Spare Rib 26W

Spare Rib INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST ZINE AT DARTMOUTH VOLUME 6 | ISSUE 1 26W EDITION

the dead, the dying, and the enemy

Decolonizing Self-Care:

Community, Culture, and the Politics of Healing

pg. 29

pg.41

Letters to the Twin of My Soul pg. 15

Hats for Friends: A Reflection pg. 27

Tucked In

bakkhai (after Euripides)

pg. 39

pg. 21

Above the City Lights pg. 46

The Care Issue

A LETTER FROM THE EDITORS When we revived in the throes of COVID-19 with our 2022 issue Confinement, we were responding to a remarkable moment in modern history. While imposing real demands on our daily existence, the pandemic prompted us to reflect on the unstable contemporary relationship between the individual and community — including what may be lost when those threads start to unravel. However, this reflection not only invited a reckoning with trauma, but also an evaluation of a deeply human idea that became our theme for 26W six years later: Care. Today, just as during the pandemic, “care” is a multiplicitous word that always inscribes the questions: What does it mean to care? What does care look like?

In the pages below, you will find a variety of approaches to these questions. They will reflect the individual natures of the stories told, which will engage with variously universal and personal aspects of contemporary life including the American healthcare system, the digital age and the Dartmouth experience. In creative and analytical forms, you will encounter reflections on mental and physical health and the realms of popular music and competitive sport. Widening Spare Rib’s vistas, other stories will explore pertinent issues from the resonant landscapes of Ancient Greece and contemporary China. We hope that this self-assured collection of voices, including of our writers and of the others whom they invoke and uplift, will inspire a personal reflection on the stakes — and transformative effects — of caring in a world whose conditions demand care work from within.

With love, Your 26W Writing Leads Avery Lin & Hailey Maloney

THE NAME “SPARE RIB” As written in the second chapter of Genesis, God took a rib from Adam, the first man, and from it fashioned Eve, the first woman, to serve as his companion. We propose a different origin story, in which no one is merely a piece of flesh, second thought, servile, or spare.

DISCLAIMER The views and opinions expressed in Spare Rib are those of individual authors and not necessarily reflective of the zine, writers, or staff as a whole, nor represented as wholly complete or correct information, nor intended to disparage any group or individual.

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MISSION STATEMENT The Spare Rib newspaper was first published in 1992 to highlight women’s accomplishments and persisting problems in the two decades following co-education at Dartmouth. For reasons we are still working to discover, the original Spare Rib went out of print after a few years. Thirty years later, our goal reflects a movement that has evolved considerably since 1995. We are re-establishing Spare Rib to discuss struggles, achievements, and history of people and places beyond the center, hindered (but not constrained) by racism, classism, sexism and further means of oppression, through analysis, humor, and critique. Our struggles deserve recognition, our perspectives deserve to be voiced, and our strengths deserve to be celebrated.

STATEMENT AGAINST COLONIAL EXPLOITATION In accordance with Spare Rib’s values and mission, we want to bring attention to the land on which we stand, its history, and its original peoples. More than a land acknowledgement, this is a statement against a historical injustice. This is a historical demand and a material necessity that has been brewing for over five centuries. Dartmouth College is a settler-colonial, patriarchal, bourgeois institution, founded on the eve of the American revolution.

It is thus profoundly entangled with the settler-colonial project. This institution stands on unceded, continually-occupied Abenaki territory and within the wider Turtle Island, lands currently under the violent, fascistic military occupation of the Euro-American settler regime. These lands have seen genocide, warfare, and plagues, which have decimated most of its original inhabitants. They have seen treaties ignored and broken, cultures and languages forcibly erased, and entire populations displaced. Indigenous peoples remain here, standing proud and resolute, in love, community, and joy, awaiting the new dawn to come. Now more than ever, Spare Rib assumes the historical duty to stand in solidarity and dedicate ourselves to a genuine end of colonial injustice. Spare Rib stands for a return of the land, people’s government, and Indigenous self-determination. This statement is a new beginning for our efforts for Indigenous justice and autonomy —this is not the end. As we move forward, we devote ourselves to a future of collective liberation for all oppressed peoples.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Spare Rib was created by students at Dartmouth College, a school built on unceded Abenaki land that, to this day, prospers off of Indigenous trauma. Settler-colonial exploitation is ongoing, complex, and damaging to all, and Spare Rib aims to acknowledge the privileges and exploitation we take part in within society— devoting ourselves to honoring Indigenous peoples and allies around the world that fought and continue to fight for a more equitable and inclusive future. We will continue to voice our support and encourage others to educate themselves and learn about Indigenous issues and identities.

