Recently, someone told me that I looked “textbook” Korean, which felt a bit unsettling. It wasn't because of any racial shame, but because it has always been difficult for me to embrace this identity. I laughed in response, not knowing how else to reply, and moved on. However, had I been told that just a few years before, I would have torn myself apart, blaming myself for being “too Asian.” Attending predominantly white schools my entire life, I quickly realized the importance of assimilating into American culture. I was luckily not subject to the mocking that many Asian children experience in school, but I hated how Asians were always seen as “nerdy losers” and how they were characterized in the media as the “damsel in distress” stereotype, and I wanted to escape these tropes rather than face them myself. More concretely, I could not find a way to grow up and not let this bother me, as many authors tell us to.
But during my junior year of high school, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted me to reconsider the Asian-American experience in light of heightened racism and violent attacks against the community. With the extra time I gained at home, I spent my days scrolling through news articles and social media posts about aggression against the Asian American community. I grew disturbed by the realities of racism against Asians that I observed across popular media and realized that blatant discrimination still existed, despite not experiencing it myself. It was then that I started to question why the stereotypes attached to Asian Americans—that I had been so determined to defy—existed in the first place. Being Asian used to cause me shame, but once I realized I could never outgrow my identity, something shifted; I began, instead, to lean further into what makes me distinct— being Korean.
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I have never thought that my ability to speak Korean was something to be celebrated. When speaking, I was embarrassed of my slight American accent and inability to speak as effortlessly as my friends in Korea did. And while living in L.A., I was embarrassed by the fact that I even spoke another language. I pushed away my “Koreanness'' and tried to conform to the predominantly white society I was steeped in because I did not want to be manacled to the distorted
Dear Readers,
This past weekend, I made the trek up to Vermont for the first time. The whole experience was novel: An unfamiliar state, the closest to the Canadian border I’ve ever been, far enough north that autumn was already in full swing. Despite the newness of it all, it felt achingly familiar—just as I’d predicted. Really any destination with those low, rounded mountains laid out on the horizon will awaken a hungry nostalgia in my stomach. Without fail, mountains make me homesick, make me dream about the Blue Ridge. I find myself wanting nothing more than to live somewhere with mountains and feeling a small sadness that they won’t be my moun tains.
In Narrative this week, one of our writers is also reflecting on a return to a place that once was home, while the other writes about working long hours on Thayer Street. Our Feature article tackles
expectations and patterns attached to the definition of being Asian. I avoided the Koreans at my school who joked with each other in broken Korean or those who Google Translated words just so that they could talk to each other in Korean. I always felt relieved at the fact that my parents didn’t give me a middle name based on the romanized version of my Korean name, a pattern I often see in the Korean American community. I felt like I fit into the mold for being American, while others stayed stuck in the past. I looked at Koreans in haughty disdain despite being one myself.
Thus, it is fair to say that I have long wished to obliterate my cultural roots and identity. But the problem is that I still have family living in Korea, a bucket list vacation destination for many. Before I leave, the idea of visiting Seoul makes me feel overwhelmingly excited every time, despite going every year. But after a day in Korea, these feelings dissipate and for the rest of my time there, it is not necessarily the glamorous vacation people envision it to be; it isn’t a vacation at all. It’s a maintenance and enforcement of family and cultural bonds—bonds that I have always rejected. Even if I wanted to connect to these bonds, it
the dilemma of both relating to and rejecting stereo types about the Asian American experience. In A&C, one writer reviews the new Rina Sawayama album, while the other focuses on the role cooking plays in her conception of care. In Lifestyle, we have a postexclusive: a full-length crossword puzzle. Give it a shot!
I’m elated for you all to get a chance to read our articles. As for me, I’m back in Providence with no mountains in sight. And though this means the homesickness has settled back to the far reaches, it also means I’m yet again missing the mountains. Ah, the conundrum of it all.
would prove to be difficult. Considered “too American” for Korea and with a clear gyopo demeanor (the Korean term for a native Koreans living abroad), it becomes clear that there is a disconnect and barrier when engaging in Korean society. Instead of reconnecting with my roots, therefore, my time in Korea is spent showing off my “Americanness”—as if that’s superior to being simply Korean. My simple conversations in English with my sister turn heads in elevators and relatives direct their attention to our “exoticism,” and I savor that attention.
As an avid reader, it has been difficult to find a poignant and accurate book about the modern Asian American experience, despite the millions of Asians living in the United States. On my persistent hunts down the Barnes and Noble aisles, I kept encountering the same revered classics by Amy Tan and Kazuo Ishiguro. I love their books, but sought a non-fictional take on what it means to truly be Asian in this America.
don’t often read memoirs, so I don’t know what it was that pulled me to Cathy Park Hong’s collection of essays, “Minor Feelings: As Asian American
Reckoning.” But, I found my answer with her. Hong’s work provoked a recollection of painful feelings, and inspired me to look further into my past to assess my present.
