nuAZN | #30. ALCHEMY by nuAZN

nuAZN a l c h e my

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nuAZN Editor in Chief Brendan Le Print Managing Editor Kim Jao Creative Director Michelle Sheen Assistant Creative Director Gracie Kwon Photo Director Lianna Amoruso

Publisher Julianne Sun Leisure District Editors Kaavya Butaney, Rie Kim Worldwide Editors Joyce Li, William Tong, Jade Wang Gathering Editors April Li, Judy Zeng

Page Designers Jessica Chen, Valerie Chu, Indra Dalaisaikhan, Katie Jiang, Allison Kim, Jackie Li, Kelly Luo, Luna Xu, Allen You Photographers Joyce Huang, Ava Mandoli, Cassie Sun, Yinuo Wang, Diane Zhao Corporate Ashley Guo, Lucia Shen Contributors Yiming Fu, Juliana Hung, Esther Lian, Annie Liu, Sriman Narayanan, Shravya Pant, Maya Ramaswamy, Victoria Tran Models Ishika Arora, Sanjana Basava, Stacy Caeiro, Katie Chang, Elaine Cui, Shreeya Iyer, Jonathan Lai, Kennedy Naseem, Pari Pradhan, Sanjana Rajesh, Nandini Taparia

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COVER BY LIANNA AMORUSO & MICHELLE SHEEN

leisure district healing the inhospitable land lausanity dancing between dishes turn the world to gold

6 7 10 12

worldwide 14 18 20 24 27

a coalition’s composition the making of eve lessons in alchemy have you eaten yet? empty nests

gathering ju zee land you’re magical, girl from up on deering lawn brown gum bai bai boy

30 31 32 33 34 | nuAZN

PHOTOS BY VALERIE CHU, JOYCE HUANG & DIANE ZHAO

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erhaps the alchemists of old were unsuccessful in their quests for eternal life or miraculous gold. Their shaky grasps of natural composition rendered the concept of mythical panaceas and youth elixirs a relic of the times. But despite the world aging out of alchemy, its core principles still inhabit the modern body — through our faith in the impossible, the minor magic we find in the mundane, the everlasting search for a universally applicable solution. Alchemy’s theory of transmutation, the turning of ordinary metals precious, roots itself in the philosophy that even concrete objects are subject to radical transformation. So, as

editor’s note

the belief would have it, everything remains in flux, especially the self and community. For nuAZN’s 30th issue, we immortalize these stories of metamorphosis, in every sense of the word, on paper. On page 7, see how Caroline Lau became a star of Northwestern women’s basketball. Dissect the term “AAPI” through the lens of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students on page 14. On page 20, merge light and dark in nuAZN’s personal alchemy experiment. Hop on an amusement park ride at “Ju Zee Land’’ on page 30, or romanticize your Main Library cram sessions on page 33.

PHOTO BY AVA MANDOLI

nuAZN has been my alchemical project for the past year: my search to create something timeless. I’m in the final quarters of my time at Northwestern, and over my last four years, there is nothing I am prouder of than the revival of this magazine and the people who helped bring it back. Enjoy the Alchemy Issue — and every issue that follows — so we can say we’ve unearthed the long-sought secret to forever.

Brendan Le

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Healing the

STORY BY JOYCE LI

DESIGN BY KATIE JIANG

INHOSPITABLE LAND Mitski is back — loving and hurting in equal parts.

t first glance, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We reads like an anthology of hidden, everyday wounds. “Bug Like an Angel,” the opener to the indie singer-songwriter’s seventh studio album, sees Mitski ruminating over the bottom of a glass to somber acoustic guitar, confessing “sometimes a drink feels like family.” In “I Don’t Like My Mind,” a twangy countryesque ballad, she embodies a workaholic, who, when forced to be alone with her thoughts on an “inconvenient Christmas,” eats a whole cake only to throw it back up. In “The Frost,” she sits with the memory of a lost best friend, the melody trailing off gently as she sings “it’s just witness-less me” to an empty house. Loneliness, a Mitski staple, pervades the album. In an accompanying press release, she calls it her “most American album,” intent on bearing witness to the “painful contradictions” of a country often “devoid of love.” The album was partially inspired by her experiences as a biracial woman, which make her feel “other” — unable to fully belong in both white and Asian communities. Mitski believes that, like herself, most Americans hold identities that somehow alienate each person from the people around them. “I almost feel like a majority of Americans are actually ‘other,’” she tells NPR. “That’s kind of what makes America what it is.” But upon a deeper listen, the album is also a quiet exercise in healing. After calling for fans to

“retire the sad girl shit” in a Crack Magazine interview last year, Mitski doesn’t remain stagnant in her portrayal of sadness in The Land. Instead, she contrasts moments of despair with ones of unprecedented hope. Even in the record’s gloomier tracks, Mitski sprinkles in levity. In “I Don’t Like My Mind,” she wails mock-melodramatically, “A whole cake! All for me!” “Heaven,” arguably the first unambiguously joyful song in Mitski’s discography, paints a picture of domestic bliss as Mitski sips contentedly from her lover’s leftover coffee: “A kiss left of you / heaven.” The album’s closer takes place in the aftermath of a relationship. As Mitski brushes her hair naked after a shower, she marvels to the mirror, “How I love me after you / King of all the land.” The way Mitski embraces herself on this track feels like an earned resolution to her earlier work with its regret and self-loathing. “The night is mine,” Mitski sings, the “you” of the song a distant memory. “All my own now.” Sonically, the album feels both familiar and new. Mitski has created something more intimate by leaving behind the disco-pop sound and hardened, fatalistic voice she adopted in her previous two albums. The bulk of the album’s instrumentals — stripped-down guitar and muted strings — are quiet and minimal, underpinning Mitski’s haunting vocals and poignant songwriting without much distraction. True to its title,

PHOTO COURTESY OF EBRU YILDIZ

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the album takes the listener on a trek through an inhospitable Wild West, its country influences manifesting in the use of fiddles, pedal steel guitars, swinging rhythms and tinny vocals. This sonic theme is clearest in “Buffalo Replaced,” the track Mitski said became a guide for the rest of the album. In it, the beating pulse of drums and guitar complement lyrics hinting at the overlap between industrialization and nature, describing “fireflies zoomin’ through the yard like highway cars” and “freight trains stampedin’ through my backyard.” There are a few notable exceptions, moments of sublimity, in this otherwise understated record: the swell of the chorus in “The Deal”; the slow, shimmering build-up in “Star”; and the chorus of voices that surge up suddenly behind Mitski in “Bug Like an Angel,” enveloping her in a three-part melisma that echoes the word family. The contrast between simplicity and grandeur is also reflected in Mitski’s lyrics, which hint at divinity in moments of mundane tragedy. In the opener, the corpse of a drowned insect in a glass resembles an angel when held up to the light. In “Buffalo Replaced,” the rumble of freight trains evokes long-gone wild buffalo stampedes, and Mitski’s hope is a blind, nameless creature whose sleeping face comforts her. The album itself feels like a matured version of the best parts of her former work, a portrayal of home and love like none of her prior albums.

LAU SANITY Up-and-coming second-year Caroline Lau is making waves on the court.

