post- 10/08/2021

In This Issue

How I Read Your Mother siena capone 7

Walking Lily seltz 6

To the Bride to be... at Some Point marin warshay 5

My Childhood

olivia cohen 4

An Ode to Zeta, Delta, and Xi

victoria yin 2 olivia cohen 8

The Ultimate Playlist Roundup

postCover by Anna Semizhonova @wormwood.tales

OCT 8

VOL 28 —

ISSUE 3

FEATURE

An Ode to Zeta, Delta, and Xi discovering a home in more than Greek letters

By Victoria yin Illustrated by lucid clarivoyant @clairvoy.art

As I descend into the basement, familiar colorful

Growing up, the only Greek letters I knew were

Another change I made as a teenager was more

murals surround me. In them, familiar Greek letters make

symbols used in math class: Delta meant change of a

physical—tattoos. In my high school bedroom one afternoon,

appearances while cartoon Wile E. Coyotes and Road

quantity; theta represented the angle of a triangle; and

my friend hunched over my ribcage, carefully pricking my

Runners eat spaghetti, re-enact the birth of Venus, and

alpha and beta were placeholder variables. I never thought

skin over and over with a needle securely fastened to the

face each other as foosball figurines. I reach the bottom and

much of it. During those years of my life, I was more

end of a Ticonderoga #2. Her blonde hair was tied back and

begin making my way through the rooms. The game room

concerned with the calamity that was questioning my

her face was chiseled with concentration. The final result

smells like an old, decrepit basement, the pool and foosball

identity. At the outset, I started wearing slacks and button-

turned out well. It was a heart, or more accurately, a less-

tables look lonely, and the ancient black couch slouches into

downs, men’s novelty t-shirts and oversized jackets. I

than sign and a three. Afterwards, I sketched more ideas, my

itself. The kitchen has spots on the floor. For nearly two

cut all of my hair off. The internal joy I felt in this new

favorite being an ouroboros (a snake eating its tail) weaving

years, these sacred spaces have been abandoned. Moisture

appearance was overshadowed by the embarrassment I

in and out of a Greek delta symbol: a self-created symbol

crept in and pooled, dust settled into corners, and scarcely a

felt at school, where I was hyper-aware of the feminine

of eternal change. After I outlined the tattoo sketch of the

breeze blew through the building.

role I refused to play.

ouroboros snake and delta with an ink pen, I moved on with

Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, This week sped like a train on a track, and we at post- are kinda crounching in its dusty wake. But, we are PUMPED! In a couple stretchy hours, we will be jiving on the waves of a long weekend––one post-it is visiting her little sister in NY, another is spending time with her mom for her birthday, our protoplasmically kissing duo are going to Block Island, and the rest of us are really just going to do exactly what we do on any other weekend, sleeping and staring listlessly at PDFs (or like, hacking things? We have some coders among us).

And you, lucky reader, can be savoring post- one article at a time, perhaps stopping to replenish at Aroma Joe’s (is it worth it?) or roam moodily in the leaf-clumped streets. As it happens, this issue talks about New York, mothers, and being excited. What a coincidence!

Soups

Our Feature writer rejoices in the community she’s found at Zete, Brown’s queer-centered fraternity. One writer in Narrative looks ahead to her sister’s future wedding, while the other brings together joyous and tragic moments over the theme of plastic tubes. The nostalgia continues in Arts & Culture, where one author translates the New York City cultural phenomenon of walking to Providence, and the other reflects on mothers and memoirs about them. For those seeking a musical rock to stand on this semester, Lifestyle has you covered with four ultimate playlists for all your weekly vibes.

So, whether you’re moody and needing the boost that only post- can provide, or already hyped for things to come, step into our digital pages this week! You know what they say: People who posttogether… well, I’ll let you infer.

Godspeed and granola,

Olivia Howe

Editor-in-Chief

2 post–

1. Primordial 2. The Great American Melting Pot 3. Panera Bread Bowl 4. Bubble bath 5. Tomato basil 6. Maple syrup soup — the only way to eat pancakes 7. Stone Soup 8. Swimming pool 9. Cereal 10. Soy Vanilla Latte a.k.a Three Bean Soup

FEATURE my life. By senior year of high school, I was exhausted and

in 1776, chose Greek letters because they corresponded

for something I couldn’t place. To me, Zete is the first

irritated by the routine of steady hometown life. It seemed

with their secret motto “Philosophia Bios Kybernethes”

organization that made me feel fully and intimately a part

like something in the atmosphere latched onto all of us,

or “Philosophy is the guide to life.” Future organizations

of something larger than myself, its traditions and history

pacifying us into a languid state. I was anxious to leave Des

followed suit.