When I was younger, I was filled with pride that I attended a predominantly white school where I was one of two Asians out of 66 students in my grade, and that I was living in a white neighborhood where I had no knowledge of other Asians in the community except for an elderly couple. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel left out in either one of those two communities; I felt superior. I felt an unusual pleasure in living in a society where I would encounter almost no Asians. I wasn’t instructed to assimilate. I just did, and felt good about it. But this pressure to assimilate isn’t a phenomenon isolated to my own personal experiences; it’s a feeling that gets woven into the collective and amorphous community we call by many names—Asian, AAPI, Asian American.
Hong observes that many Asians, herself included, have been raised to seek the approval of white institutions—that by not writing about our identities, we keep ourselves invisible, and therefore, can keep the higher, white-dominated institutions happy. Similarly, I hated writing about my Asian American identity, and did not want to join the Asian American friend circle at school. I turned myself away from Korean culture, because I didn’t want to be marked as an identitarian. I never wrote about my Asian identity or even discussed it. I especially hated thinking about it.
Hong’s book painted a brutally accurate and sobering picture of the Asian experience in America, and most importantly, it was the first time an author reminded me of myself: flawed, complex, slightly wounded, willful, fiery. I, too, have felt that competitive hate that Hong senses toward her friends, but also similarly experienced the racial camaraderie that she acknowledges. The former, I’ve realized, is just a deep insecurity that people like Hong and I harbor. This book challenged me to dismantle my own residual feelings of self-hatred, and it’s one I will revisit time and time again, to see if my feelings change as I evolve.
Family doesn’t mean the same thing when it’s spoken by an immigrant tongue. It doesn’t always mean “related by blood,” and even when you are, it doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily “family.” As the oldest daughter of Korean immigrant parents, I have been burdened with the lifelong responsibility of acting as a cultural bridge. Sometimes I have to introduce new perspectives to my traditional parents, and other times I have to negotiate for or defend my younger siblings, who are caught in a similar racial and identity-related paradox (I just happened to have to go through it first). I sometimes have to force my parents to see things from a more cosmopolitan perspective, rather than
leaving them to see the world as they did back in their homogenous country, and pressure them to come out of their orthodox thinking. Being an interpreter is a role that is undoubtedly expected of me, and while it is not necessarily a burden for me, it may be a difficult responsibility for others. Truthfully, it’s hard to be this bridge. Sometimes I feel like my engineering was faulty, like the foundational plans were formed incorrectly before my structure was set. Having to navigate cultural differences and multifaceted identity crises from such a young age is one that I have grown accustomed to, but one that I have always wished to escape. California State University, Monterey Bay Professor Rob Weissskirch said that many children of immigrant families are language brokering for their parents and other relatives. While being a language broker for others may be psychologically tolling, Weisskrich reveals that it may lead to the development of empathy.
When I feel my parents’ feet cross my path, and the soft pitter-patter of my younger siblings behind them, I feel overwhelmingly happy, like I have something of value to share with them, like I am someone who is making a real change, even though it’s just in the humble space of my five-person family unit. So I’ve concluded that I fall into the latter half of Weisskrich’s study—that contributing to family is associated with self-efficacy.
With that empathic mindset, I steeped myself into the bigger, more diverse student body that made up college communities. The ability to engage with people from all walks of life, who would bring with them their unique viewpoints, felt like a rare opportunity, especially at such a crucial time in my intellectual development. By realizing that the Korean Americans I so shunned in high school possibly carried similar burdens and experiences as I did in an immigrant family, I was ready to immerse myself in their circle. I came ready to learn more about my culture that I had so longed to get rid of, leading to more nuanced, intersectional, and progressive dialogues. Since coming to college, I’ve joined cultural organizations and engaged in deep conversations with fellow Korean Americans, and most importantly, have become more open about my insecurities by writing about them, just like I am now. Sometimes, I am still afraid that I will feel called out in these communities—that the experiences and feelings others share, uncannily mirror my own, reminding me of my own struggles of acceptance with my identity. But at the same time, I am comforted by the fact that there is a whole community that can understand my internalized dilemma. And also that this group of people would have no criticisms over the pungent, shrimp-tinged scent of months-long fermented kimchi.
As I grew older and began to open myself up to the multiple perspectives of the world, I grew to understand how speaking Korean natively is a unique asset that many Korean Americans surprisingly don’t have. I have found it easier to connect and interact with Korean culture and people without having to look at a dictionary every few words. Being able to harness another language was not an embarrassment; it provided an ability for me to look at the world from two vastly different perspectives, a gift that blesses me daily. I’ve grown to accept these two identities as not completely extricable.
