The Georgetown Voice, 4/17/23

REIMAGINING TAIWAN’S DEFENSE THROUGH JOY

By Yen-Han Chen

VALIDATING COMMUNITIES: EXPLORING QUEER JOY AT GEORGETOWN

By Connor Martin

the joy issue

Editor-In-Chief Annabella Hoge

Managing Editor Nora Scully

internal resources

Executive Editor for Resources, Diversity, and Inclusion Ajani Jones

Editor for Sexual Violence

Advocacy and Coverage Sarah Craig

Service Chair Aminah Malik

Social Chair Connor Martin

news

Beyond fleeting joy, Black

4 on the cover

news

Executive Editor Joanna Li

Features Editor Franziska Wild

News Editor Graham Krewinghaus

Assistant News Editors Yihan Deng, Alex Deramo, Amber Xie

opinion

Executive Editor Kulsum Gulamhusein

Voices Editor Lou Jacquin

Assistant Voices Editors Barrett Ahn, Ella Bruno, Andrea Ho

Editorial Board Chair Alec Weiker

Editorial Board William Hammond, Annette Hasnas, Andrea Ho, Annabella Hoge, Jupiter Huang, Paul James, Connor Martin, Allison O'Donnell, Dane Tedder, Sarah Watson, Max Zhang

leisure

Executive Editor Adora Adeyemi

Leisure Editor Maya Kominsky

Assistant Editors Pierson Cohen, Cole Kindiger, Hailey Wharram

Halftime Editor Francesca Theofilou

Assistant Halftime Editors Eileen Chen, Caroline Samoluk, Zachary Warren

sports

Executive Editor Nicholas Riccio

Sports Editor Lucie Peyrebrune

Assistant Editors Andrew Arnold, Thomas Fischbeck, Ben Jakabcsin

Halftime Editor Jo Stephens

Assistant Halftime Editors Bradshaw Cate, Sam Lynch, Henry Skarecky

design

Executive Editor Dane Tedder

Design Editor Connor Martin

Spread Editors Olivia Li, Sabrina Shaffer

Cover Editor Grace Nuri

Assistant Design Editors Cecilia Cassidy, Madeleine Ott

copy

Copy Chiefs Donovan Barnes, Maanasi Chintamani

Assistant Copy Editors Chetan Dokku, Shajaka Shelton

multimedia

Podcast Executive Producer Jillian Seitz

Podcast Editor Livia de Queiroz Brito

Assistant Podcast Editor Romy Abu-Fadel

Photo Editor Jina Zhao

online

Website Editor Tyler Salensky

Social Media Editor Allison DeRose

Assistant Social Media Editor Ninabella Arlis

business

General Manager Megan O’Malley

Assistant Manager of Accounts and Sales Rovi Yu

Assistant Manager of Alumni and Outreach Horace Wong

support

Contributing Editors Lucy Cook, Deborah Han, Annette Hasnas, Margaret Hartigan, Tim Tan, Sarah Watson, Max Zhang

Staff Contributors Meriam Ahmad, Angelena Bougiamas, Elyza Bruce, Nicholas Budler, Romita Chattaraj, Leon Cheung, Elin Choe, Erin Ducharme, Nikki Farnham, Alex Giorno, Ethan Greer, Paul James, Christine Ji, Julia Kelly, Sofia Kemeny, Ashley Kulberg, David McDaniels, Insha Momin, Amelia Myre, Natalia Porras, Owen Posnett, Daniel Rankin, Carlos Rueda, Ryan Samway, Michelle Serban, Elizabeth Short, Sagun Shrestha, Lukas Soloman, Isabelle Stratta, Sophie Tafazzoli, Amelia Wanamaker, Andrew Swank, Fallon Wolfley, Amanda Yen, Nadine Zakheim

GRACE

2 THE GEORGETOWN VOICE design by sabrina shaffer; layout by connor martin

PG.

Page 3

Dear Voice readers,

An eclectic collection of jokes, puns, doodles, playlists, and news clips from the collective mind of the Voice staff.

Welcome to the Joy Issue: a collection of articles centered around a nuanced approach to the coverage of joy and the sentiment itself.

The point of the Joy Issue is to challenge our editorial frameworks when approaching articles, to shift how we look at our pitches and stories, and to investigate when and why we celebrate joy—and when and why we don’t. It is not meant to gloss over problems or issues, but rather to find the nuance in our coverage. Part of this is actualizing our coverage of joy and success in marginalized communities as a publication; it’s finding and telling the stories that we too often do not. This issue is an opportunity to innovate and explore, hopefully with lasting impacts on our coverage and our readers.

I hope you find joy and perseverance in these pages; I think we could all use a little bit of that right now.

Annie Editor-in-Chief, Spring 2023

THESE ARE A FEW OF OUR FAVORITE THINGS

2. Eating grapes directly off the bunch like a Greek god

3. Cheese

4. Air conditioning

5. Ice-cold water

6. Lemon ricotta ravioli from Trader Joe’s (discontinued)

7. Wawa

8. Running about on all fours

9. Meese as the plural of moose

10. Epi’s pad thai (flex, not swipes)

→ SONGS THAT MAKE US HAPPY

1. "Mr. Blue Sky" by Electric Light Orchestra

2. "New Romantics" by Taylor Swift

3. "Remind Me" by Emily King

4. "Kick It to Me" by Sammy Rae & The Friends

5. "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" by Leo Sayer

6. "Collateral Damage" by Burna Boy

7. "Shut Up And Drive" by Rihanna

8. "The Sweet Escape" by Gwen Stefani, Akon

9. "What A Life" by Scarlet Pleasure

10. "Brand New" by Ben Rector

11. "Colors" by Black Pumas

12. "Maps" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

→ TUNE IN TO PODCASTS

Listen to Post Pitch this week to hear writer Aminah Malik talk about the process of writing an article driven by joy:

Today I feel more joyful than my usual self. Spring is in full swing. Pollen and lust are in the air. Couples are caressing each other shamelessly on Copley lawn—sun’s out tongues out. The Barbie movie is finally set to premiere. That girl you’ve had an unrequited crush on since freshman year is graduating in a month and you’ll never have to confront a heartbreaking rejection, just abandonment, which you’re used to anyway. Joe hasn’t been at any of Taylor’s tour concerts, but they’re definitely still together and in love. Life is blooming and life is good.

On this joyful day, I urge you to do something nice for yourself. Tickle your friends. Tickle yourself. Laugh. Cry. Play some golf. Commit a crime. Laugh some more. Buy a bagel. Learn how to talk to women (respectfully). Check out other joyful suggestions from Voicers for inspo. Be happy. Be yourself—everyone else is already taken.

xoxo, Gossip Rat

SEEKING NEW MANAGING EDITOR AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF!

Requirements:

• Able to carry a tune

• Sexy bod

• An affinity for rats

• Is not Jared, 19

Please send completed applications to gossipratxoxo@gmail.com.

"margot ratby" by dane tedder; "annie's happy poppies" by annabella hoge; podcast artwork by olivia li; "expensive, humongous, throbbing tulip" by olivia li

Beyond fleeting joy, Black art is more than the antithesis of pain

BY AJANI JONES

Content warning: This article discusses antiBlackness, racism, and violence.

When Beyond the Lights opened in Fall 2021, it challenged the thematic expectations of Black art here at Georgetown. Instead of foregrounding trauma, the Black Theatre Ensemble (BTE) prioritized the celebration of Black American theatrical traditions and their joyful history.

“That is something that we’ve been trying to move towards, like creating art that’s just happy, that’s just fun,” Iliana Diaz (CAS ’23), BTE’s business manager, said.

Diaz sees Beyond the Lights as moving away from narratives of pain. The play platforms the joyful nuances often missing in dominant narratives in Black art while simultaneously celebrating art within the mundane.