instilled into me, its future bare in my hands. I’ve worn many

Moines and meet new people, have new experiences. To be

Fraternities as we know them today draw criticism for

hats at Zete: I planned parties as a Social Chair, organized

around other nonconforming, queer people. To find some

reports of hazing and mistreatment of pledges. The majority

events as Vice President, and this semester, I ascended

place where I belonged.

of Zetes, including myself, never considered themselves

to presidency. Intimidated by the position, I frequently

When I arrived at Brown, I first entered the door under

someone who could belong to such institutions. We found

awoke this summer from nightmares about mishandling

the Greek letters with several other eager first-years ready to

that Zete was, well, different. The history of Zete is unique,

the organization or making mistakes. As time progressed, I

step into any college party we were allowed into. We spilled

and more closely tied to inclusivity and diversity than most

grew more confident in trusting myself and my brotherhood

over each other toward the music echoing through the

fraternities. Zeta Delta Xi is an independent fraternity that

to continue to make Zete a better place. Reflecting on the

basement. People twirled on the table and dance floor, pop

was created from the ashes of Zeta Psi, an all-male national

tattoo sketch, still safe in my drawer, I find comfort in

music raged, and a strip of lights flashed luminescent blue

chapter that didn’t recognize the female officers that our

knowing that there will always be change and progress. And

then green then red onto the dancers. It was easy to melt

chapter began recruiting in 1982. On January 24, 1987,

I know when I look back years from now, I won’t forget the

into the crowd, nodding our heads and swaying our hips.

Zeta Delta Xi was born as a local, co-educational fraternity.

community I had. There are too many memories to write

At the same time, it was hard not to notice the interesting

As a local chapter we had the power to customize our rush

down: running around campus in the middle of the night

decorations: license plates from Hawaii, Idaho, and more

and pledging process over time to be more comfortable,

with my Zete brothers, helping each other with problem

lined the top of one wall above appropriated traffic signs.

consensual, safe, and inclusive.

sets, binge watching Squid Game together, and dancing until

Posters with contact information for any concerns or issues

The rush events I attended that first spring ran the

I was sore.

during parties were taped to the doors. And on the ceiling,

gamut, with astrology, milkshakes, and healing circles all

The rituals and comforts of our home were disrupted

unnoticed by the patrons, was a painting of the Creation

in the mix. I learned more about this non-fraternity-like

by the pandemic; our members were scattered around

of Adam with two revisions. It was not Adam, but Wile E.

fraternity that I was about to join, comprised of an eclectic

the world and the doors to our spaces locked. As the fall

Coyote, and it was not God, but Road Runner.

group of students: queer, not queer, students of color,

unfolds, our home reawakens. Amidst all of the uncertainty,

After that night, I kept coming back. Members of the

bookworms and actors, drinkers and sobears, from all class

it’s reassuring to know that my brothers and I have the

house introduced themselves to us. There was Taja, with long

years and backgrounds. There was something magnetic

opportunity to live together again. We mopped up the water,

hair, offering us water or a walk home. There was Christien,

about Zete. About walking into the lounge, plopping down,

cleaned the couches, arranged the furniture, installed air

full of energy and charisma, dancing with us. And there were

and, like a weary adult, basking in the comfort of coming

filters, and revived the dance floor. We returned, and our

my friends and me, laughing and smiling and swaying. The

home after a long day. And there was the feeling of being

doors are open.

next semester, I did my readings in the lounge and rarely

translucent, seen for exactly who I was and being completely

Brotherhood and fraternity do well in expressing the

missed a chance to hang out or dance in the basement. I

and utterly welcome. At this point, fraternity is almost a

familial ties that exist in Zeta Delta Xi. Currently, I sit at

learned that the symbols above the door stood for Zeta Delta

misnomer. Family would be more accurate.

my desk on the second floor of our house, surrounded by

Xi, the name of a co-educational fraternity that I happened

Many months after I became a brother, I lifted my

my community and grateful for this reflection on this place

to stumble upon. That was how most people found it, they

paintbrush to the game room wall, tracing Road Runner in

that is not just a place but a home, a home that is not just a

told me: stumbling.

black. The bird is poised in mid-air, jumping toward a Smash

home but a family, a family that is not limited to our current

The origins of “Greek life” as we know it began in the

ball. Lex, another member, worked on the sharp lettering.