STORY BY INDRA DALAISAIKHAN DESIGN BY JESSICA CHEN PHOTOS BY VALERIE CHU

nlike your typical morning routine, Communication second-year Caroline Lau starts off her day lifting weights as early as seven. After class, Lau rushes up to Welsh-Ryan Arena for practice. Once she clocks out of her athlete shift, Lau resumes student life, diving into homework. Wash, rinse, repeat. Lau serves as the captain and guard for the NU Women’s Basketball team, dribbling between Northwestern’s rigorous academics and Division I athletics. According to Inside NU’s player reviews for the 2022-23 season, Lau could be a “star” on the team. As a kid, Lau played every sport from softball to soccer, but found her calling in basketball when she was eight. “I just love playing basketball. … That’s what I want to do all the time,” Lau says. Her father, Steve Lau, says she could have pursued multiple sports. She credits her early basketball development to her two older twin brothers: Growing up playing against taller and stronger opponents helped her improve. In secondary school, Lau played for her school’s varsity basketball team, 6-foot seniors towering over her. She was already on track to pursue a collegiate basketball career after receiving a Division I offer in seventh grade. Lau brushed off many of these achievements as simple feats, only mentioning middle school memories of talking to colleges rather than the Ivy League offers. It wasn’t until

LEISURE DISTRICT | nuAZN

I interviewed Lau’s parents that I found out she was a basketball prodigy. Her mother, Jennifer Lau, says she was always a humble player. By the end of senior year, about 20 schools contacted the guard in hopes of recruiting her. In the end, Lau chose the Wildcats for its academics and impressive team, something she says “seemed like the right fit.” Steve Lau credits his daughter’s success to her work ethic. He says she’s a hard worker and achieved most of her goals on her own. “You can’t be a tiger parent and be all over it because they gotta enjoy it. … She enjoyed it,” Steve Lau says. Through middle and high school, Lau indeed lived and breathed basketball. Every day, she dribbled between traffic cones in the driveway of her home. Even inside, Lau bounced through the hallways just to get an ounce better. “Every day, rain or shine, she would practice,” Jennifer Lau says. Caroline Lau comes from a family of athletes. Her two older brothers play Division III football and her two younger siblings are high school athletes as well. Once Lau began to play basketball, her family committed to taking her to every practice and supporting her at every game. “My family is definitely my biggest fan,” Lau says. But she isn’t the only beloved basketball guard in the family. Former NBA player

Jeremy Lin also has a special place in the Laus’ hearts. Lau says between all of them, they have seven Lin jerseys. Lau has only been to two Knicks games in her entire life, one of which was to watch Lin play. She lit up when reminiscing about traveling from Connecticut to watch the electrifying “Linsanity” in action. Before her first season, Lau posted a picture on Instagram of her dribbling a basketball with an old photo of Lin striking the same pose. To her surprise, Lin left the comment, “You rock the pose way better. I gotta delete that photo of me from the files lol.” Lau immediately sent the comment to her family’s group chat, sparking a mini Jeremy Lin fan club meeting. It wasn’t a matter of their shared identities as Asian Americans but Lin’s dominant presence on the court that solidified her admiration. “I was very young, so in that moment I wasn’t even thinking [it was] because he was Asian American,” Lau says. “We just loved him.” She says Lin’s impact on the NBA made him a role model for her when playing. But she never thought of Asian American representation in sports until she started looking for it herself. “If you look in college and at pretty much any high level of basketball, there are no Asian people,” Lau says. According to the Pew Research Center, Asian Americans are one of the fastest growing racial groups in the country,

NOTABLE ASIAN AMERICAN ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN SPORTS Jeremy Lin (2012)

Vicki Draves (1948) First Asian and Filipino American to win a gold medal in the Olympics (3-meter springboard and 10-meter platform diving).

First Asian American to win a gold medal in Olympic women’s figure skating.

Kristi Yamaguchi (1992)

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First Taiwanese American player in the NBA. Sparked “Linsanity” by leading a seven-game win streak for the Knicks.

accounting for 7% of the population. However, the same sentiment isn’t reflected in the U.S.’ most adored sports leagues. In the 2021-22 season, Asian American players only accounted for 0.4% of the NBA. In the same WNBA season, there were only three Asian American players out of the overall 148. Weinberg first-year Crystal Fuqu Wang is the new addition to the NU Women’s Basketball roster, making Lau and Wang the team’s only players of Asian descent. “That’s a lot for a college basketball roster,” Lau says. “It’s kind of unheard of.” When Lau got to Northwestern, she says it was a “tough transition,” because her play time on the court was limited.

but she soon began integrating them into her workouts, bulking up. One thing that didn’t change, though, was her mindset on and off the court. During games, Lau tries not to overthink and stays level-headed, living in her own bubble. When she’s in the zone, the bright arena lights start to dim and the audience’s cheers wash out, leaving just Lau against the hoop. Lau’s body takes over, she says. “I just trust what I know how to do,” Lau says. Lau likes to think of herself as someone who doesn’t get too hung up on losses. She moves on quickly, ready to take on the next challenge. Losing games “sucks” but only motivates her to be better. “I definitely had challenges, but nothing that made me question whether I wanted to play basketball or not,” Lau says. A player of few words, Lau takes a second to think when answering

“I definitely had challenges, but nothing that made me question whether I wanted to play basketball or not.” — Caroline Lau However, as she started to get more time on the court, her momentum picked up. She started seeing changes physically manifest. Four months before NU, Lau never lifted weights,

questions, concisely responding with a simple sentence or two. She lets her performance on the court speak for her. At 5 foot 9, Lau’s speed and quick senses on the court make her a key player. When reflecting upon Asian American athletes who broke boundaries in sports, Lau says she has a complicated relationship with representation. “I don’t really feel like I need to put that kind of pressure on myself,” she says. Her goals are to shoot threepointers and pass flawlessly, Lau says. Representing an entire multi-faceted community is a huge responsibility. But her presence on the court already seems to do the job.

Sunisa Lee (2021) First Hmong American to win a gold medal in Olympic women’s all-around gymnastics.

First Japanese and Haitian tennis player to win a Grand Slam singles champion title at the U.S. Open.

Naomi Osaka (2018)

The first female snowboarder to win two Olympic gold medals in the halfpipe event.

Chloe Kim (2022) LEISURE DISTRICT | nuAZN

DANCING

The careful choreography of cleaning up the kitchen.

BETWEEN

DISHES

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STORY & PHOTOS BY AVA MANDOLI DESIGN BY VALERIE CHU

have spent countless hours as my Chinese mother’s sous chef. With each home-cooked meal, I watch the kitchen transform from a state of equilibrium to chaos and back. The preparation of a meal and its clean-up is more than an assembly line: It is a dance. In this choreography, we waltz and glide across the kitchen, spinning to dodge hot pans and sharp knives, reaching over one another to check on the stove or oven.

When we’re finished eating, the encore begins. Like many immigrant parents, my mother rarely reaches for the dishwasher, preferring to scrub each pot and pan by hand. My dad, older sister and I instinctually take our places beside her. One dries and the others put dishes away, weaving back and forth to open cabinet drawers and restore the kitchen to stillness. Plate by plate, it becomes an empty stage again, ready to host its next performance. LEISURE DISTRICT | nuAZN

turn the world to The metal with a special significance in Desi culture, passed down through generations.