And I’ve realized that this is what education is for: to take the things we held as insecurities as children and to transform them into powerful tools for societal change. Now, I know how to step back and think rationally. I define my beliefs based on personal experiences and knowledge rather than by those of others. So, what is a Korean American to me? I still have years of exploration and assessment before I can comfortably call myself one of my community’s biggest allies and fully define what that label means to me, but Hong’s work helped propel that movement as she reminded me that my “Asian-ness” is not something to reject; it is something to recognize, celebrate, and own. In the future, I hope to find others with whom to redefine the meaning of what and who family is—in my mind, it’s the people I’d invite to cross my bridge.
I’ve been here before. It’s a hazy, remote memory in my mind, but it’s there. The lingering song of a raunchy salsa band wafting through the streets. The wandering stray dogs with matted fur. The white cross of the stone cathedral. Each direction births a new recollection, unwieldy and uncertain, yet unmistakably there.
The beckon of a marketeer turns my head. He’s expecting me—he is warm, welcoming. There are bananas, papayas, fruits I’ve never seen, and fruits I remember well. The sweet mangoes, bruised and browned from tumbling off the carts–their familiar, saccharine flavor colors my tastebuds. Almost involuntarily, I reach for one.
“How much?”
The vendor stiffens at my English, eyes becoming rigid with skepticism. “ Cinco ,” he counters. Behind
“Your drag king name would be Leviticus.”
“IDK why you’re confused about the jump from hot dog to beans.”
“There’s spaghetti in my shoe… I’m assuming this is spaghetti?”
him, a sign reads their price: dos bolivares . The trace of remembrance falters. I hand him a five and move on. The fruit’s dulcet taste isn’t enough to subdue the judgment of watching eyes around me. I’m a stranger to these townspeople, yet their voices are fleeting morsels of nostalgia to me.
The dirt roads empty as I walk along them, people repelled by an alien presence. Only oblivious schoolchildren approach me to ask to play, but they retreat at the first glimpse of my stuttering response. We may share a skin tone, a hair color, a facial structure, but nothing else. No amount of physical similarities can overcome this bubble of separation—I am alone.
A lost sense of reminiscence leads me down an endless path of houses with chipped, senescent paint and graffiti-covered walls. Hours pass. Or is it days? My feet carry me onward, only stopping at the mercy of a small, cement home. An ache of longing surfaces. The wooden door groans as it hangs off the latch, and I enter without asking. I recognize the briny scent of arepa dough that meanders through the house. The voice humming a melancholic canticle. The sound of feet quietly scuffling across stained, laminate floors, careful to avoid the cockroaches that nestle into the crook of the walls. This feels like it may have once been home.
In the garden, I see faces I know, their heads bobbing in harmony with the hymn and their grins spreading ear to ear. They’re faces I haven’t seen in years, almost decades. Their features are a blurred amalgamation of faded memories, withered with age. My grandmother is the only one to see me, her eyebrows furrowing in surprise. I expect a smile, an embrace, a welcome back. Yet she steps away, fear
tainting her expression. There is no recognition. This isn’t a reunion.
“
¿Quién eres? ” “Who are you?” She’s still stepping away. The alarm rippling across her face intensifies.
Air catches in my lungs, releasing as a hollow absence of words. I’m frantic to tell her, to build a single sentence she’ll understand. “ Abuela ” doesn’t dare leave my mouth, much less “ familia .” I’m racking my mind for the language I grew up on–grasping for anything to connect me to this foreign land, to connect me to my own family.
But only vacancy awaits, and my lips are left ajar as they persist in finding the words. My grandmother’s expression settles faintly, her eyes black with disappointment. Or maybe they’re black with indifference. She doesn’t know me. Has she ever? I am not her family; I haven’t been for years. I am a distant voice on a muffled, unreliable phone line. I am a threeword response to her pressing questions as I struggle to string together full sentences in my native language. I am an outsider. I am la gringa —the American.
I scour the dingy garden for a pen and paper, a phone to translate, any medium to indicate my regret, my guilt, my hope that we can fix this. There’s still time. I can restore the years lost to assimilation, lost to a society I will never feel welcome in. Desperation quickly builds to rekindle the bond I once felt to this place, these people, the culture, but it’s sluggish in comparison to the pace of time’s arrow as it ceaselessly moves forward. I’m climbing out of the Stygian void that had swallowed me before, with the weight of Western expectations calling my name as I slip out of its deceptive hold.