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EXCAVATION: analytical + exploratory Decolonizing Self-Care: Community, Culture, and the Politics of Healing ............................41 Author: Nyashadzashe Jongwe — Designer: Isabella Sotorrio — Artist: Isabella Sotorrio

Lorde’s Virgin and the Sound of Becoming ...............................................................................7 Author: Dillon Cain — Designer: Selina Wang — Artist: Rachel Roncka

BARE BONES: informative + introductory Quiet Violence: Indifference in Women’s Healthcare and How to Resist It ...............................11 Author: Aditi Singh — Designer: Lily Aspen — Artist: Lily Aspen

We Need to Care More About Our Careworkers ........................................................................31 Author: Rachel Roncka — Designer: Maya Dombroskie — Artist: Maya Dombroskie

CHOPPING BLOCK: opinion based + exploratory A Defense of Icarus: Making Space for Compassion ..................................................................23 Author: Kenna O — Designer: Rachel Roncka — Artist: Rachel Roncka

Letters to the Twin of My Soul ...................................................................................................15 Author: Anonymous — Designer: Angela S. — Artist: Angela S.

Hats for Friends: A Reflection ...................................................................................................27 Author: Samantha Paisley — Designer: Angela S. — Artist: Alexander Harris

ARTIFACTS: poetry + artistic Cherished Connections ............................................................................................................... 5 Author: Soraya Fonseca — Designer: Lillia Hammond — Artist: Angela S.

Living on the Outside .................................................................................................................. 9 Author: Abby Byrne — Designer: Camina Sánchez — Artist: Emma Hwang

The Things We Carry ................................................................................................................. 43 Author: Aditi Singh — Designer: Idaly Barajas — Artist: Denisse Gonzalez-Marquez

bakkhai (after Euripides) ............................................................................................................ 21 Author: Saturn Guo — Designer: Angela S. — Artist: Angela S.

Tucked In .................................................................................................................................... 39 Author: M. E. — Designer: Hannah Krueger — Artist: Samantha Kang

the dead, the dying, and the enemy .............................................................................................29 Author: Anna Costello — Designer: Idaly Barajas — Artist: Samantha Paisley

STERNUM: recurring Editor’s Letter ............................................................................................................................. 1 The Care Playlist ......................................................................................................................... 48 Letter from the Design Leads ...................................................................................................... 51 Our Staff ...................................................................................................................................... 49 Socials ........................................................................................................................................... 53 Standalone Art: Manual ............................................................................................................. 20 Artist: Selina Wang

Standalone Art: Daybreak .......................................................................................................... 38 Artist: Emma Hwang

Standalone Art: Above the City Lights ....................................................................................... 46 Artist: Orum Pettid

Cherished Connections Care seeps from my b o

By Soraya Fonseca Art by Anonymous Design by Lillia Hammond n

e

s

and into my friendships.

It manifests as a fluttering buzz in my ear, a need to nurture and inspire.

I am the ‘therapist-mom, friend-mediator extraordinaire.’

Words I live by.

In the haven of the Dartmouth bubble, I look out for my friends with great attention.

Gentle smiles and roaring laughter tell me success is imminent.

But my friends were also born of the same stock.

I knew it when F. and I spent the day before classes last year near Occom Pond talking for hours about fears, hopes, and dreams.

Conversation cemented our allegiance to each other.

G. and I had dinner at Molly’s my first day back from summer break.

We spoke of summer internships and days-gone-by and plans for the new school year.

And all the while, I was so happy to have my friend back if even for a little bit before she clocked in for her turn in the predatory academia race.

C. let me vent about sophomore year commitments and my lack of time I confide in her that I can’t keep up She assures me I can.

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Weekly lunches with M. give me the chance to breathe We talk for hours about classes, pre-med extracurriculars, spontaneous friend reunions, class drama, and upcoming Dartmouth events.

I can hold on for another week This

is

waiting

for

me

My friends ground me in warmth and tranquility for they know what I had to do to get here.

They are my compass, Guiding me towards My aspirations and sweeping me from Any distractions.

They are my home And I am eternally grateful to have found them.

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once

again.