brotherhood but which extends to members and alumni

mid to late 1800s, when college students began gathering

These walls have seen so much, I thought to myself. The

who joined decades before me. I look forward to meeting all

to discuss and debate over topics not included in rigid

memories flooded back. Grinning glitter highlighting my

the new members that will inherit our home and transform

curricula, including current events and literature. These

cheeks, surrounded by voices and bodies. Sitting on the

it, meeting members who already have, and working with

informal groups evolved over time into organized debating

couch, feeling the bass pulses from a Kim Petras song

the current brotherhood to continue the work that began

and literary societies. Within these organizations, students

reverberate through my body as others conversed. Now I

decades earlier. Transitioning back to being on campus is

developed deeper relationships and, in addition to the

was not a visitor, but the host, making a mark on the walls

definitely a struggle, but being back in my unique home

intellectual element, began to hold social events like parties

of my home.

makes it all the better. And, down in the basement, I imagine

and dances. Group members often lived together, and classic

Over my time at Brown, I have dipped my toes in

fraternity houses became more popular close to the early

many different groups, extracurriculars, courses, friend

20th century. The first fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, founded

groups, and concentrations. Looking, always looking, but

“Oh no. I’m jiving. Oh no!”

“One time I was eating granola with oat milk, and I had to stop and think, ‘Wait, am I horse?’”

“Give me a conversation flow rating out of ten.

It’s kinda hard when you’re trying to bulk” “Oh um, how do we know that terrorism has come like right out of the dinosaurs?”

the decades-old murals shine just as brightly as they did the day they were painted.

I got lucky. Lucky in the sense where I was able to grow up Asian American without having a clear division between my “Asian” and “American” sides. My parents wanted me to understand, speak, and listen to the languages they grew up with, and Asian culture, food, and traditions were integrated into my everyday life. I didn’t realize how lucky I was and that my experience was not normal for many Asian Americans. Many are isolated and shunned and forced to reject or at least hide their Asianess. I broke out of my Asian bubble when I came to college and noticed that Asians were a minority scattered around the town. I found a community of people with shared backgrounds, but I still feel homesick sometimes for the city-wide cultural celebrations and opportunities to speak my languages that I grew up with. While I may feel lost sometimes, I realize that I have the power and strength to celebrate my culture and embrace my identity despite the scene around me. I want to empower others to feel this pride.

—Anonymous redenvelopestories.net Our identity is where our best stories come from.

Stories from the Asian community at Brown University covering relationships, self-acceptance, career paths, food, politics, and more, read in three minutes or less.

October 8, 2021 3

NARRATIVE

My Childhood

a story told through plastic tubes

by Olivia cohen Illustrated by joanne han 1. Granny When Granny was in the hospital, it felt like her life was held together by plastic tubes. Delicate, clear tubes connected the IV bag to her papery arm; a tube dotted with condensation connected her thin nose to the oxygen tank at her feet. Twin red-and-white striped tubes, hollow candy canes, bridged the gap between a carefully sealed water bottle and her pale lips. It seemed like such a precarious existence: She was living on a threshold, completely at the mercy of whatever was circulating through that intricate network of little clear straws.

2. The Water Slide When I was nine, I went on a road trip to South Dakota to visit Mount Rushmore. I don't remember Mount Rushmore, but I do remember La Quinta, a massive yellow stucco hotel that smelled like every surface had been doused in chlorine. I didn't mind the smell, though, because it meant there was a pool, and to my delight, this one had a water slide with a whirlpool in it. My brother and I were instructed to sit in plastic inner tubes and grip the sides for dear life as we spun around the center of the whirlpool, like spiders circling a sink drain, until we finally dropped down through a steep, blue-and-red striped chute into the pool of bright turquoise water. I was too small to keep myself upright against the current, so when it was my turn to go, my inner tube flipped over. I flailed and slid forward into the chute on my bare back. As I picked up speed, I felt each plastic ridge scrape against my vertebrae. I hit the water feet-first, immediately followed by my lost inner

4 post–

tube. I swam to the edge of the water and, through tears, showed my mom my raw, red back. She took a moment to finish the page she was reading in her book, dog-eared the corner, and closed it slowly in her lap before offering me some distracted words of sympathy. When I felt as though my pain had been validated, I clambered back up the ladder to go down the slide again.

3. The Straw At my house back in Colorado, if you look behind a row of my mom's favorite novels lining one of our bookshelves, you will find a green plastic drinking straw that wraps around your head and bends into the shape of eyeglasses. The artifact's origin is unknown; for all I know, it was there when we moved in fourteen years ago. When my brother and I first found it deep in a kitchen cabinet, we took turns using it to drink iced lemonade, the juice cold against our cheekbones as it filtered through. Later, the straw dried, sticky with sugar. We discovered that it's really hard to clean the inside of an eyeglass-shaped plastic straw, but it was too precious a relic to throw away. Now, it occupies its own sacred shrine, nestled behind hard-back copies of A Man Called Ove and The Goldfinch.