Contemporary pop culture is filled with gratuitous explorations of Black trauma and pain across all major artistic forms. From books to films and even music, there seems to be no limit to the depiction of Black suffering despite limited Black media representation. Works like The Blind Side (2009) are notorious for their commodification of antiBlack violence and subtle promotion of white saviorism. Even works like Till (2022) and Moonlight (2016)—praised for their nuanced approach to anti-Blackness and racism—are still rooted in the exploration of generational trauma and, albeit unintentionally, reinforce the framing of Black joy as the fleeting byproduct of hard-won triumph.

Art that does not prominently feature the narrative of “overcoming obstacles” receives far less industry support, according to Anita Gonzalez, a professor and co-founder of Georgetown’s Racial Justice Institute.

“[Producers] don’t get that you can just have a story about Black women just having a good time in the Caribbean,” Gonzalez said. “That kind of story is not the story that [white] producers want to hear. They want to hear about Black trauma, they want to hear about obstacles.”

Often, equitable representation for Black artists in media is rooted in

rehashed narratives of racialized violence and anti-Blackness at the expense of the artists themselves. Works featuring Black identities and stories, like BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Get Out (2017), gain the most prominence when they center racialized violence and marginalization. Creators feel pressured to continue exploring antiBlackness and histories of slavery in order for their work to be recognized, leading exhaustion given their own emotional proximity.

In her push for more lighthearted productions, Diaz connects deeply with the idea that performance art is inherently moving even when divorced from grandiosity.

“There is an association a lot of times with things that are meaningful, things that are powerful, they have to be traumatic and intense and serious,” Diaz said. “But there is as equal an effect in moments of happiness, in moments of joy, of excitement, even if it’s just a lighthearted comedy.”

Art can take even the simple moments and transform them into beautiful complexities. Tyler Mitchell’s exhibition catalog “I Can Make You Feel Good,” for instance, showcases his visualization of a “Black utopia” with joyful photographs of Black communities in uniquely free and effortless ways he didn’t otherwise see in popular media.

“The daily mundane things of life can be art,” Mélisande Short-Colomb (CAS ’21), a performer and activist, said, beaming. “Life is art.”

But herein lies the present reality and problem: Black art made of the mundane is rarely celebrated. Rather, when it comes to representing Black lives, it is art that draws from both personal and systemic forms of suffering that is given precedence. Across many major awards ceremonies, the majority of nominations for Black talent both on- and off-screen go toward films related to racism. Moreover, many critics and researchers have found that Black talent is twice as likely to be limited to race-related content. Creative work that centers Black trauma—even when produced by Black creators—can limit

Black artists are expected to continuously shoulder the burden of reliving and engaging with their traumas.

“There’s an emotional impact for performers especially when they have to put their embodied selves into these places of trauma,” Gonzalez said.

However, vulnerability can also be freeing. ShortColomb, who currently serves as the community engagement associate for the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, believes that

there is great merit in engaging with vulnerable storytelling—her one-woman show Here I Am intimately explores her personal and familial relationship to Georgetown as a descendant

Many other artists, especially those from systemically underrepresented communities, utilize their mediums to process the issues they face, particularly when the news is saturated with narratives of pain. Alfreda Davis, faculty artistic director the Black Movements Dance Theatre (BMDT), explained that vulnerable art can provide an outlet when pain can be hard

“Oftentimes, the headlines can just grab your soul,” Davis said. “Fortunately, for us as artists, we have a way of reflecting what we feel more than the average person who doesn’t have an opportunity

But Short-Colomb emphasized that it is key for artists to have agency over how and when they give access to

“Vulnerability is not something you have to give to other people, especially in performance,” ShortColomb said. “You can choose to not always be subjected to pain or expected to be present in a position of pain.”

An important distinction, however, should be made in how stories are portrayed and how they reinforce different narratives. When mainstream media chooses to only platform stories of Black pain, it becomes an exploitation of the suffering of marginalized communities rather than a depiction of reality. Agency over the decision to center narratives of suffering is essential for Black creators.

“I’m not here to perform pain for you, and I’m not scared of you either,” Short-Colomb said.

For many Black creatives, the hyperfixation on these narratives misses the nuance in these stories, particularly the joy of preservation and autonomy. These creative processes are historically a necessary part of the process of navigating the

influx dynamics of resistance and power faced by communities of color. Oftentimes the exploration of generational trauma is an act of ensuring that these stories do not go untold. Through Here I Am, Short-Colomb speaks for her heavenly grandmothers, the family she loves and lives with, beyond their role in the white history of Georgetown entanglement in Georgetown’s history.

Autonomy for Black artists involves using art as a tool to rewrite narratives of marginalization. Jabril El Abanti (CAS ’24), a student musician, believes there is innate personal power generated in repurposing harm for creative expression.

“Anything that can be used against you can also be something that is used for you— that is like the very thing that creates your identity,” El Abanti said.

In writing his song “Too Much Soul,” he takes ownership of the narratives and labels that had been used against him since childhood. Through his impassioned repetition of “too much soul” paired with an upbeat baseline throughout the song’s chorus, El Abanti is able to reclaim the harmful words and reconstruct them into a proud declaration of his energy and passion.

For many creatives, a special catharsis comes with artistic autonomy. “When you look at Black art specifically, there is closure that we don’t normally get outside of art,” Carlos Rosario (MSB ’23), a musician and film and media studies minor at Georgetown, said. “I think that there’s some kind of closure, some kind of catharsis that comes from it, even if it’s trauma, even if it’s pain, there’s joy in it because I get to tell it.”

In Mr. Georgetown 2022, Rosario performed a moving rendition of “En Mi Viejo San Juan,” a song detailing the melancholy of the Puerto Rican diaspora and the impact of U.S. imperialism in Puerto Rico. In spite of the song’s more solemn themes, Rosario shared that the performance felt like a “full circle moment” as it helped him to connect with his Puerto Rican heritage in a moment of shared joy with other Caribbean diasporans at Georgetown. Black art, even born from sorrow, can create joy through the personal connections artists share with these works.

By sharing these experiences, Black creatives are able to not only achieve individual freedom but also connect on a deeper level with their audiences. Following the release of his newest album demo nights. (2023), Malachi Quarles (CAS ’23), who releases music under the stage name HUGHLANDER, experienced both the healing that comes with personal artistic expression and the way it can create interpersonal connection.

“When you’re able to put that to an art form, that’s very healing for somebody,” Quarles said. “Even though I don’t make music for people, when people relate I think that’s really cool.”

For communities of color, art is a fundamental cornerstone of connection and comradery. Gonzalez explained that Black artistic traditions have always been rooted in ideas of communal healing and connection.

“Communities of color are already thriving and fruitful—we don’t need to be fixed,” Gonzalez said. “We have always had strategies and ways of being that keep us connected and thriving and healthy—one of them being able to sit in communities with other people and share knowledge through the vehicle of stories.”

Art has the ability to facilitate strong connections and convey intimate messages within Black artistic communities, and it is vital for the continued production of creativity.

“Having a community behind you that really appreciates what you’re doing is so important to many artists and it shows that what you’re doing is touching people in ways that you would have never thought,” El Abanti said.

In order to make meaningful art, Black creatives, especially at institutions like Georgetown, must make conscious efforts in deciding which stories they choose to center. Because communal creation has been so ingrained in the history of Black artistic spaces, fostering further collaboration opens up the possibility for community building.

“What’s made my Black creative experience at Georgetown so fruitful was just that it was about community first,” Rosario said. “The way that Black music and Black art broadly on campus will continue to thrive and be great and be beautiful is if community is at the center.”

Ultimately, Black creatives must continue to take charge of their own artistic narratives and creation founded on communal joy and love.

“What has sustained marginalized communities? What keeps us here, what keeps us going?

