Eighth grade was the year I tried to remove my upper lip hairs in three different ways.
First, I leaned into the mirror until my exhales fogged over my reflection. I wielded cuticle scissors to cut short, one by one, the longest and thickest hairs at the upper edges of my mouth.
Second, after I grew dissatisfied with the tediousness of trimming, I slipped a spool of sturdy sewing thread from my mom’s closet. I cut a length of beige, fuzzy thread and tied it into a loop which I spread into a rectangle with my thumbs and index fingers. I twisted it one, two, three times until I saw myself holding the shape of a large bow tie in the mirror. When I separated my right thumb and index, the twists in the thread darted left. I brought the twisted thread to the right edge of my upper lip until it touched my skin. I inhaled, bracing myself for pain. My right thumb and index finger snapped apart, and the twists flew left, pulling a few hairs out by the root but cutting most off at the base. Those ones would only grow back thicker, or so I thought.
Third, I stopped by a Walgreens on my way back from school—one of the few times I was alone—and, heart pounding, bought a box of lime green wax strips. When I got home, I hid them in an old shoe box in my closet for several days. The night I finally summoned the courage
By Ingrid Ren Illustrated by Ella Buchanan IG: @nanahcube from the Editorto use the wax, I carefully followed the steps I learned from YouTube: Press a strip between your hands and rub them together to start to melt the wax. Cut the strip in two, one for each side of your upper lip. Carefully peel open a half strip. Place it on the right side of your upper lip. Apply pressure with a finger in the same direction as hair growth.Inhale.
Pinch the excess paper by the corner. Remember to keep the hand close to the skin. Exhale. ImmediateRip.redness.
I stared in awe and pain at the thin black hairs and their translucent roots dotting the wax.
The first time I felt acutely humiliated about my upper lip hair was several weeks, maybe even months, before I began my attempts to remove it. It was snack time at a local summer camp, and my friend was drinking milk. She looked up to ask me and a younger boy sitting with us: “Do I have a milk mustache?”
“No,” the boy said. He pivoted his head to look at me, his expression blank. “But you always have a mustache.”
My friend laughed, I think in surprise. I blushed hard. Even at nine or ten years old, this boy had been taught to believe it was weird for a girl to have mustache
hairs. Also, at only nine or ten years old, he didn’t know to keep quiet.
Of course, he didn’t plant the seed of selfconsciousness about body hair. Growing up, I had absorbed hours of TV ads displaying women sexily shaving their hairless, pale legs and lifting their arms to reveal childishly bare armpits. I had online shopped and, in addition to being sold underwear, was also sold the norm of hairless tummies and hairless thighs. I had long been conditioned to think of body hair as abnormal and unwanted, so when the summer camp boy voiced aloud silent observations of my mustache hairs, I was propelled to action.Professor Anneke Smelik remarks that body hair is “a marker that polices significant boundaries: between human–animal, male–female and adult–child.” As society has tried to define and dictate gender through norms and rules, body hair, which is categorized as masculine, has long been seen as inappropriate and dirty on women.
Before 1915, American hair remover ads for women targeted “hair on the face, neck and arms,” as women’s clothes at the time covered the rest of their bodies. It wasn’t until World War I that female body hair removal as we know it rose in popularity. As women increasingly wore sleeveless tops and shorter bottoms that revealed hairy legs and underarms, shameless ads pressured them to remove their newly visible body hairs. One particularly bold anti-armpit-hair ad—featuring a drawing of a concerningly stoic, shaven woman—proclaims, “The fastidious woman to-day must have immaculate underarms if she is to be unembarrassed.” To-day, I laugh at this absurd and sexist wording, but I still feel embarrassed in exactly the way the ad prescribes.
I think I was so fixated on my upper lip during puberty because the rest of my regularly visible girl body was remarkably hairless where it was “supposed” to be. In seventh grade, the girl assigned to sit next to me in math class remarked in awe at the smooth hairlessness of my arm next to her softly hairy one. But instead of relishing in the general hairlessness of my arms and legs, my selfconsciousness swelled even stronger in response to the body hair I did have.
Dear
that I’m a senior, it feels like a lie. A big charade, the performance of finality, a joke that I’m playing on my classmates during Shopping Period introductions. I guess to put it concisely, I’m in denial. Let me hide behind cliche meditations on the seasons changing and feel huge emotions about leaves going orange to avoid grappling with the actual passage of time. Isn’t that enough? To roman ticize autumn and forget about senior fall? Well, it’s my plan anyway. Of course, along with that romanticization comes an appreciation for the return of post- and our lovely prod nights! This week, one of our Narrative writers considers the multiplicity of his identity as epitomized by his Mandarin and English names while the other exam ines queer Puerto Rican culture. In A&C, one writer questions who gets to tell certain stories through the
context of Hanya Yanagihara’s novel To Paradise. Also in A&C: an ode to the gray areas of relationships as told through Sally Rooney’s work. Our Feature writer contends with the act of body hair removal and its interaction with feminism. In Lifestyle, one writer provides the ultimate guide to fall while the other reviews trends in menswear.
Happy fall, everyone! Welcome back to post-. We’ve got an issue jam-packed with excel lence for our grand return, and we hope you enjoy it. And just to tie a sweet little bow on my earnest editor’s note, I really couldn’t be more excited for another semester working with this magazine. No lie, no joke—it is one of the best things this school has given me.