L o r d e’s V i r g i n and the Sound of B ecoming By: Dillon Cain Art by: Rachel Roncka Design by: Selina Wang Distorted, incomprehensible vocals pave the road across which Lorde dances on “Hammer,” the opening track of her 2025 album Virgin, which the singer/songwriter called an embrace of “city life and horniness.” Far from just a melodious intro, “Hammer” opens the door to the intricate, vulnerable exploration of gender fluidity that characterizes Virgin as a masterpiece of emotional care, where sound itself becomes a way of tending to identity.

Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, the New Zealand native better known as Lorde, makes her androgyny audible from the first sound of the album. Warped and not clearly gendered, her voice dismantles the stable sense of self that characterized her earlier work. This sonic distortion is emblematic of the fact that she’s no longer presenting “Lorde” as the feminine archetype of Pure Heroine or Melodrama, but rather as a mercurial figure fluidly moving between masculine and feminine identities. If this shift doesn’t come through in the vocals on “Hammer,” it’s hammered in (pun intended) with the line, “some days, I’m a woman, some days, I’m a man.”

Yet perhaps the most striking exploration of gender on Virgin — and arguably in recent music at large — occurs on the fourth track, “Man of the Year.” One of three singles released before the album, the track was one of the first Lorde wrote for Virgin following her decision to go off birth control for the first time since age 15. In an interview with “Rolling Stone,” she called the intense ovulations she experienced afterward “one of the best drugs I’ve ever done.” She went on to explain how “the experience opened up an avenue of discovery she hadn’t anticipated,” prompting her to “cut some sort of cord between myself and this regulated femininity.”

Lorde’s search for identity further unfolds in the next two tracks, as she reflects on past relationships and the shifting identities they led her to explore. Set against an upbeat production, “What Was That” offers insight into the body dysmorphia Lorde experienced in the wake of a major breakup (“I cover up all the mirrors, I can’t see myself yet”). Meanwhile, “Shapeshifter” presents the many versions of herself that she has embodied for the sake of others, sparking her self-derealization (“I’ve been the ice, I’ve been the flame, I’ve been the prize, the ball and chain”).

This cord is specifically referenced in “Man of the Year,” in which Lorde describes taking a knife to these metaphorical ties to her former identity. This transition into a more fluid gender is mirrored by the song’s more chaotic production towards the end, reflecting the turmoil accompanying her ongoing journey of self-discovery. She describes feeling “like new from my recent ego death,” evoking an emergence from the collapse of her old self into something freer and undefinable. Or as Lorde puts it: “someone more like myself.”

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rus, “It made me a woman, being hurt like that.” The line contains an acknowledgement of how the oppression she faced from men and society had informed and bounded her self-expression.

Throughout the middle of the album, Lorde remains strikingly vulnerable while charting her lifelong journey of self-understanding. On “Favorite Daughter,” she confronts her lingering need for validation from her audience — a desire rooted in her complicated relationship with her mother. In “Current Affairs,” Lorde admits to masking her sensitivity through fiery yet destructive sexual encounters, while “Clearblue” captures the strange sense of liberation she feels when taking a pregnancy test after going off birth control.

The eighth track, “GRWM” (“Grown Woman,” not “Get Ready With Me”), is a quiet testament to her healing and emotional maturation over time.

On the last track “David” inspired by Michelangelo’s iconic statue, Lorde reflects on her new state of autonomy through the lens of a past relationship in which she was taken advantage of. She cites the late Renaissance master’s artistic process of “carving away everything that wasn’t David,” interpreting it as a metaphor for stripping away external influences and expectations from her life. In doing so, Lorde asserts control over her identity, reclaiming the parts of herself that were shaped, and often constrained, by others.

That said, the album’s introspection is not confined to the quieter moments. Some of the rawest and most transparent lines on the entire album appear on undeniably the most energetic and fun beat on Virgin: “Broken Glass.” In the synth-infused track, Lorde looks back on her struggle with an eating disorder in the deeply personal and wildly catchy chorus:

Drawing on lessons from past experiences and on the newfound freedom she feels, Lorde proudly cries out, “I don’t belong to anyone,” marking both the song’s and the album’s emotional climax. The warped, rippling vocals that opened Virgin return, amplifying this cathartic moment and further dissolving boundaries within her sense of identity — this time with a liberating effect.

I wanna punch the mirror To make her see that this won’t last It might be months of bad luck But what if it’s just broken glass? Spent my summer getting lost in math Making weight took all I had Won’t outrun it if you don’t hit back It’s just broken glass

As the swelling production winds down, Lorde closes the album on a note of lingering discomfort — asking herself, “Am I ever gon’ love again?” while reflecting on the newfound fluidity she has embraced in both her gender and sense of self. Yet in the final moments, she reassures listeners that everything will be alright, emphasizing that despite countless obstacles, everyone deserves and will eventually find the opportunity to love. She encourages those who are uncertain to “sing it to the fountain till you understand,” echoing her own journey of self-realization and subtly tying back to the Washington Square Park fountain referenced in “Hammer.”

