By Audrey Wijono
illustrated by Joyce Gao instagraM: @orangefrog_arT
cw: homophobic slur, mentions of gender dysphoria
There’s a photo up on my fridge back home, so old it’s grown yellow at the edges. I try not to draw attention to it when people come over, but it’s always to no avail; it’s so uncharacteristic a photo of me that it sticks out like a sore thumb.
I’m young in the picture, probably no more than three or four. I was a round kid, and it shows: My cheeks are full and limbs soft, baby fat folding into itself. I’m Cinderella, adorned in flowy, shimmery fabrics. The dress itself is much too large for me—I’m drowning in cloth and glitter, layers enveloping my figure. And yet, in some odd way, it fits just right. Even under the weight of it all, I’m grinning,
Do you talk to yourself? Specifically, I’m wondering about conversations, or even arguments—kinds of self-talk where one self is offering up different ideas from what the other self has assumed, and there’s some critical exchange of thought. I ask because, personally, I don’t. My internal world is a monologue that happens outside of my conscious direction, which is why I think writing is so alluring to me—and also, so difficult and so horrifying. To write is to put my thoughts on paper, which means the act of reading my drafts is a deeply sobering experience: You mean to tell me that’s what it’s like in there?
But then, no one claimed that the self would
carefree.
Beside me are two girls, dressed in the same extravagant costumes. Their arms are linked with mine. And they too are smiling in that same unrestrained way, traces of laughter still evident on their faces.
We slot together in our girlhood. And it’s natural, as all friendships should be.
For a time, I would have said gender was innate. In those early years, I was a girl, and unmistakably so. I did everything right: I wore bows in my hair and spun around in pleated, delicate skirts. I wore jelly sandals and Mary Janes, grew out my hair, and begged my parents for everything a girl should: plushies, dollhouses, jewelry.
be easy to comprehend. The self in relation to others, to what molds us, to what stands in our way… our writers this week have risen to the challenge of sharing about and of themselves. In Feature, our writer grapples with knowing and presenting the gendered self. In Narrative, our authors turn their attention toward religion and ethnicity, as well as longing for home and recognition. In Arts & Culture, one writer finds outlets to cope with change and uncertainty; the other ponders how digital technology has shaped who and how we are. In Lifestyle, our very own editorial board reflects on the significance of female friendships. Plus, another crossword!
Earlier this semester, I spoke with someone interested in writing for post-, and they were surprised to learn that I’ve only been an editor here,
I played dress-up with my friends with an ease I knew only in childhood.
But that kid, that baby-blue Disney Princess in the making—was that really me?
And if so, where did she go? *
My mother was fiercely protective as I was growing up. Nowadays, she tells me that she must have sheltered me a little too much; she rarely, if ever, let me out of her sight. I didn’t hang out with many kids outside of school. And when I did, it was usually with my cousins.
My older cousin quickly became my idol—perhaps by proximity. He’s not so much older than I am; two years is
never a writer. I don’t think it was a criticism, exactly, but it did confront me with a weakness I prefer to avoid: Knowing myself is hard, which makes the writing hard too. So kudos to our writers for braving what I cannot, and shoutout to you, readers, who occupy the position in this exchange that I also far prefer.
This even applies to writing long emails, Alice Bai Feature Managing Editor
nothing to me now. But back then, when all I knew were the confines of my youth, there were worlds between the ages of seven and nine, and those two years made all the difference.
I watched him like a hawk. In school, at home; there was something so incredibly refreshing about the way he lived, and the way people seemed to gravitate toward him. His boyhood charmed me—it made him likable and funny and, above all else, cool.
And I wanted to be cool, too!
His interests reinforced—no, determined—my own. I’d pirate all the Pokemon games so I could join him as he played (even when he’d bash on my starters), and I’d come over to his place with my fake Beyblades so I could play against him (even when I inevitably lost).
I was a crude imitation, and I was proud of it.
It wasn’t that I had no female friends growing up— because I certainly did. We’d come to school early in the morning, ganging up against the boys in a game of tag, spinning around on monkey bars and pushing one another on the swings. We doodled in our notebooks and passed them around in class, each of us eager to show off our own creations. And in the afternoons, once we’d all gone home, we’d clamber onto Moshi Monsters, leaving silly notes on each others’ virtual walls, telling ourselves we’d be friends forever.
But my interests naturally began to diverge from theirs as I spent more and more time with my cousin.
In childhood, girlhood was still mine—but my place within it was waning.
*
I was somewhere around 10 or 11 when I felt the shift. Seated next to the girl with soft curls and round lips, I felt something grow. It was the taste of something forbidden: a foreboding, warning sense of distance.
I studied her, glanced at her in the breaks between schoolwork and play. I listened to her with my entire being whenever she spoke. I was enraptured by her, by the way she lived.
I wondered if my own hair looked as soft, if people saw me the same way I saw her, my features all delicate and dainty. Did my movements look as mangled as they felt? Did my words come out in flowers and swirls? Did I want her, or did I want to be her?