Currently reining in my sappy bullshit, Kyoko Leaman Editor-in-Chief
At the beginning of eighth grade, both of my parents tried talking me out of shaving. After months of secretly trimming my armpit hair with cuticle scissors in the shower to avoid feeling self-conscious at ballet and at Nicki Minaj Bee/Bey Jinkx Monsoon Chess Dancing Queen young sweet only 17 Trap Queen (1738)
school, I finally asked my mom to buy me a razor and (many) extra cartridges. That night, my dad came into my bedroom just before I went to sleep. His voice gentle and urging, he said, “The hair there is natural. You don’t need to remove it. In China, you know, no one removes hair like that. It’s natural. Just leave it.” My embarrassment for wanting to shave turned my cheeks pink, but I was already decided.Armed with my new (pink) razor, over the course of the next seven years, I shaved my relatively hairless legs a couple of times and, upon one man’s insistence, my pubic hair, but mainly I removed my armpit hair. Switching out my razor’s cartridge every couple of months, I fell into an easy pattern of shaving in the shower every few days. I used whatever bar soap was around as shaving cream, as if to prove to myself that I didn’t care that much about it, and I shaved quickly, almost furtively, as if embarrassed of my childishly bare armpits that showed how I, too, bent under this absurd social and gendered pressure to remove my body
not alone in feeling this pressure. Historian and researcher Rebecca Herzig estimates that 99 percent of American women have removed body hair at some point in their lives, and 85 percent “regularly remove hair from their faces, armpits, legs, and bikini lines.” Women spend an average of $15.87 per month on shaving, amounting to almost $200 every year, or over $10,000 in a lifetime. After all, a 1998 research study found that “both men and women view a woman with body hair as less sexually attractive, sociable and intelligent than the same woman without body hair.” As someone who, of course, wants to be seen as sexually appealing, socially adept, and intelligent, it’s obvious to me why so many women—especially women with visible body hair and trans women—are motivated to spend huge amounts of money and to experience the pain required to be perfectly
hairless.While
the removal of hair on the legs, arms, face, and underarms has been motivated by visibility, the removal of pubic hair evolved separately. Because pubic hair was already perceived as sexual and lascivious, it wasn’t considered inappropriate in early pornography, according to Professor Smelik. In fact, female sex workers did not remove pubic hair until the 1990s when pornography became mainstream and they, too, were expected to fit feminine gender norms. Former model and porn actress Kelly Nichols says, “I was a Penthouse model in the early 1980s, and I posed with a full bush. No one in adult entertainment shaved back then. Now everyone does.”
To perform womanhood acceptably and appealingly, women are expected to remove underarm and pubic hair, natural markers of adulthood. This upholds the male–female boundary while blurring the adult–child boundary, dangerously sexualizing a girlish aesthetic to a largely adult
male audience. It’s no coincidence that “teen” was the most searched term on Pornhub in 2014 and has been among the most popular searches every year since.
When Covid-19 hit and I spent months at home changing into various pajamas, I stopped shaving completely. As long, soft tufts of hair grew and remained under my arms, the comfort of not caring—of not having to care—about the presence of my body hair was uncomplicated and relieving. But when I returned to campus in the fall, I carried with me my same pink razor. In the spring of 2021, I was having dinner with a friend who wore a tank top and, I noticed, whose expressive arm movements unhesitatingly revealed armpit hair.
“Can I ask you a question that might be personal?” I asked.
“Sure,” they said.
“I noticed that you don’t shave your armpit hair, and I also want to not,” I said, “but I never feel comfortable letting it grow out. How did you decide to?”
My friend (who at the time used she/her pronouns) said they knew that the only reason they shaved previously was because of the social expectation to do so. Being perceived and judged, specifically by men, had motivated them to be hairless, and they didn’t want that pressure to dictate their actions anymore.
I feel the same way. Removing certain body hairs for fear of external judgment feels weak and ridiculous. And, yet, the act is continuously difficult to let go of. An early stereotypical example of a “bad” feminist, or perhaps a misunderstood feminist, is one who proclaims that women shouldn’t shave. “Good” feminists are quick to correct that we should all be free to choose what we do with our body hair. But this choice is not simple. I do not feel free to publicly display the hair on my armpit, tummy, and thighs simply because feminism supports it. I still feel more comfortable choosing to shave, even though I recognize that by doing so, I continue to follow sexist, societal
packed my suitcases before flying back to campus, I spotted my pink razor lying at the bottom of my toiletries bag, where it had been for most of the summer. I hesitated. Having used this razor since the age of thirteen, the handle sheen had faded and now felt sticky in my palm as I turned it over. Finally, I got up and went to the bathroom, opened the lid of the small blue trash can by the shower, and dropped my well-used pink razor inside. I’m committing, as of now, to the discomfort and the pleasure of not shaving. That’s not to say that I don’t feel self-conscious when I wear a sleeveless top and raise my arms, and it’s also not to say that I will never remove my body hair again. But for now, simply because I want to, I’m trying to present myself as if the expectations around body hair didn’t exist.
Your name is DANIEL HU. This is not a Chinese name. Your parents named you in Mandarin first: 旦一 This name has since been supplanted by DANIEL such that 旦一 is now your middle name instead.
旦一 is made up of very simple characters because your parents figured you might grow up to be too illiterate in Mandarin to recognize even your own name in writing. They chose a similar-sounding English name that would allow you to blend in with your peers. In your early childhood, you appreciated this second name for the invisibility it lent you. Teachers have no problem pronouncing your name. There is no need to tell the baristas at Starbucks how to spell it.
But behind this cloak of DANIEL is still 旦一 , quietly lurking in the liminal space between first and last name. Sometimes he takes a peek at the outside world from behind DANIEL. 旦一 cries when characters die in movies. He feels lightning run across his skin when he reads particularly electrifying poetry. He writes because he can barely speak the language of his name, because words have ground him down to dust and there is nothing left to do except stare at the page and cry. He writes because he loves words as much as they hate him.
You have spent the last thirteen years of your life in school. The implicit expectation from your parents and peers has been that you ace all your classes, to “win” school insofar as an education can be won. “Winning” school has therefore been your perpetual goal. This pursuit is all-consuming. Some nights you wonder if you have wasted the best years of your life on things that really didn’t matter in the end. You have found a few basic household remedies for these allconsuming nighttime thoughts ( see : CALMING DOWN, TECHNIQUES IN SERVICE OF).