M RY STO

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DESIGN B PHOTO Y AL L EN YO U S BY VA L ERIE CHU

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edill first-year Norah D’Cruze’s family is building a new gold jewelry collection, year by year. Her grandparents — who lived and worked in Bangladesh — were poor farmers, she says, whose jewelry was lost or dispersed among about eleven siblings. After immigrating to the U.S., though, her family had the means to buy more gold jewelry. “Every Christmas and every birthday [my mom] gets me a new piece, even if it’s really tiny, like a ring,” she says. “But [she] wants me to be able to pass something on to my kids because she didn’t have that much to pass on to me.” As with many Desi women, gold is about heritage for D’Cruze. Historically, gold jewelry was one of the few possessions a Desi woman was allowed to keep throughout her life — even after marriage — and then pass on to her children. While many Desi cultural norms surrounding marriage and female property rights have evolved, the value of inherited jewelry for younger generations still holds. A metal that was once monetary now functions as a matriarchal token.

“It’s like a piece of my family that I wear every day,” Weinberg secondyear Sanjana Shankar says, gesturing to her two gold rings: one from her grandmother and one from her mom. “It definitely ties into my feminine identity … in terms of my family and my relationship with my mom and my relationship with my grandma.” Shankar recalls her grandmother telling her about gold’s auspicious qualities. Her experience in Bharatanatyam, a classical South Indian dance form, also fostered her love for the metal, as the dancers adorn themselves with gold jewelry and headpieces while performing. “Bharatanatyam itself was a really unique space that I had to express my cultural identity,” Shankar says. Shankar’s Bharatanatyam jewelry carries meaning from that space. But there is a practical value to gold jewelry as well. D’Cruze says that in dangerous times, gold jewelry is an assurance of security for women. Her mother and grandmother have told her about how their gold jewelry was important to their well-being while living through genocide in Bangladesh. As some of the first in their families to grow up in the United States, young Desi women are incorporating family heirlooms into their own fashion. “My parents immigrated here from Bangladesh, and they [could] only bring so much,” D’Cruze says. “So the jewelry that I have is very important and special to me.” D’Cruze also says that recently, wearing cultural jewelry has felt more widely acceptable, and she has begun wearing it more in public and even on professional occasions. Normalizing Desi jewelry has become a major development in the world of Brown fashion, with bold jhumkas — a traditional bell-shaped earring — and stately bangles integrated into everyday outfits. A key example of this jewelry revolution is the work of designers like Simran Anand, founder of jewelry company BySimran. Despite launching

just last year, BySimran has amassed over 18,000 followers on TikTok and 16,500 followers on Instagram. The company’s signature “micro” and “baby” jhumkas have gone viral on Instagram. Anand, who lives in New York City, drew inspiration from her Punjabi upbringing in small-town Pennsylvania to design easy-to-wear, meaningful Desi jewelry pieces. From thin necklaces to delicate payals, or anklets, Anand hopes Desi women — particularly young women — can come to embrace what she calls the “Desi girl aesthetic.”

“It’s like a piece of my family that I wear every day.” SANJANA SHANKAR , WEINBERG SECOND-YEAR “We’re not Indian enough for the Indian people, we’re not American enough for the American people, so the Desi girl aesthetic is a combination of both,” Anand says. Anand is particularly drawn to gold pieces in her designs. Although BySimran has expanded its collections to also include silver and rose-gold colored accessories, even those pieces are made of white gold, not silver. She says she has always been surrounded by gold, culturally and religiously. Gold accents her everyday life, from her house decor to her family home’s prayer room. As a Sikh, the metal also has religious significance from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab. “The Golden Temple is the highest place in India for Sikh people, and it was 100% made out of gold,” Anand says. The fundamental quality and material of gold sets it apart from any other,

Anand says. For one, it is one of the most long-lasting metals. “You can’t really fake a lot of things,” Anand says. “If you see a shine in a certain piece, it’s because of the quality of the gold.” For some Desi youth, evolving Western beauty standards, including recent “silver vs. gold” debates on TikTok, don’t diminish the huge cultural importance of gold. Others are frantic about color theory filters, checking if their veins are blue or green to seal their fate between gold or silver jewelry. One of Dutch jewelry company LORI-LORI’s videos on the app even goes as far as to say it’s “one of the hardest decision[s] that every woman has to make,” before showing viewers how to properly analyze their veins using natural light. But across platforms, many Brown girls fall back to gold, with or without a TikTok filter. Desi TikTok user @aishuadd made a video captioned “Maturing is realizing that gold jewelry + culture suits us best.” User @museerar writes, “me, a brown girl, absolutely refusing to see how id look in silver because gold is the only option.” Gold’s significance is unshakable in the subcontinent and beyond. Regardless of the change in how much gold costs now or in 30 years, Anand does not see its value diminishing. “Gold is evergreen,” Anand says. Shankar says gold is the only jewelry she’s ever known, and its value comes from its origins and family history. American gold is precious because of its financial importance. Indian jewelry is worth more than “tenfold” compared to American gold, especially inherited pieces, because it ties her back to her culture. And for D’Cruze, it doesn’t hurt that gold complements her skin tone too. “I feel like [gold] was made for Brown girls,” D’Cruze says. “We look so good in it.” LEISURE DISTRICT | nuAZN

N O I T I

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W LI & DO G N EN MA VA UDY Z EN A Y J YB SHE R E O L ST EL ICH M BY GN I S DE

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AP in A

hen Medill second-year Kederang Ueda walked up to the Asian American Student Journalists table at the Fall 2023 Student Organization Fair, he could tell the students working the table weren’t quite sure why he was there. Half Palauan and half Japanese, Ueda has dark features, chestnut brown skin and slightly wavy black hair. He says the students’ apprehension is something he’s experienced many times before. “No shade against those people, because it’s just natural. I don’t look like anybody that typically identifies as Asian American Pacific Islander,” Ueda says. “But I think that’s a part of the work that needs to be done in expanding that term.” Organizations using terms like AAPI and AANHPI vary widely in how much they actually represent their non-Asian American constituents. While pan-ethnic terms can help people identify with something bigger than themselves, some Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students say these terms obscure the uniqueness of their cultures and lived experiences. Instead, they suggest using specificity in language to let individual cultures shine. Ultimately, determining where coalitionbuilding efforts should give way to the recognition of individual ethnicities can be less like drawing a line and more like painting a gradient.

UNDER THE UMBRELLA Coalition acronyms build on European racial categorizations imposed on ethnic minorities, says Asian American Studies Program (AASP) professor Ji-Yeon Yuh. As a consequence, the AAPI community emerged. Being racialized means community members unite under shared experiences, according to AASP Director Nitasha Tamar Sharma. For example, Asian Americans collectively face the model minority myth, the glass ceiling and perpetual foreigner portrayals — all phenomena that emerge from the racial framework of the modern European empire, Yuh says. The 1980 and 1990 U.S. decennial censuses combined Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders into a single racial category, grouping people with roots in East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Hawai`i, Guam, Samoa and other Pacific islands. This standard was established in 1977 by the Office of Management and Budget to aid federal agencies in gathering “compatible, nonduplicated exchangeable racial and ethnic data,” according to the agency. Following these categorizations, acronyms emerged: AAPI for “Asian American Pacific Islander” and APA for “Asian Pacific American.” More inclusive variations also arose later: APIDA for “Asian Pacific Islander Desi American” and AANHPI for “Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander.” These alternatives sought to highlight frequently overlooked ethnic groups like Desis and Native Hawaiians, according to CNN. While the U.S. Census grouped Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders together, the Asian American intellectual movement began exploring ways in which Pacific Islanders could be a part of the Asian American coalition, according to the article “Whither the Asian American

Coalition” by Paul Spickard, a history professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The Association of Asian/Pacific American Studies was founded in 1979 before changing to its current name, Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS), just three years later because some Pacific Islander Americans questioned the tokenization of Pacific Islanders in its title. At first, the combination of the two communities was more often than not done by Asian Americans who chose to group Pacific Islanders with them, rather than a collaborative effort, Spickard wrote. In the 21st century, Pacific Islanders began engaging more in these coalition spaces. Debbie Hippolite Wright, retired vice president of student development and services at Brigham Young University-Hawaii called for a “frank, open, mutually respectful and mutually supportive dialogue” between the Pacific Islander and Asian American communities with the goal of building coalitions, according to Spickard. Today, Pacific Islanders continue to explore their role in pan-ethnic communities.