*
I never quite outgrew the things my cousin loved. As I grew older, my interests brought me closer to the boys around me. And slowly, I mirrored their actions, tussling and cussing and gossiping in the ways they did. I let myself speak in their tongue and embrace their dress; I weeded dresses and skirts out of my closet, whittling my selection down to a few well-worn pairs of jeans.
The adults called me a tomboy. I must have liked the term, because I remember adopting it for myself. The term was interesting, because it didn’t quite deem me a ‘boy’;
I was still a girl, by this definition. But it was different, a wonderful, exciting third category.
I think, deep down, I’ve always wanted to be different; to prove my worth by defying what has been handed to me. A contrarian, maybe. And at this age, it was gender I contested. When teachers called on the boys to help with heavy lifting, I’d scramble to their side, eager to prove my worth. I rejected the demands of the adults around me, their calls for little girls to be dainty and soft and polite, to adorn themselves in soft pinks and painted nails and to play dress-up in the same ways I’d been taught to as a child.
So: tomboy. Still girl enough to maintain to girls that I was one of them, that it made sense that I stood in women’s bathrooms and played on their teams in PE, that I could still be an object of their affection in the same way as before. Still boy enough to become everything I’d been told a boy could be, to move beyond the confines of girlhood: strong, brave, cool. The man of the house, the leader of the pack. *
I became increasingly averse to anything I deemed feminine. But as I stumbled into puberty and my body changed, I could no longer deny what being a girl meant, especially as I made it to the point of no return.
My mother, seeing these changes, sought to transition me into womanhood. But the woman she saw in her head, the image she had for me—it was so far removed from the way I’d always been. It was time, as she said, to be cleaner, neater, more put-together. Defiant as I always was, I refused her requests to dress better and cried if she so much as applied blush to my cheeks.
It came to a peak one night, right before a performance. The prescribed dress code had me in a too-tight blouse, tapered right around the waist, its fabric ever-so-sheer. As I wailed and moaned about how girly I looked, she snapped.
“You can’t always look like a d*ke.”
If I wasn’t enough of a girl to my own mother, how could I be one at all?
At 14, girlhood felt so incredibly wrong. Staring at myself was hell; my hair was too long and my features too soft and my body was curved in too many places. I hated who I was in the mirror—not because I believed she looked bad, but because this woman I was meant to be simply wasn’t me
It clicked there, in my childhood bedroom, as I cried over a word I’d never been called in my life. I couldn’t be a girl. I clearly hadn’t lived up to the standards of girlhood; I could feel the stares of those around me, the judgment that came with being wrong—with being an ‘other’. And if girlhood rejected me, then I would reject it in turn.
Gender, at 14, was a choice, a process of rejecting one and turning to the other. And if I couldn’t have girlhood, I’d take boyhood as my own.
Boyhood enveloped me, its momentum all-consuming. I deepened my voice and my slouch; my breasts cave in when my shoulders round out, and I am more like them
when I am hunched and formless, aloof in that poised, boyish way. My humor became crass, but forced. I spoke of women as if their bodies were not my own, as if their words, at some point, were not the same as mine—as if I didn’t watch the flow of hair along the napes of their necks, the flutter of their eyelashes, the glints of light reflected on the moisture of their lips.
Boyhood took me in, but it was conditional. I pretended the boys didn’t give me the same weird stares the girls did in my adolescence, that they didn’t see me as the token ‘girl’ in their dynamics. I wasn’t truly one of them—but what could I do? If girlhood had rejected me, then this boyhood, cold and crude, was all I had left.
*
At 16, a friend showed me a girl in our year. “What do you think?” he asked.
“She’s pretty,” I told him—because she was. I envied her, the ease with which she moved; every jostle betrayed the strength of a swimmer’s build. My eyes traced over the length of her hair, catching on hues of blue and green. They complemented a natural black. “Really pretty.”
To my surprise, his expression contorted to one of disgust. “No way,” he said, cackling. “Her?”
I didn’t see what I could have done wrong. “I like her smile,” I said. She smiled with a refreshing earnestness— with her whole face. “There’s nothing wrong with her.”
He paused, but only for a moment. “I’d fuck her with a paper bag over her head.”
Guilt swarmed my mouth. I wondered, then, if they would always be like this, these men; if everything they’d been taught about women was irreversible.
Maybe they’d always see me the same. *
I am an imposter among men and a traitor to my flesh.
What does my authenticity entail?
Gender doesn’t feel like a choice anymore. Suddenly, it’s exclusion—this odd, third category where I can no longer claim to be one or the other. Neither see themselves in me, nor can I see myself in them.
I cut my hair.
I reject boyhood, and all of gender along with it. *
I miss my girlhood at times. I miss being Cinderella, twirling around, playing in plastic glass slippers, hosting plushie tea parties.
But what does it mean to be her again?
Neither boyhood nor girlhood have rung true for me, nor do I think they ever will. I’m stuck, precariously toeing the line between the two, splitting my personality in messy halves and assigning each piece to a side.
Whatever gender is will come to me one day.
Until then, I’ll keep searching.
