother cannot compromise or adapt to understand the other. When she was younger the shouting matches would be loud. More often than not my sister was struggling with the same issues for which my mom was yelling at her. Failure, disappointment, and conflict are hard for someone that, through no fault of her own, cannot focus. I remember fights ending with, “I am trying my best. I didn’t mean to…” Today the fight usually ends in, “Why can’t you understand that you have a daughter with ADHD?” In January 2014, my sister was admitted into the philosophy masters program at the New School for Social Research. Something had to immediately change so that she would not make the same mistakes again.

It was at this point I first heard my sister mention astrology. Astrology did something for her that Adderall could not. Drugs could help her brain to focus for the time it was in her bloodstream. Astrology helped my sister cope when the drugs wore off. What started out as a hobby quickly became necessity.

Today my sister has 12 astrology websites she checks daily, weekly, and monthly: astrology.com, Prokeraia, Susan Blair Hunt, Astrology Zone by Susan Miller, Astrodienist, Venus group, Jonathan Cainer,

Chani Nicholas, Free Will Astrology, horoscope.com, Daily Horoscopes, and Café Astro. She typically spends the most time Monday reading horoscopes, because she reads the daily, weekly, and then, when appropriate, monthly ’scopes precisely at midnight so that she is also accounting for time differences with the authors of these different sites.

According to Everyday Health, 10 tips for managing adult ADHD are to 1. Downsize Distractions 2. Get Organized 3. Take 10 and Think It Through 4. Get Moving 5. Get Sleep 6. Eat a Power Breakfast 7. Boost Your Odds of Success by Working with your Strengths and Weaknesses 8. Reward Yourself 9. Try Guided Imagery 10. Ask for Help With the help of these websites, my sister is in the process of changing her habits so that she is able to function without relying on Adderall. She practices with these horoscopes to learn how to react when unexpected things happen in life. When she is stuck in a portion of a paper for a graduate school class, she does not let herself lose focus because her chart told her that she would have a mental block for a while that would lead to inspiration later in the week. When my mother does not understand what having ADHD is like, Lindsay does not blow up, because her chart said that she would need more patience dealing with loved ones today.

My sister is not irrational for following 12 different horoscope websites. Stars are not something of fantasy or a way for my sister to claim an identity. My sister uses the stars to guide her. Not like the North Star with the Underground Railroad, because that’s not even the brightest star in the sky. Sirius A is. Stars are neutral space. They don’t cause my sister mood swings or make her feel inadequate. They are just stars.

There is a difference in understanding who you are.

This is the difference in understanding your rising sign from your sun sign from your moon sign. For those with behavioral disorders, who they are and how they are can easily be misunderstood. My sister isn’t lazy.

She just needs more time than most to sort through her thoughts and sift out relevant ones from random ones. The difference being that my sister’s work ethic does not define who she is essentially. Her work ethic instead is managed through a bunch of means. Behavioral drugs are one way. Looking at her rising sign is another. illustration by Michelle Ng

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arts & culture

young thug JOSHUA LU managing editor Young Thug possesses the rare, pure inability to give a fuck. This quality crops up in practically all of his output. His music is described as not intending to sound good, but rather intending to sound how it’s supposed to sound. His imagery, seen in the androgynous cover art for his latest album JEFFERY , and his videos, like “Wyclef Jean,” revels in its awfulness and are hilarious spectacles. None of this would be worthwhile if he didn’t also possess raw talent. Young Thug, like all great rappers, is comfortable occupying a variety of thematic spaces, and he relishes in changing the course of an album from playful fun to humorless darkness. For an eccentric and eclectic artist, you can only expect an equally entertaining performance to come.

Illustration by Katie Cafaro

empress of JOSHUA LU The marginalization of women carries into the music industry, unfortunately. A common complaint, echoed by artists like Grimes and Mitski, is the assumption that if a man is involved in crafting a project, then the man is likely the one in charge of the creative direction. Lorey Rodriguez — stage name Empress Of —subverts this mistreatment entirely by wiping her credits clean; she is the sole singer, writer, and producer of her tracks. Her material is entirely her own. She’s not afraid of embracing this fact, either; the feminist synthpop banger “Woman is a Word” was a response to the notion that being a woman was an unflattering description.