TAKES ON THE TERM Ueda was born in Colorado and moved to Hawai`i when he was seven years old. The move forced him to consider his racial and ethnic identity because of the discrimination Microneseans face in Hawai`i. To Ueda, the term AAPI resonates with him because he identifies as both Asian American and Pacific Islander. However, he says it’s challenging to use such a broadly inclusive term in a meaningful way. “It really is an umbrella term,” Ueda says. “There are so many different colors and features out there across the Pacific.” The lack of specificity in panethnic terms can also flatten people’s cultures. Jessica Lee (McCormick ‘22)

is Chinese, Japanese, Okinawan and Hawaiian, but she grew up in Oʻahu and attended a school specifically dedicated to Native Hawaiian students and preserving their culture. “I think every culture deserves their own representation,” Lee says. “I don’t even combine the Asians together or the Polynesian cultures together. There’s definitely similarities, but I think there’s big differences that deserve to be seen and heard.” Although Lee says she looks East Asian in appearance, she most strongly identifies with the Hawaiian part of her identity because of how immersed she was in its culture growing up. When the NU Hawaiì Club revived on campus, Lee had an opportunity to connect with people she could better relate to. Just speaking the vocabulary she used at home with other Hawaiian students was something she didn’t realize she was missing. A few times, she went with the club to Aloha Eats, a Hawaiian-owned restaurant in Lincoln Park serving plate lunch, a Hawaiian staple. Plate lunch is typically made up of two scoops of rice, a portion of mac salad and a protein such as chicken katsu, Portuguese sausage or barbecue beef short ribs. The dish originated during Hawaiì’s plantation era in the 1880s when workers from China, Japan, the Philippines, Korea and Portugal arrived to harvest sugarcane. They packed foods from their own cuisines for work and the plate lunches that developed from them became distinctly Hawaiian. The history behind plate lunch reflects many Hawaiians’ mixed heritage. About 25% of people living in Hawaiì identify as two or more races, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. “It’s an evolution of different cultures together,” Lee says of Hawaiian identity. Weinberg fourth-year Noah Blaisdell, who most strongly identifies

WORLDWIDE | nuAZN

with being Native Hawaiian and Filipino, says pan-ethnic terms are a significant point of discussion in the Asian American studies classes he’s currently taking. “I think it’s important for Samoans and Tongans and Native Hawaiians to be part of a group because they’re stronger collectively, at least politically and socially,” Blaisdell says. “But I think there also should be recognition for individual communities.” These collective networks don’t just appear, however. It takes work to connect people with shared identities when they are at NU, where less than 1% of students are Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, according to Northwestern’s most recently available diversity report from the 2020-21 school year. When Weinberg second-year Dean Uata — who lived in Tonga when he was young — moved to Evanston, he quickly realized how few Polynesians there were at Northwestern. To this day, he has not met any other Tongans. He was never very vocal about his identity growing up, but now he wears it as a badge of pride. His LinkedIn bio reads, “The One & Only Tongan @ Northwestern.” Uata took it upon himself to seek out other Pacific Islanders to connect with and learn from. “I hop on LinkedIn, and I type in very common Polynesian last names. And usually, the first two or three people who are on there are like super sick people doing big things,” Uata says. No matter their field, Uata says the professionals he contacts always say they’re glad he reached out because there aren’t many other Pacific Islanders in their lines of work or in their lives. He often

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connects them with other Pacific Islanders he’s met. That was the genesis of Nesian News, Uata’s startup at The Garage dedicated to connecting and inspiring Pacific Islanders around the world. “Nesian” comes from the Greek word “nesoi,” meaning “islands.” Uata aims to connect Melanesian, Polynesian, Micronesian, Indonesian and other Pacific Islander communities through this platform. He’s starting with longform podcasts interviewing successful Pacific Islanders and hopes to expand it to be a professional directory and a mentorship program. “Eventually at some point, it has to fall on us to actually go out there and make our voices be heard,” Uata says.

the Pacific, such as Asian migrants working on Hawai`i’s plantations. Still, acronyms like AAPI and APIDA do harm in hiding different ethnic groups, Sharma says, because they don’t reflect the same accuracy and specificity that comes from using full names. She demonstrates it by saying “Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders” instead of “AAPI,” because it conveys that the two groups are separate. Sharma personally doesn’t use these acronyms. Besides making her cringe, she says, these terms came from the government in ways that aren’t “intellectually, politically or on-theground informed.”

IN THE BOOKS

CREATING COALITION SPACES

In the academic sphere, scholars are working to sift through the historical and socio-political correlations between Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. AASP treats Pacific Islanders as a separate group. Sharma and Yuh say Pacific Islander studies are more closely related to Native American and Indigenous studies than Asian American studies, but there are zero ethnic studies professors of Pacific Islander descent at Northwestern, Sharma says. However, AASP carefully incorporates Pacific Islander experiences into class curricula, according to Sharma, who grew up in Hawai`i. Sometimes it makes sense to discuss Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians and Asian Americans together, as their histories have overlapped. For instance, much of Asian immigration went through

Since the AAPI community emerged from socio-political origins, Asian Pacific American Coalition (APAC) Co-President and Weinberg fourthyear Lena Rhie sees the Asian American identity not as a replacement for ethnic and cultural identities but as a representation of shared political and civic values. Northwestern’s Multicultural Student Affairs (MSA) staff and APAC both use “APIDA” in their everyday work. Rignesha Prajapati, MSA assistant director for APIDA student support, says inclusion is at the center of affinity spaces. While these labels have their shortcomings, they can serve to help more people feel heard and supported. Prajapati, who is South Asian, says they can’t speak for individuals of

Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander descent on whether they identify with the APIDA label or not. Rather, she hopes to provide a supportive space for those who do choose to identify with the label and want to participate in MSA programming. Rhie says different labels have different pros and cons, and how people use the terms is an individualized choice. “It’s not like we’re trying to make a statement with that name necessarily. I think it’s just trying to be as descriptively accurate as possible, which I think is sometimes almost an impossible task when it comes to describing the Asian American community,” Rhie says.

A LAYERED IDENTITY Some Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders say other people have influenced their relationships with their own identities, which can conflict with how they self-identify. Lee felt that her teachers in Oʻahu wanted her to represent their culture well in the continental U.S. After arriving at Northwestern, where there are few Native Hawaiians, she began questioning if she was the right person to carry that responsibility. “I have imposter syndrome about, ‘Am I the right representation?’” Lee says. The feeling of otherness is not exclusive to the continental U.S. The antipathy Ueda experienced as a Micronesian living in Hawai`i demonstrates how tensions also exist between communities under the umbrella term AANHPI.