But the light is dimming, flickering, gone. My
grandmother’s expectant face is dissipating into nothingness. The ground is shifting beneath me, laminate floors mutating to wood panels. The solemn gray of the walls grows into a muted brown. The flowers around me begin to die, losing their color as they wilt away. The warm aroma of arepas becomes the neat smell of an empty house. The familial hum turns into the buzz of a news anchor’s voice from a television below. Have I been here all along? In my hands appears a ratty photograph of a garden, alive with foliage and conversation. It’s a distant memory, one I have to will my mind to remember. But I do. I am home, perched in a rusted wooden chair with scars of use across it. Tomorrow’s homework is sprawled on my floor. I am home, yet the isolation strengthens. The house I’ve grown in feels just as far away as the lands I originated from.
My grandmother’s panicked, “Who are you?” echoes in my ears. In this new setting, I grasp at any vestige of my identity. Am I defined by the posters hung on my wall? The records in my drawer? The books cluttered on the floor? No, it’s none of these. The photograph of the garden trembles in my fingers. I’ve already lost the biggest part of who I am.
I pick up the phone and dial a number, quickly— frantically. It rings for what feels like years until the startling notification of my grandmother’s voicemail plays. “ Déjame un mensaje y te llamaré más tarde ,” she says. “ Leave me a message, and I’ll call you later. ”
I leave a message. It begins with Abuela.
“Would that be debit or credit?”
“Apple Pay.”
I look over our new register, trying not to sigh. “Yes, is it debit or credit?”
Sometimes the person says a quick “Oh—!” and responds. Sometimes the person repeats their answer: “Apple Pay.” Or sometimes they say, “Either is fine.” Depending on their response, I mentally categorize them into considerate , unaware , and/or rich
“Oh—either is fine!” Considerate but rich “Apple Pay. Either is fine.” Unaware and rich
Is it an oversimplification? Yes.
But does it entertain me, especially when you consider how straightforward the question is, and how long I’ve been at this register? Yes.
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I don’t think I’ve ever had a healthy relationship with working.
You hear it all the time: “Work-life balance is important.” And, if you’re like me, you tell yourself, “Obviously—duh,” and then proceed to work and rest in the most unbalanced way possible. For me, this usually means scheduling two 12-hour shifts in a row, or leaving one job just to head straight to another.
I hate sharing my Google calendar with others. When scheduling meetings or hangouts—god, I have to schedule my hangouts—I refrain from displaying my GCal. Instead, I ask people when they’re available and try to fit them in.
I’m aware of how stupid that sounds. But I have to do my best not to inconvenience people—my professors, my advisors, my friends, my family, and, most importantly, my employers.
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Three days a week, I get up at 10 a.m. and rush to Thayer Street. I’m there in 10 minutes, slightly out of breath but never more than 10 minutes late.
The store is quiet and bright. I set my bag down and slip the store apron strap around my head, knowing it’ll start tangling behind my neck a couple hours into my shift. Sometimes I buy myself a fridge pastry and a cold can of coffee for breakfast. Sometimes I set aside a drink to buy later, labeling it with a pink sticky note: “Danielle’s Drink :3” (I make sure I don't forget the “:3”).
Thayer Street at 10 a.m. is so much better than Thayer Street at 10 p.m. It doesn’t feel too crowded; there’s generally a max of three people in the store. No one comes in asking for change, for an ATM, for the bathroom. If I feel like it, I’ll connect to the store speaker and play whatever music fits the morning vibe— lately, it’s been a pastel combination of mxmtoon, Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo, and Noah Cyrus.
I take photos of items that need restocking and collect them from the basement shelves. Gummy watermelon candy, chocolate covered almonds, strawberry filled marshmallows, various obscure flavors of KitKat, and dried hot chili peas.
Once the clock hits 11 a.m., I’m flipping over the “Closed” sign to “Open,” and unlocking the door.
The timer starts in my head—hour one of twelve.
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Growing up, I was always told: “Hard work pays off.”
As the oldest of three siblings from an alcoholic household, I desperately wanted that statement to be true.
At school and in my mind, I made myself believe: If I work hard enough, things will get better . And if they don’t get better, it’s because I’m not working hard enough
My dad didn’t help. He wanted everything at home “a certain way.” And if he didn’t get that, then everyone was in danger. I was the one who kept things “a certain way.” This meant once I got home from school, I had to organize the shoes, do laundry, make sure the remote wasn’t too close to the folded laundry, vacuum, pick up anything the vacuum couldn’t, wipe down everything— there was a period my dad really didn’t like dust—and make sure the counters were clear.
I could never sit when my dad was in the room. The moment he walked in, alarms went off in my head— sitting is dangerous, relaxing is dangerous, you’re not working hard . Back home, there wasn’t really a place I could rest.
This mentality followed me to Providence.
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When it rains, the store feels distant from everything. The glass windows start to fog up. You can hear water running in small rivers down the street, and you watch from the windows as people struggle to keep
their shoes dry. The music feels louder in the silence of the store. Sometimes someone comes inside, buys a $20 umbrella, then speed-walks to what I can only assume is class, home, or maybe—like me—work.
