TUFTS OBSERVER ISSUE 3 (BODY)
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LITERARY ISSUE (SEX) VOLUME CXLII
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
“UNFAILING, UNFORBIDDEN”
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
DID YOU GET WHAT YOU NEEDED FROM HER
BY PAULA GIL-ORDOÑEZ GOMEZ AND ALICE HICKSON
POETRY • BY PEARL
FEATURE • BY CE MALLEY AND JUANITA ASAPOKHAI
POETRY • BY TATUM SCHUTT
BEFORE, AFTER, DURING
RECLAIMING THE SPOTLIGHT
BREAKING THE SILENCE
THE SET UP
POETRY • BY JADY ZHANG
NEWS • BY SABAH LOKHANDWALA AND SILVIA WANG
WOMEN
POETRY • BY SONIA RICHTER
BARELY
CAMPUS • BY EMILY THOMPSON
PROSE • BY CALEB MARTIN ROSENTHAL
THE SUMMER AFTER
POETRY • BY ALICE HICKSON
WINE-BLUE
POETRY • BY ALEXANDER ELIASEN
POETRY • BY AMANDA LIPARI MAXSON
$69 MILLION FOR A TOKEN?
PURPLE
ARTS & CULTURE • BY WYOMA CHUDASAMA AND RABIYA ISMAIL
POETRY • BY PAULA GIL-ORDOÑEZ GOMEZ
CREATIVE INSET
THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DESIRES
BY EVELYN ABRAMOWITZ
THE PEOPLE V. WHITE SUPREMACY OPINION • BY JUANITA ASAPOKHAI
2 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
POETRY • BY AKBOTA SAUDABAYEVA
Calloused hands run wild—grasping hips and thighs and chest. Your touch lingers after you leave, the memory of it briefly seeping under my skin. I would give up far too much to stop it from fading.
STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF: Akbota Saudabayeva MANAGING EDITOR: Josie Wagner CREATIVE DIRECTORS: Brigid Cawley Richard Nakatsuka FEATURE EDITOR: Ryan Kim NEWS EDITORS: Rachel Dong Mira Dwyer
VOICES EDITORS: Anita Lam Lee Romaker CREATIVE INSET EDITOR: Evelyn Abramowitz LEAD ARTIST: Kelly Tan ART DIRECTORS: Kate Bowers Joanna Kleszczewski LEAD COPY EDITOR: Grace van Deelen
COPY EDITORS: Grace Abe Claudia Aibel Sabrina Cabarcos Madhi Ibrahim Chloe Malley Tara Steckler Ethan Yan
DESIGNERS: Kate Bowers Janie Ingrassia Joanna Kleszczewski Carina Lo Sofia Pretell Julia Steiner Brenna Trollinger
STAFF WRITERS: Juanita Asapokhai Sonya Bhatia Isabelle Charles Rabiya Ismail Mahika Khosla Sabah Lokhandwala Myles Platt Cana Tagawa Emily Thompson Silvia Wang
CONTRIBUTORS: Aidan Chang Anna Cornish Alexander Eliasen Amanda Lipari Maxson Caleb Martin Pearl Matilda Peng Sonia Richter Tatum Schutt Alexanda Yang Jady Zhang
ARTS & CULTURE EDITORS: Wyoma Chudasama Brittany Regas
MULTIMEDIA DIRECTORS: Maddie Oh Justin Wang
OPINION EDITORS: Caroline Blanton Aroha Mackay
PODCAST DIRECTORS: Florence Almeda Sofia Pretell
EDITOR EMERITUS: Myisha Majumder
CAMPUS EDITORS: Melanie Litwin Amanda Westlake
PUBLICITY DIRECTORS: Janie Ingrassia Eve Ogdon Juli Vega Del Castilo
MULTIMEDIA Ben Bortner Anushka Chadha Maddy Keipp Esther Tzau Silvia Wang
POETRY & PROSE EDITORS: Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez Alice Hickson
ABROAD CORRESPONDENT: Yumei Lin
ISSUE 3 & LIT ISSUE DESIGN BY JOHN BRIGID DOE, CAWLEY, ART BY COVER JANE DESIGN DOE BY RICHARD NAKATSUKA
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 3
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
2 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 12, 2021
This literary issue comes at the beginning of spring. Last April, locked inside a season of waiting and unknowing forced us to hold beauty in unconventional ways. How eerie and structureless life became without other people veining through our minutes. How disorienting touch and intimacy became, like a distant memory we weren’t supposed to remember. In these times, our energy looks different. We have become static, yet increasingly restless. Through our unending screen time, we are yearning to touch the other side of the glass—an unfamiliar, idyllic scene. Poetry has become a solace, a force to keep our eyes and hearts open. Finding grace in the untrained movement of petals and branches interrupting the pin-drop absence. Finding it even in the stillness of the city drawn shut, the sun painting the quietude turning bedrooms into a golden dreamscape. Before this year, we took overcrowded nights in the MAB Lab for granted. As the dreaded latenight layouts extended into early mornings, we talked for hours about the excitements of the everyday, laughing about the awkward interactions, babbling about the people we’d kissed and hoped to kiss. Those unexpected, blissful moments of support and trust formed a patchwork of care that we draped ourselves in. Now, that blanket serves as a reminder that our distance is only temporary. We chose to theme this literary issue “Sex,” because we are all relearning how to allow intimacy, pleasure, and human connection back into our lives. This spring, we are letting the poetry replenish us. Finding tenderness in every brief signal of life that suddenly feels suspended and surreal, and holding it close. We have never loved spring more. Love, Alice
&
Pau
<3 <3 <3
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 3
FEATURE
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM:
By CE Malley with reporting contributions by Juanita Asapokhai
ACCESSIBILITY AT TUFTS IN THE AGE OF COVID-19
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FEATURE
T
hree semesters into virtual learning in the wake of a pandemic, the changing needs of the student body have reawoken conversations about accommodations and accessibility on campus. While the transition to virtual learning has been a drastic shift in the routines and daily lives of all students, it has uniquely impacted those with disabilities, mental illnesses, and various other chronic health concerns at Tufts. Articles covering some of the issues that students with disabilities face on campus have garnered attention in the past, and individual students and organizations alike have consistently voiced concerns about accessibility. Now, as a result of the strain on resources caused by the pandemic, the urgency for these concerns to be addressed has only increased. One of the key campus resources for students with disabilities is the Student Accessibility and Academic Resources (StAAR) Center. As described on the center’s website, it works to “provide reasonable accommodations to students with disabilities.” The center offers various assistive technologies, such as literacy and text-to-speech programs, laptops, as well as accommodations in residential housing, academics, and transportation. All of these resources are put forward with the aim of fostering “students’ educational growth and awareness” and promoting “access to an inclusive and collaborative learning environment.” The center has fulfilled these objectives in many regards. In the fall of 2018, approximately 15 percent of undergraduate students were formally registered with Student AccesDESIGN BY JOANNA KLESZCZEWSKI, ART BY AIDAN CHANG
sibility Services (SAS) at Tufts. In the fall of 2020, SAS and the Academic Resource Center merged to form the StAAR Center. As a result, the number of students registered with the center has likely increased, as many of the processes for receiving help have been streamlined and thus have become more accessible to the student body. According to Associate Dean of StAAR Kristen Behling, “[the merge] equates to less run-around, referrals to other offices, the need for additional appointments, and trying to find the services that [students] need specifically.” However, as the university attempts to accommodate the needs of its students as they navigate the challenges associated with the pandemic, the promises of easy access have slowly diminished, and the limitations of some of Tufts’ programs have become increasingly apparent. Some students have expressed displeasure with how the university has approached accommodations and claim that the process of receiving proper aid can be quite difficult. Sophomore Stephanie Rifkin sought academic accommodations with the StAAR Center as she managed the effects of post-COVID symptoms from an infection that she developed on campus. Rifkin explained, “It took me a while to reach out to [the StAAR Center] because I didn’t really know how to approach asking for accommodations … They’re very focused on needing documentation from a doctor saying that you need accommodations, which is not something I have because this is so new … [and] that’s not something that every student is gonna be able to do.” Rifkin described the Accessibility Services website as “very unwelcoming,” and “discouraging students from reaching out for help,” because the system expects the student to advocate for themselves at every step of this unfamiliar process, even though students applying for accommodations might not be able to reach out as consistently as is expected of them. “I almost didn’t reach out to them for accommodations because I didn’t think I would be able to get them … it was a big deterrent for me for asking because I was under the impression I wasn’t going to be able to get help,” she said. Even after making the initial appointment, Rifkin found the process of following up and communicating with the StAAR Center afterward to be difficult. “It seemed like they were expecting me to be on top of reaching out to them and getting after them on things and making sure they were doing their job,” Rifkin said. Although many students work past the online and administrative hurdles to get the support and resources they need, the ability of students to utilize their accommodations in class is not always certain. The discretion that professors have towards how they address student health and accommodations varies widely. For sophomore Jessie Goober, when her computer science classes were using PDFs that were not compatible with her screen reader program, her professors took steps to change them to a more accessible format. However, in other classes, she’s faced an increased workload and unaccommodating professors. “[I get] a lot of pushback of, APRIL 13, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 5