There’s a lot to unpack about Lorde’s psyche and her relationship with her body, both past and present, as we experience her longing to “punch the mirror” for her past self.

The image of “broken glass” serves as a metaphor for the fractured self-perception she experienced during her struggle with an eating disorder, reflecting not only the lingering trauma of her symbolic “months of bad luck,” but also the moment she chooses to shatter her own illusions instead of continuing to live with them.

By acknowledging that you “won’t outrun” such a disorder “if you don’t hit back,” Lorde emphasizes the need to confront, rather than flee from, internalized standards — especially those related to gender. In doing so, the song explores the ongoing tension between the body she inhabits and the societal expectations imposed upon her. Though the lyrics are painful, the track ultimately feels uplifting, allowing listeners to witness Lorde taking a step towards personal liberation.

From start to finish, Virgin is a journey of vulnerability, desire and self-discovery, with each track peeling back another layer of the psyche of an artist unafraid to confront the boundaries of identity. The album’s title also resonates strongly throughout the songs, describing a state of constant rebirth while reminding us that to be fully oneself is to be perpetually alive and uncontainable. In the end, the album leaves listeners not only witnessing Lorde’s transformation, but also daring them to practice care for themselves by embracing change and honoring the ongoing process of becoming.

Lorde continues to follow this personal journey with the reassuring pop-rock bop “If She Could See Me Now,” a song chronicling her emergence from this difficult period in her life. She credits dark experiences such as these with reshaping her sense of womanhood, singing on the cho-

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LIVI NG ON THE OUTSIDE

By: Abigail Byrne Art by: Emma Hwang Design by: Camila Sanchez

I cannot remember the last time I did not perceive myself from the third person.

I often feel the gaze of some amorphous, intangible “other,” perceiving and judging my actions as they unfold. I don’t think I am special for feeling this way—after all, one of the fundamental aspects of being a person is understanding that we do not exist in a vacuum, but instead within a complicated web of relations with the external world. Most of us are all simultaneously self-involved and obsessed with everyone else.

I believe this to be a central characteristic of humanity.

However, I also believe that an emphasis on this “third person” perspective has been exacerbated in our modern era of social media, including TikTok, and extreme interconnectivity. Every experience can be commodified for personal validation with respect to external perception.

Every run can be logged on Strava, every trip photographed and posted on Instagram. Likewise, an embarrassing moment recorded can live forever on video. When we live this way, we are all active participants in a performance of our own life. Although it can feel mandatory at times, there is no denying that it feels good to hit all the right marks and make the crowd roar. I think a college campus also amplifies the feeling of surveillance. You are constantly surrounded by peers, whether you would like to be or not. On a campus the size of Dartmouth, you are also often stripped of the right to any anonymity, as even a walk to the dining hall usually entails seeing at least one person you know (or who knows you).

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I believe one of the most powerful consequences of this new state of existence has been the perpetuation of a culture of toxic nonchalance with a fear of expressing passion.

Although the very word “nonchalance” has lost its sincerity because of its co-optation by the internet, I nonetheless find it extremely relevant to our current social condition. It has always been “cool”—although that word is so subjective as to essentially be meaningless,—to be above something, to project indifference in an effort to elevate your own importance (even subconsciously). However, I believe this culture has only been heightened by modern social technology.

Your “cringy” or “ugly” phase no longer simply exists in the formless void of people’s memories—it is tangibly accessible on your cell phone. Why would we not be scared of being cringy, when our perception of ourselves not just in this moment, but for years to come is now almost inevitably filtered through the lens of other people’s perception of us? In the world we live in today, unadulterated authenticity and excitement receive so little recognition—so it is hard not to think and act accordingly.

Problematically, the standards by which we judge each other are steeped in our own societal biases and discriminations. For example, the male gaze continues to be integral to how people not only present themselves, but also view themselves owing to toxic, biased socialization. The internet and apps like Instagram have reproduced and entrenched pernicious societal prejudices online (even when they can simultaneously be platforms for fighting them), rewarding the most judgmental and inauthentic parts of ourselves.

I don’t know what the solution is, or how much this applies to everyone. I am obviously making generalizations. Yet in any case, I think living authentically involves separating yourself from the constructed image that you believe exists in other people’s minds about you.