4. Caramel's Palace There was nothing I wanted more than a hamster, one of the tiny ones that curl up in your hand. I coaxed my parents through a Keynote on the family desktop chock-full of "cute hamster" photos with Shutterstock watermarks. I made some very persuasive points (albeit in Papyrus font): Hamsters don't need to be walked, I argued, because they can exercise themselves on their wheels. Plus, nobody in the house would have to listen to him squeaking because I would keep my hamster's cage on top of the tank of the toilet in my bathroom. My parents wearily obliged. The very next day, I depleted my life’s savings

(as of middle school) at PetSmart in exchange for a purple cage, woodchips, an exercise wheel, a water dispenser, a bag of foul-smelling food pellets, and (most excitingly) a collection of red plastic tunnel tubes. My hamster was going to have his own personal mansion, an architectural feat designed specifically for his ultimate enjoyment. When I finally brought home my new hamster—Caramel—he took one look at my tube palace and promptly dug himself deep into the wood chips at the bottom of the cage. When I tried to pick him up and deposit him into one of the tunnels, he bit me. Caramel passed away a month later from hypothermia after I left the bathroom window open during a snowstorm. I embalmed him in a toilet paper roll and buried him solemnly in an unmarked front-yard grave.

5. The Solar System Just before I left for college, I gave my high school boyfriend a poster of the solar system, rolled neatly in a white plastic cylinder. When he opened it, he struggled to pull the poster out of the tube; it was packed in too tightly. What had been a relatively romantic moment turned into an awkward dance as we spent several minutes trying to pry it out. He held onto the tube as I leaned backward, pulling a corner of the paper as hard as I could. We thought it might rip if we continued, so he resorted to slamming it repeatedly onto my kitchen table like a nearly empty bottle of Ketchup. At last, in a stroke of ingenuity, I was able to coax it out of its packaging with my eyebrow tweezers. It was a beautiful poster: a detailed diagram of the planets and their moons drawn in thin black pen. But it had been rolled for so long that every time we tried to straighten the ends to look at it, it sprung back into a coil. The poster laid curled on his dresser for months. In the spring, before we broke up, I called him and asked about it.

He told me he would flatten the poster ends and hang it on the wall soon. He never did.

NARRATIVE

To the Bride to be ...at Some Point a look into my sister’s future through our pasts by marin warshay Illustrated by joanne han I’m in the room with her. I know my mom is there too, but I can’t say for sure who else is. My mom and I are fluttering around my sister like the little birds that talk to Cinderella before the ball. I’m not sure what this room is, what it looks like, or if it’s even a room at all.

But it doesn’t matter, because all eyes are on her today.

Gabrielle. No one calls her that. Only some greeting cards address her with this formality. But I know her thank-you notes will be signed Gabby, in her handwriting that I’ve always coveted. Letters stout and even, bubbly and curved; their shape suits her so well. She’s organized and driven as hell, but always in her own style. And just as her scribbled notes reflect her character, I know she’s planned the perfect wedding for herself.

She’s ready. Her dress is simple, so all eyes are on her shoes. The details are uncertain, but I imagine they give her height and her toes peek out the front to show the nail color that we spent upwards of thirty minutes picking.

I lead Gabby out of the room, where the chatter from the guests is immediately audible, but completely unintelligible. We’re holding hands. Gabby turns to me, and I’m already sobbing. We lock eyes and let out a little giggle as we sniffle away the tears. That giggle is a little message to each other that says everything we can’t articulate. I crack a joke—probably something

that we’ve been laughing about for ten years at this point—because otherwise we would never stop crying. Our hands still interlocked, the long first note of a song echoes around us, demanding our attention.

That’s her cue.

My hands are now by my side, hers around a bouquet of blush pink flowers. I let her go and before I can say anything else to her, she is standing before me, a newlywed.

That’s how I imagine it will go, anyways. *** Wedding talk always seems to revolve around what will come to be. Gifts for a future home—little salt shakers for midweek dinners and candles for special occasions; the bouquet traditionally caught by the future bride; all the “you’re next”s I hear from my relatives. Weddings celebrate life not yet lived. Except for my maid of honor speech, which is all about the past. *** Gabby, We’ve talked about this moment for years. Well, it couldn’t have been too long, because we only became friends when you left for college. We don’t talk about the time before that—weird. It’s strange to think about how much of our relationship has consisted of us leaving each other and reuniting, over and over.