Sometimes people sit on the small ledge we have by the front windows, waiting for the rain to calm down. One rainy day, I was restocking because no one was in the store except for a high school student waiting by the window. After twenty minutes passed, she came up to me.
“Hi.”
I looked up from the boxes of Pocky I was shelving. “What’s up? Can I help you with something?”
She straightened her back. “Can I help?”
“Sorry?”
“Around the store. Can I help?”
I look around. “Uhh… it’s okay. There’s not much to do right now.” This was a small lie—the chips were running low on the shelves and the fridge needed to be refilled with drinks, but no way was I taking free labor from a minor, no matter how enthusiastically she offered.
“Oh, okay.” She rocked a little on her heels before returning to the window ledge, disappointed. Her boredom was evident in the way she messed with her shoe strings.
Another fifteen minutes passed and the girl stood up and waved at me. “Bye.”
I watched as she stepped out into the rain and slid into a small black car. Weird.
The rest of the day was slow, except for a couple of stragglers asking for change or if they could hang up one of their signs promoting farmers markets, upcoming worship services, and, perhaps the weirdest, a Persian short-hair breeding business.
Rainy days on Thayer—where I’m not in the rain— are my favorite Thayer days.
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I don’t usually take my first break till 5 p.m. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not used to eating before 6 p.m., or if it’s because I get too preoccupied with the expectations of my employers.
When I do take my break, it’s not really a break. It’s a break from my job, but not a break from work itself. I’m either texting my mom and handling whatever crisis she’s having, editing photos for the BDH, working on an essay, or—like now—writing a post- piece two days after I said it’d be ready for edits.
I like to sit on top of the basement stairs during breaks because the size is cozy, and it’s out of our security cameras’ sight. I started sitting here while training new employees, since the front register is literally around the corner, making me available for questions/potential problems. But now it’s where I sit and eat whatever food I brought from home, doing my best to scroll through Twitter without messing up the store Bluetooth speaker connection.
There’s a window above the basement steps, and it’s weird to watch the clouds drift through it, watching as the rest of the world moves forward. While I’m working on Thayer, time doesn’t feel real. It’s like I’m underwater, caught in the fog on the rainy-day windows, locked in the store basement surrounded by too many boxes that need organizing. It’s like I’m one of the small plastic cats we keep on the register, the ones we keep rearranging throughout the day, making them dance, spin, lay down, and line up.
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Working over 40 hours a week is tiring. At the end of the night, I either close the register—counting cash and coins—or mop the floor.
It’s funny—not funny ha-ha but funny annoying— every time groups of people enter the store 10 minutes before we close. My favorite thing to do is shout, “It’s 10!” and watch as shoppers either leave or hastily make
their selections, while a coworker flips over the “Open” sign to “Closed.”
Thayer Street is most chaotic at night. We’ve been stolen from, I’ve been threatened while at the register, we’ve seen street races, and I’ve had to deal with quite a few intoxicated college students.
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All my friends say I should take more breaks. As I’m writing this, I’m being forced to reflect on how chaotic my work schedule has been. I don’t know how to build better work habits, but I do know that it starts with recognizing imbalanced work structures and denormalizing them. I want to make more restful spaces. I want to rest without the irrational stress that comes with resting.
I was always told to “work hard,” and after nearly twenty-three years of doing exactly that, I wonder how I can reframe that mindset into something a bit more healthy, realistic, and ultimately kind to myself.
This summer I switched to Spotify. I was always petrified to reveal my identity as an Apple Music user, but I was equally stubborn to admit that the platform was inferior. Unsurprisingly, it was a boy’s pleas to have access to my playlists that ultimately tipped the scale. After five hours spent methodically transferring each playlist and each song to Spotify, I was reborn into an algorithm that knew what I wanted to hear much better than I did. And no, this is not an ad.
With my Spotify renaissance came my return to a revived art pop genre. The catchy sound and accompanying funky, bold aesthetic was popularized in the early 2000s by artists like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Gwen Stefani. Today, it’s kept in vogue by Rina Sawayama, a JapaneseBritish pop-punk singer with a modeling background and various collaborative credits for Charli XCX and other electropop musicians.
Charli XCX, an English singer/songwriter who escalated quickly from Myspace singles to mixtapes under contract with Asylum Records in 2012, has developed a more experimental sound over the past decade that has made her the face of the modern hyperpop genre and led to dozens of musical collaborations, including one with Rina Sawayama. The duo first worked together on an unreleased ballad for Charli’s 2019 self-titled studio album. More recently, they collaborated on “Beg for You,” the third track on Charli’s 2022 album Crash , which led me to discover her solo discography.