ACCENT: The ears are always sharper than the tongue. You can listen but you cannot speak. When you attempt Mandarin, your speech is pulled down by the gravity of a heavy English accent. The syllables roll clumsily out of your mouth. Your English is better, almost fluent, but occasionally you find yourself slurring words and stumbling over speech. The exact cause of this phenomenon is unknown. Sometimes you find that you cannot say anything at all, despite your best efforts ( see : CONFIDENCE, LACK OF).
“You don’t exist in naked?”
“You know me: standing alone, tall and proud like a sigma wolf.”
“I never thought I’d be asking this, but how many limes?”
CALMING DOWN, TECHNIQUES IN SERVICE OF: Tetris. Poetry by Ocean Vuong. Taking walks in the hours between 1 and 3 a.m. on cool summer nights. Stress eating. Taking a shit while browsing Reddit. Listening to the sound of your own breathing, taking note of the steady expansion and contraction of your lungs, enclosed in the cage of your ribs. Everything inside you beats: the thunderclap of your heart, the shuddering of your breath, the quivering of your stomach. It all beats. Like wings. Like things longing for freedom, longing for escape from this prison of flesh, blood, and skin that you call your body.CONFIDENCE, LACK OF: Silences are their own family of DIASPORA:sounds.
Your parents tell you of the sacrifices they made to bring you here, to America. They tell you of the life they have left behind. You see this sacrifice every day. You and your kind are aliens in America, the perpetual foreigners. You find yourself gravitating towards stories of exile and tales of unfamiliar earth. You read about Aeneas, the mythological ancestor of the Romans. Aeneas barely escapes the destruction of Troy, his war-torn homeland, bringing his culture and his gods with him. Unlike Troy, China still exists. But it is not your homeland. You were not born there. You do not speak the language. You are not of China. But America is not your homeland either. You are hopelessly untethered.
MODEL MINORITY: Do math (see: ACADEMICS). Keep your head down (see: CONFIDENCE, LACK OF). You are well on your way to joining the ranks of the “good ones.” You and your people are meant to be smart, but inconspicuously so. This is why your parents made your first name DANIEL and not 旦一. You have been invisible for as long as you can remember, trying to look for yourself.ROMANTIC ENCOUNTERS, FUMBLING OF: It is clear that you need the most help in this department. Your parents are private people. The only kind of overt romance you have ever seen has been that of books and movies. It is only several mistakes later that you realize that these are not, in fact, good role models.
The first mistake comes during high school. You are weightless until you see him. He comes like a dream and he is all rough edges. You have heard that love is something soft, smooth, something with feathers. This is perhaps true of the love you feel for your family. But this is different. This is not love, or if it is, it is a flavor of love that feels like gravel and sandpaper. Your world had previously been all circles and clean lines, no edges but curves. His presence bends you into sharp angles. You ache at night and are afraid to fall asleep because you think you might find him there. You begin looking at yourself in the mirror. You wonder if you should do something about your hair. You occasionally see him in
the hallways at school. You have struck up a few short conversations with him and you think that he may be warming up to you. You think in a few weeks, you may ask him out. A few weeks turn into a few months.
And then you have waited too long and now he is dating a Yougirl.think perhaps you should follow his example so you also ask out a girl. She says yes. You break up with her two months later over text because she does not make you feel like he did. She is upset, according to her friends. Also according to her friends, you are an asshole. You find yourself agreeing with that sentiment. You have not talked to her in a while. There are three separate drafts of apologies saved on your phone but you have not worked up the courage to say any of them.
The third time is a slower, longer mistake. It is the only one that your parents know of, and of course they disapprove. They do not say so explicitly, but she is a white girl and this is disagreeable to their sensibilities. Their disapproval adds mystique to your relationship, making it illicit and all the more intimate. She is softspoken, but there is a core of steel to her, and this is endlessly alluring to you on account of the fact that you have never had that kind of conviction in your heart, or at least you have never been brave enough to express it.
But there are things that she does not understand (see: DIASPORA). It is unfair of you to expect her to automatically understand these things about you when you cannot understand them yourself. You do not explain this expectation of yours. It is on her to do her homework about your life. She should read A GLOSSARY OF TERMS FOR 旦一, but you will never allow her to read it because it is for your eyes alone. You have set for her an impossible task. There are parts of yourself that you hate but you desperately want her to love them. You have not let her wander past the facade of DANIEL and you are afraid to. You want her permission, or really anybody’s permission, to tell you that you may love these parts of you.By the time you finally break up, she is already kissing other boys, at last getting the honest affection she could never get out of you. You have spoken to her a few times post-breakup and it seems that she is doing well. You wish her the best.
You have spent your whole life waiting for someone to tell you how to start it. You have prayed for rain and you have cried for wind and you have stared into every mirror and every glass and every stagnant pond in every forest to search for yourself. You have been searching in the wrong places.
旦, the first character of your name, means “daybreak.” It is a pictogram. The sun, 日, is climbing over the horizon. Start looking toward the sunrise, perhaps. Love them, but before that, love yourself.
+ AAfterword:GLOSSARY OF TERMS FOR 旦一 is, quite obviously, for 旦一. But it is also for DANIEL because he too has his place and he too is learning to love. He is you and you are him. The only division is in the space between the names on your birth certificate. You are a dual identity. This is for you. All of you.
While roaming the streets of Old San Juan, I entered El Laberinto, a local bookstore. Bookshelves created floor-to-ceiling passageways. As the name illustrates, it is a labyrinth. I got lost in worlds pitched through covers and titles individually unread, yet such a crucial part of their literature. As I crossed one of the dark oak shelves, approaching the checkout line, I saw a rectangle of blue construction paper with “LGBTQ” scribbled on it. Two entire shelves, crammed into existence like they just came into being three seconds before I looked over. There, I found what I had been searching for the whole time: a map— San Juan Gay by Javier E. Laureano.