It’s love. It’s not power, it’s not resistance,” Short-Colomb said. “When we come from those places, and we meet in the middle, we meet in the middle because we love each other.” G

BRAVE: Black women in the arts are in “A Never Ending Renaissance”

BY ADORA ADEYEMI

When asked what it means to be brave, actress Tati Gabrielle replied, “It means showing the world that you deserve to be taken a chance on. ’Cause you were the first to take a chance on you.”

Gabrielle was the keynote speaker at the eighth annual BRAVE summit, which was founded in 2015 by three Black Georgetown alums to highlight Black women’s narratives. Each year, the event has a different theme inspired by one of the words in their titular acronym: “Black, Resilient, Artistic, Vigilant, Enough.” This year’s theme, “In the Black Fantastic: A Never Ending Renaissance”— an ode to the ‘A’ of BRAVE—celebrated Black women and femmes in the arts. On March 26, creatives from both on-and-off campus gathered to discuss various forms of self-expression and equip college students with the confidence needed to enter the professional world.

Speakers at breakout sessions included CEOs, musicians, and psychologists who spoke to their positions as Black women and femmes in the industry, each hoping to encourage the gathered students.

“Growing up I never had anyone that looked like me that was, like, popular,” Fannita Leggett, a TikTok creator with almost two million followers, said. “I never imagined that I’d amass this many people that like me for me that don’t know me.”

“It’s really inspiring,” she added.

Leggett was part of the panel “Picture Perfect: The Conflicts of Presence and Perception” in which participants discussed balancing an internet presence while staying true to themselves. Other speakers included well-known Instagram and TikTok creators Promise Elisa and Anayka She.

When asked if social media use should be fun, Leggett replied with a decisive “yes,” framing it as a form of resistance: “Black girls on the internet get beat up from the ground,” she said. “I’m gonna show all the fat Black girls that we can have fun.”

For her part, She emphasized the importance of representation and expressed her appreciation for the ways social media provides a platform for multitudes within the Black community. “In today’s age, you can be any kind of Black woman: a goth, a baddie, a city girl. TikTok has helped us find all these different nations.”

“I’m so happy to be a part of that,” She added.

Though the panel was mostly positive, the creators acknowledged that there are certainly still obstacles in their field. Elisa warned the

young audience about the dangers of looking to the internet for self-worth: “Everybody will hype up this new Black woman, this new star, and the next day there’s smear campaigns everywhere,” she said.

“I think Black women get a really bad rap,” Leggett said. Attendees nodded as she listed the stereotypes that were all too familiar: ghetto, loud, aggressive, stuck-up. But from her personal experience, she affirmed that “nobody sees you like another Black woman.”

Through it all, the camaraderie between the young women was comforting. As they shared stories of the first time they met, teased each other for laughs, and praised each other’s efforts in their industry, their solidarity seeped through the room.

The support found in the breakout sessions carried into the lunch period as we shifted from learning about Black self-expression through art to witnessing it: Georgetown’s own “Dancing Diamonds” dazzled with choreography in matching blue leotards; underground artists shared original music; and D.C.’s 2022 Drag Queen of the Year Cake Pop!, who spoke on art and intersectionality at the “Different Colors, Same Rainbow” session, captivated the room with an engaging performance, sauntering through the pink tables where members of the crowd sat.

The final event was a Q&A where Dr. Brienne Adams, a professor in Georgetown’s department of African American Studies, engaged in conversation with Gabrielle, known for her roles on popular Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, You , and Kaleidoscope

A self-proclaimed “hyper-optimist,” Gabrielle spoke to the need for joyful narratives about Black people to be showcased more in Hollywood. “There weren’t enough

Black stories at that time,” she said, reflecting on her college days. “Our struggles were always shown—I was like, ‘Can we be seen celebrating our own coming of age?’” While she acknowledged that there has since been an increase in Hollywood’s diversity, she is adamant that there is still a long way to go.

For young Black women looking to pursue a career in the arts, she had memorable advice: “This industry is not nice, particularly to us. Make sure you have an intention of why you wanna do this.” Gabrielle added that even though she’s faced obstacles, she remains compelled to pursue her acting career by expanding Hollywood’s vision of possibilities for Black narratives. To Gabrielle, her involvement in the industry is something bigger than herself.

“I’m exhausted but my ‘why’ is so loud in my head,” she said. “I cannot stop fighting against an industry that is fighting me back as hard as it can.”

As the floor opened for questions, the conversation became even more relaxed: Gabrielle gave details from head-to-toe on her fashionable, all-white outfit with gold jewelry and whipped out her phone to list out artists found in the playlist she’d curated for her role as Marienne in You (such as Jorja Smith, Edith Piaf, and Nirvana); a student’s request for her to AirDrop the link elicited laughs throughout the room.

Eager rounds of applause marked the end of the event; the first wave honored Gabrielle’s powerful contributions to the gathering, before growing even louder when directed towards the BRAVE team behind it all. Organized by and for Black women, I left the event confident that I can step into the world and find us in all corners of the creative world, flourishing in a never-ending renaissance. G

design by elin choe; layout by graham krewinghaus

CREATIVITY AT GEORGETOWN STARTS WITH

BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD

At an institution generally regarded as preprofessional, it’s easy to forget about student art. You and a friend might go out every once in a while to see a student-run play or enjoy an on-campus concert, but unless you’re deeply involved in such artistic endeavors, attention to student art at Georgetown is probably relegated to one-off exhibitions and chance encounters.

This should not be the case. What if the arts at Georgetown were no longer consigned to separate spheres, but intentionally integrated into our student lives? What if, even for just a week, the arts took center stage? If this sounds new to you, you have probably never heard of Arts Week.

The GUSA Senate Subcommittee on Creative Expression organized the first Arts Week in Spring 2014 in response to a lack of visibility and funding for many arts groups on campus. After more than half a decade of creative celebration, the pandemic abruptly ended the annual tradition.

During that week, students tabled in Red Square displaying community art projects, performancebased clubs put on shows and workshops, and the university hosted open discussions with professional artists. The 2019 Arts Week saw events like Georgetown University Collective of Creative Individuals (GUCCI) open mics, student concerts, and comedy shows. That year’s event also boasted a discussion with Boots Riley, acclaimed director of Sorry to Bother You (2018).

Arts Week curated five days of collective creative joy at Georgetown. It was a week in which enjoying lor taking part in the arts was no harder than stepping outside your dorm. In 2017, thenlead coordinator and artistic director Katherine Rosengarten described Arts Week to the Voice as “a smorgasbord of events and projects that both represented the existing arts community and invited people who maybe don’t consider themselves ‘artistic’ to take up a paintbrush or a microphone and give it a shot.”

The last Arts Week was in 2019, and the event has been lost almost entirely to a vanishing institutional memory. A concerted effort between the administration, creative student organizations, and the Georgetown Program Board (GPB), however, could bring it back.

What would a modern Arts Week look like at Georgetown? Previous years featured a State of the Arts Town Hall where students could sit down with performing arts groups and student publications to

discuss their joys and concerns surrounding creative expression on campus, all in a centralized forum with no current equivalent. Spaces like the De La Cruz and Spagnuolo Galleries in Walsh could showcase art from all types of community members—not only students but also faculty and staff. Art isn’t just about showcasing community work; witnessing and consuming art is in and of itself an act of communitybuilding. Getting the entire campus at least thinking about art, even if only for a week, could highlight the art that so many in our community create, but few ever get the chance to see.

voices and talents, the potential revival of Arts Week presents a greater opportunity for Georgetown to rejuvenate its approach toward community wellbeing in the wake of the ongoing pandemic. By bringing back celebratory events like Arts Week, Georgetown can call attention to the artistic accomplishments occurring on campus, bringing creative expression and representation out of the periphery and into the spotlight.

a week of giving artists the oxygen they need will not spark many long-term changes if the rest of the time they are left to find that support for themselves. The university has a responsibility to provide more institutional support for arts programs. That means better funding the creative spaces we already have, like the Maker Hub, as well as prominently promoting events such as limited-run performances, showcases, and workshops. It also means increasing access to existing creative outlets, like art classes, by no longer placing additional burdens on students who wish to enroll.

arts means more than simply affording more resources to individual artistic activities; it also means reimagining the way Georgetown approaches art. In professionally focused institutions like Georgetown, art is often viewed only in terms of how it can be manipulated for practical—or profitable—purposes. But art is more than just marketing graphics or shaking up in-class presentations; Georgetown ought to treat it as such. By placing more value on artistic paths, the university can make them more accessible.