Her live performances feature her and nobody else, but we’ll soon see that she commands the stage perfectly fine on her own. illustration by Soco Fernandez-Garcia

arts & culture

princess nokia JOSHUA LU Destiny Nicole Frasqueri has gone through a number of stage name changes, from Wavy Spice (which is a better name than Scary Spice) to the singular Destiny. Her latest incarnation goes by Princess Nokia, and she describes the persona as a representation of her “multi-dimensional aspects.” For a singer so concerned with questions of who she is and what it means to be something, her music similarly tackles issues of identity and the three-dimensional na-

ture of mankind. Her songs and statements encompass queer, transgender, and other identities, such as her song “Brujas,” which establishes her identity as a Bruja and tackles issues of colonialism and ethnicity. Her music is as multifaceted and complex as human nature, and her determination to empower women of color is commendable.

Illustration by Katie Cafaro

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cherry glazerr JOSHUA LU My first exposure to Cherry Glazerr was their song “Nuclear Bomb,” which is interesting for a number of reasons. The song is slow, undulating, and painfully emotional, which doesn’t match the title at all. Second, the video features a woman having sex with a guitar. Naturally, I was intrigued, and I dug through their discography to find more indie rock greatness, from the upbeat and captivating “I Told You I’d Be With The Guys” to the groovy chaos of “White’s Not My Color This Evening.” Cherry Glazerr is masterful at crafting unique soundscapes and aesthetics, compelling you to dance and maybe even, as it turns out, have sex with a guitar. illustration by Esther Kim

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alunageorge JOSHUA LU To clarify some potential misconceptions: AlunaGeorge is a duo, comprised of singer Aluna Francis and producer George Reid smashing their names together like it’s German, and while AlunaGeorge have experienced touches of mainstream success recently, the duo’s been pumping out quality music since the beginning of this decade. Songs like “You Know You Like It” (tip: the original is better) and “White Noise” with Disclosure showcase how much power and allure dance music can carry, especially when crafted by a producer unafraid of experimentation and with a singer with an undeniable cool to her voice. AlunaGeorge isn’t known for sledgehammering beats or bombastic choruses. Instead, they substitute a slinking groove to their music that you can’t help but dance along to. illustration by Katie Cafaro

erykah badu JOSHUA LU Known as the queen of neo-soul, Erykah Badu’s career is the most prolific of this year’s Spring Weekend performers. She started performing in 1996 --opening for D’Angelo-- and her rise as an artist has been considered a female counterpart to the R&B dominating the charts in those times.

That isn’t to take away from her individual strengths; Badu masterfully draws from soul and hip hop to craft her music, and thematically, her songs are just as complex, addressing issues her counterparts rarely explore such as her African heritage, religion, and guiding philosophies in life. Badu’s music is textured and nuanced, and while her set list is sure to be full of bangers, they carry more gravity than you’d expect. illustration by Doris Liou

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arts & culture

illustration by Katie Cafaro

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trouble with the curve watching brookmire on ifc

JAMES FEINBERG staff writer

There isn’t anything particularly special about Brockmire, the new series that premiered April 5th at 10 p.m. on IFC, except for the fact that Hank Azaria is in it. The Simpsons star hasn’t been a cast member on a live-action television series since 2011’s flop Free Agents. But he’s one of the great TV talents of all time—best known as a voice actor but doing great work, too, in films like Tuesdays at Morrie and Heat and on the stage, as well as in innumerable guest appearances on sitcoms, for the past 30 years. Seeing his face onscreen is a pleasant reminder that great careers don’t always fade into irrelevance, so Brockmire is in some ways welcome.

Azaria plays the main character, a dissolute baseball announcer, a character he created in 2010 for a series of Funny or Die shorts. Two years later, he was possessive enough to sue Craig Bierko for full ownership of the character—smart move. Jim Brockmire is a unique and valuable creation, a motormouth with a voice and style of which any announcer would be proud coupled with a chronic inability to keep his personal life out of the booth.