This was my stepping stone into the history of Puerto Rican queerness, allowing me to reframe my search in the Digital Archive. Now, hurried and desperate phrases like “gay puerto rico,” “trans puerto rico,” “homosexual puerto rico,” “transsexual puerto rico,” “gay porto rico,” among many others, became the names of queer activists and publications, bringing up long sought results.
Something they don't tell you about working with (and against) the queer Archive is that, when you're searching, you need to become both the homosexual and the homophobe. You need to use words that are now considered derogatory, but were once used to address people, in order to find information about them. We’re told that the words we use are important, but in the Archive, they are all we have left. It is both my ally and my enemy, just like I am its biggest fan and number one hater. To be engaged in archival research is to be a masochist. To be a writer is the same. However, writing has allowed me to fill the “nothings”—the gaps—in the Archive by patching them with personal experience through prose and poetry. While still an act of masochism, my writing is a tool to counter the weight of the Archive. It’s my methodology to prevent the persistence of violent silences, even if the experiences are bittersweet.
The Archive is cruel. It leaves us with doors half-opened, mirrors into pasts we deemed unreachable, information and disinformation wrapped in the same red bow, and gaps that we can only yearn to fill. It’s the gaps that interest me. We, as curious humans, want what we can’t have. I have searched night and day, hoping for mere crumbs of queerness in Puerto Rican history to materialize from the dust of digital archives. I owe the acquisition of these crumbs to my homes and the filled gaps to my own experiences. I learned
that, sometimes, what we want is already within us.
the age of nine, sometime between the transition of my Justin Bieber and One Direction phase, I first—and unknowingly—heard a homophobic slur in my school’s playground through a sing-song phrase.
Mary con su cartera.
Marycon su cartera.
Marycon Maricón.Marycon.su.
A slur—a synonym for faggot. A phrase part of my classmates’ vocabulary: “Mary with her purse.” That’s the closest I can get to its translation. This phrase serves, not only as a sly way to say the slur, but also as a way to mock effeminate men. They’re addressing them with a feminine name (Mary/ María) and having a purse.
I repeated the phrase. Hushes circled me.
“Ten cuidado, no lo digas al frente de los maestros.”“Yeah, there could be teachers around.”
“No nos queremos meter en problemas.”
“Yeah, be quieter.”
It took a series of questions from my end to understand what was so bad about a woman named “Mary” and “her purse.” What was so bad about that“Significa? gay.”
“It means gay.”
“Yeah, gay. Not good.”
Well,“Gay.” I knew what gay was. It’s what boys would say while accidentally touching hands, or when they said something wrong, or right, or when their backpacks clashed, or when they both wanted to go on the playground at the same time, or when they faked moans for laughs at the back of the classroom, or if they got paired for a project, or when they were assigned to sit next to each other, or when they put their hands on their hips, or when they swayed them, or when their hands swung too far up when they walked—gay, when they looked into each others eyes—gay, when they looked in the mirror and they saw gay—gay, or what they call themselves now, now that their internalized
homophobia has simmered and they realized that maybe they were a little _ _ _ .
But gay meant so many things, so which one of them were they referring to? What instance were they talking about, and can someone please tell me what this has to do with a woman named Mary and her purse?Inthe
end, I learned not to say that because it meant gay, not because it was homophobic.
“‘Marica’II. [or maricón] is a diminutive of the proper name María and was born to refer to men who were outside the hegemonic canon of masculinity, either because of their homosexual affiliations or simply because they did not meet the standards of rudeness, violence or strength expected of the male, the macho .”
ProvidenceIII.
sidewalks are terrible—raised by tree roots, dented by missing bricks. Thayer Street sidewalks are some of the best, slightly sticky beneath the shoe, but nothing too bad. That's where I was when I had to tell my friends that the loud utterance thrown from a car meant that . In Spanish. Fully resonant. It ricocheted from the overstuffed trash cans to the collage of stickers on the back of road signs. Ultimately, the word landed within my frame of hearing, unwiring my jaw and causing my eyes to gape.
Haven’t heard that one in a while.
I never expected Providence to remind me so much of home, with regaetón blasting from cars, four-wheelers rolling on their sides, and the smell of sofrito wafting over from Caliente. Sometimes I see Puerto Rican flags and take a picture—just to prove to myself that there’s more of me here than I want to believe. But despite everything, I did not anticipate hearing a homophobic slur in Spanish while going to grab coffee. Who was the man yelling that at? I don’t know. Probably a friend, because nothing says friendship like calling each other slurs. Seriously, people do this, especially in the community I grew up in. It was… a learning moment for my friends. They gave me the same look of dismay that I offered them as I explained. At that moment, we were one— united in queer confusion.
TheIV. relationship between labels within the queer community and the labeling of the queer
Archive will always be at a crossroads. Terms are continuously added, modified, and subtracted to fit how we interpret contemporary sexuality and gender expression. There are slurs that have stayed slurs due to their consistent negative implication, and others that we have adopted. In this way, labeling within the queer Archive serves as a time capsule of previous conceptions of queerness. It is up to us to continue to change as the times do.
The Archive is tiring.
I don’t exist to be an antithesis to gender norms or heteronormativity, I exist in a world that uses these social classifications to give itself meaning. Since I don’t feel that those labels define everything I am, I resort to queer.
VisibilityV. for the queer community is a doubleedged sword. While we yearn for recognition, our being seen is often only prompted by a false accusation, an act of defamation, or a threat to one’s life. Being seen is what often renders us invisible, as we are pushed further into the margins. Sometimes, it feels like we are nowhere. Like the lack of our documentation in the Archive validates the popular notion that queer people do not exist. But we are everywhere and incredibly—
undeniably—real.+Ipurchasedseveral other books in El Laberinto that day. My parents sat at a table in La Plaza de las Palomas, a couple of minutes away, as I perused.