Art classes, for example, are generally valued at fewer credits per hour than other Georgetown classes, placing an academic incentive on deprioritizing the arts. Most classes listed under ARTS, like Oil Painting or Graphic Design, require two two-and-a-half-hour classes per week, while some non-art classes meet for only two and a half hours a week total. And, like other classes, art classes often involve hours of additional out-of-class work each week—all for a standard three credits.

If Georgetown academically values an hour of artistic creation less than it values an hour of political debate or mathematical reasoning, its students are likely to do the same. This makes art less accessible. Students who have less free time—perhaps because of a job or other nonacademic concerns—face more difficulty fitting arts classes into their course load. This intensive time commitment makes the arts especially inaccessible to students already working paid jobs with long hours, who are disproportionately low-income students.

In refocusing Georgetown’s culture on the arts, institutional support should be extended to all expressions of creative ideas, including theater, music, poetry, and creative writing. Further devotion to the arts would only deepen students’ capacities in other areas—including their preprofessional endeavors. Art is a vehicle for self-improvement, both emotionally and professionally. Practicing art is a valuable way for students to express themselves, share powerful political and social messages, and improve their mental health and wellness. Cultural identity and expression are also inherently interwoven in art—Diamante, Rangila, and Art Celebrating Disability Culture (ACDC). All offer students more varied and thorough perspectives of the world to work into their passions.

Arts Week should return, but more than that, we need an arts reform. Let’s bring Arts Week back, but not for its own sake. Let’s bring it back to start painting a bigger picture of art at Georgetown. G

Upon deciding to attend Georgetown, I began the tenuous and vulnerable process of gauging my future home’s level of acceptance towards LGBTQ+ people. Each new cultural marker felt auspicious: the “Homo Saxa” Patio (boo GroupMe), Ben Telerski (CAS ’23) remarking on TikTok, “I go to a very gay Catholic university,” and the appearance of the “Lavender Haze” on the Corp’s menu.

But actually entering Georgetown’s queer community revealed a landscape of identity and experience far more diverse and complex than one affinity group chat for queer people or just a “very gay” university. After interviewing 11 LGBTQ+ identifying students, I’ve excavated a complicated and beautiful picture of what it means to be a queer student at Georgetown. It’s an individual understanding: a lived reality filtered by race, gender identity, class, and other aspects of identity. Viewing this complex picture in all of its nuance and diversity matters because queerness is too often flattened into one experience, when it’s multiple and individually defined.

Queer people have arguably become more visible on campus over recent years. The 2022 Marriage Pact Survey and the Voice’s sex survey show that more than 35 percent of Georgetown’s undergraduate population identifies as nonheterosexual.

For me, coming to Georgetown from a Catholic high school, where I could count the number of openly queer people on one hand, was liberating. I entered a space where I could both celebrate my queerness and let it exist as one facet of my identity amid many. For one of the first times, it was not hard for me to find other queer people—a principal source of anxiety for me. I did not have to worry as much about my queer identity when I entered a class, made friends, or started dating.

“One of things I was worried about specifically after committing to Georgetown was, ‘Am I going to be the only trans person here? Am I going to be the only non-binary person here?’ ” Marre Gaffigan (CAS ’26) said. “Upon coming to campus, I realized such a huge percentage of this population is queer in some way.”

Some of this visibility on campus stems from queer students’ heavy involvement in campus clubs and affinity spaces. “Every queer person who is out loud is often doing a lot of work on campus,” Ollie Henry (CAS ’24), a student activist who’s very present in affinity spaces on campus, observed, discussing how many of the queer students they know sit on multiple club boards.

This sense of visibility also extends to broader queer social life. Olivia Yamamoto (SFS ’24), director of this year’s Rocky Horror Picture Show—a musical comedy horror film that has become a queer staple due to its themes of sexual liberation and self-discovery—recounted an unofficial GU Pride party at an upperclassman’s sweaty Henle in their freshman year as liberating compared to more repressive high school environments: “This is how it’s supposed to feel like at a party where you belong,” they said. “Where you could

make out with someone on the dance floor if you wanted to. To feel that same messiness that every first-year college student should have.”

Historically, spaces like GU Pride, the LGBTQ Resource Center, Haus of Hoya, queer retreats like Journeys (which haven’t run since the pandemic began), and traditions like Gender Funk parties, the “i am.” shirts, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show have been staples in cultivating queer life at Georgetown. On more individual levels, queer students have also built vibrant informal spaces: charcuteries on the lawn, music-sharing, or queercentered friend groups. Remaking institutions that might not be explicitly queer—like theater— into especially queer-positive environments has been, for some, uniquely validating.

“Theater at Georgetown has provided me not only with lifelong friendships but probably the most validation that I’ve ever received in my life as a trans person and as a queer person,” Gaffigan said.

Queer people haven’t always been visible on campus. Shiva Subbaraman, a faculty member in the Department of Performing Arts and former director of the LGBTQ Center, spoke to a significant cultural shift in LGBTQ+ visibility. “I started the center in 2008 when most of the queer community was very small because there was so much homophobia on campus. Very, very few students felt empowered or safe to be out on campus,” Subbaraman said.

The very work of making queer life possible is difficult. “You have to go against the grains of hustle culture, of ascribing yourself to a thousand and one clubs, to build community. You have to go against Georgetown’s culture to build community.” Henry noted Georgetown’s preprofessional culture encourages students to value career building over community building.

certain students. Harapanahalli, who left the GU Pride board in fall 2021, described how they felt that as a person of color, a lot of the labor of making GU Pride more inclusive fell to them without much support from the rest of the board.

The racialized dynamics of the university’s queer communities also seep into the dating scene. As Yamamoto mentioned, “It is kind of hard to navigate dating because just because someone is queer doesn’t necessarily mean that they are A, not racist, and B, willing to connect with you and understand your experience as a queer person of color.”

Sometimes this means students of color date off campus in order to find people who can understand or share their experiences and perspectives beyond simply being queer.

“On Tinder, when I set my location, I have to set it, not just five miles, I’m setting it 10, 15, 20 miles. I need to make sure Howard’s included,” Henry said. “I think queer dating is really difficult at a predominantly white institution (PWI) because there aren’t supports for navigating all those different forms of internalized oppression that shows up interpersonally.”

Validating communities: Exploring queer joy

BY CONNOR

Many interviewees also questioned whether there even is such a thing as a unified or singular “queer community” to build upon.

“I don't think there's a ‘queer community,’ I think there’s queer communities,” Nikash Harapanahalli (SFS ’24) said. “There are communities that are both racialized, that are put into different groups based off of identities, that are a part and parcel of who they are, with queerness being something in conversation with those other identities.”

The unpaid and time-consuming work of leading queer affinity spaces often falls into the hands of queer students that hold the privilege and thus the bandwidth to do it—which at a predominately white and wealthy institution often means white, cisgender, affluent, gay men. The result is these affinity groups like GU Pride often engineer spaces to intentionally or unintentionally exclude

When people of color date outside of their own racialized community, they can experience eroticization that can make dating prohibitive, or even harmful—a dynamic present in straight and queer relationships alike. “There is unfortunately a tendency to see queer people of color as bodies, as fetish, as to fetishize them and to eroticize them, or even to not date them at all,” Harapanahalli said. “I think the unfortunate reality is that, as a queer person of color, I’m a person of color before anything else.”