“I think I’ve decided to skip the gaslighting and go straight to manipulation.”
“I had to dress my best because today we got a gecko (his name is Beef Chili Fish, but if you know him like that you can call him Fish).”
Dear Pastor B,
Of you I remember almost nothing. I remember a speech about divine grace you gave before we watched Kung Fu Panda at Bible camp. I remember your spindly fingers and the bumpy blue-gray veins that pulsed down your forearms, and the way you walked with a thumping arrhythmic gait. I remember the call-and-response you used to get us to quiet down: You sang out bum bum buh-dum bum and waited for us to sing back bum bum! I remember your white hair and your hawkish blue eyes. I remember how odd I found it that you—a white man—were the one preaching to a congregation of Chinese children.
The rest of you is captured only in the haziest impressions. I can hardly recall a thing you told me about God. These shattered mirror memories are all I have left of you. Half of my life was spent going to Bible camp and Sunday school but I confess to no longer being Christian. I’m not sure that I ever was.
I write this not as an apology, because I have nothing to apologize for. I write this not as a means to reach you, because I know how unlikely it is that you will ever read this. I write this for myself, and perhaps for my mother, who still quietly worries about the status of my immoral, and unfortunately atheist, soul. This is not for you.
I remember your wife, Angie, who held me when I cried during Bible camp activities. Do you remember that summer? I suspect you don’t remember it like I do.
In those years, summer came as a thunderstorm. There was not an hour of silence in our months. The cry of the cicadas was upon us during the days; at night it was the drum-beat rumble of thunder.
Before we were born, my mother and all the Chinese mothers in our town found God, and wanted their children to find Him too. This is why the Chinese church in my town doubled as the Chinese school. We learned about God on Sunday mornings, and we practiced our Mandarin on Sunday afternoons.
One mother in my neighborhood distributed pocket Bibles along with Skittles each Halloween. My own mother was never that overtly religious, but she sent me to Bible camp during the summers, just like the other Chinese mothers. For us, the humid summers acquired a divine texture.
At Chinese Bible camp, we learned about Christ through
imitation. Do you remember the snack activities? You would stop by our classroom and teach us about a particular episode in the Bible, and we would construct the scene using food.
I remember you came over and complimented me on the Nativity scene I made out of pretzels and graham crackers—the infant Christ represented with a small marshmallow. A few minutes earlier, I’d stolen a handful of Jesus-marshmallows from the bag and furtively stuffed them in my pocket to eat later. I was too worried about you seeing them to properly listen.
I want you to remember the day I cried in the belly of the whale. One of our activities involved acting out Biblical stories. There was a large room in the basement of the church that we would go to for our reenactments.
This was on the day we were reenacting the miracle of Jesus healing the leper. A counselor picked a few of us to act as the lepers. She put fluorescent orange stickers on our skin, marking us as diseased. We were sent off to a corner, exiled as those with leprosy once were.
Do you remember this? The day before, we’d acted out the story of Jonah and the Whale. Jonah is swallowed by a whale and remains in its belly for three days and three nights, praying all the while. The windows in the church basement were still covered with big blue tarps, the darkness simulating the inside of the whale’s belly.
The few of us huddled together, swaddled in the excess tarp which pooled on the ground, in the whale’s belly. One by one, we were called forward to be healed by you. You’d told us how terrible leprosy was, how those with leprosy would be exiled forever, how the illness had been incurable without the touch of Christ. But you weren’t Him. You were only a man, peeling orange stickers off our skin.
I sat in the corner in the dark, and I cried. I didn’t respond when my name was called. You came to me and peeled the stickers off my skin, shushing me and my tears. The leprosy wasn’t real, but I was born sick. Your wife, Angie, collected me in her arms and whispered to me, “It’s not real, it’s not real.”
I tell you this not to blame you. I tell you this because I have no words to describe how I felt other than to just tell you this story.
In our town, summer ends not with thunderstorms, nor with the flight of cicadas, but with the drip of Chinese children returning home from Bible camp.
The Chinese church stood in a zone of perpetual construction. A mountain of earth always stood defiantly in the lot across the street. A dirty yellow bulldozer was always parked next to it.
A few years ago, an apartment complex rose where the mountain used to be. The church itself was renovated, now with a shiny white facade and large windows along the sides. Two new wings now jut out from either side of the church. I can no longer picture the inside of the building. Everything is
unfamiliar now.
I have one more thing to say to you.
You preached to us in English. I remember how you told us about the Exodus—Moses leading his people out from Egypt. You asked us to think about what it would mean to live in a place that mistreats us, what it would mean to leave that place, to pack up our lives and cross seas. You asked us this not knowing that we have already been asking ourselves this question since we were born.
What do you know of Exodus? Or rather: What do you know of our exodus? What do you know of being untethered as we are, of being too Chinese for this country but being too American for home? You taught us about the Promised Land, but there is no such concept for us. We are only ever at home in liminal, impermanent places: doorways, school buses, the washed out places where the ocean meets the land, and in the Chinese school-church, where we spent mornings learning the language of God and afternoons learning the language of home
I realize this sounds accusatory. I try to tell myself that you spoke only in good faith.