The Plaza is gorgeous and, as the name declares, full of pigeons. I walked towards them, my brown paper bag swinging.
I shuffle into the wooden stool.
My mother set down her phone and enthusiastically asked, “What did you buy?”
I pulled them out:
LasTesis - Antología de textos feministas by Lea Caceres (“I learned a lot about this group in class.”)
Edgar Allan Poe Obras en Prosa I y II; traducción por Julio Cortázar, ilustraciones por Nelson Sambolin (“It’s grandpa! I had told you I wanted to get it because of his illustrations here.”)
Huracanada by Mayra Santos Febres (“I love all of her work; I think I saw her earlier but was too scared to She“That’sapproach.”)it!”Isaid.smiled.
They called themselves an army. They set up camp on a private pot farm in central O‘ahu, locked out the legal owner of the property, and stayed there for nine months. They wore knockoff military uniforms. They carried rifles. In a lawsuit, the legal owner of the land described them as “squatters.” They described themselves as the rightful heirs of the land. They remained on the farm for nine months until they were arrested in July.The radical tactics of Hawaiian sovereignty activists are familiar to residents of the islands— including novelist Hanya Yanagihara, who spent much of her childhood in Honolulu. Her novel To Paradise is split into three parts; “ Lipo Wao Nahele, ” the second section of the book, follows a Native Hawaiian father and son, both of whom are named Kawika. They are the descendents of Queen Lili‘uokalani—the last queen of Hawai‘i before its illegal annexation—and now they must live in the aftermath of her overthrow.
“ Lipo Wao Nahele ” is written as a letter from father to son, although it often sounds more like an extended apology than an epistle. Kawika chronicles his affair with a quixotic Hawaiian sovereignty activist named Edward. As Kawika and Edward grow closer, Edward’s definition of a “true Hawaiian” narrows: A true kānaka maoli speaks exclusively in ʻ ōlelo Hawai‘i (English is the language of the colonizer), does not pray to a Christian god (Christianity is the religion of the colonizer), and lives off the land (just as their ancestors did—before the colonizer came). Edward convinces Kawika and his young son to live with him in the woods of O‘ahu’s North Shore. The three live in a homeless camp for years. It is not unlike the real-life occupation of the O‘ahu farm from earlier this year.
It is easy to find criticism of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement in Hawai‘i. In the comment section under a Honolulu Civil Beat article chronicling the takeover of the O‘ahu pot farm, many dismiss the group’s call for separatism
as a pipe dream for uneducated Hawaiians. “I get the vibe this is somehow more about marijuana?” one commenter posted. “Cue the Twilight Zone music,” another joked.
I understand where they’re coming from. When people trespass on private property, don military uniforms, and threaten law enforcement with guns, it’s easier to ridicule them than confront the root of the problem: Hawai‘i was, and still is, illegally occupied by the United States. People can condemn radicalism all they want, but at the end of the day, we need dialogue, not insults. We can’t denounce the behavior of sovereignty activists without acknowledging the reasons for their behavior.Which is why Yanagihara’s interpretation of the sovereignty movement is refreshing. Kawika criticizes Edward’s radicalism, but he never rejects Edward for being “crazy,” as many residents of Hawai‘i would. As a direct descendent of Queen Lili‘uokalani, Kawika is uniquely positioned to see what sovereignty activists do not: That, while people rally around the restoration of the monarchy, they have never considered who their monarch would be. They do not know Kawika, nor do they know that he has no interest in being king, despite being next in line for the throne. The restoration of the monarchy is merely a symbol of freedom from the United States, a fantasy rather than a tangible goal.
In an attempt to fight for the rights of Native Hawaiians, the “activists” have dehumanized the very people they claim to uplift. At the end of “ Lipo Wao Nahele ,” the stress of Edward’s expectations causes Kawika’s mental breakdown. He is left blind, paralyzed, and living in a mental institution. His adult son, traumatized, cuts him off for good.
Yanagihara does what she does best: She takes a contentious social problem and shows us its miniature, the way an issue may affect one person, one family, one relationship. Colonialism is personal to the colonized and their descendants, and its reckoning should also be personal. Kawika disagrees with Edward, not because Edward’s frustration is wrong, but because Kawika feels personally misunderstood. The conflict of “ Lipo Wao Nahele ” relies on tension between the Native Hawaiian characters and thus, tension amongst the broader Hawaiian community. It is a conflict left unresolved.Yanagihara presents the complexities of the sovereignty movement without discounting the pain of indigenous people. Although colonialism
has caused generational trauma for her Hawaiian characters, the conflict is not one of good versus evil, colonized versus colonizers. She does not make a case for or against sovereignty; rather, she shines light on the intricacies of the movement itself. It’s an intentional move. In an interview with The Guardian, she explains, “I hope the book offers no moral judgment about a craving to return to this era in which things seemed simpler and more noble and respectful. It only says something about how hard it is to try to go back, when history is always in the way.”
Race further complicates Yanagihara’s narrative. Kawika cannot help but notice that, for all Edward’s talk about being a “true Hawaiian,” Edward passes as white. He wonders if Edward’s radicalism is a form of overcompensation for his lack of connection to his cultural identity. The story begs the question: If we are trying to establish a kingdom free from American—and therefore white—power, how can we trust a white person to do that?
But Yanagihara herself is not Native Hawaiian. She, like 57 percent of the people who live in Hawai‘i, is Asian American. She would likely argue that her race should not have any impact on her ability to tell a good story. (After she published A Little Life , people questioned her right to portray the intimacies of gay male relationships. In her interview with The Guardian, she stated, “I have the right to write about whatever I want. The only thing a reader can judge is whether I have done so well or Still,not.”)when someone writes a story about a marginalized group, it is important to remember where that story comes from. Yanagihara and I are both Asian American. We both grew up in Honolulu. We both attended private high schools (rival high schools, in fact). I observed the way colonialism affected Native Hawaiians, but it never affected me directly. Proximity to an issue can foster sympathy, but not a complete understanding. Overtourism, military occupation, water shortages—I knew these things were objectively harmful, but I existed with them comfortably. It was not until my freshman year of college, when I moved to the mainland, that I realized most Americans don’t have to confront the fact that tourists are eating away at natural resources or that the Navy contaminated the drinking water of thousands of families. In other words, most Americans don’t think about the aftermath of living on stolen land.