FEATURE
‘Well, that’s how it is,’ or ‘We can’t move this because this is how it is,’” Goober said. Though Goober mentioned that some professors do try their best to accomodate students, the fact that this cannot be guaranteed from class to class has proven to be a challenge. Senior Sabrina Fleishaker agrees that the lack of a university-wide protocol for professors has posed a problem for an accessible accommodations process on campus. Fleishaker is the secretary of the Tufts Chapter of Active Minds, an organization dedicated to mental health destigmatization and advocacy on campus. “I feel as though there should be some sort of codification, or at least some overall general policy. Even just a broad brush strokes type of thing, or just a kind of cutyour-students-some-slack kind of thing,” Fleishaker said. “And I know some professors have been great at this, but with the accommodation system, there’s no sort of universal standard for the professors.” Additionally, some assistive technologies have become unavailable for some students as a direct result of the pandemic. According to a student assistant at Tisch Library who chose to remain anonymous, many of the laptops intended for student use are now out of circulation. “A large portion of the laptops we have for loaning out are broken … the ones that do
6 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 12, 2021
work have all already been loaned out, so we can’t give them one,” they said. “This is mainly because they weren’t originally intended for long-term use.” To address this, the student recommended that Tufts increase the budget for the Division of Student Diversity and Inclusion to allow them to repair and loan out more laptops for student use. This move would make this element of social and academic engagement more accessible to the student body. In an editorial from February 2020, the Tufts Daily emphasized the importance of a collaborative approach to accommodations within the classroom. They presented various ways that faculty and administration could work more effectively to make the process of obtaining support more accessible to students that have voiced health concerns. They suggested that there be a representative that could serve as a mediator between the student and the administration who could work to “gather documentation, arrange for timely exemptions and coordinate makeup work” to streamline the process of receiving proper accommodations. The editorial encourages Tufts administrators and professors alike to “value student wellness above … convenience,” a sentiment that would be reflected in many of the statements that students made about health and wellness at Tufts. The pandemic and the subsequent shift to a virtual/hybrid model of teaching have illuminated the inconsistency of approaches to accessibility within and beyond the classroom. However, for some students
with disabilities, there have also been some benefits. “[Because of the virtual format], a lot of my tests have been online, and because of the text to speech reader that I use, because I’m dyslexic, I’m much more compatible with that,” Goober said. Recorded lectures, which have also become a new norm in the midst of the pandemic, not only allow remote students the ability to attend class at an appropriate time but also allow students with disabilities to adapt their class experience to their needs. Elaborating on the benefits of these recorded lectures, Goober said, “I have a slower processing speed as a part of my learning disability, so having those lectures recorded is extremely helpful because I can go back and review them.” StAAR Center Accessibility and Assistive Technology Specialist Samantha Brumer echoed Goober’s sentiments in response to questions about accommodation changes due to the pandemic. “Not all student experiences are the same, and while some students faced increased barriers, others shared a preference for the remote academic environment,” Brumer said. “With regards to individual accommodations, many of our students found that they were easily transferable to the remote environment and in some cases no longer needed.” While this sentiment may hold true in some cases, online learning has also introduced a slew of obstacles to learning that students are forced to contend with. “What makes in-person learning effective is that there’s a more interactive feel to it, with a bunch of people in a classroom, discussing, perhaps raising their hands— whereas on Zoom, that interaction becomes more difficult,” Fleishaker said. “Asynchronous classes, in my opinion, are one of the more complicated situations because you might not even interact with your teacher for the entire class.”These different modalities limit some of the necessary engagement that is needed for social and academic support. To many students, taking hybrid or fully in-person courses might appear like the antidote to several of the issues created by online learning. Goober highlighted that these course modes would still present major issues for deaf
FEATURE
and hard of hearing students who would have to sit through classes taught by professors who have their mouths covered and voices muffled by masks. “[Hybrid learning] would have been a huge barrier [for deaf and HOH students] because they could not understand people because they rely heavily on lip-reading, especially because a lot of people don’t sign,” she said. “And so they wouldn’t be able to understand their professors, they wouldn’t be able to understand their friends.” As a result, Goober has heard that some deaf and HOH students opted not to come to campus this school year. Additionally, online learning has proven to be incredibly isolating, and this isolation and lack of interaction are especially hard on those with mental health concerns. “Meeting and looking at faces on screens all day, especially for people with social anxiety, or potentially people who are neurodivergent and might otherwise have difficulty interacting socially, or even just people who have difficulty building support networks [has been a struggle],” Fleishaker said. She went on to clarify that “this is not any particular individual’s fault; it’s just that the circumstances are difficult.” But, as Rifkin said, “It’s not like there are support groups for this.” The lack of socialization and communication among students due to pandemic isolation has made looking for support within a welcoming community increasingly difficult. For some groups, the isolating nature of the pandemic has made student organizing and outreach difficult to arrange. As Goober put it, “people with disabilities during the pandemic, especially health-related disabilities … it’s just hitting them on all sides. So [ABLE] has a very limited capacity, during this pandemic more so than we already do.” Counseling and Mental Health Services (CMHS) Director Julie Ross agreed with some of the concerns about the accessibility of organizations and support groups surrounding health and wellbeing. She explained in an email that “some of the virtual groups and workshops have not been as well-attended as we would have liked (and not as well-attended as when we are able to meet in person).” Ross partially attributed the low attendance of these workshops to the very issue
that necessitated their creation: excessive Zoom use. “We have been hearing from students now that they are, understandably, exhausted, and suffering from Zoom fatigue, and that this has been an obstacle to engaging with these programs for some students,” Ross said. “We believe that communication is also an issue, as sometimes students request programs that we are already offering, but they don’t know about them.” CMHS set out to address the needs of students maneuvering college in a pandemic. “We learned that students wanted opportunities for virtual spaces, and we increased our group and workshop offerings, including adding online connecting spaces for students in quarantine and isolation,” Ross said. She shared CMHS’s plans for more programming in the future to bridge the social and emotional gaps amongst students. “One of these is called Project Connect, and is a peer-facilitated small group connection project that has been very successful in other university settings,” she said. Additionally, a recent project petition to create a Tufts Wellness Center has been garnering campus-wide support. Introduced by the Entrepreneurship Association of Tufts, the center would “allow Tufts to continue to prioritize student mental health, ultimately benefiting the university at large.” The center aims to collaborate with CMHS to address the limited resources available to those looking to connect with others and manage stress. According to the business plan, the center will be active in ”promoting a sense of belonging, creating an environment that encourages and embraces open, respectful dialogue on mental health, and creating interactive inclusion by supporting diverse perspectives and backgrounds.” Despite the enthusiasm among advocacy groups about the new center, there still exists a history of unsuccessful support groups and programs that petered out in the critical developmental phase that the center is in currently. Tufts Community Union Senate member Griffen Saul recalled that there were several attempts over the years to create communities and foster outreach surrounding disability advocacy but that many projects never came to fruition.