You told us that we were all God’s children—that I, too, was a wayward son to be saved. I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been thinking about what would happen if I had a wayward son of my own.
Should I have a son, I would name him in Chinese after some consultation with my parents. I would name my son the same way that my parents named me: first in Chinese, but also English, with two names.
I would look at my son and tell him that no matter how many generations we stay in this country, we will always be foreigners; we will always be aliens in America. I would not insist that my son go to church or to Bible camp, but I would tell him the truth about this particular “promised land." And I would probably insist he go to Chinese school.
I will look at my son and tell him that this country is a cauldron: bubbling, bubbling, bubbling until our skin is split and our blood is boiled and our bones become the base of the broth that feeds a community.
Because only then, looking at my firstborn son, will I realize why my parents named me in Chinese. Because my parents, my son’s grandparents, left their whole lives behind them to come to this country. I’ll tell my son that every mile his grandparents traveled, they shed more of their skin, sanded down more of their corners, became so small in the soul that they could carry it all in a suitcase, taking with them only their language.
One more time: This is not for you. This is for me. And perhaps my mother.
Yours,
(Daniel)June 6, 2008 was the first time I saw an iPhone. I was sitting in a Jewish deli next to the hospital where my mother was in labor with my brother. At the time, I only knew the flip phones I saw in movies and the Blackberries my parents used, which solely piqued my interest when they let me borrow one to play Brick Breaker. But this new phone had everything. I marveled at its camera, an app I could click on with my finger, that opened and closed with a swirling motion. Instead of just Brick Breaker, you could put whatever games you wanted on it by downloading them from an “App Store.”
The mailroom worker calls my name like they've never heard a name like it before, because they've never heard a name like it before. I know it's a box from my mom; her big black Sharpie font says her name and mine. For a second, we are together. All the times we have hugged and every time we could not.
I put the box in the bag that she told me to bring because she said I would need it. “Que pena que vives tan lejos,” I remember her saying as the smooth tunes of Samara Joy aligned with my steps.
I use the scissors she bought for me when I moved in to rip through the five layers of tape. Because, as her voice reiterates in my head, “USPS always beats up the boxes.”
There's always tissue paper and two handwritten notes: one from her and one from my niece. Those are the contents I value most. This time there is bubble wrap. As I peel back the layers I realize it is a mug, bright with color. It comes with a spoon I won’t use because I don't add sugar to my black coffee.
The mug says “Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.” There's a vibrant pattern of buildings from this area, one on top of the other, and a Puerto Rican flag painted on the centered door. El Morro is off to the right with a Puerto Rican flag on top, the ocean behind.
Here, at my dorm desk, I realize I don't want a souvenir from the place I come from. It means I have left. I don't want a Puerto Rican flag. It means I have left, and that the packages will keep coming.
Whenever the Puerto Rican Day Parade played on our TV, I saw flashes of red, white, and blue that did not mean the United States but meant Puerto Rico. I didn't understand the fascination behind a flag whose blue was changed to a darker hue so it would emulate the American flag, whose blue once meant sky; white, independence; and red, revolution.
From 1948 to 1957 La Ley de la Mordaza prohibited Puerto Rican people from displaying or even owning our flag; it was seen as a sign of rebellion, of unacceptable Puerto Rican nationalism. I didn't see the flag as anything more than a symbol of the fact that we’re still a colony. But now it’s signifying that we are allowed to be visible, to see each other.
I still don't want a souvenir from Puerto Rico. I don't want to have to explain to my friends why I don't want it because I don't want to have left. I don't want to take pictures of every Puerto Rican flag I see hanging on rearview mirrors or poking out behind fences. I don't want to put a Puerto Rican flag pin on my backpack.
But I do.
The mug sits in a case with a plastic front cover so you can peer into the cityscape. I think I understand why they make it transparent: so you can display it, and hold on to it like a semblance of the puertoricanhood you want to claim. I want to be recognized as Puerto Rican, not asked where I'm from. I don't want people to tell me that my American accent is really good or ask if it's snowing back home. I don't want to say I'm from Puerto Rico and for people to respond, “Oh that's so cool I went there on vacation once!” or, “Sick I've always wanted to go, it's so exotic, the people are so warm, I've heard.”
Recently, whenever I tell people I am Puerto Rican, they ask me where I'm from again. They don't assume I come from the island. They assume I'm from the diaspora. Their eyes widen and they shake their heads in disbelief—I can't really believe it either. They look at me like they've never seen a Puerto Rican before, like they've never seen before. I don't really know why this image is so vivid in my head, maybe because I have seen this face so many times. I know they just want to ask me how I feel in this snow now. I don't know how I feel, in this snow, now.
The “people are so warm” is true. We are. It is normal—customary—to greet everyone with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. To dance in the streets when there's music playing or when you have the rhythm within you. To cheer, to yell, to make a beautiful noise. To speak Spanish so uniquely only we can decipher it.