I had accepted the aftershocks of colonialism, in part because I never knew anything different, but mostly because I had the privilege of ignoring them. So did Yanagihara. Maybe it’s wrong to project my own experiences onto her, but our experiences are so similar that it is difficult not to. I would not feel comfortable writing about what it means to be Hawaiian because I am not Hawaiian. Who is she to feel differently?
Which raises the central question: Do we dismiss Yanagihara’s writing solely based on her race? If we accept “ Lipo Wao Nahele ” at face value, we ingest a story about Native Hawaiians that was not written by a Native Hawaiian. The Hawaiian identity is central to the narrative. And all narrative, fictional or not, is a form of control. Everything—the protagonist of the story, the events that will occur, even the words used to describe those characters and events—is the author’s choice. As soon as one person, plot point, or idea is chosen over another, there is bias.
Authorial intent becomes negligible; whether she means to or not, Yanagihara is speaking on
behalf of the Native Hawaiian community. Asian Americans already control much of the islands; by making the Hawaiian identity the main conflict of her story, Yanagihara now controls an identity that is not her own.
But if we reject the novel solely because Yanagihara is not Native Hawaiian, we argue that people are not allowed to think critically about activism unless they are part of the affected group. No, Yanagihara is not affected by colonialism as her characters are, but that does not automatically make her wrong. The points she raises about the sovereignty movement are worth considering. How can activism dehumanize the very people it is meant to help? What happens when members of a marginalized group cannot agree on their goals? We can feel frustrated, even angry, with Yanagihara for hijacking the narrative, but we can’t disregard all her observations solely because of identity politics.
We also should not expect Yanagihara alone to tell the story of Hawai‘i in modern literature. If we want to understand the legacy of colonialism in Hawai‘i, we cannot limit ourselves to one person. Lois-Ann Yamanaka, who has built her career on literature about Hawai‘i, often writes in pidgin; she paved the way for other local authors to write books meant for local readers. Kristiana Kahakauwila received widespread attention for her collection of linked short stories This Is Paradise , which touches on the class and racial struggles of Hawai‘i. Kawai Strong Washburn melds myth with reality in his novel Sharks in the Time of Saviors , which follows a working-class Native Hawaiian family. In the end, Yanagihara’s voice is just one in a larger conversation.
You may argue that, in writing “ Lipo Wao Nahele ,” Yanagihara is part of the problem. You may also argue that, in writing this criticism, I am too. And maybe this is what really draws me back to “ Lipo Wao Nahele ,” over and over again: wondering if she had the right to write this book, wondering if I have the right to tell her what’s right.I never expected to see someone like Yanagihara, whose books have a national following, write so intimately about the discord of Hawai‘i. Sometimes, as I read her novel, I felt the same way I did when I read about the armed separatists on the O‘ahu farm. There is a rage in Hawai‘i that festers like a dormant volcano. It is not mine to claim, nor is it Yanagihara’s. But something about it will always be familiar.
As the perfect embodiment of the English major who would happily spend hours dissecting a Sally Rooney novel in the corner during a bustling dinner party, it has never occurred to me to question her cult following, of which I could very well be the leader.Reading
as a writer, Rooney’s books felt worldaltering in their simplicity. My first attempts at producing short stories only began after I devoured her first two novels, and I am still convinced I would be incapable of producing fiction in any capacity if I did not have her voice etched into the back of my mind. I could go on for pages about her genius at the sentence level, her acute ability to capture very specific feelings I would never recognize as real if not for the precise way in which she phrases them: “I knew the subtlety of this change would be enough for Bobbi to deny it later, which irritated me as if it had already happened.”
But I don’t think it was her stylistic prowess or precise observations that first sucked me in, or inspired the widespread devotion that Rooney herself did not anticipate or even welcome. As much as she presents, to me, an alternate model of writing–piercingly stripped down, without any of the “show, don’t tell” advice that everybody seems to be handing out nowadays–she also offers something larger and far more compelling: “alternative models of loving,” as her character Frances phrases it in Conversations with Friends.
“Is it possible we could develop an alternative model of loving each other?” Frances writes to Bobbi in an email towards the end of the book. To a certain degree, I think this question is at the center of all three of Rooney’s novels, each of which explore ambiguous, undefined relationships in different ways. She never answers this question definitively–that would be both reductionist and counterproductive. But she provides some very vivid glimpses into the possibilities that this ambiguity generates.
These possibilities sometimes only exist in the in-between spaces–the gray areas of uncertainty that we have collectively come to dread. Maybe this is because they run in contradiction to the conventional relationship “model,” which assumes labels and definitions are ideal–or at least necessary to achieving the assumed ideals of stability and longevity. The undefined, fluid relationships in the “in-between spaces” then become a step below the ideal: a lack of something real–commitment, clarity, communication–or perhaps a stepping stone toward that.
But Rooney’s characters embody these gray areas so that they are not just a “lesser” version of the conventional relationship, but a space where intimacy can exist in an entirely different way.
Frances and Bobbi, for instance, were uninterested in and incapable of sustaining a traditional relationship, but the word “friendship” would be insufficient to describe the nature of their intimacy; they render the whole concept of categorisation arbitrary, because whatever label you choose unfairly cuts off a layer of nuance in their dynamic that refuses to fit neatly into a box of any size.Rooney
pushes the boundaries of what a relationship can look like structurally, mirroring the attempts her characters make to push the boundaries of their relationships within the novels. They test the conventional rules and wisdoms of what “healthy” or “normal” interpersonal relationships are meant to feel like. I have grown up idolising different versions of the “empowered,” “independent” woman. But reading Connell and Marianne’s relationship, I was forced to question that assumption, and entertain the possibility that there is something uniquely liberating about dependence. Marianne comes to this deceivingly radical conclusion in Normal People: “No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.”