First, you went on your gap year. It took the distance from Israel to Providence for me to learn how important you are to my sense of self. When you came home for Thanksgiving each year in college, I quickly realized how lucky I am to have a built-in best friend. And then you left again, for India—one of the hardest years of my life. Matthew had just left for college, and you were suddenly on the other side of the world. I didn’t realize how lost I would feel without you two to look up to. I never had to think about it until you left, but I hope you both know how

grateful I am to have grown up in your company. And finally, you left for Cleveland to start your adult life.

Geographically, it was tough. But the distance between our stages of life never felt too big, and you made it so. I will always remember the time Mom mentioned to me that you told her I was your best friend. I teared up a little bit, because I must have been 16 and you 22. That was when my definition of a best friend changed forever. It didn’t matter how old we were, or how much we had in common, or even how much time we spent together. Best friendship is a feeling, one that you shared with me.

So I responded with “well, of course, she’s mine.”

You loved me unconditionally when friendships were hard. You found me funny when no one else was laughing. You taught me that it’s okay to eat ice cream before dinner if that’s what I want. You were my preview for what life would be like. So thank you for showing me. Thank you for paving the way so bravely, and then coming back to tell me how it is out there.

Thank you for teaching me to love myself when I had completely forgotten how. Thank you for being you, so I can be me.

There are a lot of unknowns out there, Gabby. For example, I’ll never understand why so many people think we’re twins. You’ll never know that inside joke between me and Matthew. Sorry, not even on your wedding day. And we may not always know the next time we’ll see each other. But that’s okay. Everything will be okay. You taught me that. You are strong, smart, motivated, and loving. A new chapter of your life has just begun, and I am so proud of you.

Our friendship might feel a little sprawled right now, but that has never stopped us before. Honestly, our relationship thrives on distance. I am so excited to watch you flourish from afar, and to see you up close when I get the chance.

October 8, 2021 5

ARTS & CULTURE

Walking a love letter

by Lily seltz Illustrated by lucia tian It’s February in New York, junior year of high school, lunchtime. Outside it’s frigid and grey, and the locker hallway is warm, bustling, cacophonous.

Lila looks over at me: “Want to take a lap?”

I say yes, so we put our backpacks down, grab our coats, and head outside. We walk the perimeter of the building: two short blocks and two long avenues, a quarter of a mile in all. And when we get back to the entrance we keep going, or maybe we turn around and walk the other way.

As we go, we gossip, we give advice, we ask each other about our days, we talk through ideas for the English paper, giggle, ruminate, seethe.

We’re not there for the scenery. The walls of our high school are stacks of red brick, and we know them like we know our times tables. There’s no real reason to be out there, in the cold, moving briskly when we could be standing still. But we’ve done this a dozen times before and at this point it’s just what we do. It’s what everyone does. For some people the route is different: it’s the loop of third-floor hallways, it’s the path around the North Meadow in Central Park. We don’t think. We just walk.

At least I didn’t think about it until I got to Brown. A few days into orientation, I heard my roommate Lauren talking to her friend back home. “Because my roommate’s from New York”— my ears perked up—“and because all her friends are from New York, they like walking!”

I was struck by her tone of astonishment: I’d never considered walking to be something notable or even negotiable. But Lauren grew up in a city where most people got their licenses early and spent high school driving. If it was a half-mile trip, she once told me, you got in the car. After talking to people from all over the world, it became obvious that the kind of experience I’d had in high 6 post–

school was more of an exception than a norm, the ubiquity of walking being a particular element of certain cities and their cultures.

Walks are to a New York high schooler what cafes are to a Parisian: the very fabric of the social scene, the foundation of the city’s cultural landscape. Maybe when I say I love New York, and miss it, what I really mean is that I love walking, and I miss living in a walking city.

When I talk about walking, I don’t really mean walking to a destination, although the fact that many cities are set up to allow and encourage walking as a means of transport is also a prerequisite to walking-as-leisure. When living in New York you’re forced to walk first, because there’s no parking, the subway’s probably broken, a cab costs a fortune, and the buses crawl up and down the park slower than the pace of your own feet. Maybe one day traffic is light and the bus is right there, but it’s such a nice fall afternoon, so you decide to make the trek anyway. And then before you know it, you’re walking for walking’s sake. In circles, in squares, in meandering there-and-backs.

And why? There is something inarguably irrational about going for a walk with a friend when you could sit on their couch and talk about the same dramas without risking shin splints.