Still, I don't want this mug. I am not from Old San Juan. I am not from San Juan at all, not even the North. I am from what old sanjuaneros would call La Isla (in an attempt by the elite class to distance themselves from the “Others”) as if we weren't all from the same island. I'm from the South, where seeing a tourist is as rare as seeing flamboyants bloom in May. Where you are always five minutes from a river, a beach, the mountains, or a broad field of dry, dry soil. Where the bougainvilleas line our fences, crowning each home with mosaic delight. Where cacti can grow next to pomegranate trees and the morning dew evaporates as quickly as it lays on the bluegrass.
Still, my mother will keep sending me boxes and sign every letter with the name of our Town, City surrounded by hearts. Still, in our daily FaceTime calls, she will show me the backyard: “Para que no te olvides de nuestra casita.” Still, the distance will make me want to use the damn mug.
Gen Z is the first generation to grow up with smartphone technology at our fingertips; the technology grows with us. People born at the beginning of the millennium aren’t young enough to have been iPad babies, but by middle school, we were hooked on every app from Tiny Wings to Twitter. Big tech companies at that time were just beginning to discover how the interest they created could transform into addiction. This contemporary tech was new, so we experienced many glitches; we’re essentially a generation of guinea pigs.
I joined Snapchat in 2011, the year it was created, and Instagram soon after, without even having the term “social media” in my vocabulary. When I made an Instagram account on my iPod Touch at age 11, I didn’t have to ask for my parents’ permission—it was free on the App Store, and neither them nor I knew what it was. I heard it was a place to share photos with your friends–one photo at a time, in a square, with one of four filters applied to it. That was all the app was capable of doing.
As I grew up, I watched Instagram, Snapchat, and other similar applications and technologies fumble with new features and adapt into what they are today, nonchalantly signing over my data and my time for the promise of strengthened online friendships. The rapid expansion of these platforms was overwhelming to a growing teenager like myself, especially given that it was unclear which were fads and which would stay. Vine came and went, as did House Party (with a stunning resurgence during the beginning of the COVID lockdown). Facebook faded, Musical.ly became TikTok and caused a new boom, and though I no longer maintain Snapchat streaks, I still depend on Instagram, and many rely on Twitter.
I don’t have many physical copies of photos from my childhood or any “home videos” taken on real cameras, but I was born too soon for it all to be documented via iPhone. I was six when the first iPhone came out. Even by the time I got one seven years later, the technology was not advanced enough to store all your memories in iCloud without losing some every now and then. At the time that iCloud was introduced, no one really understood what it was or trusted it entirely. I became skeptical of its capabilities one day in middle school when my phone crashed randomly, and my backup external hard drive broke—I lost almost all of the photos from the past few years.
I matured in a strictly tangible sense, which is perhaps why I obsessively hold onto mementos like ticket stubs, postcards, and birthday notes, and why I refuse to purchase a Kindle and insist on only reading physical copies of books. Simultaneously, my virtual self-image was just beginning to develop. My parents
documented my early childhood via digital cameras, but they rarely printed out any of the photos to store in physical photo albums, the way people of the previous generation did with film photography. Many of my unseen childhood memories lie on random SD cards strewn about my house, likely to not be uncovered any time soon. The “Glitch Generation” lies somewhere in between the film and digital ages—where the data stored on new fancy devices ran the risk of vanishing, yet was simultaneously available to broadcast widely and instantly.
What does that mean for memory, and what does that mean for art? My questions, posed amongst a group of my Glitch Generation friends, recall a concept explored by Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish philosopher and cultural critic, in his 1935 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Benjamin proposes that the mechanical reproduction of anything automatically devalues the aura of the objet d’art (a small, ornamental work of art). He believes that in the absence of any ritualistic and traditional value assigned to an object, “the authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced.” His concept emerged during the Nazi regime, but his introduction of the aestheticization of politics (i.e. a spectacle that enables the masses to express themselves without affecting ownership relations) into our cultural vernacular transcends time.
Do digital art and memorabilia inherently hold less value in their auras than certain physical objects and mementos? To me, tangibility certainly enhances emotional value, regardless of an object’s monetary value. The essence of a handwritten note from my grandfather or a portrait my friend painted of me contain testimony, history, lived experience that a photo of neither item could ever replicate.
What would Benjamin make of a Snapchat, a photo, or video message that disappears permanently after it is opened, or Banksy’s infamous $1.4 million painting that shredded itself at a Sotheby’s auction in 2018 and later sold in 2021 for $24.5 million at another auction, despite its physical form being destroyed?
How about art created by our newest toy, artificial intelligence like DALL-E 2? Robots might be capable
The drive back down to Providence crosses between two of my own realities as it crosses state borders. Every single time I embark on the journey back to campus, the hour-long car ride is always accompanied by a torrential downpour. The kind of rain that loudly pounds against the windshield and consumes all corners of your mind. The sort of drive where I momentarily revert into my five-year old self, scared of the darkness and bombarding droplets that seemed to surround us. My dad likes to joke that it’s the universe’s way of trying to keep me at home; sometimes I think he is absolutely right. And it makes the return just a little bit harder each time.
of creating art that looks like it could have been made by a talented human, but to what extent does any of it hold authentic value or cultural authority? Likely, Benjamin would argue it does not contain much meaning, because, as he states, even the mere existence of a copy of anything diminishes the value of the original. If anyone can conjure the same piece of digital art within seconds, the item no longer possesses the unique singularity that made it meaningful.