While Ueda says otherness made him feel ashamed about his identity as a child, he began to take more pride in being a Pacific Islander as he grew up. He said reading work by 20thcentury Black writer and activist James Baldwin in high school was a turning point, especially when he wrote an essay about his own racial identity based on Baldwin’s work. “It was just a very introspective moment. … I started to realize how much James Baldwin’s experience of being a Black man in America, and that racial aspect of existing, was the same thing that I was existing in,” Ueda says. He started considering how just by existing, he is representing something bigger than himself. That has become something he takes pride in. “It’s something that I don’t think is said often enough, that everybody is beautiful,” Ueda says. “Everybody deserves to have a space here, and I think that it’s easy to forget that, especially if you’re not represented around you.”

“It’s something that I don’t think is said often enough, that everybody is beautiful.” KEDERANG UEDA, MEDILL SECOND-YEAR

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The

makingof Eve

Four generations, one mitochondrial fingerprint. STORY BY MAYA RAMASWAMY

round this time of year was when my great-grandmother, Paatima as I always called her in Tamil, passed away. Two weeks before, my grandmother, Ammamma, dreamt of her mother sitting on a swing looking at the sky. Paatima looked quite young in the dream.The crinkled folds of her frock bristled in the wind, the heat yawned and the flies bickered against the trees. But something felt wrong. Around midnight, when Ammamma had her dream, Paatima had called her. “It’s time for me to go,” Paatima began. “It’s time for me to say goodbye.” And she did, physically. But it seems the time has yet to come for her to say goodbye in spirit. To me, at least, there isn’t an explanation for Paatima and Ammamma’s psychic connection. For so long, I’ve been asking myself how it was possible for my grandmother to be so in tune with my great-grandmother that she practically “predicted” her passing. If there is a theory behind it, it must have some infinitesimal component — something cellular.

One of the most fascinating forms of genetic inheritance is the “mitochondrial Eve hypothesis.” The mitochondria is a unique organelle in that it carries segments of its own DNA, independent of the knotted bunches stored in a cell’s nucleus. The hypothesis is that this DNA is exclusively passed down from mother to daughter. The mitochondria retains this genetic fingerprint in each newly fertilized embryo, from a woman who started it all — the “mitochondrial Eve.” It seems fitting to call this mysterious Eve my Paatima.

nuAZN | ALCHEMY

DESIGN BY GRACIE KWON Paatima was a town girl, the first born after two miscarriages. She was raised to be a housewife from the tender age of 10, cleaning pans, whisking batter and feeding her seven siblings. At 14, Paatima had an arranged marriage to a man she’d never seen before. From churning butter to steaming the urad dal, Paatima kneaded her family’s wants and sated their desires. She was the mitochondria itself. Soon, she was tasked with having children. One of those seven kids was Ammamma, her eyes a replica of Paatima’s, but clearer somehow. All Paatima ever wanted for Ammamma was a good education. “I didn’t know how important it was until I realized I never had it,” Paatima told me.

Ammamma was the eldest daughter, also raised to be a housemaid. Except this time, girls could go to school. With her onyx-pleated braids and plaid skirts, Ammamma was a schoolgirl by day and a cook by night. This lasted until the 10th grade, when money suddenly became tight. “It was time to choose among the children,” Ammamma recalled, “and yet it never really was a choice.” Ammamma’s father decided to only pay for the education of his sons. The work never stopped, of course. The mitochondria kept chugging at full steam. Ammamma too had an arranged marriage, and soon after, she had three kids, the second being Amma, my mother. Ammamma spent the remainder of her life in the kitchen, sizzling, steaming, grinding and kneading until the bread need not be proven any longer. Her bones frayed, but her mitochondrial fingerprint remained. Amma carried Ammamma’s eyes from the start, brown and bright with wonder and curiosity. “The minute her eyes blinked open,” Ammamma told me. “I knew I wanted her to do everything I never could — everything I never knew could be done.”

Amma finished university in India at the top of her class with dreams of being a doctor. She was destined for greatness. But Amma didn’t get into medical school. She felt empty but couldn’t afford to dwell as the time came for her to get married. My mother had an arranged marriage, but she was allowed to date my father for roughly a year before they married. Soon after, my mother had to immigrate to the United States, where my father lived. In the U.S., my mother began to feel her inherited filaments twisted and stretched thin. The evening curd rice meals became afternoon pizza brunches. The rose-colored saris became ripped jeans. The hot arid dew dressed with particles of ancient stars became snow. Those first 10 years in the U.S. made her question everything: How do you enter a foreign land with just a suitcase of clothes and a cereal bowl and accomplish everything you want in life? She tried filling that gap by translating her anxiety into ambition, securing corporate executive roles, cooking for the household and exploring a country her family was never able to. After those 10 years, Amma got pregnant. A few days before I was born, my mother dreamt of me. “You were seven years old, curled up alongside me. I asked myself who you were, but intrinsically, I knew.”

When I was born, the first thing the doctor told my mother was the color of my eyes. “Her eyes are so brown, I can see right through them,” my doctor said. They were bright, like my mother’s. I like to think they still are. But they carry pressure behind my frames, both physically and in spirit. Like my mother, I can attend a phenomenal institution to pursue my undergraduate schooling — but without the pressure of being a housemaid, wife or mother. I am beginning to learn how I should craft my own

life and establish my own name alongside the endless impressions of Paatima’s fingerprint. To make a mark on Paatima’s fingerprint, servitude is expected. For Amma, Ammamma and Paatima, living in India for the majority of their lives meant servitude was defined with respect to their families. For me, that was never really the case. Being raised in the U.S. has redefined what kind of “servitude” I aim for. The U.S. has trained me to use the words “service” and “success” interchangeably. This is explored in the book Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley by Shalini Shankar, Northwestern professor of anthropology and Asian American studies. The book discusses how Desi teenagers grapple with the “model minority myth,” which expects specific minority groups to achieve high educational and economic success. There is this unspoken demand for me to join, become or even exceed my counterparts. That’s why I’m at Northwestern — to become a part of our “model minority.” But this worries me — especially since the delicate padding of Paatima’s thumb was lined with years of care towards her family. Servitude became her biological makeup, which she then passed on to her daughter and granddaughter. Even while my amma commanded the marketing industries of healthcare and beyond, her care was never left behind. What if I never uphold the same care? Or, more importantly, what if I don’t want to? I have yet to knead anyone’s wants or sate anyone’s desires. I have yet to bring about a family and battle the triumphs and constraints of womanhood as my ancestors have done. I come from a line of housemaids, wives, mothers and leaders. I come from an Eve with bright brown eyes dulled gray with life, born from dreams carried across the infinitesimal particles of blood. I’ll never forget that. But that doesn’t mean I can’t add my own mitochondrial DNA with time, and be an Eve of my own making.

WORLDWIDE | nuAZN

Lessons

in Alchemy

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lchemical reactions are ever present in our lives, but we don’t always acknowledge them. College is an example: a time for constant reformation, transformation and growth; a time where we feel all the feelings, all the pain, joy, excitement and sadness stronger than we ever will again. A time that adults wish for and teenagers detest. This shoot is our transformation. As Asian and multiracial students, we have the unique challenge of finding where our cultures intersect with who we are becoming, and how we reclaim who we want to be. We are transforming from the base metals we were born into the golden versions of ourselves we’ve always searched for. Transformation is solitary, but not always lonely. Beautiful, but sometimes painful.The two shoots, the light and dark, represent its multifaceted nature. They come together in the center because even though the process isn’t linear, we are never alone. — Lianna Amoruso

PHOTOS BY LIANNA AMORUSO, VALERIE CHU, AVA MANDOLI & CASSIE SUN | nuAZN 21

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WORLDWIDE | nuAZN

e v a H you eaten yet?