But I really hate sitting on people’s couches and I don’t remember the last time anyone texted me: “come over so we can sit in my living room and talk.” There always has to be a pretext: Let’s study together! Let’s see a movie! Let’s get coffee!

Since so many of us have spent roughly 18 years going to schools and living in places dominated and defined by the Great Cult of Productivity, it’s no surprise that most people I know are uncomfortable with the idea of doing nothing.

But if we can’t sit still and just focus on each other, then walking is the best alternative, an activity that isn’t really one. In Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit’s history of walking, she writes: “...doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.” Walking isn’t a real distraction from the people around us in the way that movies, or study sessions, or even meals tend to supersede the conversation and the actual act of being with somebody.

The sense of productivity you get through motion and distance isn’t the only reason it’s nice to walk and talk. During the depths of the pandemic, all I was allowed to do was talk to my friends over the phone, and the conversation was formulaic: what’s new from your life? What’s new from yours? It was better than nothing, but this was a static mode of relating to someone, this constant retrospection and rehashing of things that had already been done. I longed to be walking instead, where every street corner would offer something new to talk about.

By June of that first Covid year, I was out and about again, albeit with restrictions. Indoor activities were a no-go, so walking was the default activity. It was a way of safely meeting up with people, or even as a solo walker, a way to be alone while still being out in the world. Walking was a solution to the paradox of social distancing.

There’s an exhilarating anonymity to being a walker. You never have to stay in the same place for long enough to really be perceived. Maybe someone looks at you as you pass them by, but a second later you’re out of sight. A walking city invites you to observe, and it does you the favor of not ogling back.

In New York I would walk to watch and I’d walk to think—something else, like talking, that isn’t generally thought of as “doing” anything.

But of course thinking is reasonably important to everything that we “do.” At the very height of college application season I couldn’t be caught dead taking an hour off of schoolwork, or application work, or some work. But I would let myself go for a walk. Between Zoom classes I took to leaving my building and ambling over to Riverside Park, or up and down Broadway. Sometimes I’d bring earbuds and listen to music as I went. Sometimes I just people-watched. As I walked, I could feel my shoulders relaxing, the cogs in my brain loosening.

It was “productive,” it was “helpful,” and it was also just lovely. Walking feels good. Your arms swing, your feet rise and fall.

At Brown, walking isn’t nearly so inescapable; I don’t unintentionally stumble into 15 mile days.

But walking doesn’t need to be the norm or the lifeblood of a place: I’m a walker and I’m going to do it anyway.

A week ago I knocked on my friend Sophie’s door, about to suggest that we study? Get coffee?

Watch a movie? She suggested we go for a walk.

We wandered over to Prospect Terrace, ambled down College Hill. The sky was an impossible kind of blue. Near the Providence River we turned right back around, and our calves burned as we trekked back up towards campus. We gossiped, we gave advice, we asked each other about our days.

Our eyes were open (what was that mysterious Music Mansion on Meeting Street?), our minds were untethered, and our conversation progressed with the careless ease of our swinging arms. It was an excellent hour, for one spent doing almost “nothing” at all.

ARTS & CULTURE

How I Read Your Mother on memoirs & moms

by siena capone Illustrated by john gendron

This house is full of women Playing guitar, cooking breakfast Sharing trauma, doing dishes And where are you “This House” by Japanese Breakfast My favorite scene in Crying in H Mart is one in which Michelle Zauner, the author, makes kimchi.

Although making doesn’t quite capture what’s happening: it’s the obsessive flurry of Zauner’s hands across the page as she ferments, seasons, spices, bottles, stacks. Up to her wrists in wet red matter.

Knees aching on the kitchen floor.

The scene is my favorite in part because of Zauner’s rich description—the way she translates obsession resonates with me. But most of all, I love the scene because it’s not really about making kimchi.

It’s about grief.

Some pages earlier, we stayed by Zauner’s side while her mother died of cancer. Food was their shared love, their middle ground, Zauner’s cultural tether. So when she makes her mother’s kimchi recipe, she’s not just making kimchi. She’s monument-making. We’re holding a woman, made of words. *** I used to avoid memoirs. I had an uncharacteristically cynical take: unless you were someone incredibly famous and influential in the conventional way, like a first lady or a prominent activist, why would you have something to say that was more worth publishing than any of the rest of us? I thought personal history and desires should be played out in novels: not sharing your life verbatim, but dressing it up in costume and sending it out into the streets like a trick-or-treater. That was interesting. A new take on your own life, but not just your own life.

Natasha Tretheway proved me wrong. She’s still famous and influential—United States Poet Laureate 2012-2013, author of multiple dazzling collections—but Memorial Drive isn’t about that.