Even when students date within their own racialized communities, there are challenges.

“There are still barriers of internalized racism, homophobia, toxic masculinity that you have to also parse through,” Henry said. These are dynamics that make all kinds of dating difficult; however, they feel incredibly acute in queer communities due to the compounding nature of oppression. This acuteness is only complicated by fractured queer communities and a disconnect to LGBTQ+ history on campus.

Queer Hoyas are isolated from their history because they’re rarely exposed to it—university advertising doesn’t mention it, it isn’t readily

accessible on most Georgetown websites, and it’s not discussed during New Student Orientation.

“We really lack the ability to be able to sit within our history, and that pulls us farther away from our sense of community,” Henry observed. According to them, this lack of knowledge has tangible impacts on the present day; when queer students don’t understand what was required on the path to achieving acceptance, equality, and resources here at Georgetown, they don’t fully grasp the gravity of continuing this work.

“I also want people to remember that our queer ancestors really fought for our right to be open and for me to even do this interview,” Yamamoto said.

On April 30, 1980, two student groups—the Gay People of Georgetown University (GPGU), which would evolve into GU Pride, and the Gay Rights Coalition of Georgetown University Law Center (GRC-GULC)—filed a lawsuit with the D.C. Superior Court accusing the university of unlawful discrimination after Georgetown rejected multiple efforts to form an officially recognized LGBTQ+ student group throughout the 1970s. After eight years of legal battles, the university capitulated, agreeing to grant equal access to university benefits for LGBTQ+ student groups but not official recognition until years later. A major institutional victory, the win did not necessarily reflect a cultural shift toward queer students.

communities: joy at Georgetown

Georgetown’s past of marginalizing its queer community is as integral to its history as its Catholic identity. “The University rejected GPGU’s request for University recognition on the grounds that the group

beginning, right, I was very focused on saying, no, I want to show my students as happy, thriving, well-adjusted, joyful people.”

The understandings of what queer joy is are as diverse as the Georgetown queer experience. It was described as everything from “liberating” (Joe Hofman, CAS ’23) to “freedom in community” (Tara Ravishankar, CAS ’22) to simple scenes of love and community abound.

“When I think of queer joy, I think of the party that we threw for a trans student when he got top surgery,” Siena Hohne said (CAS ’22).

Henry, who sees queer joy as something beyond words, highlights that some of the happiest experiences of queer community they’ve found here are grounded in connection. “It is the best feeling when I meet a trans-masc person and I’m like, ‘You’re here, I’m here, we’re here.’ It’s those moments of affirmation of your existence,” they said.

Yamamoto found queer joy in their involvement in Rocky Horror. “For Rocky, I think you can just show up and be silly. You can go up in your brawn thong and dance to a song that doesn't make sense in a movie with a plot that doesn’t make sense,” they said.

“Seeing this person that made a really good point in your IR class also be able to strut down the aisles in stilettos—it’s a very exciting thing to see,” she added. Seeing the raw and visible queerness of Rocky Horror is important and exciting because it represents that queer people can show up to spaces as they are and want to be.

For me, understanding, accepting, and expressing my queerness was a journey marred by shame and seriousness. I hid my own queer identity for years, from myself and the communities I loved, and dismantling those external and internal barriers changed my relationships and made me feel fully seen and valued. This experience of interviewing my peers on what queer joy means to them has provided a moment of pause and reflection on that journey— it’s shown me how far the joyful, silly, expressive person with almost completely faded pink hair is from the fifth grader who didn’t understand why he liked boys, and hated himself for it. Reflecting, here, in community with others has shown me that the work of self-affirmation, above all else, ends in joy. G

"IT IS THE BEST FEELING WHEN I MEET A TRANS-MASC PERSON AND I’M LIKE ‘YOU’RE HERE, I’M HERE, WE’RE HERE.’ IT’S THOSE MOMENTS OF AFFIRMATION OF YOUR EXISTENCE"

If you go down, I'm goin' down too

BY FRANCESCA THEOFILOU

Solidarity—standing up for a group you do not belong to and putting your own comfort aside in the process—is the linchpin to social justice. Historically, however, celebrities have dropped the ball when it comes to supporting and uplifting marginalized communities, and not for lack of trying. Taylor Swift’s music video for her single “You Need To Calm Down” simplified the complex issue of homophobia and queer identity to rainbow makeup and parades while simultaneously funneling money garnered from the performances of queer folk into her own pocket. Celebrities (poorly) sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” while quarantined in their million-dollar mansions to let us know that we were “all in this together” during the early days of the pandemic despite the glaring disparity between their financial and occupational positions and those of the average person. Kendall Jenner’s 2017 Pepsi ad attempted to end police brutality with the gesture of Jenner offering a can of soda to a cop in riot gear.

This year, however, multiple celebrities have stepped up, sometimes risking backlash in the process, to express solidarity with queer folk as anti-LGBTQ+ legislation continues to pass throughout the U.S. Kelsea Ballerini’s performance as co-host of the 2023 Country Music Television Music Awards stands out as a phenomenal example of celebrity advocacy and solidarity. On April 2—just weeks after Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill banning drag performances in public—Ballerini performed her song, “IF YOU GO DOWN (I’M GOIN’ DOWN TOO)” on the stage of the CMT Music Awards alongside four drag queens. This country anthem—teeming with lyrics like “dirt on you is dirt on me” and “if it all blows up and we end up on the news / if you go down, I’m goin’ down too”—proclaims a rich and poignant message: We all must stand with the queer community, especially now.

Nearly five and a half million country music fans throughout the nation tuned in to watch the awards, making Ballerini’s choice to highlight drag queens on such a vast stage a gutsy move. In an interview with ET , the four queens who danced alongside Ballerini—Olivia Lux, Jan Sport, Kennedy Davenport, and Manila Luzon—expressed gratitude for the opportunity to perform with her. Lux emphasized that the song itself is about the “celebration of being a community” and expressed that she felt that message was internalized by those watching the performance.

“Just like all of these amazing country music artists, we, drag queens, are also artists, and we deserve a space to be ourselves, express ourselves, and create something wonderful for everyone to enjoy,” Luzon said.

The performance itself was simple, sweet, and fun. Ballerini, her band, and the four performers—dressed in colorful ’60s pinup style outfits with teased hair to match— lounged and chatted on a grass lawn adorned with a white picket fence. A screen behind the performers depicted a lineup of traditional suburban homes that change to different colors of the rainbow with the beat of the music. The performers came together to dance around Ballerini, finishing out the performance against a rainbow background, confetti falling onto the audience. The simple yet effective performance emphasized her message calling for support for drag during a time when the art form is at risk. Historically, country music has garnered a more conservative-leaning audience. One study found that people who follow congressional conservatives on Twitter are more likely to follow country musicians than musicians of any other genre. Tennessee is particularly vital to the country music scene as its capital, Nashville, is commonly known as the birthplace of country

music. Ballerini chose to use the CMT stage to highlight drag performance in a space filled with the same people who support its banning. In making such a statement, Ballerini risked losing a portion of her 10 million monthly listeners, the source of her livelihood.

Ballerini is not the only celebrity using her platform and audience to stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. Two weeks ago, it was announced that Daniel Radcliffe has partnered with the Trevor Project to moderate a new online streaming series, Sharing Space, where six young trans and nonbinary people share their experiences, joys, and needs, as well as what they hope to see from the world in the future.