When “eat more” converges with “stay thin.” STORY BY ESTHER LIAN DESIGN BY GRACIE KWON Content warning: irregular eating, mentions of body dysmorphia

far cry from the flamboyant Singapore portrayed in movies like Crazy Rich Asians, the two-bedroom apartment that my po po and uncle shared was cramped, dimly lit and modest. But every time my family and I joined them for dinner, the place would come alive with the aroma of homestyle cooking, and the old wooden dining table would be crammed edge to edge with plates of dishes: steamed white chicken, fragrant rice, chicken broth, satay, otak-otak. Cheap, disposable cups filled with sugary Pokka green tea struggled to find their places on the table. My po po never liked my plate empty. As she scooped food onto my plate, she would affectionately remind me that I needed to limit the time I spent in the sun as my skin had tanned too much or that my body seemed to be scrawnier than before. “Duō chī diǎn, bùrán nǐ huì xiāoshī de,” she would say as she shoveled another scoop of rice into my bowl. Eat more, or you’ll disappear. Of course, these incessant comments and unrelenting scoops of food were delivered out of love. Across the Asian diaspora, food is at the crux of gathering and family. Yet, in direct conflict is the almost-unattainable Asian “thin ideal.” The innate nature of Asian parent-

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child relationships put immense pressure on youth to conform with certain beauty standards. This paradoxical relationship between food as a source of cultural identity and the pressure to maintain a particular physique has led to complex dynamics within Asian families. Growing up, food played a significant role in Medill firstyear Gauri Adarsh’s close-knit bond with her mother. “If I’m ever stressed out about midterm season or exam season … my mom will always make sure to have some rice and curry, so I always have a good dinner,” she says.

“She’s always saying ‘I need to lose weight, I need to lose weight’ because she doesn’t think that she could be But food is a double-edged sword. Both Adarsh considered beautiful by our and her mother faced eating problems: Adarsh noticed her mother constantly striving to lose weight while community otherwise, even simultaneously worrying about Adarsh skipping meals. “It’s very important to her that if I’m stressed out, my though she really is.” go-to should be eating food, not … not,” Adarsh says. “It’s a big thing between me and my mom.” Eating disorders and body dissatisfaction issues plague Asian women. A study from The International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health showed European and American women tend to underestimate their weight. On the other hand, East Asian women were much more likely to overestimate their weight, with many average-weight East Asian women believing themselves to be overweight. In an increasingly technological world that has become influenced by social media, women tend to be swayed by unrealistic beauty standards set by movies, television and popular influencers. Recently, Indian media has been swept by a wave of “diet culture” that promoted slender bodies in magazines, music videos and more, according to a Journal of Intercultural Communication Research study. A BMC Psychology study found that a combination of “diet culture” and the growing pervasiveness of social media has turned dieting into “a social obligation that outweighs healthy eating patterns” within the Indian population. Adarsh describes the ideal Indian female body as “just thin,” with no room for anything else. “I have no other words to say because it’s not even curvy or anything,” she says. “Just thin, and maybe a bit taller.” Adarsh would regularly hear her mother complain about her weight. Her mother would stuck to strict diets and fasted between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m. each day. Adarsh characterizes her mother’s behavior as toxic and detrimental to her own preexisting body dysmorphia. “She’s always saying ‘I need to lose weight, I need to lose weight’ because she doesn’t think that she could be considered beautiful by our community otherwise, even though she really is,” she says.

PRESERVATIVE FREE

— GAURI ADARSH, MEDILL FIRST-YEAR Adarsh traces many of her behaviors back to her mother and her cultural roots. Similar to her mother’s daily use of an Indian skin-lightening cosmetic product, Adarsh continues to purchase foundation a shade lighter than her natural skin tone. Weinberg third-year Christina Liu, who attended a public school in China, grew up in an environment with a similarly strict beauty standard that valued pale skin and slender bodies. As a middle schooler, Liu spent a lot of time in the sun, darkening her skin and subjecting her to relentless teasing from peers. “I consciously started to use my mom’s facial cream because I thought that that would make my skin a little bit paler, but obviously, that didn’t work,” she said. In high school, Liu began to alter pictures of herself to appear thinner. As her friends began to consume nothing but salads and chicken breast, Liu also placed herself on a strict diet, avoiding all sugar and carbohydrates. Because Liu attended a boarding school, she could only return home during the weekends. Her mother cherished these precious three days of the week, and much to Liu’s dismay, would cook her copious amounts of food.

YAMA SA SOY S AUCE

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As a homesick first-year, my heart hurts when I think about just how much precious Singaporean food I left to waste. “Sometimes, she would make me those cute little plates of fruits with apples, bananas and cherries, but they also have sugar — so I will not touch it and will return them to her,” Liu says. “She didn’t express anything, but I feel like she was definitely hurt.” And yet, Liu’s mother would always make sure there was a portion of rice or noodles — essential components of the Chinese diet — on the table for her, even if she refused to touch them. Upon entering college and having ample access to the salads and Western foods she once enjoyed, Liu began to recognize her love for Chinese food. “Back then, I chose to eat [Western food], but now I have to,” she says. “I miss Chinese food a lot.” Like Liu, I wasn’t able to recognize the significance of home-cooked food until I lost access to it after moving to college. My mother hated cooking. Yet, after we moved to Los Angeles, she kept a meticulous yellow notebook filled with recipes that reminded us of home. Such is the intertwining of Asian food and the unmistakable glimmers of familial love. Chicken curry, Hainanese chicken rice, kway teow and more — the essential dishes of Singapore were on my plate every evening. I was taught to finish every bite of food on my plate. My parents would always nag at me, saying that the number of grains of rice I left to waste would equate to the number of pimples on my future husband’s face.

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As a member of my high school dance team, I prided myself on staying slender so I would never be the odd one out. I always felt my mother scooped too much food onto my plate. Terrified of failing to meet her expectations, I would leave the dinner table bloated and in pain — and on more drastic nights, sneak leftovers down the kitchen sink drain. As a homesick first-year, my heart hurts when I think about just how much precious Singaporean food I left to waste. Although my mother and her homemade dishes are far out of my reach, I feel her presence in the text reminders she sends, asking if I’ve eaten breakfast. And at every meal, I find myself emptying my plate of every last grain of rice. In Singapore, my po po’s and uncle’s small fridge is tucked away in a backroom, unable to fit into the kitchen. When I return to their apartment for dinner, my uncle guides me to that fridge and proudly opens the door, displaying two 1.5-gallon bottles of sweet Pokka green tea. “See?” my uncle would say. “I always remember!” Joyce Li contributed reporting.

