Endpaper
Daye: A Woman Who Untangles Roots
To this day, hearing her switch between languages — her mother tongue, Sorani Kurdish, and Arabic — reminds me of the melding of cultures I’ve always hoped to embody. Yet I find myself replying to her in Arabic. Mama longed for me to learn Kurdish, but I was pressured to embrace my Arab half at the expense of my mother’s tongue.
Asian Non-American?
Categorization can help us feel a sense of belonging to a certain group. But what happens when these categories become exclusive? What happens when these categories instead entrap and ensnare us?
Birds Chico Photo
A photo of birds that the author took one day as she lay in the grass at the park by her house.
To Pay Attention
I never thought I loved Chico. But that December day as I lay curled up in my childhood bed watching the interaction between Christine and Sister Joan on my iPad, I realized that I had paid attention to it. And if I really hated it, why did I spend so much time telling other people about it?
Elane orders of magnitude endpaper graphic
It is late spring, and Eomma is teaching me how to make rice. “It’s simple, watch,” she says, her Korean soft and gentle. A little unfamiliar in its slowness.
brandon endpaper
Other kids studied hard to impress their fathers; I did it so I could get away from mine.
What It Means to Lead The Harvard Crimson
In a way, you take an oath when you are elected to this presidency, even if you don’t realize the depths of its demands at the time.
An Asthmatic Character
“A person should stand up straight, not crooked,” my mother would whisper, referring to both the calligrapher and her creation.
Hannah Endpaper Image
This summer, my job title was “Senior Returning Mountain Cowboy” and my life was absurd in the childhood fantasy way.
No Country for Harvard Men
I felt like I had entered a thick and strange haze. Daily showers made me feel unnaturally clean, and I missed the smooth arc of the sun across the sky. I felt like a space alien walking down a crowded street and making small talk after class.
Goodbye, Beloved
To me, Sethe was the literary embodiment of womanhood — the queenly woman with blood on her hands and a tree scarred into her back. She was the personification of repression and “rememory,” the manifestation of a traumatic past into the present.
To Be Tamed
“The Little Prince” makes me homesick for all the places I’ve been and all the places I have yet to see.
sam junior year room
Every square inch of Sam's walls, and even parts of her ceiling, are covered in decorations this year.
room cover photo
My collage brings to mind precious experiences that I’d have otherwise forgotten. It’s like a library of my life, which challenges the ephemerality that my memories can easily take on.
sam senior hs room
In senior year, Sam's lived with her best friend. They decorated the room by combining their ephemera collections, and the room reached its peak as a vibrantly cozy haven.