It is impossible to know your own brain, much less anyone else’s. No one should be afraid to care, to laugh loudly or say the wrong thing. I think whatever action facilitates that feeling of solid comfort within yourself—whether deleting Instagram or just working to change your understanding of it—is the path forward.

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Quiet Violence: Indifference in Women’s Healthcare and How to Resist It Trigger Warning: Mentions of race-related, birth-related and medical trauma Author: Aditi Singh Art + Design by: Lily Aspen Note: This article is not intended to be a critique of individual medical providers. Rather, it seeks to explore the educational and operational systems within medicine that have led to distorted applications of empathy and care in medicine. There are some incredible women’s healthcare providers who are innovatively trying to change these narratives and promote women’s autonomy and dignity in healthcare. A great example of this is “Reclaim Menopause,” a health clinic housed right here in New Hampshire.

Healthcare, at its root, is intended to be a care system. However, our healthcare system routinely diminishes the value of genuinity in this care, trading empathy for memorized patient dialogues and exam scores. Women† bear the brunt of this burden. As traditional women’s healthcare continues to dismiss patient pain and decentralize patient autonomy, this notion of care as the foundation of health only further deteriorates. This phenomenon is tragic and unacceptable.

Colposcopies plainly exemplify this tragedy. Of the 72.4% of women who regularly undergo cervical cancer testing, 5% are referred to cervical biopsies (colposcopies) to assess the presence of precancerous/cancerous cells.1 Under these procedures, which doctors describe as producing mild discomfort, Glamour writer Gigi Engle described feeling as though her gynecologist was repeatedly hole-punching her cervix, noting that “without a single doubt in [her] mind [...] this was one of the most traumatizing experiences of [her] life.”2 This story, unfortunately, is far from unique. A recent National Institutes of Health (NIH) study reports that approximately 30% of women who underwent cervical biopsies experienced post-traumatic stress symptoms related to their procedure.3 The modern coloposcopy was developed in the 1920s by German physician and known Nazi Hans Hinselmann, and it has evolved little since then.4 Although lidocaine injections (injected into the cervix without numbing) or general anesthesia could help reduce pain during the procedure, they are not frequently administered — particularly due to understated claims about the amount of pain caused by the procedure and concerns about taking on unwarranted risks. Patient stories and concerns say otherwise, and yet these women’s pain continues to be dismissed.

A 2022 NIH report speaks to this pattern, finding that “women are more likely to encounter skepticism regarding the severity or legitimacy of their symptoms as a result of gender biases and cultural norms,” and even that healthcare professionals attribute women's pain to “psychological factors or hormonal fluctuations.”5 This constant dismissal transforms women’s healthcare into a space of violence, frustration, and mistrust.

Perhaps even more unnerving is obstetric and birth-related trauma. Skye Curtise, a 33-year-old White woman from the UK, describes a provider leaving her mid-birth because their shift had ended. She recounted how throughout her surgery, her providers failed to communicate with her about several ongoing complications, leaving her anxious and terrified.6 These stories only worsen for women of color. A 2025 NIH study reports that Black women risk being stereotyped as demanding and unreasonable, aggressive “superbodies,” causing these women to be at increased risk of maltreatment and maternal mortality. Specifically, women of color described their providers treating them as dramatic, uneducated, and negligent parents. One Asian woman was even told that “she was going to be

induced regardless of the result of her nonstress test or own preferences.”7 This summer, I worked remotely for “Abide Women’s Health Services,” a Black midwife organization in South Dallas, and the stories I heard there consistently echoed these statistics. The midwives shared patient stories of entitled male doctors, poor bedside manner, and lack of communication around complications. Birth is a painful and stressful process for any mother, but when the people responsible for your health overstep their roles and dismiss your needs, the situation is unimaginably worse.

The impact of these experiences is substantial. Approximately 44% of multiparous African American women and 47% of multiparous Hispanic women experience postpartum depression, compared to 31% among their white counterparts.8 Considering that prior studies have demonstrated a clear association between birth experience satisfaction and postpartum depression, treating women with dignity and respect during birth is not just kind, but also morally obligated under the promise doctors make to do no harm.9 While doctors are experts in biomedical sciences, patients are experts on their own conditions — and they should be treated as such. If this philosophy is not the basis of treatment, it is impossible to provide genuine care; rather, medicine becomes a game of mapping patients onto symptoms. This notion of dual expertise is crucial because it prevents the overgeneralization of medical conditions, encourages providers to pay attention to patients’ stories, and leaves patients feeling heard.