He clarified that “a lot of the faculty and the student services that work specifically with students with disabilities, they, from my conversation with them, have been very receptive.” However, due to some of the machinations of the Board of Trustees, Saul said, “It’s been really challenging to get there to be any kind of movement around this issue.” Ross echoes the sentiments that organizations like the Wellness Center and various advocacy groups work to address, suggesting that reaching out to peers, or to CMHS services, is an essential step towards ameliorating some of the mental health issues the pandemic has caused. “Among the important stress-reducers are acknowledging the impact of this national health emergency on each of us, and adapting expectations of ourselves accordingly, practicing self-compassion, and doing our best to treat our bodies well with sufficient rest, nutrition, and exercise,” Ross said. Even though there have been some deliberate efforts to expand accessibility to resources on campus, there is still much work to do. The pandemic has not only exacerbated already-existing issues that disabled students face, but has also presented new challenges of accessibility, and the inconsistency of the approaches that the university has taken to address these issues is still being questioned. “To think that that’s a reality that some students have to face, that some students have to come onto Tufts campus—they’re touring the school and they’re like, wow, I really love this school, but you know what, it’s just not accessible enough for me,” Saul said. “We’ve got to realize that [accessibility] is not just an individual fight but a collective fight. I think that’s something that this campus would benefit from.”
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 7
FEATURE
Before, After, During By Jady Zhang
Are you just someone new I might wake up to for a while? The touch of your fingertips a spell to conjure worth from wasted breath I used to lick your pelvic tattoos expecting the blue skin to taste different I’ve never been good at igniting tenderness fighting sad with worse sad using the bone of one whale to harpoon another isn’t beautiful The bloom of your cheeks like all living things had a season I lived here once I need not return Would you do it in the woods?
I have learned to throw myself down and pin back my own shoulders split the black lace on purpose as I rip Between the unseen bird’s sweet beckoning I swim down myself A river filled with thick cotton rags Dry as licking cinnamon and sand You swim behind me and whisper wetly I taste skinny dipping in a glass of bourbon Brass knuckles and blush Pop stars eating poptarts Finger fuckin’ good I bet I taste like your mother does like a small knife taste like your favorite cocktail spiked with antifreeze Taste like you can try it love it but it will kill you
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FEATURE
After you slouch spent against the rock asking why do you love me? And my anger shrunk to an egg I could swallow or drown You’ll wear yourself out you said I’m sorry I was drifting Maybe I could be expelled from my body follow a few feet behind it like a scolded child No better way to curb my addiction (to what?) than to martyr to dance in ankle-deep glass I was lovely for a moment wasn’t I? the second before a scratch turns bloody the time before water turned lands muddy Why how do you sleep so fucking much? The way you curl up too big even on the guest room bed too tall you always lie in a diagonal And rub your chin against my thigh the most endearing most ungraceful vibration of air
DESIGN BY KATE BOWERS, PHOTOS BY MATILDA PENG
I dreamt you were with him you’d wake up and tell me And myself I dream of nothing too often Rows of ovens unbolting one by one their large bald concentric throats Or dirt’s blunt bitterness prying my mouth open to lump itself inside sprouting pale roots from limp limbs And me grinning all the while as though I kept catastrophe cupped tight in the heart All selves are quartered flayed severed into fillets plated to be saved sliced well beneath the belly’s protrusion I dreamt I was a fish receiving c-section I’d never wake up and tell you
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 9
NEWS
BREAKING THE SILENCE: A MOMENT OF RECKONING FOR ASIAN AMERICA
By Sabah Lokhandwala and Silvia Wang
A
recent shooting in Atlanta, Georgia follows a trend of growing anti-Asian American sentiment since the beginning of the pandemic. As the United States continues to navigate a year of public health crises and political turbulence, it still has to address a long history of violence against the Asian American community. Meanwhile, Asian communities at Tufts grapple with the implications of recent events and feel a need for stronger structural support from the university. In the March 16 shooting, a 21-yearold white man killed eight people—six of whom were Asian women—at three spas in Atlanta. The victims were Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Paul Andre Michels. Federal authorities did not classify the shooting as a hate crime, which sparked nationwide outrage and protests. Katherine Wang, a junior at Tufts, reflected on the aftermath of the Atlanta shooting. “I feel somewhat closer to people after talking about [recent acts of racism] because I think a lot of the times Asian racism is invisible. I think the more these events are in the news, it makes me feel more personally affected,” she said. The rise in hate crimes like the Atlanta shooting can be attributed to growing xenophobia and anti-Asian rhetoric since the start of the pandemic, which has been
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strengthened by Former President Donald Trump’s comments and social media’s ability to spread misinformation. Courtney Sato, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University specializing in Asian American studies, who will be joining Tufts’ Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora Department in the fall, said, “Social media helped to widely disseminate racist tropes and catchphrases. But [these] racist tropes are not anything new. The difference is you have such a public figure verbally saying these things [and] tweeting these things.” The alienation of the Asian community through rules and rhetoric is not a phenomenon created by the pandemic. “We can situate what happened in Atlanta in a broader historical genealogy, as early as 1871. All the way back in the 19th century, there was the Chinese massacre in Los Angeles, and then we have anti-Asian sentiment that was then codified legally into the law and immigration policies,” said Sato. Hate crimes against Asian Americans rose 150 percent in 2020, with incidents concentrated in big cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Boston. Baljaa Borgil, a peer intern at the Asian American Center at Tufts, said, “It’s not that I could predict this happening, but the fact that it happened did not surprise me.” Student groups are finding various ways to respond to the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. Wang is also a member of the
Tufts Asian Student Coalition, which is currently working on its Voices magazine, a literary and art publication produced in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. This semester, the theme was anger. “There were a lot of submissions around anger [about recent events] and getting to read them was very comforting in a way and very powerful,” she said. Also a member of TASC, Borgil said, “I feel like [anger] is an emotion that I’ve never been able to feel for my people. It’s interesting
“HAVING THAT REALIZATION OF LIKE, WOW, THIS SHOOTER TARGETED
PEOPLE
WHO
LOOKED SIMILAR TO US, THAT MADE ME SPEECHLESS.” to see this theme being played out and how it challenges us as a group to vocalize ourselves.” Despite finding community in peerled groups, students have still had difficulty processing the Atlanta shooting due to a lack of support from Tufts. Elizabeth
NEWS
Hom is the Asian American Community Senator on the Tufts Community Union. When asked about whether Tufts provides enough resources for Asian students, she said, “I think no, point-blank. Tufts really struggles to give adequate support for communities of color.” When a February op-ed in the Tufts Daily addressed the lack of action taken by the administration in addressing antiAsian violence, Tufts University Student Life responded with a schoolwide email, signed by the director of the AAC, Aaron Parayno, and other administrative leaders, condemning violence against Asian Americans shortly after. On March 18, Tufts President Tony Monaco released a statement voicing his support for the Asian American community in response to the Atlanta shooting; however, many students expressed a desire for concrete action from the administration. In both cases, the university pointed to the AAC as a key resource for Asian students, but students report that simply steering students to a center does not address the larger problem at hand. Wang believes the university needs to do more in terms of structural support, not only for Asian students but for students of color in general who have to cope with racism. “I think in general [Tufts needs] more funding for student centers; just the existence of them is not enough, they need to be maintained and supported with resources,” said Wang. She explained that absolving responsibility to identity centers without adequate resources puts the burden of labor onto the identity group rather than the university. At the same time, Wang believes that labor should not be shifted onto non-Asian staff members, reinforcing the need to expand identity centers’ resources. Hom also mentioned the difficulties of dealing with the news while being a fulltime student. “Professors don’t acknowl-
DESIGN BY CARINA LO
edge any of these things going on and expect us to be fully functioning on top of the lack of support. Not even acknowledging these things that directly impact your students while assigning the normal amount of work, and even more than that, is, to me, crazy,” she furthered. Deborah Schildkraut, a political science professor at Tufts, also said that messaging from individuals in positions of power plays a crucial role in creating a sense of belonging. “If you want people to feel welcome, included, invested in the community in which they live, messages from elites matter a lot. The people who create the rules, create the institutions can set the tone for whether or not that group is included and is seen as a full member of that community,” said Schildkraut. These students’ anxieties point to insecurities in the larger systems at play. The shooting in Atlanta is discussed heavily in relation to anti-Asian violence and rhetoric, but more specifically, it reflects the intersection of race and gender in these cases. “This was the most speechless I have ever felt in response to the hate crimes in the media because this was targeted against Asian American women. Having that realization of like, wow, this shooter targeted people who looked similar to us, that made me speechless,” said Hom. Wang had similar thoughts about safety after the Atlanta shooting. “Increasing [hate crimes] has made me a little bit more fearful on an everyday level. It definitely has made me turn more inwards to think about who I present as and how other people perceive me,” she said. Sato believes that Atlanta should be contextualized within the history of fetishization and sexualization of Asian women. Police cited the killer’s “sexual addiction” as the reason behind his shooting
