Student Poem Earns National Acclaim The Significance of Small Suns

By Hanning Yan ’25

my mother grew up poor in eastern china and when i was little she whispered to me (like a secret like a story like a prayer) that when the days were good her father, my grandfather, would bring back a single orange for their family to share. she told me that peeling that orange, that little ball of gold, felt like holding all the riches in the world. their family of four would get two wedges each and even on dark winter nights next to the fire each pocket of juice was a drop of sun.

(in china oranges are a sign of long life. prosperity. they are new year’s gifts. they bring good luck. they are the color of glowing gold, to give an orange is a shining sign of wealth.)

when she moved to america, my mother had nothing. coming to a new, strange country for the wisps of hope for a brighter future, isolated from friends and family, without the worldly comforts of 16 years of life. and then: in her college’s dining hall there was always a bowl of fruit stocked with sweet oranges. a sign of the american dream. a sweet-smelling prophecy. the oranges my grandfather worked so hard for in such a casual bounty, like the plastic bowl was filled with little round miracles. with little pieces of hope.

(in the united states oranges are just a fruit. they are $1.99 per pound at the store because they are grown in abundance and often thrown away, merely another cheap fruit for the cafeteria.)

By Julia Fox

Hanning Yan '25 is a national gold medalist in the 2023 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for her poem i think my mother made it. she graduated college, became a working woman, married my father, gave birth to my brother and me. the american dream: a house in suburbia, two kids running around in the backyard. and every sunday when my father goes for groceries, he always comes back with two netted bags filled with the oranges that have followed behind my mother her whole life. my brother and i eat oranges by the handful. as my mother peels the skin off another clementine and passes it to my outstretched fingers i think that she is handing me a priceless gift. we will never have to be hungry the way she was. we will never know what it was like: to be cold and tired, to feel such joy from two little wedges, carefully pried apart. who knew one orange could mean so much?

"The Significance of Small Suns."

Founded in 1923, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards are the nation's longest-running, most prestigious educational initiative supporting student achievement in the visual and literary arts. The program has an impressive legacy of being the first to acknowledge creative talent and is today's largest source of scholarships for creative teens.