I would assert that a journal kept in the iPhone notes app would eventually hold less emotional value than one documented in a physical notebook in someone’s handwriting on a page they touched. A printed photograph taken on a film camera might hold more sentimental value than one on an Instagram feed that has been curated to present a specific, typically less than truthful self-image. There is a distance between who you present yourself to be and who you really are.
Glitch Generation kids have somewhat caught on to this; we’re experiencing a film revival that is meant to be nostalgic, even though we weren’t alive when it was first popular. Disposable cameras are used at parties, perhaps as an aesthetic trend, but also as a means to grasp something physical. A stuffed animal, a drawing, and an annotated copy of a favorite novel are all items that reflect a person’s true self. They cannot be FaceTuned or filtered, and even if you lose them, they will never truly vanish.
I often wonder if Instagram will last forever or if it’s just an elongated fad. I can’t imagine my children one day scrolling through my hundreds of posts to see what my online persona was like when I was their age, but perhaps that is the destiny of our digital footprints.
Given that we continue to experience myriad glitches as society rapidly invents and adapts, there is no way of knowing whether any tech is permanent. Conceivably one day soon it will all disappear before we can print any of it for a photo album; people still sometimes get permanently locked out of their Instagram accounts and must start over. Being born into the Glitch Generation is exciting and creates an instant convenience my parents didn’t have, but gone is the ephemerality and the emotion. We’re all just searching for something to grasp.
Gone are the pink walls and scratched up wooden floors from my childhood bedroom, and I am once again surrounded by four concrete walls where my photos dangle from poorly attached Command strips. I don’t even bother unpacking the excessive amount of clothes from my month at home. I yank my iPad from my backpack and climb right into bed, ignoring my duffel bag sitting in the corner. I would do anything to stay in the safe haven I had built for myself for the past month and keep the reality of the looming semester at an arm’s distance away.
I didn’t want to be on campus. After weeks of waking up in an appropriately-sized bed, my mother happily cooking me meals, and driving around aimlessly with my hometown friends, I couldn’t fathom diving right back into the spring semester within the next three days. How could Brown expect me to get back to waking up before the sun emerges after my hometown lovingly gave me a free pass for sleeping an unlimited number of hours each day? The impending transition seemed impossible and ruthless.
Half-asleep from the unsettling journey, I tried to find a comfortable position on my untouched, now-hardened twin XL bed. I coped with my return to school the only way I knew how to: through familiarity. Muscle memory kicked in as my fingers began swiping and tapping until I found myself on the Hulu app, hovering over the play button for Season 1, Episode 1 of Normal People . Ah yes—what better way to ease back into my everyday life than through the everyday lives of others? ***
Sally Rooney’s Normal People permeated my life during the depths of quarantine in 2020. I had a copy of the novel sandwiched between other books I bought, read, and proceeded to tuck away in the back of my mind over the years of high school. The constant state of chaos and stress that defined my high school years interfered with my ability to truly appreciate Rooney’s characters and their sentiments; without ever taking the time to slow my own life down and treasure the miniscule moments, I had unknowingly overlooked most of what Rooney had tried so hard to relay to readers.
Now, sitting bored in my room, there was no better time to relive and relearn these pages.
Upon hearing that Hulu was about to premiere their own TV adaptation of the novel, I scavenged my bookshelves to find my hidden, tattered copy so that I could immerse myself in the 200 or so pages in preparation, timing my spontaneous reread such that I finished hours before the show came out. It was the most productive I had felt after nearly a month and a half of being stuck at home as the world struggled with its new normalcy.
I was struggling with adjusting to the new normalcy too. I’ve never been a fan of change— why mix things up if they work? Familiarity is so lovely; familiarity is so easy. The sense of comfort that accompanies lived experiences and interactions feels so safe . The fact that I can look back on past encounters and triumphantly say that I had survived them speaks volumes. The same cannot be said about embarking on a new storyline, which solidifies change as the scarier option in nearly all aspects of life. Is that risk of exposing myself to something new and unfamiliar always worth it? Rationally, I know that the answer is usually yes, and that growth is good for any individual. But internalizing and fully embracing that is not nearly as easy.
So naturally, when faced with a changing world and countless unforeseen circumstances, I was more than happy to lose myself in the world of two characters whom I had once obsessed over, and couldn’t wait to watch them come to life on my own screen.
Rooney brings readers and viewers along for the ride as Marianne and Connell, two young adults from small-town Ireland, tackle the ups and downs that are school, confusing relationships, and the dreaded question of figuring out what one is to do with the rest of their life. Although this may seem like any other coming-of-age plot, my attachment to Normal People and its characters instead emerges from the way Rooney portrays everyday interactions through raw expression and intense emotion.