and that he referred to the Asian women whose lives he took as “temptations” to eliminate. “In the Atlanta killings, the perpetrator was humanized, and law enforcement justified it as that he was just having a bad day. But at the same time, we also see how the mainstream media is not able to grapple with the complexity of these Asian women, and the lives that they lead. It speaks to the ways in which Asian women have continually been dehumanized and overly sexualized throughout history,” said Sato. While students felt frustrated and alienated in the moments after the shooting, it presents an opportunity to come together and make progress. “If people feel hopeless or terrible right now, one solution is working with other people who share your interests to try to make change. [It] may not yield immediate results [but] organizing and advocating for your interests matter and can work,” said Schildkraut.
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 11
Women By Sonia Richter
Make cotton feel like silk and drugs come on stronger Blur tequila-fueled fantasies of men in patterns into citrus curls and tobacco lipstick I touch a version of myself stuttering Graze the faults of your hips with my bitten fingernails Vicariously shiver as if from sour candy or biting seltzer Your memory is blood-thinning making anemia intimate I am pushed against the sharpest wall before the flush of you fades into male palms and grayscale Flat water warms with time I warm to men and recognize bodies unlike mine coarse and alien Forget your folds and creases Romanticize cotton infused with silk perhaps my own perhaps impure Folded into unwrinkled squares skin to skin
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re
“Don’t talk Like that I’m gonna yak”
Ba
Smashed heads Brain soup
ly
You started Another silent sidewalk My aimless body emasculated Drifting under a Draped limb Authoritative affair Of orgasmic ownership It’s hard to take you seriously when “Fuck me Fuck me Fuck me” The celtic group stopped When you blew in my ear They told me “Congratulations You came Now you can go” We watched the hut burn down You wouldn’t hold my hand as the bear was macerated But I have two feet by my ears “Flexible Right?”
“I wish I could inflict All my pain on you”
DESIGN BY JANIE INGRASSIA, ART BY ALEXANDER ELIASEN ABD MATILDA PENG
en lias
Everytime you refused to Slice the window Forcing sediments to Linger and pool on my neck Yours were the muffled screams
rE nde lexa By A
There’s no headboard for me to tie you to Musk and dirty polo shirts will suffice
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 13
ARTS & CULTURE
$69 MILLION FOR… A TOKEN?
O
ver the last month, the art world has been buzzing about non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The international auction house Christie’s sold its first NFT digital artwork, Everydays: The First 5000 Days (2021) by artist Beeple for a staggering $69.3 million, the third-highest price to be fetched by a living artist at auction. The sale, which seems to serve as a stamp of approval for NFTs in a largely inveterate art world, has led to speculation about the potential this emerging technology has to disrupt and revolutionize the art market. Non-fungible tokens are cryptographic assets on blockchain, a digital public ledger, with unique digital signatures. Whereas cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are mutually interchangeable with one another, NFTs are non-fungible. This means that they cannot be traded or exchanged at equivalency, as no two NFTs are the same. When minting a digital art piece as an NFT, a file is created on the blockchain that cannot be modified or deleted. Because it exists on a blockchain, the artwork’s record of ownership is publicly available and verifiable. In essence, NFTs serve as proprietary stamps on digital works, not only ensuring its traceability and preventing fraud, but also creating a desired scarcity in the digital art market. An inherent problem digital art faces is that it can be easily copied and is infinitely reproducible. When the reproduction is identical to the original, the original artwork loses the appeal of authenticity that collectors value. As such, digital art has generally resisted commodification because it has been largely perceived as uncollectible in the art world. In the ‘90s, artists in the Net Art movement embraced digital art precisely because of its counterfeit problem—they thought it was radical that digital art could be endlessly copied and consumed, but not commodified. They created artistic websites that everybody could view without having to buy art. Central to the ethos of this genre was the avant-garde notion of being resolutely outside the art marketplace. Yet today, when there is constant engagement with, and reproduction of, digital art on social media, digital artists increasingly need and want to be recognized and compensated for their art. NFTs seem to offer a solution to this problem. By assigning a distinct signature to a digital asset on blockchain maintained on a public ledger, NFTs add the requisite mark of authenticity to digital art that makes it worth collecting. Kurt Ralske, a professor of the practice in digital media at Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts said, “The beauty of the NFT is that now it’s possible for there to be an original within the digital realm.” NFTs also give artists greater control over the sale of their art by enabling them to directly sell their work on NFT marketplaces like OpenSea. According to Ralske, “[This means that artists] can bypass the gallery, they can participate fully in their income, and not have to give a share to the gallery, which is usually 50 percent.” NFTs remove the need for intermediaries like agents and galleries, not only allowing for greater market efficiency, but also for artists to connect directly with their audiences. And, because the record of sale and purchase exists live on a blockchain and is publicly visible, artists earn resale income every time the work changes hands. The recent NFT craze in the art world may be partly fueled by a genuine interest in supporting digital artists. Yet, there are several people buying NFTs who are motivated primarily by the gains of financial speculation with vested interests in sustaining NFTs’ popularity. Nick Seaver, a professor in the Tufts Department of Anthropology who specializes in tech culture, pointed out that Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile, who purchased the Beeple work for $69.3 million, is already actively
By Wyoma Chudasama and Rabiya Ismail 14 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 12, 2021
FEATURE ARTS & CULTURE
invested in the crypto world. It could be said that Rodriguez-Fraile bought the NFT at a nominally high price to artificially increase the apparent value of Ethereum, the cryptocurrency in which the work was sold. Seaver said, “It’s the same group of people that hand each other money in order to make it look like a lot of trading is happening… [which] is a known kind of fraud within the stock market.” In that case, it is unclear whether this new technology is here to stay and revolutionize the art world, or if it is simply a bubble created by those who are already invested in selling and trading NFTs among themselves. Though the benefits of NFTs are immeasurable for artists, those individuals contributing to this cycle may unintentionally gatekeep the market from smaller artists and buyers. It is questionable, though, why an auction house like Christie’s, which committed to becoming 100 percent carbon neutral in the next nine years, would support the increase of NFTs. The enormous energy consumption involved in NFTs is not sustainable for Christie’s carbon-neutral plan. Immense computing power is required to operate the blockchain system of NFTs, and the carbon dioxide emissions generated are immense. Spectrum IEEE reported Ethereum’s market capitalization at roughly $10 billion US dollars in January 2019, which meant one transaction used more power than the average US household in a day. In April 2021, its market capitalization has risen to $243 billion. Since most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain, they are far from being an environmentally conscious way to purchase art. According to CryptoArt.wtf, the ecological impact of another one of Beeple’s NFT digital artworks, Crossroad, sold for $6.6 million, is roughly equivalent to a European Union resident’s total energy consumption for five and a half years. Currently, it costs approximately $5,000 to offset the emissions from one of his collections. Beeple and other artists turning to NFTs are attempting to offset emissions from their works by investing in renewable energy, conservation projects, or sustainable technology. Still, the most impactful solution is to change the security system for cryptocurrencies. The most common security system, proof-of-work, asks people to solve complex puzzles using energy-consuming machines. It uses significant amounts of energy and is also significantly inefficient. Of course, NFTs make up a small portion of all Ethereum transactions, but their recent popularity will likely increase the use of Ethereum and, in turn, increase emissions. An alternative to proof of work is a system called proof-of-stake. While proof-ofwork relies heavily on electricity because of its complex equations, the proof-of-stake model uses a different crypto-algorithm. Rather than using an extensive amount of electricity to enter the cryptoworld, proof-of-stake only asks people to prove they have a “stake” in the ledger by putting their tokens in as an investment. This means that the more someone “stakes,” the more significant their output will be. But if they attempt to do anything malicious, they lose their stake. Since this model does not require complex cryptographic sums, its electrical costs are lower. Ethereum is hoping to transition to a proof-of-stake model, and many artists involved in cryptocurrency are optimistic about the transition. According to Ralske, “[the NFT] is a game-changer” for many artists and has the potential to break down the barriers of exclusivity of the art world. Though NFTs may be slow to operate under environmentally sustainable technology, their popularity is exciting for both emerging and well-known artists. The future of NFTs in the art world is uncertain, but they certainly have a place in the present cultural milieu.