The obvious answer to Marianne’s question is the possibility of leaving yourself susceptible to a tremendous amount of pain if the relationship ends, but to point out something so temporal seems almost trivial in the face of everything Connell and Marianne share. They drift in and out of each other’s lives, but they never truly exit; even when there should have been no space in their lives for their intimacy to continue, their relationship evolves to fit them in a way that would not have been possible if it was more defined. In Beautiful World, Where Are You, Rooney says: “At times I think of human relationships as something soft like sand or water, and by pouring them into particular vessels we give them shape. But what would it be like to form a relationship with no preordained shape of any kind? Just to pour the water out and let it fall. I suppose it would take no shape, and run off in all directions.”
Far from being “less” than a conventionally defined relationship, Connell and Marianne transcend the labels–they let their vessels overflow, often beyond the reaches of their control.
Although their relationship is far from perfect, there is something beautiful about watching this fluidity, seeing the shape change over the course of the novel and their lives. Rooney shows us the potential for complete vulnerability and total attachment, unconfined by the pressures and constraints of the past and future. In a post-COVID world where individual boundaries are higher than
"the value of undefined intimacies in sally rooney"
ever, her gray area became irresistible to me, even though her writing is never deceptive about how painful it can be. It seemed to me that through Marianne, Rooney conceived not only an alternate model but an alternate, almost utopian world. A world in which skin is porous and it is possible to dissolve any barriers until there is no empty space left between two people–one in which a conflation of identity does not have to come with complete loss.
More significantly, this gray area somehow becomes a fairly stable space in itself, not just a purgatory. Normal People ends with Connell leaving for New York, and Marianne staying in Ireland. “I’ll go,” Connell says in the television adaptation. “And I’ll stay,” Marianne responds, “and we’ll be okay.”
The uncertainty has not been dissolved–the scene is heartbreaking, and it feels definite. But Marianne and Connell have transcended geographical boundaries before, and we don’t really know where they’ll end up.
Despite the complete lack of clarity, it doesn’t feel like their story ended with loose strings or an unrealized love–it feels as resolved as a Brontëesque “Reader, I married him.” Because for Rooney’s characters, the gray area was never something to overcome; they belong in this realm of ambiguity, which to them is just as real and meaningful as the realm of conventional monogamy was to Austen’s Elizabeth and Darcy.
Even though Rooney’s books have left me feeling empty on the inside more than once, this particular aspect of them seems wildly hopeful. There are always going to be a million different “models” of loving someone, and there will always be the possibility of romances as intense and magnetic as Connell and Marianne’s, or friendships that are too dynamic and complex to be captured by that word, like Frances and Bobbi.
It’s easy to depend on words and categories to consolidate feelings, but Rooney’s characters serve as welcome reminders that there’s only so much that these boundaries can contain and explain–that relationships are allowed to extrapolate them, and that I’m allowed to feel their significance with a seemingly inexplicable intensity. “You live through certain things before you understand them,” she writes in Conversations with Friends. “You can’t always take the analytical position.”
The ineluctable presence of mid-dark tan when the cold weather comes will find no welcome, at least, in my closet. Yes, fall weather is upon us, and with it the great unifier of men’s fashion across campus: the tan overcoat. I am, of course, talking about the great, the steady, the horrendously ubiquitous presence of the singlebreasted tan overcoat around the shoulders of everybody from Wickenden to North Campus.
It’s a sight unseen in my own wardrobe; what once was style stubbornness has evolved into sheer avoidance. My first ever big clothing purchase was a leather jacket, funded by a high school summer job. Out of all the options laid before me, I chose a brown jacket, not only because I liked it, but because I figured that most people would buy a black one. I love that jacket to death and I haven’t seen a single one like it.
The pervasiveness of the tan overcoat is what drives me away from it, especially since I consider the colder seasons a sacred time of creative dressing. Yet a uniformity is developing at Brown: think the labyrinthine mental prison of slim cut J.Crew chinos. The jacket is only one of many such trends to hit the Ivy League: The raccoon coat of the late twenties, the camel hair polo coats that replaced them, and now the single breasted tan overcoat…paired with everything you could imagine, drifting toward Gogol with each passing year.
But compared to the relative stability offered by tan coats we see here on campus, the wider world of menswear is in a state of flux. The fashion trends have swung around to wider fits in everything from pants to OCBDs. Following suit, we witness the millionth cycle of the return, and eventual death, of Ivy, trad, and preppy style (the differences between these are minimal and mainly rest on if they know what Three-Roll-Two means) and from this, the heralded “death” of streetwear without really any backing to show for
it. Social norms will always carry judgment, and from these cycles we will never be liberated.
Within these times of flux, doors can be opened for more freedom of expression and inclusivity within the menswear community. Yet for all the opportunities we have to make a more inclusive space, I continue to see a trend of exclusivity towards marginalized groups and very little effort from the menswear community to stop
Theit.aforementioned Ivy style, a recurring and vital theme in the American stylistic symphony, is inherently connected to systemic oppression and classism with an aesthetic based in wealth, capital, and whiteness. The aesthetic is undeniably paired with a history of exclusivity towards people of color and other marginalized groups.
In the broader world of men’s fashion, we find even deeper and more unrelenting assumptions about how clothes should be worn and how they should fit, making much of men’s style inaccessible to many members of the transmasculine community. Outside of a few limited runs like Banana Republic’s BR Athletics and Polo Ralph Lauren’s occasional adventure into expanded sizing in the men’s line, we have seen few attempts to be more inclusive and serve a whole community of people who are systematically being denied the chance to express themselves. This is not only a trans issue; many cisgender members of the menswear community would be served by more inclusive sizing and cuts (I, a short guy myself, would love pant inseams that don’t give me a break deeper than the Grand Canyon). Inclusivity is beneficial to everyone, and the menswear community is in dire need of change.