Accordingly, care within medicine should focus on one notion above all else: promoting patient autonomy. This does not mean avoiding all procedures that result in pain; rather, it means performing these procedures with utmost respect for patients’ dignity. Instead of viewing empathy and care as a box to check, it should be the central focus of every medical encounter.10 Based on a combination of a literature review and women's anecdotes, a 2022 study found that positive birth experiences were characterized by interactions “that made her feel supported, in control, safe, and respected.”11 In other words, women want to feel autonomous and dignified, and they are generally less concerned with the intellectualization of their conditions than with the way in which they are treated.

Although disappointing, the current approach to medical care is unsurprising, and this can be understood through the way in which medical students are trained. The cocktail of sleep deprivation, endless exams, and memorized dialogues often desensitizes medical students, transforming them into walking textbooks — fascinated by medical conditions, yet sometimes apathetic towards the patients experiencing them. When the medical conditions and procedures women experience are already traumatic, this sterility has a grave impact.

After their first year of medical school, students conduct psuedo-appointments with actors posing as patients. When students go in for their simulated encounters, they receive scores based on the number of boxes they check — including everything from washing their hands to acknowledging patients’ emotions. Given this checkbox approach, some medical students themselves say that when dealing with real patients, they are not properly trained on how to empathize with them, falling back on hollow apologies when faced with tragedy.12 When women and people of color are already more likely to be dismissed, the impacts of this inadequate training are amplified.

Conversely, when operating with an ethos of foremost promoting patient autonomy, the intention of even simulated clinics radically shifts. Rather than checking boxes and relying on biochemical explanations, providers focus on the patients’ experiences and understandings. To achieve this ethos, I believe a humanities-centered approach to ethics training in medical school may help. It is easy to gloss over academic presentations about the importance of kindness towards patients and demonstrate shallow empathy in simulated clinical appointments. However, when students are asked to engage with these ethical matters through reading, writing or even art, understanding the emotional weight of medical conditions and treatment is more accessible.

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For instance, in her one-act play Wit, Margaret Edson explores the story of a fictional professor who navigates her terminal ovarian cancer diagnosis and attempted treatment. While technically competent, the doctors in the play are emotionally bankrupt.13 By delving into the professor’s experiences as she interacts with these doctors, students can better understand the damage that overintellectualized medical care can do to real human patients.

Simulation training should also reflect and reinforce the dual expertise model of patient care. Instead of evaluating students based on their ability to effectively check boxes, the actors should provide feedback on how they felt throughout the interaction. Did they feel cared for and heard, or did they feel dismissed?

Pragmatically, the 60-80 hour weeks worked by medical residents as well as the sheer number of cases for which full-fledged doctors are responsible each day significantly impact providers’ emotional capacity to extend genuine kindness to their patients.14 Although patients almost certainly feel more satisfied when their appointments are longer, hospitals are already understaffed and overbooked, and radically changing this model seems unlikely in the immediate future.15 Yet these smaller changes — namely, changes in how medical students learn and how doctors approach their encounters — can at least do vital damage control.

For the women whose pain is repeatedly disavowed and whose doctors have failed to hear them, even these small changes can feel healing, comforting, and momentous. †

This article uses the word “women” as a generic placeholder for “people of any gender who give birth.” This is largely because most available data/anecdotal evidence available is from cisgender women. However, most of the premises of this article (including dismissal of pain) are almost certainly exacerbated in trans communities. 50% of transgender patients have been mistreated by a medical professional. 16 1

Edward Winstead, “Why Are Many Women Overdue for Cervical Cancer Screening,” National Cancer Institute, last modified February 22, 2022, https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2022/overdue-cervicalcancer-screeningincreasing#:~:text=Results%20on%20cervical%20screening%20from, Suk%20noted.

2 Gigi Engle, “The Trauma of My Cervical Biopsy,” Glamour, last modified September 10, 2019, https://www.glamour.com/story/cervical-biopsies-are-important-commonandcan-be-seriously-traumatic.

3 M. Jentschke, “Psychological distress in cervical cancer screening: results from a German online survey,” National Institutes of Health, last modified June 27, 2020, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7447652/.

4 Bruno Halioua, “The participation of Hans Hinselmann in medical experiments at Auschwitz,” National Institutes of Health, last modified January 14, 2010, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20040829/.

5 “Gendered pain: a call for recognition and health equity,” National Institutes of Health, last modified March 7, 2024, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10937548/.