SAWAYAMA , Rina’s 2020 debut studio album, boasts all kinds of bops, from her bouncy Madonna-esque dance anthem “Comme Des Garcons (Like The Boys),” to sonically and lyrically intense “Dynasty,” to endlessly catchy “XS,” a playful and satirical commentary on excess that sounds like early Britney Spears. I was immediately hooked.
What surprised me most about Rina and converted me to a true fan was not solely her
sound, but her enigmatic presence—from Instagram to YouTube. While I looked up to female pop musicians of my childhood for glorifying adolescence (Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream ) and preaching individuality (Lady Gaga’s Born This Way ), I always felt as though they were out of my grasp and at times performative. Rina brings a refreshing sense of self-awareness that makes me feel as though we could quickly become friends if I met her at a bar this weekend; online, she is funny, raw, and true to herself.
The video for Rina’s audibly electric 2022 single “This Hell” depicts her getting dressed in a ridiculous wedding get-up complete with white cowboy boots, a strapless corset top, and a gargantuan circular tophat with a veil flowing off it. She dances down the aisle with a squad of backup dancer bridesmaids and into a darker bar scene with an edgier outfit. Her cowboy boots are now red patent leather, and she’s throwing back vodka shots. This outrageously fun video made me ecstatic for the rest of the album. In August, when I found myself at Outside Lands in San Francisco, I had to see Rina perform. If it was anything like her punchy, oversaturated music video for “This Hell,” her performance was sure to turn heads.
Rina brought the party. She delivered one of the most over-the-top, serotonin-boosting festival sets I’ve ever witnessed, despite Outside Lands attracting a much chiller, earthier crowd than other festivals I’ve attended previously. Complete with full choreography and a team of stylish backup dancers, I was transported back to the early 2000s pop girl groups I grew up on. In response to the full-blown show taking place in front of us, most people danced and sang along at the top of their lungs. Others stared into the void, enveloped in the warm haze radiating off Rina and her team. Rina put a level of intricacy into the big picture of her performance that many modern pop artists neglect. Her vocals were strong, but the elaborate dances and effervescent energy that accompanied her set was what set it apart.
The sea of girls and gays was pulsating with joy akin to what we all felt the first time we saw Lady Gaga or Katy Perry perform. Like Gaga and Katy, Rina made a conscientious effort to ensure that all of her audience members felt not just appreciated
as fans, but also empowered as individuals—all while fitted in crazy costumes and dancing her ass off. Rina made shy remarks about therapy and her complex relationship with her mom in between girl power bangers; her pristine cool-girl stage presence was accompanied by glimpses of a very real person. Despite the in-your-face stylistic and musical similarities to her pop predecessors, Rina’s set design and speeches in between songs felt less manicured in a refreshing way. She eased into a more reserved stage presence than many of her female pop influences, but her musicality is just as complex and catchy.
Rina’s Outside Lands set teased tracks from Hold the Girl , her sophomore studio album released in September 2022. She introduced “Catch Me In the Air” as a song she wrote for her mom. Reaching into her childhood brought up memories of my own; this song in particular reminded me of the Kelly Clarkson hits my sister and I used to yell out the backseat of my mom’s car. When listening to it later within the context of the album, the innocence and sheer love of her inner child shines through even more vividly. It’s flanked by “This Hell,” her first single off the album that quickly became a hot girl summer anthem, and “Forgiveness,” a harmonically stunning power ballad about letting go of her former self that plunges the rest of the tracklist into the contemplativeness of autumn.
Hold the Girl does not hold back; ultimately, Rina slays. While this term is remarkably overused in today’s pop culture, it is wholly fitting for her: the euphoria she creates for her audience extends from her music into her vernacular.
She might even overachieve with Hold The Girl : a highly ambitious attempt to integrate myriad melodies and genres into one cohesive sound. Thematically, the genre-bending songs interact as peacefully as their predecessors on SAWAYAMA , but I’ve found myself preferring to focus on re-listening to individual songs, as opposed to exclusively viewing the whole project as one entity. Days I feel like bumping “Frankenstein” differ greatly from times I’d like to hear “Send My Love To John.” I’m grateful to my Spotify transition for introducing me to Rina, and I’m excited to see where this algorithm—the same one I once feared–will take me next.
on building a culture of care on college campuses
by Lily Seltz Illustrated by elliana reynoldsChocolate-chip banana muffins. Picture them. Soft and robust, their tops golden and cracked like a drought-split plain. I’m standing in front of two full plates, one batch with peanut butter smeared over top, another without. I’ve just come downstairs to the living room and here they are, on the foot-tall dining room table that Ben and Coco built from scratch in the Brown Design Workshop. "Where are these from?" I ask the room.
Ava answers: "I made them! Have some!"