Radcliffe has been outspoken about his support of the trans community since even before J. K. Rowling—the creator of the Harry Potter franchise which kickstarted Radcliffe’s career—began putting out her extremely transphobic and harmful ideas about gender and womanhood. By continuing to speak out in support of trans youth and trans lives, Radcliffe is risking the fanbase and relationships that defined his public image. Like Ballerini, Radcliffe’s activism acknowledges that standing in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community ought to be considered above all else.

On March 31, a federal judge temporarily blocked Tennessee’s ban on drag performances, deciding that the state had failed to provide a compelling argument for the law’s necessity. This decision comes as the result of the hard work of local LGBTQ+ activists, waves of protestors, organizations like the Memphis group Friends of George who filed the lawsuit against the ban, and, of course, drag performers. Yet the fight is nowhere near over. The Tennessee bill’s blockage is only temporary, and other states continue to draft legislation just like it. But Ballerini’s meaningful performance at a critical time helps prove that drag will not disappear from the public eye so easily.

At the end of the day—despite the great work of these influential allies—real progress comes from the activism of LGBTQ+ people and allies who risk their lives to stand up for their rights. If you find the time to stream a song, see a show, donate a few dollars, or volunteer your time, use that to support drag performers or queer people in your community. Simply streaming Ballerini’s single is not enough. If hateful bills are being presented in your own state, research their impact, contact your legislators, and find authentic queer voices fighting them on the ground to support and listen. But after that, turn up the volume and blast “IF YOU GO DOWN (I’M GOIN DOWN TOO).” G

The enduring magic of Sex andtheCity, 25 years later

BY AMANDA YEN

I started watching Sex and the City when my childhood best friend, Emily, came to visit. She arrived in the last breath of September, the end of the beginning of our senior year, on her first trip to the East Coast. In the daytime we walked the jagged brick and cobblestone, gossiped over glasses of tea and champagne, and watched the autumn leaves float down around us. That Friday night, while the rain fell outside, we flicked on the pilot episode of Sex and the City in the pint-sized living room of my Georgetown townhouse.

I was only half-watching. It was Emily’s choice, not something I would’ve watched on my own. But by the end, I was invested in the brilliant, witty, and wonderfully messy women figuring out love and friendship in Manhattan.

Sex and the City follows four friends living in late-1990s

New York. Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), our narrator, is a 30-something newspaper columnist who writes about sex, love, and relationships. Her three best friends are the redhead Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), a no-fuss lawyer with a sardonic edge; the blonde Samantha (Kim Cattrall), a femme fatale who values sex but disdains romance; and the brunette Charlotte (Kristen Davis), a hopeless romantic who, despite her naivete, sometimes imparts the greatest wisdom of all. Carrie frames each episode with a particular theme (e.g., threesomes, kinks, dating younger men, dating older men) as the women navigate New York’s dating scene. The show is beautiful to look at: The four friends move through the vibrant streets of Manhattan in unrealistically high but admittedly tasteful heels, decked in designer outfits that rival Emily in Paris in imagination. The most striking aspect of Sex and the City, however, is how accurately it captures relationships. The toxic men of the 1990s are the same toxic men of the 2020s: men with commitment issues, men that can’t take a hint, men that ask for too much too soon. In 2023 we call these red flags and categorize the men as male manipulators, pick-me’s, players—labels that didn’t exist for Carrie and her friends in 1996. They navigated New York hookup culture in its adolescence, asking how well we really know the people we sleep with, and two and half decades later, I was asking the same thing.

Some aspects of the show haven’t aged well. Its handling of interracial dating, body image, and queer relationships leaves much to be desired. Many of these issues revive old, essentializing tropes that would make a modern viewer cringe: Carrie and Charlotte each have stereotypical “gay best friends,” and Samantha and Miranda each have an arc with a Black love interest that rehashes racist tropes about Black aggression. The women are haunted by traditional anxieties associated with white femininity, like the fears of ending up alone, of growing old and ugly and therefore worthless. But in spite of this, the show’s core depictions of female friendship are what anchor it.

A few weeks after Emily’s visit, my roommate Lea asked me who I thought she was most like on the show. This question has captivated generations of viewers: Are you a Miranda, a Samantha, a Charlotte, or a Carrie? For the women I knew in real life, though, I could only come up with halfanswers. Lea had Miranda’s tenacity, Charlotte’s persistent optimism, and Carrie’s wit and charm. She wasn’t a perfect match for any of them. But by observing the fictional women onscreen I could better appreciate the things I loved most about Lea and the parts of our friendship I was most grateful for.

There’s something reassuring in seeing Carrie and her 30-something friends lead lush, exciting lives in the city. It’s what I need to see now at 22 to understand that the end of college is not the end of youth. Last fall when Emily visited, I’d begun to feel my age as I never had before—the rooms I used to frequent filled with more unfamiliar faces, time at Georgetown slipping away like sand through the space between fingers. The end of college started to feel like the beginning of real life, which was terrifying. But in seeing the disordered swirl of city life onscreen, I started to believe there was beauty in all that future unknown.

It’s said that college is the biggest dating pool you’ll ever have in your life. But if you’re like me and you haven’t had a serious relationship in college at all, it can feel like you’re running out of time. Watching Sex and the City as a college senior, I saw women

over 10 years older than me still fumbling through romance and dating. They don’t have relationships figured out, and that’s okay. They’re still complex, successful, and beloved. Over six seasons and two movies, they learn that it isn’t about finding the right partner so much as it is about finding the right friends.

I saw Emily last week. We spent Easter together in Arizona, where she lives now. Over the holiday we threw a dinner party, swam in a waterfall, sang Taylor Swift songs down the speedway in the 90-degree heat. One night, sitting by the fire pit under the Tucson stars, we talked about our old friends, our last ill-fated situationships, what life next year might look like for each of us. She asked me if there were any new men (“boys,” actually) in my life, and then she asked me what episode of Sex and the City I was on.

The truth: I was watching the last season slowly. I was trying to make it last as long as possible. Over the last few years, my friendship with Emily has existed mostly in these short conversations over text and FaceTime and in the memes and TikToks we send back and forth. Watching the same shows, reading the same books—it’s our way of saying I see you, and I know you’ll understand this the way I do. In the media that connect us, in the space of a question about Sex and the City, we are saying I’m here, I miss you, and I remember this about you. So maybe it’s true—the real, enduring magic of Sex and the City is the friends we make along the way.G

Reimagining Taiwan’s defense through joy

BY YEN-HAN CHEN

A cherry orchard by the house. Above the cherries beetles hum.

The plowmen plow the fertile ground And girls sing songs as they pass by. It’s evening—mother calls them home. A family sups by the house.

A star shines in the evening chill. A daughter serves the evening meal. Time to give lessons—mother tries, But can’t. She blames the nightingale. It’s getting dark, and by the house, A mother lays her young to sleep; Beside them she too fell asleep.

All now went still, and just the girls And nightingale their vigil keep.

– “A cherry orchard by the house” the Casemate by Taras Shevchenko

There is a version of Taiwan that I know and love, and then there is the version of Taiwan in the news. In the former, there are juicy mangos, brilliant royal poinciana blossoms, and majestic mountain ranges. In the latter, there are military exercises, air defense identification zone violations, and Chinese territorial ambitions. In a way, it is like the Shevchenko poem, where life goes on despite a vague but real prospect of war.

Over the years, Taiwan and China have moved away from being mysterious, faraway lands to frequent and notable topics in the collective consciousness of the world. Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait have become subjects of intense scrutiny as Chinese expansionism becomes ever more threatening to Taiwan’s sovereignty and democratic institutions. Taiwan is a sovereign state that China ahistorically claims as one of its provinces. China has also endorsed genocidal rhetoric such as “keep the island, not the people” and a “final solution” to the “Taiwan Question.” A rapidly modernizing People’s Liberation Army, the elimination of rival factions within the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, and growing ethnic nationalism have all furthered Chinese aggression.