Empty nests

Birds have a remarkable ability to remember exact locations even after many miles and meters and months. STORY BY APRIL LI DESIGN BY ALLISON KIM

ecall the first time you saw a bird’s nest. Bird nests can range from barely an inch to 11 meters across. Bird nests can be scrapes in the ground or platforms so big they damage the structure of the very tree they’re constructed on. Birds are considered the most skillful, most practiced of all nest-building creatures. Spurred on by the nesting instinct, the biological urge to protect a heartbeat they have yet to meet, birds work tirelessly to care for their young. They scour the earth for twigs and grass and leaves, generate globs of their own

saliva — anything to ensure that nest width, depth, thickness, density, mass, surface area and elevation will be enough to prevent the eggs from being broken or taken. To prevent them from being swept away by the ocean. The American robin’s scientific name is Turdus migratorius. It flies south in the winter, covering around 100-200 miles each day. The journeys of these robins can take more than a month. The distance from Beijing, China, to Salt Lake City, Utah, is just under 6,100 miles. There is an ocean in between. But in November 1995 the journey would only have taken a young woman about 24 hours if she flew from Beijing PEK, went through customs in Seattle SEA and took a connecting flight into Salt Lake City SLC where she and her husband could go to grad school. This estimation does not take into account the month she stays in Beijing before her departure, preparing for the TOEFL. Nowadays, it takes about 15 hours to get from Western Connecticut to Beijing with two kids (only if there’s minimal traffic on the drive to JFK and the flight is nonstop). The distance is about 6,769 miles. There is an ocean in between. The American robin is the state bird of Connecticut. Robins are altricial

when they’re born, meaning they emerge from their eggs naked and blind and helpless, requiring their mother’s constant attention. The mother does not deny them this attention. Why would she? Not after she’s spent two weeks incubating the chicks, keeping them warm, diligently inspecting her clutch of pale blue eggs, all smooth and Crayola-crayon-perfect and nestled away in the warmth that she’s created. After she’s toiled her days away to ensure the sticks and feathers and mud, the cushion of grass, can create the optimal nest insulation. Unlike the homes that mother birds create for their young, the Bird’s Nest in Beijing is not made out of sticks or mud or grass. It is made out of concrete and steel. It is made out of dusky July evenings when kids flock out to Àolínpǐkè Gōngyuán Park to fly paper kites in the hot wind, the ethylene tetrafluoroethylene cube of the National Aquatics Center shining cyan light onto their faces. Later, perhaps, a few of these children will return to the neighboring Tōngzhōu district, just another night in the midst of the summers they spend in China, when they have long, smoggy months of street markets, bagged milk, old ladies dancing guǎngchǎng wǔ and freezer-burnt mung bean popsicles WORLDWIDE | nuAZN

while the fan blows heavy air around their grandparents’ apartment. The National Stadium (or, more commonly, the Bird’s Nest) was created for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Measuring 333 meters from north to south, the stadium’s construction took four years and 26 kilometers of unwrapped steel. Forty-two thousand tons of Made in China steel. If one were to look at the stadium from the perspective of a bird flying above it, one would realize that it is nearly symmetrical both in the northsouth and eastwest directions. The stadium is constructed from clear rules. Robins, too, operate on clear rules, perhaps imperceptible to the human

observer. As a thrush, the robin becomes nomadic where it winters, wandering in search of its diminishing food supply. But like clockwork, spring brings the robins back. Birds have a remarkable ability to remember exact locations even after many miles and meters and months. They navigate using the sun and the stars, internal mechanisms ticking and magnetizing to the forces of the universe. They remember how to go home. The 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony took place on

Aug. 8, 2008, at eight o’clock in the evening, China Standard Time. For an elderly Chinese couple visiting their daughter’s family in Connecticut, this meant turning on the box television at 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, glasses on, their six-year-old granddaughter huddled between them. Maybe it was strange for them, knowing this extravagant display was taking place a half-hour’s drive away from their apartment back home, and here they were watching it broadcast through a cathode-ray tube on the other side of the world. The same year, your parents get a karaoke machine. On it is a track by Taiwanese singer Jonathan Lee called “Ài De Dài Jià” — “The Price of Love,” some sentimental song about looking back on a young love, something and someone lost. It’s a song from the 1990s that made its way to the mainland in 2004 after your parents already immigrated to the States and

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after your mother already passed through three airports. So your mom never bought the song on cassettes and CDs, the way she would back in college whenever her favorite artists released new music. In fact, although she’s heard the song’s title before, she’s never listened to it until now, with the machine plugged into the clunky TV. It is considered a norm for American teenagers to leave their sound of “Ài De Dài Jià” on repeat, homes 18 years after birth. Robin remembering how your mother would fledglings leave the nest two weeks croon “zǒu ba, zǒu ba” into the karaoke after hatching. Even after exiting machine, the ’90s Taiwanese pop the nest, however, juvenile robins instrumental tinny in the living room will follow their parents around, where it seemed like this was all you’d begging for food. The parents ever know. sing out to them, showing where to forage and warning when predators are near. Only a couple of weeks later, the fledglings become proficient at flying, perhaps forgetting there was once a time they couldn’t even see. I wonder if years after they leave their nests, the birds ever get homesick. Has anyone ever considered conducting a study on that? I wonder if they cross oceans and think about whether they’ll come back to a place they still know. I wonder if they sometimes listen for the melody of their parents’ call, for the notes bursting forth from those vermillion lungs, and imagine, for just a second, they can hear a chord of longing in the tunes that warble through the brittle dawn air. And perhaps years later, alone in your college dorm PHOTOS COURTESY OF APRIL LI room, you fall asleep to the WORLDWIDE | nuAZN

Ju zee land

STORY BY JULIANA HUNG DESIGN & ART BY INDRA DALAISAIKHAN until their homework is done, they can’t leave the dining room table. they can’t be the two sprouting kids who soar down the stairs, almost stumbling as they skip over squeaky steps, almost crashing as they land on the black couch:

a black vehicle with plush seats and invisible doors, that’s closing in three… two… one, a bus driving towards the room’s single window, lined with cracks and speckled in dust, capturing cotton candy clouds drifting through the soft sorbet sunset. the girl in the plaid skirt, the boy in the gray slacks, both run to their older cousins who kneel at the coffee table, beep-booping the buttons of the plastic register, to administer paper-thin tickets that are handwritten and hand-cut, a warm welcome to the amusement park! on the ground level of the grandparents’ home, where upstairs smells of ma ma’s wrapped wontons, and the air steams of yeh yeh’s egg custard, while downstairs screams of rides open only after school, between the hours of midday and goodnight. the kids line up for the swing ride, sandwiching themselves in between the soft slices of the mattress, to be spin and spun by their cousins, where slippery wood pairs with socked feet, propelling them over and off the ground — but dizziness isn’t enough. so the kids plead for the log ride, the attraction forever out of order. but the claw machine, loveseats that kiss, fill with dust stuffies and germy goodies, where the kids control the hand claws forward! no back! no down, only to witness their toy fall back into the cushion. the single window, lined with cracks and speckled in dust, captures the fading fog drifting over the lighthouse moon. turn off the lights, blanket the room into a haunted ride, and tease the screams that blend into giggles, a melody that ceases to the call, that the four of them must come up and eat! and until their food is done, they can’t leave the table. they can’t save the forgotten furniture, snagged stuffies, and torn toys who stay, for the amusement park has closed for the rest of the day.

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you’re

magical, girl Plex prism power, make up!