Most of Brockmire’s pilot concerns Brockmire laying low. After being fired

from his network play-by-play job, the disgraced announcer is reduced to in-stadium announcing for a minor-league team in the fictional Morristown, Pennsylvania.

It’s a tired premise—the once-high-flying elite sent packing to an environment way below his pay-grade (see Community, The Newsroom, and, perhaps most relevantly, Eastbound and Down, from which is borrowed not only the sports-related premise but the podunk locale and warm orange-toned lighting). Amanda Peet, as Jules James (say that five times fast), the owner of the minor-league team, the Morristown Frackers, is once again relegated to the unfunny sidekick position, and it’s only when she’s allowed to geek out over baseball that we see her humanity through her inexplicable corporatist Master-of-the-Universe facade. A diversion in the second episode that sends Brockmire and James on a sexual tear to prolong a Frackers winning streak is conceptually daring but only intermittently as shocking as it wants to be. The hot-andheavy stuff is another example of where the series seems to be strongest—its increasingly frequent self-contained montage sequences—which heighten the realization that Brockmire would’ve been altogether better off as another viral video.

In the opening scene of the pilot, a four-minute bravura piece of acting, Brockmire has a breakdown live on air while announcing a Royals-Red Sox game. His wife has cheated on him in the most graphic and offensive manner as possible, and the announcer doesn’t hold anything back. It’s fluid and remarkable, a car crash you can’t look away from, except that this crash is anchored by Azaria’s extraordinary control as an actor. Nothing that follows in the first few episodes lives up to this sequence, which takes wide swaths of its material from the original FOD short, “Gamechangers: A Legend in the Booth.” As the creator, executive producer, and writer of all eight episodes, Joel Church-Cooper, late of Undateable, has the unenviable task of creating a framework that can support Azaria’s talent.

He fails, which isn’t entirely his fault—the show is nice as can be, with genuine dramatic moments coexisting peacefully with Azaria’s high-flying lunacy. But there are a hundred sitcoms on the air that are nice enough to fall asleep to, and it’s a stretch to argue we need one more.

The show, at least, doesn’t take its time getting to the meat of its story, which may satisfy those with a short attention span but, in its haste, leaves one feeling markedly empty. The general threat, it turns out, is actually an ex of Jules’s (played, ominously, by the perennial pilot-killer David Walton), who works for Pennsylvania Shale Oil and wants to raise the Frackers’ stadium to make way for some nonspecific shrine to petroleum straight out of Dynasty. Our heroes, naturally, haven’t quite figured this out yet.

Boilerplate sitcom space-filling needs time to ensue—minor-league baseball players are fat, Brockmire threatens to leave town and then (shocker) stays, Brockmire gets high on qat with a local boy (Tyrel Jackson Williams) unironically referred to as an “internet whiz kid.” West of Philly, evidently, the World Wide Web is still working its way into the American lexicon.

Given the time and attention, Brockmire could develop into something worthwhile.

It’s killer visuals, courtesy of director Joe Farrel, and as-of-yet unexplored world suggest potential. But as of right now, it’s not worth the time. Unmoored and unmotivated, the show bobs aimlessly from scenario to scenario, an unlikely contender to bolster IFC’s comedy slate as the end of Portlandia approaches. Anyway, Azaria’s last star turn, the aforementioned Free Agents on NBC, was canceled for low ratings after four episodes. Ah, well, Hank. Chief Wiggum is calling. illustration by Kathy Luo

illustration by Katie Cafaro

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awards won by post- magazine

1. pulitzer prize 2. nobel prize (all of them) 3. the popular vote 4. NHL all-star game MVP 5. most likely to succeed 6. presidential medal of freedom 7. got into intro to creative nonfiction 8. internship at goldman 9. the razzies 10. caldecott medal

02/11/16 -Liz Studlick

All these guys just sit around and talk about how dope Jesus is .

I think UPenn needs more trolls.

Train is like a poor man’s Maroon 5.

Now that Nice Slice is closed, what is our plan?

ine ach

“Despite...all the medications, I come into Blue State twice a day.”

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hot post tim e