Through Marianne and Connell’s interactions over several years, Rooney successfully reenacts how heartbreaking misunderstandings can arise from miscommunication. As both characters
are intensely protective of their own feelings, the fear of opening up and being vulnerable with each other inevitably results in their own misperceptions of the other’s emotions. This fear of change and not knowing what might accompany these alterations infects their minds, leaving them to take actions that fail to reflect their true feelings. And it is exactly what makes them both so infuriating yet relatable.
Finding parallels of yourself within fictional characters is exhilarating. I have never felt more validated than when I’m nodding along to dialogue that I have quite literally spoken myself. No matter how exasperating it can be to watch Marianne and Connell fail to be on the same page as a result of simple miscommunications, it serves as a reminder that everyone faces these same struggles everyday. It reminds us that whenever we struggle to tell someone the truth, or come to terms with an uncomfortable reality, we’re not the only people to have ever been put in those positions. Even though it can feel like the most isolating setting ever, it just might be one of the most uniting moments among people.
Sometimes I worry that I’m not going to do something transformative with my life. Or even something great . As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to grapple less with “How am I supposed to leave my impact on the world?” and more with “Am I even meant to leave an impact on the world?”
Rationally, I know that I’m going to be just fine. I’ll graduate, I’ll find a job, and I’ll have my friends with me every step of the way. Knock on wood . But being able to recognize this and being able to actually internalize it are two completely different actions, and it’s nearly impossible for me to complete the latter. Because who truly knows what will happen? The fearful curiosity lies heavy on my shoulders in the face of the unknowing, yet again.
This is exactly why I find such comfort in characters like those of Rooney’s universes. Reading about individuals who still feel lost in their seemingly perfect lives validates my own worries I have about the future. Digesting mundane yet silly conversations between characters reminds me that no matter how
pointless the conversations I carry with others may seem, these are the chats bringing life to my friendships. In Rooney’s characters, I read descriptions of their everyday actions that are nearly identical to the messy text messages between my friends, where we never hesitate to share the most recent thoughts to occupy our brains.
It brings me solace to come across a stream of consciousness passage that reads all too familiarly because my mind runs its course through the same daunting thoughts each night.
We need to embrace normality; it is what makes up our daily interactions and encounters, which all bring meaning to our lives. Even as someone who loves structure, the repetitiveness of waking up at 8 a.m., attending class, swiping in at the dining halls, and parking at my favorite study spot can get to be a little tedious. But there is so much more to my everyday life than these seemingly mundane activities.
When the lovely ERC baristas ring up my coffee order before I can even greet them. When a new friend invites me to grab dinner for the first time together. When I forget to check the dining hall menus beforehand and it turns out that the Ratty is serving falafel. When the dorm washers and dryers are available. When I get to climb into my friends’ beds as they tell me about their own, ordinary days.
Normality is enlightening.
Ordinary is not boring; ordinary is real. Choosing how to perceive our everyday actions is what allows us to derive pleasure and excitement from our day-to-day lives. And the best part is that we get to choose our actions once again the very next day—there is nothing more reassuring than knowing that I get to control my narrative. ***
As I finish binging the beloved Normal People for the nth time, my body has already melded to my softening twin XL bed. I glance at the photos surrounding myself, and absorb all the moments I’ve captured with my friends, ranging from weekend-long trips to silly selfies taken on the floor. Even the rain has stopped. And I realize that the semester will be just fine.
The most transcendental part of any relationship, for me, is self-recognition through the other. It establishes, in one irrefutable proof by example, the assertion that we are all one, intertwined in our struggles and pains as we are in our joys and exaltation.
I met my ride-or-die-twin-flame while we were both coveting the role of lead singer in our 7th grade music class. The song was “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid , and needless to say, we were mortal enemies. Since then, a decade down the line, our paths couldn’t be more different, but our essences, our freaky parallel lives, the way we choose to live out our femininity (edging insanity, no short of delusional), echo each other in an impenetrable equilibrium.
It’s startling to think what my reality would be without her—she’s had my thoughts and voiced them before I even knew the words. She hears me as me; she’s more me than me. We are each other’s proof of existence, a justification of sorts that says, “you are valid as am I.”
Not to be melodramatic, but, as Lana says, we did it for fun, we did it for free, I showed up for you, you showed up for me.
When we were six years-old, Emely and I would host the most extravagant dance parties. Anyone who was anyone was there—her worndown teddy bear, the lopsided Little Mermaid
pillow, and the two of us. We pushed her leather sofa back against the wall to broaden the dance floor, revealing leftover Lindt chocolate wrappers we'd snuck out of her pantry the night before. As I browsed through dozens of cable radio channels on the TV, she would fill up our water bottles and stretch.
Would we be dancing pseudo-bachata to some Prince Royce? Perhaps we’d choreograph a heartfelt interpretive dance to Katy Perry’s “Firework,” or a hip-hop routine to the latest Black Eyed Peas hit.