The book doesn’t meditate on metaphors or the anxiety of publishing your most personal thoughts in verse. It’s about her mother.

Her name was Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough. She grew up in the Jim Crow South. She sewed her own clothes, had a birthmark at the base of her head, and wore perfume. Her husband—Tretheway’s father— was white, and their marriage was not recognized by the state. The couple eventually parted ways before Gwen and Natasha moved to Atlanta, where everything would change. When Natasha was 18, her stepfather killed her mother.

But not right away. First there is how magnetic her mother’s beauty became when she danced. There’s the bunch of daffodils Natasha gave her Mom. The terrifying driving lessons with her stepfather, Joel.

A new baby brother. An uneasy awareness of White Flight and harsh looks. Collecting tiny stones from the creek bed to make paths, when all roads didn’t lead back to one memory.

These memories of abuse, love, and fear are charting towards something both Natasha and the reader are simultaneously desperate to avoid and unable to shut out: “Look at you. Even now you think you can write yourself away from that girl you were, distance yourself in the second person, as if you weren’t the one to whom any of this happened.”

Memoirs are not fiction’s trick-or-treaters because their truths don’t need to dress up in anything to be monstrous. Tretheway goes so far as to put the transcript of her mother’s last phone call right on the page. The injury is bound in a book, balmed and stitched up with paper and ink. *** My younger sister read Crying in H Mart after me, zipping through it in a day. I had joked with her about feeling like Zauner was my friend after I closed the book, and subsequently feeling offended and startled when I opened Instagram and remembered that she is a famous musician with thousands of followers.

I’m not sure that this intimacy could’ve come from reading about Zauner’s music career as Japanese Breakfast or her day-to-day life alone. To know someone’s mother is to know both the parts of them that the author wants you to know and the parts she doesn’t; it pulls back a curtain of years—through our upbringing, our parents blueprint much of the architecture of our future existence. People can decide whether or not to call on those manuals as an adult, but they’ll always have them in the archives.

The feeling we get when we read about mothers is something boundless and timeless. Visceral, as my sister and mother described it. To love that intensely. Whether someone’s mother is their best friend or someone they’ve never met, mothers leave their traces. We work our whole life to make sense of them, like lines on a palm.

*** Zauner and Tretheway’s memoirs are alive with more than just the memory of the women who gave birth to them. Their haunted family homes are full ones. Both their mothers come with a hefty constellation of people they’re responsible for and attached to. In South Korea, amongst a grandmother and several aunts, Zauner is a woman in a house of women, separated by a language barrier but united by something deeper. In the first chapters of Memorial Drive, Tretheway’s house is alive with the memory of her grandparents, aunts and uncles who lived in the neighborhood and filled the absence of Tretheway’s father.

All of these additional figures that pass in front of the windows of childhood are markers of their mothers loving and being loved. These relationships have a transformative and influential power over us in their own right: observing the ways the world moves around one of the most important people in our lives.

As kids, many of us look to our mothers to see what love looks like; when it’s too loose, too tight, just right.

When it’s life-giving or threatening.

In both memoirs, the mothers’ other relationships are never reduced to the periphery but charged with significance. Zauner seethes when her ailing mother’s close friend, Kye, comes to take care of her and assembles a barricade of whispered untranslatable words and home-cooked meals better than Zauner can make, providing her mother with a comfort Zauner knows she can’t replicate. It is from Gwendolyn’s time in an abusive relationship that Tretheway learns how to plot an escape. When the past becomes too painful to bear, she makes hers from Atlanta, and vows never to return. *** When I think of the ways my mother loves and is loved, I think of the comments my Dad makes that send my mom into helpless laughter, their silhouettes in the driver and passenger seats. People who have taken her hard work for granted. Old stories of my Mom insisting upon adopting a stray dog named Annie despite my grandma’s protestations. I feel lucky to inherit my Mom’s capacity for love, a basin sculpted by the innumerable hands that clasped hers.

I wonder what she would write about these loves.

What she would write about her own mother—the parts I don’t know—and what each mother before mine would write. I wish I had all of their memoirs. But since I don’t, I cut out space in my personal history for these unknown ones and fill it with imaginary women: women who loved. Who stayed. Who left. Who saved themselves, so I could be here, writing them down.

