August 5th, 2019: “We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence.”—Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States. One day before, on August […]
When you look at the image to the right, what comes to mind? Because for me, the first thought that pops into my head is: “They didn’t feel like paying for WiFi.” Every few years, a phrase that says something along these lines gets popular and it’s always a divisive topic, as is pretty […]
Prisons and jails have notorious reputations for the illicit relationships that they foster. Relationships between officers and inmates are often publicized to look like stories of lustful scandal. Other times, the criticism is directed at inmates who are in relationships with other inmates, or officers, while having a spouse, or partner outside of the […]
The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates the harvest moon, which may include paying fealty to the moon goddess, a pale-faced abstraction with winglike sleeves. Even before my first Mid-Autumn Festival, I remember the worship of its deity. This did not yet involve the ritual devouring of mooncakes— the amazingly caloric, and gelatinous staple food of the […]
How often do you reach in your pocket, certain your phone is vibrating, only to realize you fell victim to a “phantom buzz?” What about the inner pull to look at your phone, leading to hours caught up in a social media scroll, left with no recollection of why you picked up your phone […]
Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for James Gray’s Ad Astra. The spaceman always finds his way to the moon. He makes it despite his spacecraft stalling in elevation, or sparking flames on its way down. Over and over again, we return to the same suspense, and the same malfunctions, all for a liftoff. The flame […]
White. Upper-middle class. Male. College educated. These are the characteristics that define BernieBros: the fanatical supporters of Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. They are often volatile, and lash out at anyone who publicly criticizes Sanders. They swarm comment sections, Twitter feeds, and chat rooms, sniffing out dissent and striking, as if with a single hive […]
“I’m just so scared about everything,” I cried to my mom one night. We were talking about what always seems to come up periodically throughout the year: my anxiety. Anxiety, the clever girl, sneaks up on me when I least expect it, my throat closing up, eyes welling with tears. It leaves me breathless […]
I turn to Edwidge Danticat’s The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story when I am on a stalled A train, when I am still in bed hovering between sleep and wake, when my knees knock against the hard seat in front of me on the Q37 as it rumbles over potholes. “There’s no […]
Part 1: Write. Photocopy. Fold. Staple. Disseminate. Repeat. I first learned about zines in 1999, during the WTO protests in Seattle. A friend and I left high-school early (there was a city-wide curfew at that time) and wandered into an anarchist bookstore where a large group of people were gathered. Someone handed me what […]