6 Philippa Roxby, “Horrendous birth experience left me needing therapy,” BBC, last modified May 13, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/health-69002375.

7 Amelia Dmowska, “The Intersection of Traumatic Childbirth and Obstetric Racism: A Qualitative Study,” National Institutes of Health, last modified March 1, 2025, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10922554/.

8 Elizabeth A Howell, “Racial and Ethnic Differences in Factors Associated With Early Postpartum Depressive Symptoms,” National Institutes of Health, last modified January 22, 2015, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4302723/#:~:text=RESULTS,as%20 compared%20with%20white%20women.

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Eva Urbanová, “The Association between Birth Satisfaction and the Risk of Postpartum Depression,” National Institutes of Health, last modified October 5, 2021, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8508559/#:~:text=A%2030%2Ditem%20version%20of,the% 20risk%20of%20developing%20PPD; Robert H. Shmerling, “First, do no harm,” Harvard Health Publishing, last modified June 22, 2020, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/first-do-no-harm-201510138421.

10 Asif, “Simulation Training.”

11 Julia Leinweber, “Developing a woman-centered, inclusive definition of positive childbirth experiences: A discussion paper,” Wiley Online Library, last modified July 5, 2022, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/birt.12666#:~:text=The%20following%20 definition%20was%20formulated,woman%27s%20psychosocial%20well%2Dbeing.%E2%80%9D. 12

Asif, “Simulation Training.”

Margaret Edson, Wit (New York City: Dramatists Play Service, Inc 1999).

14 Caroline Mercer, “How work hours affect medical resident performance and wellness,” National Institutes of Health, last modified 30 September 2019, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6773545/.

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15

“The Cost of Caring: Challenges Facing America’s Hospitals in 2025,” American Hospital Association, last modified April 2025, https://www.aha.org/costsofcaring.

16 Jo Yurcaba, “Nearly half of trans people have been mistreated by medical providers, report finds,” NBC, August 19 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-andwellness/nearly-half-trans-people-mistreated-medical-providers-report-finds-rcna1695.

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Letters to the Twin of My Soul By: Anonymous | Art by: Anonymous | Design by: Anonymous Content warning: This piece contains references to suicide and sexual violence. 「人类历史上最大规模的屠杀，是房思琪式的强暴。」

“The largest-scale massacre in human history is the rape of the Fang Siqis.”1

台湾作家林奕含（1991-2017）的长篇小说《房思琪的初恋

The brilliant Taiwanese writer Lin Yihan (1991-2017) was raped by her Chinese literature teacher in an extracurricular class in high school, who disguised his crime as love using quotes from Chinese literature. Her 2017 full-length book, “Fang Siqi’s First Love Paradise,” whose protagonist is the beautiful schoolgirl Fang Siqi, was based on her own experiences. Struggling with psychosis, Lin ended her life shortly after her book was published. The book helped kickstart the #MeToo movement in Taiwan and China and has profoundly influenced sexual violence prevention in Taiwan.

乐园》，以文学之美剖视性暴力创伤，其创作背景与社会

影响深远。这部于2017年问世的作品，取材自作者高中时 期遭补习班教师性侵的真实经历——加害者擅用文学话语

将罪行包装为“师生恋”，使受害者陷入认知扭曲的困境。 小说通过少女房思琪的悲剧命运，深刻揭示权力不对等关 系中的性暴力本质。

林奕含在作品出版后辞世，其遭遇引发台湾对性侵防治与 补教制度的全面反思。该著作成为推动台湾和中国大陆女 性主义运动的重要契机，并直接促成台湾《补习及进修教

Prelude

育法》修法。这部用生命完成的文学作品，已然成为台湾 地区性别平等教育与暴力防治体系演进的重要里程碑。

“Rape a girl, and the world will blame her. Even she will blame herself. That guilt will drive her back to him. Guilt is an ancient, purebred shepherd dog.”2

序

He knew this far too well. He knew how to wield a literature teacher’s polished rhetoric to wrap violence in affection. After all, in a society where “the teacher is always right,” who would ever dare question him? He stood on a pedestal built by parents and students alike; he is revered like a living Bodhisattva who delivers students from the purgatory of college entrance exams. Of course he dared to say: “This is how your teacher shows love… You like your teacher, and your teacher likes you. We haven’t done anything wrong.” Schools and families never set foot in the classroom where sex education should have been taught, and society repressed sex under layers of fear and shame — desire is a sin that must be buried