You can imagine, at 5:45 p.m. on a Wednesday (in other words, hump day, slump hour)–when lunch had been an Engineering Café sandwich devoured on a slightly wet bench near the SciLi hours before (and I had forgotten napkins)—how it felt to bite into one of those homemade muffins, the sweet crumbs sparking and prickling on the tip of my coffee-burnt tongue.
Thinking: This is how we care for each other. This is how we make a place home.
This scene was made, if not possible, than at least more probable by my living in North House. North and West Houses, both located on Brown’s campus near Pembroke Quad, make up the Environmental Program House (EPH). EPH members, including sophomores, are generally not on the Brown meal plan; instead, they pay much lower dues to the house, order food in bulk, and cook in their kitchens. Six days a week, a rotating slate of residents make dinner for everyone (around twenty people, or sometimes more on open dinner nights). I’ve only been part of North House for a few weeks so far, but I’ve already fallen in love with this way of living.
The sugary, reviving scent of onions frying, the steadying aroma of cumin: Nothing says home to
me quite like the sensory recalibration that comes from stepping into a room where something’s on the stove. It doesn’t matter what, really; it’s just the fact of it: a promise of comfort, a reaffirmation of routine, and a sense of being cared for in the most essential of ways—through sustenance. Cooking and love are inextricably linked in our cultural imagination, in a sense perhaps best summed up by a Pillsbury Doughboys ad slogan from 1962: “Nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the oven!” But commercial clichés and their invariably bad gender politics aside, there’s something to that, because is there any more fundamental way of supporting and caring for a person than by making the stuff that keeps them alive?
Of course, feeding someone takes work, whether it’s the work of the Brown dining staff or of our own hands. The EPH system ensures that this work is evenly distributed between members using a biweekly jobs quota, rejecting any gendered (or class-based) allocation of unilateral domestic labor. EPH’s program is mutual and reciprocal, and much of my appreciation for the meals I eat here comes from knowing all too well the labor that goes into cooking for twenty. My first week at North House, my shift partner and I set out to make falafel. Sixty minutes into the two hours we were allotted, we were still struggling to puree the chickpeas using a two-cup, roughly 1994-model push-down blender which made horrifying shrieking sounds and only managed to cut the chickpeas in half at best. Our ears were ringing, we were tired, we still had registration overrides to fight for, and we just wanted to be done. But the comical frustration of the process was superseded by the delight of completion—placing the pan of charred and almost-collapsed patties on a folded towel atop the table from the BDW, and hearing my housemates admire, exclaim, and devour what turned out to be a fairly delicious meal.
Living communally in EPH isn’t just about cooking; it’s also about intentionality in our use of a shared space, building a culture of care, and generally figuring out how to coexist as young
adults under near-perpetual stress. These are vital skills and, speaking personally, not particularly easy ones to learn.
Now, it is possible to learn how to do these things in a typical dorm setting. But EPH, much more so than first- and second-year dorms, mirrors the kind of conditions that students will experience living off-campus as upperclassmen or graduates. In real life there is no meal plan; roommates often budget, shop, cook, and eat together. Space is shared to a much greater extent than in dorms, which are essentially hallways with double- or single-bed bubbles jutting off and an underused gesture at a living room in the form of the floor lounge. In real life, there’s a much greater imperative to set boundaries about the use of common spaces, often among a larger number of people—and, maybe most importantly, to fairly allocate the labor that goes into keeping a home up and running.
And while upperclassmen and graduates often have the privilege of living with friends and loved ones, many young adults end up with roommates they choose by necessity rather than preference. North House mirrors real life in this way too: Some members, including me, applied and moved in with a close friend or two, but generally we’re living with people we did not directly choose and might barely know. Still, we cook for each other. EPH challenges the idea that people are only obligated to care for the people we know and love and have already chosen. Love and community can grow out of care— care as a choice, a habit, a blind act of faith—and not just the other way around.
Learning to care for each other means paying attention to the little things—the things that might otherwise pass us by. It takes practice. You realize that you might not care about wearing street shoes indoors, but the sight of a damp Doc Marten past the living room threshold has the power to derail your housemate’s day. You realize that playing guitar in the living room in the evenings can make everyone a little happier, but you also notice when one of the residents of the first-floor bedroom starts to look
weary, and you pack it up for the night. You are not good at noticing these things at first. But you get better.
EPH’s setup lets members learn how to live together as adults while still enjoying many of the supports that come with living on campus. Facilities still clean our bathrooms, and we can still call them if our toilet breaks or the heat won’t turn on. ResLife is still available to deal with lost keys and roommate conflicts and whatever else might turn up. This system recognizes the value of learning and practicing communal living skills as a way of showing care for each other in community, while recognizing the potential pitfalls in that process and is structured to allow for guided growth. But in this, EPH is the Brown exception, not the norm.