ART BY ANNIE LIU

7:00

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DESIGN BY JACKIE LI

GATHERING | nuAZN

FROM UP ON DEERING LAWN Romainticizing your life. STORY BY VICTORIA TRAN

DESIGN BY JACKIE LI

ecked out in platform Docs and vintage jeans, you’re dressed to impress — the onlookers in Main Library, that is. Clacking away at your laptop with freshly-done nails, you grace the empty Google Doc with a grand “The” before navigating to CAESAR and dropping the class. You treat yourself to a wellearned last sip of your Norbucks strawberry açai refresher — all in a day’s work. The dreamy falsettos of NewJeans’ “Ditto” filter in through your wireless headphones. “Hey, is this seat taken?” You glance up, locking eyes with your library crush you’ve been mentally pursuing for weeks now. Perhaps a sign from the universe? “Oh, no.” “Cool,” they mumble, sliding into the adjacent seat: a meeting straight out of the dramas your mom’s been binging nonstop. For thirty minutes of “work” (sitting still and looking pretty), the world’s gaze is transfixed on you two. Info Comms is your oyster, if you wish it to be. When TikTok starts failing to capture your attention, you toss your Kanken over your shoulder, whisking your feet out the doors and onto the concrete you’ve trodden a thousand times over. You pass under the carefully hollowedout lettering of the Arch, destination

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PHOTO BY DIANE ZHAO

set for your sanctuary: Happy Lemon. An arduous trek, but you don’t mind. There’s nothing quite like late spring in Evanston: azure skies, wide-eyed rabbits running amok and, most importantly, temperatures above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Your second little treat of the day, but could anyone blame you? Heaven is a passionfruit jasmine green tea on your tongue — halfsugar, less ice and topped with crystal boba. Sipping away until nothing but ice chunks remain in your cup, you amble through the bicycles, joggers and honking geese on the Lakefill’s path to sit on the rocks by the water’s edge. Right as you hike your knees up to your chest, you’re forced to decline your nagging but endearing mother’s call — likely about your little class drop — telling her you’ll call back later. An act of grand disobedience to preserve the sanctity of this moment. When you first stepped foot on Lake Michigan’s shores, you were 18 and held the world within your palms. You’re 21 now, but the everlasting blue has yet to dispel its wonder over you. Soon enough, you’ll have to call another shore home. Even so, Evanston will always have you: your beating heart, your hopes and dreams and the fleeting, pastel-washed memories of your youth — all cast into the horizon and beyond.

N W O R B GU M

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ore-bon,” Anirudh’s mother would sound out. Her finger dragged across the package’s puffed letters. The letters dwarfed the important bit: an image of two chocolate creme cookies. Two packages on the counter, still wrapped in shiny cellophane, sat just out of reach from his hands. What a waste. Anirudh’s hands were big enough to each hold their own cookie. He wouldn’t want one after school. His mother offered it as an afternoon snack. But he’d still be full from lunch and had no desire for sweetness. He wouldn’t be able to give the bore-bons the proper indulgence. But after dinner — after two idlis swallowed in Amma’s fire-red chutney — his mouth cried for them. Amma refused. She said that to eat a biscuit after dinner was to allow a bug to crawl into your mouth as you slept. Bugs, like little boys, loved chocolate. She said this every night, because he asked every night. Ani imagined the bugs feasting on his gums. Tonight, though, Ani had a plan. That afternoon, he had told his mother that he did want a biscuit after returning from a long day of first grade. His mind had changed, he’d said. Life was too short. When his mother handed him the cookie from the package, he walked with the biscuit into the living room. His mother began preparing dinner. Anirudh placed the cookie in his pocket. Dinner passed. The chutney was even spicier than usual. He made his way to the bathroom. He removed the biscuit from his pocket. It was mostly undamaged, save for a few pills of lint that had collected in the cookie’s crevices. It was delicious — much better than if he had eaten it at noon. This was how life was to be lived.

STORY BY SRIMAN NARAYANAN DESIGN BY LUNA XU PHOTO BY LIANNA AMORUSO

He turned into bed that night facedown, so as to prevent the bugs from entering his mouth. Anirudh awoke the next morning. He inspected his mouth in the mirror. His mouth looked rather similar to how it had before. He decided his mother was lying. At kindergarten that day, though, a classmate named Johnny told him his mouth looked funny. “Your gums. They’re brown,” Johnny said. He started to laugh, then waved Timmy over. “Our gums are pink — see?” Timmy said, and the two of them hooked their fingers into the corners of their mouths and pulled outward. Their gums were all, in fact, pink. The whole class gathered round to confirm that Anirudh’s gums were not. On the ride home, he asked his mother why his gums were brown. “You’re always eating so many chocolate cookies, Ani. That’s why,” she said. “Brush your teeth better.” The boys had laughed at him, though. And Anirudh knew for a fact that all those children ate far more sweets than he did: Brow-knees and Ree-sees and Ohree-ohs — all of which his mother refused to stock. Ani got home. He brushed his teeth. His gums did not change color. All he could taste was Coal-Gate and a tiny bit of blood. The bugs, Ani realized. Years passed, and Ani didn’t eat another piece of chocolate for fear of the bugs returning. It wasn’t until he was about his mother’s age, when he looked in the mirror and realized his gums were just brown, like his skin and his eyes.

GATHERING | nuAZN

BAI BAI BOY

Got a man still on your mind? Harness the power of Chinese medicine to make sure you’re never seen simping again. If you’ve thought about the male species in the last 24 hours, you are in dire condition. Your blood pressure will spike, your heart will beat faster than Nayeon’s “Pop!” choreo and your palms will sweat like a little gay boy at a Chinese church. Some patients have an extreme case — the “it’s been a year and you’re still obsessed with your ex” flu, otherwise known as “downbaditis.” This critical condition plagues 250,000 poor lost souls patients nationwide and is a problem not even your dad at the dinner table can solve. But don’t worry, because traditional Chinese medicine offers instant relief. I’m Dr. Yiming Fu Ph.D./M.D./“I went to med school,” and I once visited Taiwan for 10 days, so I’m the most highly certified expert on all things Asian wellness. With my top tips, you’ll whip your body into shape — and your ex out of your boba-sized brain.

STORY BY YIMING FU Signature of Doctor

ACUPUNCTURE 針藥 Now we’re getting to the good stuff. We’ll ease our way into our practice today with some nice my trip to Taiwan, I met real herbal tea to soothe our upset souls. It’s true, hot water can 茶 On Chinese people (they exist!) who 灸 really fix any problem. I love my exotic tea leaves from the HERBAL TEAS

Deering Meadow highland steppes. You can almost smell the fragrant gold phoenix dust on them, which helps clear the sinuses and calm the throat so you can scream “FUCK YOU!” so loudly his Jamestown ancestors shake in their cabins.

MASSAGE Next, we’ll calmly move into a soothing massage practice. You’ll feel your body slowly return to balance after slinging around the lopsided weight of a useless man. Feel free to hop on the table, lay on your stomach and give yourself some shut-eye. I trained in the traditional Chinese art of massage at the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion Shaolin Temple, an exclusive shrine that requires 10 years of celibacy and a Northwestern Wildcard. You can also use your student ID number if you’d like.

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按摩

taught me how to do acupuncture. It was like the movie Mulan came to life. With this new devout Chinese practice I learned, I will penetrate the skin with thin, metallic needles at pressure points along the body, including the forehead, arms, legs and torso. This helps qi circulation, removing blockages (like nose congestion, or that gnarly lump of an ex-man) from your system once and for all.

MOXIBUSTION Final step! This is where it gets spicy! Or as they say in Chinese, là. Sometimes you have to burn your ex right out of your moral consciousness. Moxibustion focuses on the same pressure points as acupuncture, but this time we’re burning small mugwort leaf sticks close to the skin. This is said to expel cold, promote circulation and clear out toxins. For maximum effect, light all pictures of you and your ex up in flames as well. If this last step fails, I would make a bomb. As they say in Asia: Hit them with that DDU-DU DDU-DU!

PHOTO BY YINUO WANG Signature of Doctor

艾灸

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