Essay
CategoryWhat We Feed Ourselves
During quarantine, many of us are eating at home much more often than before. Whether this means physically eating in our home versus prepping food to take to work, or cooking for ourselves instead of going out to eat, our home-food-scape has changed drastically. In quarantine, I have struggled to put care and love into feeding myself the way that comes easily to me when feeding or sharing food with others. I hope that, while in the chaos of a global pandemic, we can treasure the foods that make us feel safe and cared for, and give ourselves a little bit of love in the ways we feed ourselves.
Words to Live By
by Kim Fountain
My mother’s favorite question is, “They pay you to talk?” In my sweet 80-year old mother’s tone there are also two comments. One being, “So stupid that this is a job” and the other, “Wow, my child is smart”, but not smart in the sense of what it is I actually say, but in that by talking, I make money.
My mom left school at age twelve to work 15 hour days on her feet. She has never been to a meeting in her life and has never touched a computer beyond dusting it so, for her, my desk job and its meeting after meeting schedule is ridiculous because I can’t point to a final product. I do add in, that now and again, I need to say something of use or I don’t get asked back. By then though, she is off on another subject.
I know that there is not as much difference between us as she might think. It is after all, because of her that I figured out that words, used to trouble and even sometimes rupture power, would eventually carry me toward a sense of purpose.
Sapiosexual Seeks Lumbersexual / Meandering Thoughts on Dating Apps
by Tina Bhaga
We’re snowboarding and jumping off airplanes, kissing babies, and kitted up real nice at friends’ weddings. The curated montage of ..
Growing Up Shiseido: Chain Stores, Beauty Magazines, and Whitening Cream
by Jane Hseu
My grandfather founded the Taiwanese branch of Shiseido, the high-end Japanese cosmetics company. The family story, told to me by his daughter, my mother, is that during WWII, while Taiwan was under Japanese colonization, my grandfather went to Japan to work, leaving his young wife to take care of their young daughter and his aged parents in the hardships of the Taiwanese countryside. For my grandmother, my mother said, life was bitter. After working at Shiseido in Japan, my grandfather founded Shiseido in Taiwan, Shiseido’s first overseas venture, and became a rich man. There were tens of millions of Taiwanese women to whom he could sell make-up and skin products.
photo credit: Chao-Yan on Upsplash
A Girl from Zanzibar, a Guy from Goa, and that Chap (from) Mercury
by R. Benedito Ferrão
I had finally arrived, but the start of this journey of a lifetime had already begun badly. Journeying from the metropole – London – to the once colonial periphery – Nairobi – I had made it, but my suitcase hadn’t. In it were the hand-written notes from the first chapter of my Ph.D. thesis and a copy of the book that that chapter was based on: Roger King’s A Girl from Zanzibar, published in 2002 and set in the 1980s. As I explained to the travel insurance company, no, I hadn’t typed up any of those notes and, no, I couldn’t reconstruct a year’s worth of work from memory. Perhaps it was the perfect postcolonial metaphor – the loss of a suitcase full of words between the empire writing back and a subaltern trying to speak.
photo credit: Alejandro Luengo Upsplash
Jamie Dihiansan and Chicago Graffiti
by Erik Matsunaga
The first time you hit a real wall, not a practice spot, you get this rush. Like, “I shouldn’t be doing this.” Especially when you’re running along the El tracks and there’s the third rail, a train might be coming, and you gotta jump onto a roof. It’s a thrill, and even more thrilling when you paint something and get to see it from the train the next day. – Jamie Dihiansan, aka MENS
Watch Me
An Essay
by Jason Poole
Gramma? Can Uncle Jason take us down to the bridge to go swimming?
Your voice rang through the little wooden house with tin roof; over the grownups who sighed and stood with their arms and legs stretched away from their bodies to keep from sticking to each other; over the sound of the chickens and roosters making a ruckus outside.
Illusions of Next Time
An Essay
by PJ Temple
“Dad, I think it’s a good time for me to start looking for an apartment. I’m almost twenty. I need to be more independent.”
“Oh no. Vy move? You vill stay here until you get married. We don’t believe in moving, boving.”
He’s over-rhyming. The topic must have struck a chord for him. He might as well have said moving out is hocus pocus, a mythical idea reserved for spooky nights around campfires. He made the idea sound outlandish and revolutionary. I suppose it was, in his mind….
Making ourselves at home
Essay
by Patti Kameya
Waiting for the #6 Jeffery Express to downtown Chicago.
Hey you. You with the white balding head, drab jacket, and gaze that glistens on contact with young Asian women. We need to talk to you, as well as the bystanders who look away as you slide up to us, lips dribbling tales of your backpacking adventures in China….
Cartel of Silence
An essay by Euree Kim
Nurse told me to be stripped naked.
I asked: Do you have my consent? What about my rights?
Nurse replied, I do not need your consent. You do not have rights.
[X] Other
An essay by Danielle Tanimura
“What are you?”, not “How are you?”. As early as preschool, I thought that this was just how conversations were supposed to start. This is normal. This is fine.
Seeking Refuge
An essay by Mary Grace Bertulfo
“’One is one’s own refuge, who else could be the refuge?’ said the Buddha.” – Walpola Rahula
Monday night. 6:10 p.m. Alone.
I drove down Lake Street in our worn, twelve-year old mini-van. Hot fury heaved in my chest and shoulders and transformed into a high-pitched scream that poured out of my throat for two whole blocks. I screamed until I had no more energy. I screamed until my voice was hoarse. Had I been a superhero, Wonder Woman say, the scream would have been a siren shattering every van window.
Remember heritage, imagine identity, stop believing
by Co Shi An
I am not white. I have spent 29 years of life believing I was white. Now I’m realizing it. I’m not white. I am not white and I am also not Yellow. I am, however, Chinese, and Irish. Not white, not Yellow. Chinese and Irish.