HOW NFTS ARE TRANSFORMING THE ART WORLD DESIGN BY JANIE INGRASSIA, ART BY KELLY TAN
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 15
FEATURE
feel me touch me
kiss me
i like that DESIGN BY EVELYN ABRAMOWITZ
16 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
i want you closer 1. PAULA GIL-ORDOÑEZ GOMEZ, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 2. TARA STECKLER, DIGITAL ART
FEATURE
r DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 17
OPINION
T
By Juanita Asapokhai
T H E P E O P L E V. W H I T E SUPREMACY
ragedy struck the Atlanta area on the evening of March 16 when a 21-year-old white man shot and killed eight individuals at three separate spa locations. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent. The shooting occurred as America crossed the one-year mark of the coronavirus pandemic. Racist and xenophobic rhetoric surrounding the virus, propagated by the Trump administration and reinforced by right-wing media, has culminated in a 150 percent increase in hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities since last March. As the recent surges in violence pushed national conversations towards the colonial and imperial history of anti-Asian racism, a simultaneous countercurrent of anti-Black rhetoric began to surface on social media platforms and news media outlets. One month before the deadly shootings, NBC News aired a 10-minute Nightline segment memorializing Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai American who was killed in his San Bernardino neighborhood earlier this year. At one point in the segment, Ratanapakdee’s white sonin-law stares into the camera to deliver a short message: “We need the Black community to realize that Black people are hurting Asians, and they need to speak out in their own community.” It is clear that Ratanapakdee’s loved ones are speaking from a place of immense grief. At the same time, their comments echo a reoccurring narrative about relations between Black and Asian Americans that conveniently erases the role of white supremacy in creating antagonistic relationships between people of color. Too often, a story is spun out of tensions between racial or other minority groups that effectively put them on trial before a national audience— usually, Black People v. Another Marginalized Group. The identity of the real perpetrator is almost always obscured. The true impetus of these tensions is a society that has historically been deeply and intentionally stratified along racial lines. How do we move our attention to the case that will liberate us all from the oppression of racialization? How do we get The People v. White Supremacy a day in court? In the 1999 paper “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” political scientist Claire Jean Kim proposes a new framework for thinking about racial dynamics
18 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 12, 2021
in America. Her framework seeks to add nuance to the traditional binary discussion of “Black versus White” and illustrates how white supremacy and colonialism have racialized all people of color in unique ways relative to one another. In particular, Kim speaks to the racialization of Asian Americans and the “midpoint” position they occupy between white people and Black people in a wider “field of racial positions.’’ From racial triangulation, we get the model minority myth. In sum, the model minority myth creates a racial “characterization” of Asian Americans as “hard-working, independent, intelligent and economically prosperous.” This stereotype simultaneously condemns Black Americans for their failure to “overcome” the obstacle of racism. It ignores the racial wealth gap—a byproduct of slavery—and the day-to-day institutional anti-Blackness that bars Black people from opportunity regardless of individual efforts. At the same time, Kim adds that the lasting impact of American imperialism in Asia and the intellectual legacy of orientalism renders Asian Americans “immutably foreign” and unable to assimilate into white society. The model minority myth also overlooks the history of Yellow Peril, America’s concerted legislative effort to codify antiAsian racism and prevent Asian Americans from gaining citizenship and having a legal framework to fight for their rights during the 19th and 20th centuries. Most insidiously, the model minority myth fulfills its purpose as a rhetorical tool to vilify Black people and Black political movements while also obfuscating the poverty many specific Asian ethnic groups experience. Instead, the model minority myth creates a monolithic image of the Asian American that “overcame” racism. In effect, Kim concludes, racial triangulation both “valorizes” Asian Americans relative to Black people “on cultural and/or racial grounds,” while “subordinating both groups, especially the latter.” Kim’s racial triangulation model provides a much-needed context for media representations of tensions between Black and Asian Americans. It explains why angry Twitter users demand in a Greek-like chorus that Black people “keep that same energy” whenever news of the racist abuse or murder of a non-Black person hits social media. These statements reduce decades of civil rights work, academic scholarship, and the contemporary Black Lives Matter DESIGN BY BRENNA TROLLINGER,
OPINION movement to an “energy” that can be replicated simply by retweeting a thread. Furthermore, demanding that people “keep that same energy” is a divisive, reactionary tactic. But it’s no wonder, given how easy it is for incidents of racism to be forgotten, sanitized, or outrightly denied, that Black Lives Matter is so often misused like an ideological stick to prod others into action. In a nation with such an extensive history of racial oppression, racist attitudes are infused into the cultural fabric. People of color fall prey to internalizing racist stereotypes about themselves—not to speak of one another. These stereotypes are broadly reinforced, frequently without disruption. So what happens when the Black Lives Matter movement is thrust into the national spotlight? From 2014 on, Black Lives Matter became the benchmark against which all other contemporary American social campaigns—even illegitimate Capitol-storming mobs—are measured and a talking-point for anti-Black rhetoric. Invocations of the Black Lives Matter movement while discussing racist violence perpetrated against non-Black people are made in poor taste. They are part of America’s cultural tendency to debunk, trivialize, or demonize movements against anti-Black racism in order to avoid addressing it. Most insultingly, these comparisons fail to recognize the costs of Black people’s hypervisibility: government surveillance, endangerment, police brutality, imprisonment, and death. They fail to acknowledge that the widespread availability of images of Black death is deeply disturbing and traumatizing for Black viewers. The comparisons not only diminish the work of Black and Asian American activists alike, but also insinuate that the public is incapable of giving attention and compassion to two different issues at once. At their core, the comparisons reflect anxiety about being able to hold the attention of the 24-hour news cycle. It is reasonable to worry about not being believed in a nation that seeks to erase Asian identity and exonerate white supremacy from its role in the oppression of people of color. The constant contrasting of the Black Lives Matter movement with other social movements speak to the fears that people of color experience in a country where just 13 years ago, political pundits and laypeople alike declared the birth of a post-racial society following the election of Barack Obama. DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE
Meanwhile, deportation, incarceration, police brutality, and hate crimes continued to ravage communities of color. The hostile race relations crafted by white supremacy in our capitalist society breed resentment between different groups of people of color. This fosters a sense of competition as the pendulum swings between hypervisibility and invisibility around racial issues—as if discussions about systemic anti-Blackness negate the existence of other forms of racial oppression. That resentment
HOW DO WE MOVE OUR ATTENTION TO THE CASE THAT WILL LIBERATE US ALL FROM THE OPPRESSION OF RACIALIZATION? HOW DO WE GET THE PEOPLE V. WHITE SUPREMACY A DAY IN COURT? poses a major problem; it is a blockade to the cross-cultural solidarity that is required to fight racism and liberate people of color from white supremacy. To overcome that blockade, it is imperative that we acknowledge the role of white supremacy in creating and maintaining animosity between people of color. We must recognize that white supremacy is predicated on anti-Blackness, the dehumanization and displacement of Indigenous people, and anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. Any kind of racial pecking order is artificial and created to service the goals of capitalism and patriarchal white supremacy. So what can be done? In an essay for YES! Magazine, Oakland-based writer and activist Michelle Kim advocates for education-centered and transformative justice approaches to combating anti-Asian racism. Kim calls on us to reject the urge to make race-based generalizations in the line