October 8, 2021 7

LIFESTYLE

The Ultimate Playlist Roundup by olivia cohen Illustrated by connie liu Picture this: You are walking back from a friend's apartment late at night. You're feeling fine; you're a little tired, but you had a nice time. You decide to listen to music for a few minutes as you make your way back to your dorm. You press shuffle on your favorite songs on Spotify (or Apple Music, if you're a barbarian), and the first song that comes on is "Ivy" by Frank Ocean. Before you know it, you're ugly crying. You have to stop and sit down on a bench to collect yourself. Several people stop and ask if you need help. (This is all hypothetical, of course.)

Whether or not you’re familiar with this situation, in our dynamic and fast-paced lives as students, it is absolutely necessary to have multiple playlists for different occasions. Your background music when you're getting ready for a 10 a.m. Monday class should sound a lot different from your background music when you're getting ready to go out at 10 p.m. on a lively Saturday. Your life deserves a movie-quality soundtrack. Therefore, I've curated a master list of four ten-song, no-skip playlists for different moments in your day-to-day life:

1. for when you just woke up, but you wish you were still dreaming “Miss Summer,” ODIE “Venus Flytrap,” Feng Suave “OUTTA MY MIND,” Monsune “Weekend Friend,” Goth Babe “Headfucked,” Shy Girls “Show Me How,” Men I Trust “Saw You In A Dream,” The Japanese House “Visions,” Loving “Shampoo Bottles,” Peach Pit “You Say I'm in Love,” Banes World

3. for when you need to drown out the sound of you crying in the shower “Violent Crimes,” Kanye West “Cold Little Heart - Radio Edit,” Michael Kiwanuka “Come Back to Earth,” Mac Miller “when the party's over,” Billie Eilish “Fade Into You,” Mazzy Star “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK,” Joji “Holding Out For You,” Pond “Tommy's Party,” Peach Pit “Godspeed,” Frank Ocean “Paul,” Big Thief

2. for when you're walking down Thayer feeling like a BMOC (Big Man on Campus) “Skate,” Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, Silk Sonic “Freeze Tag (feat. Phoelix),” Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, 9th Wonder “I Wish,” Skee-Lo “CRISIS,” Sam Ezeh “We Don't Care,” Kanye West “I Believed It (feat. Mac Miller),” dvsn, Ty Dolla $ign “The Count (feat. Wiz Khalifa),” Curren$y, Harry Fraud “I Was Sad Last Night I'm OK Now,” tobi lou “HIT EM WHERE IT HURTS,” PawPaw Rod “Jet Black (feat. Brandy),” Anderson .Paak

4. for when you're on aux but you're not about to play Mo Bamba “In My Room,” Frank Ocean “WUSYANAME (feat. YoungBoy Never Broke Again),” Tyler, The Creator “Ghost Town,” Kanye West, PARTYNEXTDOOR “Funny Thing,” Thundercat “Photo ID (with Dominic Fike),” Remi Wolf “Borderline,” Tame Impala “Waves,” Kanye West “BOY BYE,” BROCKHAMPTON “Ego Death (feat. Kanye West),” Ty Dolla $ign, FKA twigs, Skrillex “Dang! (feat. Anderson .Paak),” Mac Miller

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Olivia Howe FEATURE Managing Editor Alice Bai

“I’ve emerged out of quarantine with a renewed sense of curiosity and appreciation for life. I take a deep breath of the fresh morning air. I seek creature comforts. I speak up for myself.”

—Chloe Chen, “Tom and Olive,”

Section Editors Andrew Lu Ethan Pan

10.2.20

“There was a peaceful beauty to laying outside at 1 a.m., one of the few people awake in the town of 749, possibly the only one that the sky was entertaining in this brief moment that seemed to include in it the entirety of the universe. “ —Grace Layer, “Far From Home,”

ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Emma Schneider Section Editors Kyoko Leaman Joe Maffa

NARRATIVE Managing Editor Siena Capone Section Editors Danielle Emerson Leyton Ho

Copy Editors Katheryne Gonzalez Samuel Nevins Eleanor Peters

LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Caitlin McCartney

SOCIAL MEDIA HEAD EDITOR Tessa Devoe

Section Editors Kimberly Liu Emily Wang

Editors Kelsey Cooper Julia Gubner Kyra Haddad Chloe Zhao

HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Joanne Han

10.15.18 Want to be involved?

Email: olivia_howe@brown.edu!

8 post–

COPY CHIEF Aditi Marshan

CO-LAYOUT CHIEFS Jiahua Chen Briaanna Chiu Layout Designers Alice Min Angela Sha STAFF WRITERS Kaitlan Bui Dorrit Corwin Danielle Emerson Jordan Hartzell Alexandra Herrera Ellie Jurmann Nicole Kim Liza Kolbasov Elliana Reynolds Adi Thatai Victoria Yin