Then, the real party began. For hours on end, we danced like no one was watching, because no one was. Our dance routines perfectly fused the agility of an acrobatic routine with the tender storytelling of a lyrical piece. In our minds, we were no different from the cool girls in our favorite Disney Channel shows.
Between fits of laughter, we would lie on the carpet in comfortable silence, relishing in the fact that we would do it all over again the next day—if our moms said yes, of course.
In the post- office, my most supportive, nurturing, and healing friends Aditi, Alice, Kathy, Kimberly, and Tabitha know something that I don’t.
Maybe it’s how to use an em dash.
But that doesn’t stop me from trying—despite being ratioed by their endless grammatical wisdom.
Maybe it’s why the ethmoid looks vaguely labial. Command+T, “ethmoid,” Command+T, “ethmoid, pussy bone?” Command+W .
Maybe it’s about Aditi and Alice’s first editorial board—a group of witty, wonderful women who made this magazine the bubbly and beautiful publication that it is. They observed this group as quiet copy-editors, glancing above their computer from time-to-time, wondering how they got to be in a room with people that cool.
Yeah, I know that feeling.
Admittedly, I’m an outsider—loud with my voice in a room of thinkers, clumsy with my words in a room full of writers—oh, and the obvious I guess. An outsider, but a guest, and I know it. So there I sit, and sometimes I interject, and sometimes I break into my head-voice for HAIM’s “3 AM” (which I added, don’t get it twisted). But mostly I listen, and I laugh; in fact, I laugh a lot, especially when there’s nothing I really can nor should do but laugh. And I listen some more as we agree: “Men, you know?” I roll my eyes. In fact, I do.
My summer in Memphis was thick with sweat and hazy Mississippi air. I didn’t know anyone there, not really, and I had braced myself to spend my free time romanticizing solitude and practicing (or just playing at) adulthood.
What I found instead were friendships with women who were willing to share. We shared car rides, and cheesecake, and lunch swipes, and stories about what we cared about and how we thought the world might perceive us. For a summer and by happenstance, we shared the same space, and what it left me with was a feeling that persists, even now that the time and place are gone.
When I write about female friendships, this is what I mean. They bind you together. They leave you with a sense of proximity that you do not forget.
Middle school sleepovers were the pinnacle of my existence. Planned weeks in advance, they were my first real taste of independence.
My mom can drop me off if your mom picks you up.
We can stay in the basement and order pizza.
I have to leave at 9am for my soccer game.
We would squeeze into the beds we were just beginning to outgrow, and under the cover of darkness, we let our secrets flow freely. We would intertwine our pinkies and our futures, making unbreakable pacts to be best friends forever.
Our voices flitted in and out, discussing rumors and failed tests and going to high school and who to invite to our birthdays—every new topic so all-consuming that nothing else could possibly matter.
And just maybe if we whispered quietly enough, morning would never come, and we could remain weightless and frozen in time, surrounded by friendship as pure as it would ever be.
Looking back, those sleepovers were only a sneak peak into my future here: too many bodies snuggled in one twin XL, whispered conversations deep into the night, and promises of friendship, forever.
“I’d like to believe that endings do not erase beginnings. I’d like to believe in a world that, despite blustery winters, turns snow into sunlight. So I’ll just live as if those things are true.”
—Kaitlan Bui, “Something like the Opposite of Loneliness” 03.11.22
“It often feels like my brain is a novel that I did not write, and I’m only a reader trying to interpret the author’s message as I go.”
—Ellie Jurmann, “Unfinding Meaning in Everything” 03.05.2021
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Kimberly Liu
FEATURE
Managing Editor
Alice Bai
Section Editors
Addie Marin
Klara David -
son-Schmich
Lilliana Greyf
ARTS & CULTURE
Managing Editor
Joe Maffa
Section Editors
Elijah Puente
Rachel Metzger
NARRATIVE
Managing Editor
Katheryne Gonzalez
Section Editors
Sam Nevins
Anaya Mukerji
LIFESTYLE
Managing Editor
Tabitha Lynn
Section Editors
Kate (Jack) Cobey
Daniella Coyle
HEAD ILLUSTRATORS
Connie Liu
Emily Saxl
Ella Buchanan
COPY CHIEF
Aditi Marshan
Copy Editors
Eleanor Peters
Indigo Mudhbary
Emilie Guan
SOCIAL MEDIA
HEAD EDITORS
Kelsey Cooper
Tabitha Grandolfo
Natalie Chang
LAYOUT CHIEF
Alice Min
Gray Martens
Layout Designers
Brianna Cheng
Camilla Watson
STAFF WRITERS
Dorrit Corwin
Lily Seltz
Alexandra Herrera
Liza Kolbasov
Marin Warshay
Aalia Jagwani
AJ Wu
Nélari Figueroa Torres
Daniel Hu
Mack Ford
Olivia Cohen
Ellie Jurmann
Andy Luo
Sean Toomey
Marlena Brown
Sarah Frank
Emily Tom
Ingrid Ren
Evan Gardner
Lauren Cho
Laura Tomayo
Sylvia Atwood
Audrey Wijono
Want to be involved?
Email: mingyue_liu@brown.edu!