of “Black people are anti-Asian” or “Asian people are anti-Black.” Instead, Kim urges us to study and amplify the history of Black and Asian solidarity. The average American history class omits accounts of Asian American civil rights activism, influenced by the work of the Black Panthers and civil rights leaders, and ignores powerful historical examples of Black and Asian solidarity. Here at Tufts, our education includes learning about the role that our university plays in the gentrification of Boston Chinatown. Kim also encourages readers to look deeper than the reflexive calls for higher levels of policing as a solution to acts of violence, and urges us to support communitybased interventions “that seek to keep all of us safe.” In Oakland and across the nation, multi-racial coalitions have sprung up in a show of solidarity and care for members of the most at-risk members of the Asian American Pacific Islander community. Further, we must educate ourselves about the ways that anti-Asian sentiment manifests outside of interpersonal encounters, like in deportation surges that target the working class and separate Southeast Asian families that sought refuge from violence in the U.S. decades ago. Moreover, it is crucial that we support AAPI communities materially. Some options include donating to local organizations that serve Boston’s AAPI population and sharing the GoFundMe pages of victims and their families. The families and friends of the victims lost to racist violence are not symbols in a political conversation. They are individuals who have the right to express their grief in ways that are authentic to them. For the rest of us, spectators to their bereavement, we must direct our attention to the causation of the problem—white supremacy. We must work to build movements of solidarity that allow us to reckon with internalized racist attitudes and eliminate the structures of white supremacy that fuel xenophobia and perpetuate violence against Asian Americans and all people of color. APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 19
By pearl
“unfailing, unforbidden” 20 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 12, 2021
Let me serve you/ Let me do things to you/ the way you want me to/ Let me help you feel good/ and leave me to enjoy your joy/ and be satisfied with just that/ Tell me I’m doing a good job/ that I’m a good girl/ even though I am not (a girl)/ but sometimes I can be (good for you)/ Tell me that I deserve to see you like this/ Tell me this feels like a dream/ Tell me this is pleasure beyond compare/ better than eating the best orange of the summer/ Tell me all this and more/ and let it be enough/ to have quiet companionship the rest of the time/ Tell me you need help/ if you want it from me/ It’s okay if you want to do this alone/ me too, sometimes/ Tell me if it hurts/ if you want it to hurt/ me too, sometimes/ I might not want to do that with you/ but I want to be with you/ in whatever way is meaningful for you/ in whatever way you want to keep me around/ I will not beg for a place with you/ but I am quietly pleading in my own way/ hands held out the way old women pray/ ready to take you/ the way that you are/ and whatever you will give me/ If I ask/ If you tell/ If sharing ourselves with each other/ will fill that continual want/ those Gardens of Pleasure/ Might we end up there together?
DESIGN BY BRENNA TROLLINGER, ART BY AMANDA LIPARI MAXSON
did you get what you needed from her By Tatum Schutt
or was it not like that, the way she came together. There are lessons or at least one letter, left of consonantal divide where two tongues once straddled split. If there is a place and time where we were right you can press your palm to my stomach, you can look at me from night cheek; I bend away to shut the window. This is love, or at least something to fill the space between eyes and words. What else can we make, besides whispers of tune for tomorrow?
DESIGN BY BRENNA TROLLINGER, ART BY ANITA LAM
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 21
CAMPUS
By Emily Thompson
RECLAIMING THE SPOTLIGHT FINDING COMMUNITY WITH IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?
T
he student-written jukebox musical Is There Anybody Out There?, based on A Great Big World’s album of the same name, aims to find community and understanding through the telling of stories typically excluded from the stage. At the core of the show is Norah, a South Asian Muslim-American woman, who is pursuing her musical dreams in New York City alongside Bernardo, a Mexican-American man, when a relationship between them begins to bud. Just when the audience sees the two leaning in for a kiss, Norah comes out as gay for the first time. The unexpected twist spurs the development of the rest of the show, which follows Norah’s exploration of her sexuality, Bernardo’s and Norah’s friendship, and their relationships with their families. In a pre-recorded stage 22 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 12, 2021
reading over Zoom on April 9 and April 10, Is There Anybody Out There? explored what it means to be seen, to find community, to be in love, and to thrive when the world you live in throws you to the sidelines. Sophomore Athena Nair is the playwright of the show and stars as Norah. She started writing the musical four years ago as a sophomore in high school after hearing the album that the musical is based on and finding that no one else had beaten her to the idea of creating a jukebox musical from the work. “I just started writing it on a whim because I have no experience writing musicals,” said Nair. The show features an all BIPOC cast, which came to Nair automatically: “A lot of my other work is very intentionally representational in thinking about queerness and people
of color. But with this show, I was like, ‘Okay, I see a lead female and a lead male. The lead female’s gay, but she’s still figuring it out. She’s South Asian, the lead male is Mexican-American.’” Once at Tufts, she was encouraged by Untrue to Form, an experimental student theater group, to continue developing her work. After workshopping the show, she brought the idea to Torn Ticket II, a student-run musical theater group at Tufts. This is Nair’s first production with Torn Ticket. She said, “I haven’t been in a Torn Ticket show officially. To be totally honest, Torn Ticket seemed very exclusive and really white.” This is the group’s first production with a full BIPOC cast, following a problematic history of Tufts productions casting white people as traditionally
CAMPUS
BIPOC characters, according to Nair. The lack of diversity in Tufts theater groups demonstrates a microcosm of a larger occurrence on the stage: in a 2020 report examining representation in New York City theater, the Asian American Performers Action Coalition found that only 18.5 percent of BIPOC performers were in roles specific to their racial identity, and only about 20 percent of those roles centered on BIPOC experiences. Nair is seeking to change this reality with her production. “This is our show. This is our space. In one way, it’s like we’re trying to infiltrate the space, make it our own and make it comfortable. Hopefully, this is the start of that,” said Nair. This show is the first that Siddhant Talwar, a junior, has been involved in since coming to Tufts. Talwar plays Norah’s father, a computer programmer by day and a drag performer by night. Echoing Nair, Talwar said, “I don’t think a lot of other Torn Ticket productions have particularly interested me in the past because of the content.” What drew them to this show was the characters being recognizable to them. “A lot of plays and theater [are] about white folk. Often it doesn’t interest me … I would never be able to play a character who wasn’t South Asian.” “[The show is] not a grand event of people being POC, it is also small moments of everyday life,” said Talwar. They found moments of recognition when listening to the character Norah have conversations with her mother, knowing the traditional food they eat, and catching the cultural references made between characters. In contrast to other productions that ignore marginalized experiences, Is There Anybody Out There? centers the lives of these communities onstage in gentle pursuit of exploring the complexities of identity and relationships. Talwar emphasized how having POC spaces at Tufts, a predominantly white institution, has shaped their experience finding community. “Zooming in to the first rehearsal and then having that moment of realization like, ‘Oh, all of us are people of color,’ that was really fun,” said Talwar. “The comfort that automatically came by being in that space was really interesting. There was very little awkwardness from DESIGN BY SOFIA PRETELL