We must stand up to authoritarian aggression by seeking out and celebrating stories of joy. While this sounds paradoxical, fighting against dehumanization and authoritarianism must involve highlighting humanity and the qualities that make people human, namely joy.

The weapon of authoritarianism is fear, deriving its power from coercion rather than public will. Thus, to a tyrant, there are no

the joy and the humanity of the Taiwanese people. Taiwan is not just a pawn existing in a geopolitical game. It is home to more than 23 million people and over 1250 species of endemic plants and animals. It is home to diverse cultures from all parts of the world, a reminder of Taiwan’s place in the Age of Discovery and subsequent colonialism. Limiting our understanding of geopolitics to lines on maps and war footage overlooks this history, this identity. People in Taiwan are still people, and they do not spend their days worrying about Chinese military aggression. People raise their families. People go to work on the weekdays and markets and parks on the weekends. People pray at temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues. We choose to mark our special moments. We choose to fall in love. We choose to live in joy because living in fear is no way to live at all. To have hope and joy is to be defiant against authoritarianism and against all odds.

This is not to say people in Taiwan are oblivious to the danger. We know what is at stake. Our parents’ generation lived under a brutal military dictatorship from China on the same land that is now a democracy. And during our grandparents’ generation, it was a colony of Japan. An undemocratic future orchestrated by foreign leaders is not a mere hypothetical, but a part of lived history that is very real. And should China succeed in its annexation of Taiwan, the specter of authoritarianism will likely return. But the truth is, the threats will continue from China

Joy allows Taiwan to stand up for itself and write its own story. China has portrayed Taiwan as an unstable society to the world. Partly, this is to attack the merits of Taiwan’s fledgling liberal democracy in an attempt to delegitimize Taiwan’s political institutions. Partly, this is to dissuade outside interactions with Taiwan, which would bolster Taiwan’s standing in the international sphere. And neglecting stories of joy endorses the narrative that Taiwan is an island of desolation. Celebrating joy is fighting against the untruths that justify the actions of the Chinese war machine.

Taiwan does not need to be liberated. Quite the contrary, Taiwan is already free and showing the world its splendor. We are home to a multitude of cultures dating back hundreds and even thousands of years. We are the only state in all of Asia that enshrines marriage equality in law. We have peaceful transfers of power with free and fair elections. People watching Taiwan from afar: Please listen more to those on the ground, which, thanks to social media, is easier to do than ever. Listen to the news and the pundits, but also keep in mind Taiwan is a society, where everyday people do everyday things and create joy despite the animosity from across the Strait. Listen to the independent journalists, artists, scholars, and musicians that call this place home. The stories they tell are ones of their lives and their humanity, something no external threat or attack can extinguish.G

National Portrait Gallery's Kinship provides a reflective glimpse into our closest relationships

BY RHEA BANERJEE

“Families are forever—in the good, the bad, and the spaces in between.” These words appear alongside artist Ruth Leonela Buentello’s work at the National Portrait Gallery. Her dynamic portraiture is part of the Gallery’s Kinship exhibit, the latest in their “Portraiture Now” series.

Featuring eight contemporary artists, Kinship depicts the complexities of human relationships through various media, emphasizing different perspectives on intimate interactions. The placement of the works and contrasts between rooms—from colorful wallpaper to monochromatic art pieces to door jambs—accentuate the roles of storytelling and memories in connecting different generations, cultures, and families. Encompassing both the living and the dead, time is the string connecting all of the works.

Buentello’s artwork is exhibited in a room awash with pink, her vibrant pieces distinct against floral wallpaper. Her paintings have 3D elements with the inclusion of telas, or fabrics, such as emerald ribbon adorning the edge of “Under the Mexican Colchas” (2012). This multimedia art immerses the viewer in a homey, warm room, surrounded by a family sitting with and hugging each other, exploring kinship through moments of shared silence.

The Kinship project started in 2018, and the separation and loss that followed during the pandemic provided a new angle for the exhibition: finding hope in darkness. Portraiture as an art form shows the vulnerability and private moments of families, but also the community that unites us.

When I entered the exhibit, I was struck by the room immediately to the left, housing Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s lively work. One portrait, “Nkem” (2012), displays her partner wearing his “senator suit” from their wedding. The traditional Igbo and Niger Delta garments are mixed with the fabric found in European formal wear. Collaged onto his body are numerous images of American pop culture influences contrasted with the couple’s Nigerian culture. Another portrait displays Crosby

mirroring Frazier’s own experience with toxic pollution in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Small frames hold images of Cobb’s son rinsing his mouth with bottled water and a satellite view of the town. Next to them is a larger, staged portrait of Cobb’s family staring directly at the viewer. Their humanity shines through the raw pain of the portraits, highlighting their united front fighting for accountability in government. These parallels continued through the exhibit, ending with people able to drink water in their hands from a small, flowing stream and Cobb standing in her living room a year later. While its

The next room depicts Sedrick Huckaby’s kinship with people who come from the same home. Though kinship often has a strong physical presence, Huckaby’s work illustrates how it can extend to a spiritual level. “Connection” (2020) surpasses the 2D space to depict a connection between the living and dead. The oil painting on the wall presents an abstract figure with a skull for a face, foregrounded by a childlike sculpture made of newspaper papier-mache sitting atop a desk chair on a wooden platform. Hunched over, the child holds a piece of cardboard in the shape of a book. This piece masterfully bends the restrictions of time and distance, and shows a kinship that extends across lives, hidden as a result of time but strongly bound together nonetheless.

Jess T. Dugan’s work examines time passing across generations of her family. Her photographs capture cherished moments among family. Spread across the walls at eye level, they confront the viewer with their intimate subjects. Many portraits mirror each other: One photograph shows Dugan embracing her child while another has her partner, Vanessa, holding their child in an outdoor shower. Another duo on opposite walls depicts Dugan embracing her wife in bed and Dugan resting her head on her mother’s lap. While Dugan’s work is more explicitly a statement about the lack of queer family representation in cultural spaces, the strength in familial vulnerability expressed by these photographs is a theme echoed by all eight artists.

monochrome coloration created a sense of solemn distance from the crisis, this archive acts as a reminder of the Cobb family victory in the eventual indictment of the officials.

Crossing over to the right side of the exhibit, the portraits take on a different tone. Anna

The hallway connecting the six rooms presents Thomas Holton’s evocative photography. Holton always felt a disconnection between the clashing sides of his identity—his Chinese heritage and American upbringing. In 2003, he met the Lams, a Chinese family living in NYC that accepted Holton into their home and demonstrated the possibility of connecting both sides of his culture. That sense of belonging became the foundation for Holton’s definition of kinship. Through his photographs, he presents intimate moments between both worlds: family meals around the table, moments

Breastfeeding runners can win marathons. Now, races are finally setting them up for success

BY MIA MURILLO

When Aliphine Tuliamuk crossed the 2022 TCS

New York City Marathon finish line as the top American, the moment was made even sweeter by her two-year-old daughter Zoe running into her arms. The Nov. 6 race was the first marathon Tuliamuk had finished since giving birth to Zoe in Jan. 2021, months before she represented Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics.

Only a few months postpartum and still breastfeeding, Tuliamuk and her coach felt confident in her training for the Tokyo Olympics. Then, just weeks before the race, they discovered there would not be any breastfeeding accommodations for her at the start of the marathon or throughout the course.

“I didn’t have enough time to pump the morning of the race,” Tuliamuk said on the Ali on the Run Show, a running podcast. “My breasts were feeling full at the start and I didn’t know how I could finish a marathon like this.”

In her Olympic debut, Tuliamuk submitted a “did not finish” status just

This expanded lactation plan not only creates space for professional runners like Tuliamuk, who are breastfeeding and competing at the highest level of the sport, but also eases the logistical concerns of the everyday breastfeeding runner, who does not have as much support as professional runners on race day.