The crowd mentality, the one affecting the coat population on campus today, needs to be one of inclusivity and support, under whatever circumstances or for whatever reason. Until we as a community can come together and make the designers, brands, and trendsetters more inclusive, the mens fashion community will still be stuck in its tribalistic ways—more concerned with solving fashion than appreciating style. And as for our good old friend, the single-breasted tan overcoat, perhaps look for something in navy this winter, if only just to spice things up a little.
On the grayest days this fall, when all you want to do is curl up and read a book…maybe that’s exactly what you should do.
When the clock strikes midnight on September 1, the northern United States is transformed. The water wheels of previously shuttered cider mills spring to life, pumping apple cider out of every orifice of settler’s cabins. Once-empty patches of farmland fill with ripe orange pumpkins, jolly faces practically carved into them already. Remember the girl who bullied you for all that flannel you wore in middle school? Look out, because she’s wearing it too.And I can’t stand it.
a deep-dive into the singlebreasted tan coats
Let me be clear: I still own seven sweaters, I eat pumpkin pie, I go to the mill. But while we mindlessly enjoy assorted knits and vine vegetables, the days shorten, the air chills, and suddenly the sun has vanished and everyone’s sad all the time. You think I’m happy to skip down that ochre brick road to doom? I don’t think so. You can be fall’s biggest supporter, but after so many dreary, monotonous days, it becomes disheartening.
So, if you find yourself down in mid-October, don’t look to a fall-lover for advice; they haven't put the work in! I, a longstanding fall-hater, have. I present to you a brief guide on how to fall in love with fall, even when you hate it.
1) Set the mood. Listen to jazz.
Your autumn soundscape is vital to embracing the general mood. Emphasis on “embracing.” I don’t like to listen to summery pop during the fall, but I stay away from the sad wintery stuff too. Fall is a melancholic transition and your music should embody that. So listen to jazz. It’s not my favorite genre, but even its faults–the "elevator music" stereotype, the lull–evoke fall. When I listen to jazz, I walk around feeling very 90s turtleneck, very Nora Ephron. Try out the old classics, above all else. But–and don’t tell the music enthusiasts I said this–you can listen to a premade Spotify jazz playlist in a pinch.
The turtlenecks bring me to another genre pick: folk. Talk about melancholy. The entire genre is composed of guitar picking with anxious undertones, and maybe some harmonica, which is exactly how I’m feeling come November. Here are my personal favorites:
- Simon and Garfunkel. Need I say more? They don’t just sound great during the fall, they are fall. No, fall is them.
- Fleet Foxes. Like vanishing into a dark wood, like wading off into the stormy Atlantic. If a renaissance festival were a sound.
- Nick Drake. Perfect for laying around and thinking of Frank O’Hara.
- Early works of Big Thief. The folk-rock in their first two albums is unbeatable.
- Hozier. He’s so Irish and romantic. I, too, want to run away to some misty hillside.
But maybe you’re reading the above list and thinking, what on Earth is wrong with you? This’ll only depress me more. Listen, I said “embrace.” Sad music can be comforting. But if you want more upbeat picks, here are some from various genres:
- The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs. An album of, you guessed it, 69 usually-lighthearted love songs.
- T. Rex. Some banging early 70s rock for you.
- The Smashing Pumpkins. “Pumpkins.”
“Mellon Collie”. Pumpkins…a classic symbol of fall! The sound is much more energized than good old Paul-Simon.SZA.This is a hot take, I’m told, but to me she sounds like an autumn sunset thinking back on elementary school.
- Fiona Apple. Okay, maybe not particularly happy. But she’s got the jazz elements! And I just had to bring her up.
- The National. His voice is almost too perfect for this kind of weather.
- Taylor Swift. I couldn’t write this without mentioning folklore and evermore
- Wolf Alice. “Bros” brings me right back to September morning drives to middle school listening to alt-rock radio.
2) Kinesthetic learning.
Bake, if you can. Knit or crochet, obviously. Draw, paint, sculpt. Whittle? Write poetry, diary entries, or Lifestyle articles for Brown University’s post- magazine. Using your hands simply makes you feel like a little old person living among the trees and making your wares to sell at the market in town.3)There’s never been a better time to refuse to leave your room.
I highly recommend getting fresh air as much as you can, but if you’re not feeling a night, books and movies are delectable this time of year. There’s
something special about curling up under ten layers of blankets, the microwaved tea in your hand hopefully curing whatever horrific rendition of the common cold the Brown student body has cooked up this year, and watching every Robin Williams movie that’s ever been made. Here are some movie recommendations:-EveryRobinWilliams movie that’s ever been made. Specifically, Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society
- When Harry Met Sally
- Halloween movies, including but not limited to Edward Scissorhands, Hocus Pocus, Clue, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and The Nightmare Before Christmas
- All the Harry Potter movies. Specifically, Prisoner of Azkaban
- All the Twilight movies.
The books are up to you. Anything by J. D. Salinger is good. Donna Tartt, too. Maybe The Perks of Being a Wallflower
4) Look at the world through sepia-colored glasses.Itdoesn't have the freedom of summer, or Christmas to look forward to, but fall has its own advantages–as everyone but myself, apparently, is well aware. Still, whenever you’re feeling down, just know that I was right the whole time. But seriously, watch your favorite movie or put Bob Dylan on, and relish how good a hot chocolate tastes right now.
—Kaitlan Bui, “Poetry is Everything I Don’t Understand”09.18.20
“I’ve come to my The fall—the urge to shed, to transform—comes multiple times a year for
“Poetry is a practice, and a poem is an experience—with no prerequisites.”