the start … It just felt comfortable from day one.” Over the summer, theater communities joined the rest of the country in beginning to reckon with racism and white supremacy. Nair was in these conversations within Tufts theater groups and said she felt the toll it took on her while expending labor and energy as one of the few POC members in the predominantly white space. “I’m doing this so that hopefully other people of color can feel safer, and to make some changes, but that was really, really tough,” Nair said. Nair emphasized the benefit of not having to explain her culture throughout production because of the diversity in casting. “It’s been really joyful connecting with other BIPOC creating art right now.” Nair made sure the cast and production team had the opportunity to bond and discuss the topics covered in the show. They recently hosted a discussion about immigration, a major theme in the show, wherein people shared their different experiences and personal stories on the subject. “[The space is] a chance for people to come together to create art. It should be joy and an expression of creativity during COVID. It’s also a way to build community,” said Nair. Attention to identity also extends into the fashion and set, according to Mia X, a sophomore and the designer of the show. X said she was drawn to the musical because of the diversity in the story and cast that allowed room for so many identities. In designing the costumes, X said she thought deeply about how the characters’ identities manifest into their physical appearance. She explored how one character might wear a flag from their home country to note how proud they are in their identity, while another character might not dress to reflect their culture because they are timid about outwardly showcasing their heritage. “I have certain characters who are very proud of their ethnicity, so they might dress in a
style that’s indicative of the contemporary era we live in, but they’ll also wear some things that remind them of their culture,” said X. “I want everyone to look unique because … everyone’s identity is different.” X said that everything from the design to the story of the show represents an opening space for voices traditionally muffled in theater. “I want everyone to feel like they have a space in this,” said X. “I want this to feel like the people’s production. This was made by us, to be consumed by primarily us, but it’s for everybody … theater is not just a platform for white cishet students, theater is for everybody. I think that marginalized people have every right in the world to reclaim theater, to reclaim musicals, and to reclaim happiness and joy.”
“THIS IS OUR SHOW. THIS IS OUR SPACE. IN ONE WAY, IT’S LIKE WE’RE TRYING TO INFILTRATE THE SPACE, MAKE IT OUR OWN AND MAKE IT COMFORTABLE. HOPEFULLY, THIS IS THE START OF THAT”
NOTE ABOUT CONTENT:
If you’d like to talk with the playwright about your own experiences with any of these identities, or any thoughts/concerns you may have about the show, reach out to athena.nair@tufts.edu.
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 23
FEATURE
By Caleb Martin Rosenthal
My mother, during a lengthy dinner at a new place in Midtown, told me that one of her clients has a really nice smile. She grinned slightly and slurped an oyster. “And her eyes, David. They sparkle, I swear.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, sighed, and reached hesitantly for her fork. Her hand on the pristine white tablecloth looked like a delicate artifact. A reminder that although she was paying, as she had after countless winning soccer goals and straight-A report cards, we were quite a bit older now. My mother awaited a response, her eyes smug and pleading. “I don’t need you to do this, Mom,” I said quietly. Someone at another table coughed. “I’m perfectly capable on my own.” She looked at the floor, thinking, I’m sure, of the nightly vacancy in the queen bed she had bought for me when I moved to my own place. I noticed the restaurant’s muffled choice of music. The vague, sensual nightclub bass felt incongruous with my mother’s wrinkled smirk, long pleated skirt, and conservative glass of chardonnay. An attractive 20-something couple, who I’d been making accidental and regrettable eye contact with all night, sat a table away. I wanted to change the subject. “That couple over there,” I gestured with my fork, my voice hushed. “Should 24 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL SEPTEMBER 12, 2021 28, 2020
we play Names?” My mother looked over her shoulder and chuckled. “Of course. Hard to believe we haven’t yet.” It was a classic game for us, played on buses, in lines, at movie theatres before the room went dark. “He looks confident. Very professional,” my mother said. “Like a Kurt, or an Evan.” I nodded and took a sip of my water, noticing how well Evan’s jacket fit him. I wondered if people still used tailors. “Agreed. Evan it is.” “She’s very cute. Very cute, David,” my mother continued, pointing with her napkin. “A Melanie, maybe.” My mother may have guessed correctly, because just then, Melanie shot a glance in our direction. I sat up a bit straighter. My mother noticed and rolled her eyes, reminded of our other conversation. She cleared her throat and took a breath. “This girl, from my practice. She’s a wonder.” “Mom.” “And she’s kind, really very kind.” I thought about my mother, listening to clients all day in her cramped office, each session nothing more than an audition for the role of companion to her handsome son. “You’re very handsome, David. And she’s a biker. You love to bike.” For my thirtieth last year, my mother had gifted me
a gleaming white road bike, with clip-on shoes. “You’ll get fit,” she had urged. I’d taken it out once. “I don’t need your help, mom.” I felt my face turning red. “Honey, don’t–” I interrupted her, and then felt guilty. “Or, I don’t know if I need it, but I don’t want it.” Under the table, I tore up my straw wrapper into wrinkled white shreds that someone would have to clean up. “I really don’t want it.” My mother shook her head and took a sip of her wine. “All I’m saying is that you should be open to these things. You don’t have everything together, David. And I won’t be here forever.” I grimaced, and I think she did too. Her words stung. Across the room, Evan laughed. A professional laugh, I figured. I asked for the check. There were sugary mints from the restaurant, a quick goodbye, and a promise to do it again sometime before my mother ducked into a cab and I bathed in the white noise of the subway, hurtling back towards Brooklyn. It upset me that our dinner had ended with my mother’s soft look of regret I’d seen countless times before. Yet, I knew I didn’t need her meddling, or her looking out for me, or whatever she’d call it. It was pitiful! Both for me to accept it, and for
her to even offer it—an expression of grief from a mother who wasn’t able to sever her life from mine. I was startled by the F train passing on the right, going the same direction as my train. In that brief moment shared, while careening through space at the same speed and the same way, I peered into the other car and noticed a cute brunette in a green jacket and a bike helmet, with a beat up twelve-speed by her side. My breath caught in my chest and I chuckled quietly. My mother’s client could be any one of these women. Passed on the sidewalk, steps away in line at the coffee place I liked. I sat up straighter, ran my hands through my thinning hair, and smoothed out the wrinkles in my pants. My mother, and she’d be happy to hear it, had gotten in my head. By the time we were crossing the East River, I had counted four women with bike helmets in my subway car alone, and one who, after much back-and-forth, I decided had a biker’s water bottle sticking out from her bag. As the train emptied out at my stop, I pushed through the throngs of people on the platform, scanning every face I passed for someone with eyes that sparkled. I wasn’t exactly sure what that’d look like, or what my mother had meant, but I figured I might know it when I saw it. I didn’t turn on any lights when I got back to my apartment. On my way to bed, in the dark of the living room, I flicked the little silver bell on my bike handle. A clear tone filled the air. I realized, feeling sorry for myself, that that may have been the first time it had been rung. In a fitful sleep in that giant bed, I dreamed I was playing another game of Names. Sparkling eyes, very kind, likes to bike—my subconscious named her Emma. I didn’t know why. In the morning, I sipped watery coffee and noticed an envelope on the counter. A thick, milky, cardstock ordeal with a familiar weight to it. I tore it open and wasn’t surprised—another wedding invitation, from a grad school friend. They had been together for a few years and the wedding was in Aspen. They looked happy in the photo. I wondered why they decided to use such expensive stationary, and then I thought about someone, somewhere, who DESIGN BY SOFIA PRETELL, ART BY ANNA CORNISH