“Our default is to assume that we will not be supported,” marathoner Julia Sachdev, a 33-year-old mom of two kids, said in an interview with the Voice. “The first two marathons I ran as a mother, my requests for pumping accommodations were denied.”

Sachdev competed in the 2018 California International Marathon eight months postpartum, despite her breastfeeding accommodation request being denied. With her husband acting as a courier for her pumping supplies, driving two hours so she could pump near the start, Sachdev successfully completed the race.

In collaboration with &Mother, an organization that supports mothers in sports, Sachdev is now working to make breastfeeding services more accessible in marathons and other road races— starting with the TCS New York City Marathon and the Boston Marathon.

“Running the Boston Marathon had been a dream of mine for years,” Sachdev said.

“Running a sub-three-hour-and-five-minute race at 11 months postpartum would have been out of reach without the support of &Mother.”

between their careers and the chance to start a family.

During the 2022 TCS New York City Marathon, six of the top 10 finishers in the women’s elite field were mothers to young children. Lonah Salpeter, Viola Cheptoo, Edna Kiplagat, Hellen Obiri, Tuliamuk, and Jessica Stenson finished second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and ninth, respectively.

In one of the most competitive fields in Abbott World Marathon Major history, such a dominant showing by mothers signifies a changing tide in the culture of professional distance running in favor of mothers continuing to compete after birth.

While everyday runners participate in races primarily for the sheer love of it, they still deserve similar support structures that encourage them to stay in the sport.

The expansion of breastfeeding accommodations through the &Mother movement creates a space that can support runners who are chasing big goals— but only if those who are breastfeeding know this resource is available to them. During the 2022 Boston Marathon, runners were only informed of the lactation tents if they first inquired directly.

“There was no press release about the accommodations,” Sachdev said. “Lots of pumping runners told me that they ran engorged, uncomfortable, or self-expressing milk in porta potties.”

before the halfway point due to the lack of accommodations. Tuliamuk will always be an Olympian, but the lack of support on the course deprived her of the opportunity to truly compete and showcase her talent and fitness.

One year later, at the TCS New York City Marathon, Tuliamuk found herself in a much more supportive and inclusive environment for breastfeeders thanks to the tireless work of community organizers.

The New York Road Runners—the organization that spearheads the TCS New York City Marathon—announced an increased lactation plan in an effort to remove barriers to full participation for runners who are breastfeeding. Lactation tents and equipment were available for use in the starting villages at Fort Wadsworth and in miles 8, 16, and 22 along the course.

Pursuing running goals and breastfeeding are not mutually exclusive, but the ability to operationalize adequate support systems for breastfeeding runners can influence their ability to continue succeeding in the sport.

Before 2019, many running sponsors, like Nike, falsely conflated pregnancy and motherhood with women’s abilities to perform well. Running contracts effectively steered athletes away from pregnancy during their peak performance years by withholding health insurance and paid time off for pregnancy.

After Olympian Kara Goucher gave birth to her son Colt in 2010, Nike suspended her contract until she started racing again. At seven months postpartum, Goucher raced in the Boston Marathon—not because she wanted to compete, but because she needed to get paid.

Since a 2019 New York Times article exposed these practices at Nike, many professional running contracts now include fewer punitive clauses around pregnancy. This decision maximizes a runner’s career potential, preventing runners from definitively choosing

In anticipation of the 127th running of the Boston Marathon on April 17, the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) has announced its lactation plan and has also debuted a new program aimed at helping pregnant and postpartum runners.

For the first time, pregnant and postpartum runners can now defer their acceptance to the marathon, since current qualifications require individuals to qualify based on a time standard the year before the race. For expectant runners, this new program can ease the burden of qualifying and forgoing what could be a oncein-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the race.

design by cecilia cassidy; photos courtesy of julia sachdev

Pregnancy does not represent the end of a running career—and programs like these are normalizing and operationalizing what competition after birth can look like. G

Even as memory fades, joy remains

BY AMINAH MALIK

When I was younger, and my mom would feed me my dinner, I used to always ask her why she opened her mouth when she brought the spoon to my lips. I was the one eating, not her, so why did she open her mouth with me? She never managed to give me a good answer why.

Now, I find myself in my mom’s shoes, instinctively and inexplicably opening my mouth as I feed my grandmother. And just like my mother, I cannot really explain what drives me to do so. It’s simply a manifestation of emotions deep within me: the need to protect and provide, along with boundless love. I’m not feeding a young child like my mother, but somehow, the act is the same. My grandmother has dementia, so in many ways, the disease has returned her to a childlike state. While at first she just forgot little things, eventually she forgot big things too. Today, we get excited if she remembers her own name.

Caring for my grandmother places a lot more responsibility on my family. A dementia patient like her needs round-theclock care, which means my family and I are always coordinating schedules and timing our errands down to the minute to ensure she is never left home alone. It means less sleep on nights when her melatonin doesn’t kick in and doing the absolute maximum to be safe during the pandemic. There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Caring for her is hard.

When people see the challenges our family faces, they often offer advice about how we can have fun: telling us to take our grandmother with us on an outing or offering to watch her themselves so we can take a vacation that lasts longer than six hours. I know they mean well, but as her primary caretakers, we are the only ones who truly understand the hundreds of moving parts that go into the job, so we know these pieces of advice are completely unrealistic. When people unintentionally ignore the realities of our situation and encourage us to do the same, they come off as insensitive and ignorant about our lives. Their well-meaning input becomes an illustration of how little they understand the ins and outs of dementia patient care—of how little they understand my grandmother.

The problem is, people seem to think that for our family to be happy, we must have the experiences a typical family would have. But

that will only continue to get worse, and as a family we are limited by our responsibility to her. But that doesn’t mean we don’t find joy. Our joy simply deviates from the norm. It exists despite the coexistence of hardship. People tend to minimize some stories to a tragic element. When I tell someone a funny story about my grandma, I’m met with only pity and people telling me, “That’s so sad.” Don’t get me wrong—dementia is a cruel illness that is painful to watch. But just because the illness’s progression is sad doesn’t mean our lives are too. And it doesn’t mean that the illness has defined our relationship as one of sorrow.

Rather, it’s done the opposite. I’m closer to my grandmother than I ever was before. The hardships of dementia patient care have fostered new opportunities for us to connect. The love I feel for her has grown with every nonsensical story she’s told me, with every incorrect name she’s called me, with every spoonful of applesauce I’ve fed her with my own hand. Watching her forget more and more with each day might hurt, and when she looks at me and tells me her mom is waiting for her to come home I feel a chisel crack open my heart, but that doesn’t change the fact that every second I spend with her is full of joy.

The coexistence of joy and the hardships of dementia is a truth people seem to have a hard time grasping. This misunderstanding is what triggers feelings of pity, discomfort, or awkwardness when I talk about my grandmother. For whatever reason, hardship is perceived as world-defining. But joy is not

At the end of the day, my grandmother’s dementia is challenging both for her and for the rest of my family. But these challenges are integral to our family dynamic. So when it comes to caring for her, I’m not looking for pity or ways to pretend her dementia doesn’t make my family’s life more difficult. I’m just looking for support. Because despite all the pain, I would drop anything to care for her.

The happiness we find in each other may not be the one most people imagine, but it is happiness nonetheless. There is joy in the way she smiles at me when I kiss her on the forehead. There is joy in the way she still loves jewelry and anything sparkly. And there is joy in having her with me. So I really don’t need to ignore, or even overcome, all the obstacles that dementia has introduced in our lives to feel happiness.

Joy, for me, is intertwined with the instinctive need to protect, provide, and care that overcomes me as I spoon applesauce into my grandmother’s mouth; the emotions that part my lips and open my mouth as I feed her.

Joy, for me, is simply loving my grandmother. And even if she can’t remember who I am, I know she loves me too. G