The way that Brown chooses to structure the experience of a typical (non-EPH) student reflects on the values of this institution. By having firstand second-year students live in dorms and eat in dining halls, the school sends the message that the only labor we’re responsible for is intellectual labor—and that the work of shopping, cooking, and cleaning are secondary. While the university seeks to “[prepare] students to discharge the offices of life with usefulness and reputation,” it
doesn’t view the work of home and community as part of this. Domestic labor is something you can tack on during senior year, off campus—but it is not integrated into Brown’s educational plan or pedagogy.
This should come as no surprise. Institutions of higher education, especially elite ones like Brown, almost definitionally privilege the intellectual over the domestic. Part of this probably stems from the histories of these schools: Brown was an all-male institution until 1971, and, although its financial aid offerings have expanded in recent years, it remains the richest Ivy by average family income. The dorm and meal plan format (while space constraints and financial incentives would surely have contributed to its implementation) may stem from Brown’s initial audience and some legitimate assumptions made about their needs: A wealthy male student in the early twentieth century would probably never need to learn to cook for himself. He could rely on paid help, or a wife, to attend to him. Today many things are very different, but the Ratty and all its younger cousins still hold campus in their grip.
Except—not quite. We still have Ava’s chocolate chip banana muffins.
And you remember how I said those were made not possible but just more probable by EPH?
by Will Gold
There is cooking all around us, actually, despite the perpetual griminess of Keeney kitchens, despite our tiny minifridges and the fact that the closest real grocery store is a twenty-minute walk away. There are nights out that end with Israeli malawach fried up on the Perkins stove. There are birthday parties where someone brings a loaf of bread, and someone still has potatoes and cauliflower from their summer farm share, and it all gets dressed in just-mixed tahini (easy to bring from home if you buy it as a powder). And then a few of us go out to Jo’s, in the pouring rain, for mozzarella sticks and the good fries to complete our feast. There was that one time when some friends were so committed to baking a birthday cake—past 10, when all the stores were closed— that they DoorDash’ed a single carton of eggs. The eggs showed up hours later, because, as it turned out, the guys on the third floor had mistaken the delivery-man for their weed dealer and sent him off with two hundred dollars in cash. But the eggs got to my friends eventually, and the cake was made, shared, and sung over. And maybe that’s the better skill to learn: how to make a cake in a greasy half-kitchen when the stoners have got the eggs. Or, in other words: how to care for each other, despite everything.
Across
1. 45th President of the United States
Much of urban dictionary
Tiny demon
Structural support posts found outside Greek temples
Eagle's nest
PBS benefactor, abbr.
Lexicon in a certain card game, such as 1A, 11A, 26A, 37A, 38A, 39A, 43A, 31D, 33D, 37D, and 40D
Special attention, abbr.
Really irk
Spasm
Crime against one's country
Place to play ball
Option for one's burger
Must
Billionaire boss Bill
Pan-fry
___-compliant, as buildings may be
"___ Was": Harry Styles hit
Goes to Orangetheory, maybe
Where you might go on a Friday night
Complete collection
Artichoke center
Turkish stuffed grape leaves
Follower of "Yankee Doodle"
Jeans
Maneuver with skill
Interpretation of O.S., according to one's optometrist
Pliocene or Pleistocene
Veggie chopper
Ewe's mate
Logistics-heavy office position
Quiet ___ mouse
"Once upon ___"
British baked biscuit
Drug that one "drops"
Stronger than zephyrs
61. Liquide, solide, et gaz
1. Bar bill
2. Mil. time off
3. Reason for hosp. visits amongst older adults
4. Gambled
5. Mythical flying horse
Beelzebub
7. "___speak:" M0d1f13d l4ngu4g3 u53d 0nl1n3
8. Antonym of dep.
Game with matchsticks
Develop in the womb
11. Opening remarks, for short
Cantaloupe, e.g.
Wore out one's sneakers, say
Alma mater of James Bond and his creator
Med. care plan
23. Frat or forum garb
Type of cleaving enzyme
25. Weird Al Yankovic parody of a Michael Jackson song
Frighten
27. Suffix for followers
29. Descriptor of a Yeti
Gardening shovel
32. Kate's sitcom pal and roommate
33. Ventriloquist's "friend"
34. Bring down a peg
36. Six-yr. officeholders
37. Type of legal agreeement
39. It might precede a trend 40. Team without the ball
41. Solstice mo.
42. Half of icosa43. Like a pack of dogs, maybe 44. Phrase spoken while playing the game mentioned in 17A 45. Wanderer
46. Some drink garnishes
"We need to talk," online
Follower of zeta
Feel crummy
Smallest state in India by area
Tolkienian anthropomorphic tree
Hi-___ image
very
not clenching onto Abraham Lincoln’s face to save up for a Webkinz.”
Hartzell “Loosening the Reins”