might one day want to discuss that sort of thing with me. For a moment, I considered pulling out my phone and calling my mother, apologizing for last night, asking her what Emma’s real name was, and whether she could set us up on a date. But I thought better of it. I was stubborn. I couldn’t let my mother win. I took the day off from work. Getting the clip-on shoes to fit was a bit of a challenge, but an hour later, I was soaring through the city on my bike, heading towards my mother’s office in Midtown. While heaving at an intersection, I realized that I didn’t know when Emma had her appointments, what time, or even what day of the week. But I had brought mints, just in case. When I arrived, I wandered into the dingy waiting room, making polite eye contact with the woman at the desk and feeling grateful that she hadn’t recognized me. The room was silent, except for the tranquil gurgling of a fish tank that, though I didn’t look very hard, seemed devoid of life. I took my helmet off and settled into an uncomfortable leather couch, picking up a tattered, faded copy of People magazine. I pretended to flip through its pages as I caught my breath and listened to my mother’s muffled speech through the wall. I recognized this. Her therapist voice, with its compassionate cadence and thoughtful pauses. It was sort of singsongy, like a kind, even prayer. Most of all, it was motherly, and I felt strangely betrayed. I had never heard her speak like that to someone who wasn’t me, and even I hadn’t heard it in years. A pang of longing struck my chest and I looked towards the door. I wondered what I was waiting for. Would Emma simply waltz in, her kind eyes sparkling, music swelling, locks of gorgeous hair spilling over her shoulders as she removed her helmet? And what was I supposed to do, get down on one knee, right here in the waiting room? I suddenly felt silly, and creepy. With my matted hair and sweaty back and stupid plans. I had called out of work, for God’s sake. I popped a mint into my mouth and wiped my palms on the leather couch. I checked the door compulsively and listened for the slight squeak of bike brakes from the street outside. Five clients had come through the door, but none of them
were her, I was sure of it. Recently, the receptionist had begun glancing at me suspiciously and looking down at her desk, presumably checking a schedule. My throat went dry. My mother would be appalled if she saw me, her only son, the pride of her life, in bike shorts, who she wants so badly to be happy, pursuing some stranger at 2:00 p.m. on a Monday. I was startled by sudden footsteps and the creak of hinges. The door swung open. My stomach dropped. My mother was coming out. I panicked, and, slouching down low in the uncomfortable couch, with no other options at my disposal, held the People magazine in front of my face. “Michael, you’re next,” my mother said calmly to an older man to my left. I could hear his knees crack as he got up from his seat and started towards her office. “Go ahead, I’ll be right in.” She continued, walking over to the receptionist. I stayed absolutely still, trying not to draw any attention. The fish tank was deafening. From my literary hiding place, I could see her practical flats as they padded across the carpet. My hands shook and I felt ashamed. I thought of when I was nine and hid in the pantry after tracking mud on the carpet. My heart beat thunderously in my chest as my mother conducted the longest conversation of her entire life with the woman behind the desk. I felt like a criminal, a stalker, certain that I’d not only be arrested immediately if I ever made it out of here, but that I’d deserve it. When she finally retreated to her office I exhaled a sigh of deep relief and, although my legs trembled and I was wearing the clip-on biking shoes, I put the magazine down, gathered my things, and burst out through the front door. In the blinding afternoon sun, the city seemed huge and indifferent. I sat down on the curb, still drenched in sweat, and put my head in my hands. And then laughed. A deep, shaking laugh that must have drawn attention to me, because I heard someone approaching from somewhere. And then, by chance, I think, I looked up and met the love of my life.
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 25
the summer after By Alice Hickson
we live in the space between darkened doorways the thick heat of this lakeside town paints sticky kisses across our freckled cheeks longing like the tides rising and falling back into chapped lips your smile appears only through thickets of cascading hair casting the past away hoping it will be swallowed up by the unending blue for a year I pressed my hands into soil and begged for something to grow out of our decay but this lake and this garden is not big enough to hold us hunger wells up in the base of my throat I ache for something already empty we gorge on heaps of vanilla ice cream dollop them over my stomach it makes us feel full again and now the memories loosely stitched together like the pillow I loved my body once knew every dip and soft fell
26 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 12, 2021
Wine-Blue Wine-Blue Wine-Blue Wine-Blue Wine-Blue Wine-Blue Wine-Blue By Amanda Lipari Maxson
Through crushing waves you hold me fast my anchor in wine-blue sea Every ambition becomes to be yours to see how you need love to Look at me and sea-purple I’ll see you in orange— awash with the feelings we share The light lost in space through particles stilled patinas the world as we stare
DESIGN BY JULIA STEINER, ART BY AMANDA LIPARI MAXSON, PHOTOS BY ALEXANDA YANG AND ALICE HICKSON
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 27
Purpl
e
z ñe rdo l-O Gi ula Pa By z me Go
your leg twitched asleep, your comfort was astounding. i thought you were in love with me prompting piercing swallows each bluer than the last. now i want purple winter lips oozing grapes bruised collarbones plum candles squeezed fingers lilacs. i wish i could be tender with you.
28 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 12, 2021
—After Hieronymus Bosch By Akbota Saudabayeva
I.
I came to this party early, and I would like to leave it. I’m corralled in the kitchen, where the drinks line the table like small, glassy shopfronts. My hip against the marble edge, a needle in my palm, my eyes pearling. My midriff—icy. Tonight my neck wears a rhinestone dress, heavy jewels that reflect in the murkiness of the fridge handle. I’ve swallowed six swords, and I feel like a fist fight. The rat in the corner scurries over the ace of spades. I’m waiting to get sick—to call the Lyft, to lose my coat, to lay down with my lipstick on. Rinse, rinse, rinse. Kneeled, or keeled over—I’m rapacious to repent, ravenous to repeat.
II.
III.
Why did she invite me here if she was going to touch his arm like that? It’s a nice garden, by all means, but just not like the jagged, jade jungles back home. Every tree here is a downturned face. I’m sitting naked, and he’s wearing a dress of pink folds. Maybe I will pet the dog. Or the bird or stingray or chameleon. She hasn’t touched me since last night, but it’s not a thought I am allowed to have. (Do you need some water? My hands are leaves; you can drink from them.) In the dark, her limbs told me that love is the inevitable bad of being human. And now, our moods don’t mesh. My mouth fills with blood. She brought me to this party early, and I would like to leave it.
Watching you eat apples is like having sex. Molars on white flesh, jaw working up and down, syrup slipping past the breaking point of lip. No, we are not making eye contact. I am watching the apple, you are watching the apple, and the apple is being ate. A panting sound, a crunch, a slurp. Juice. We came to this party early, and we should leave it. Your hands are so big in mine. How many apples can you hold? Suddenly I’m a fruit basket, and we are at the marketplace, bright and early and smiling. Melons set to pop, rinds to unravel, and cherries to pick. Let’s run before we rot—eyes upturned and asking, a head nodding and nodding.
DESIGN BY JULIA STEINER, PHOTOS BY SOFIA PRETELL AND BRIGID CAWLEY
APRIL 12, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 29