「强暴一个女生，全世界都觉得是她自己的错，连她都觉 得是自己的错。罪恶感又会把她赶回他身边。罪恶感是古 老而血统纯正的牧羊犬。」 他可太清楚了。他当然了解怎么利用一套国文教师精美的 说辞把自己的暴行粉饰成爱意。在尊师重道的社会下，他 是至高无上的权威，又有谁胆敢去质疑他？如果说大学入 学考试是千军万马过独木桥，那补习班的名师就是优纪主 义社会下拯救学生于水火之中的活菩萨。

他胆敢说出“这是老师爱妳的方式，妳懂吗？妳喜欢老 师，老师喜欢妳，我们没有做不对的事情。第一次见到妳

我就知道妳是我命中注定的小天使。”学校和家庭在性教 育这堂课里永远地缺席，社会对性挥之不去的禁忌感…… 这个肮脏的词还没讲出来就早已掩埋在了层层羞耻之下。

于是，你为自己找到了唯一的生路。你说：“我不能只喜 欢老师，我要爱上他。妳爱的人要对妳做什么都可以，不 是吗？思想是一种多么伟大的东西！我要爱老师，否则我

太痛苦了。” 你终于咽口水般，把所有的疑问、恶心和不 甘都吞进身体最深处。没有哭闹，没有呼喊，只剩下一 具“文静、乖巧”的空壳。

16岁，致林奕含的信 03/16/2022 奕含，生日快乐。

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before it can be named.

So you found what felt like your only way out. Love was the only story left to hold the pieces of your world together. You told yourself, “I have to love him — because if I don’t, the pain will be unbearable.” In that grey zone where language softens and boundaries blur, love — of him, of literature — became both the blade he wielded and the shield you clutched. And so you swallowed it all — every doubt, every wave of nausea, every splinter of resentment: pressed it down into your body. No crying. No screaming. Only a lonely, hollow shell left in the ruins, “quiet and obedient.”

Letter to Lin Yihan from my 16-year-old self 03/16/2022 Yihan, Happy birthday.

我一直以来欣赏你的文

字的美，将你的 文字视

份美，因为我深知这份美

学是多么残忍—我甚至不

I’ve always adored the beauty of your writing, regarding your words as the bible of aesthetics. But I’ve never had the courage to stare straight at this beauty, for I know the cruelty it bears.

I couldn’t even bring myself to open your books. I could only watch your interviews over and over, your wedding speech and the scattered fragments of Fang Siqi’s First Love Paradise.

为美学的圣经。但我一直

I know I have no right to “live on with your share.” But I hope I can connect my life to yours, to Yiwen’s and Siqi’s: those pure, beautiful lives brutally severed. I will try to reclaim the faith you clung to — and to carry it forward so that more girls might survive.

我想我没有资格“连你那一份一起活下去”，但是我希望我

敢翻开你的书，只能一遍一

以来没有勇气去直视这

遍地看你的访谈的视频，

你的婚礼致辞，以及《房思琪的初恋乐园》中的无数的摘 抄。

能够在你，在伊纹，在思琪的纯粹的，美丽的，被生生打 断的人生上接一段我的人生。我会努力让接上的这段人生 无憾，努力找回你赖以为生的信仰和希望，努力让更多女 孩活下去。

I want to say: Yihan, you did nothing wrong. The fault was never yours. It lies with a world twisted enough to shroud evil in the veil of beauty and faith. I hope you, and Yiwen, and Siqi, have found another world that loves kindness, courage, and beauty. I hope you have found your faith again resting among the purest words, untouched by a language too twisted to hold truth.

我想说，奕含你很好，你没错，错的是那个用文字的美，

用最虔诚的信仰来包装恶的畸形的社会。奕含，我希望 你，连同伊纹和思琪，能在另外一个爱善良，爱勇气，爱

美的世界，最终追寻到你们的信仰，你们赖以为生的信 仰—连同最纯粹的，没有巧言令色的艺术与文字。 20岁，致林奕含的信

Letter to Lin Yihan from my 20-year-old self 10/03/2025

10/03/2025

Three years later, I finally opened your book in my dorm abroad. Curled by the faint glow of my night lamp, I read the story you bled into word by word. Those familiar Chinese characters rose from the page with unfamiliar violence, striking me anew. Knowing too well that what you left behind was not only literature, but also the wounds of your life, I, too, was undone — thrown into disarray by this secondhand sorrow, struck by the indelible pain of a life graced by your exquisite language.

三年后，我终于在异国的宿舍里翻开了你的书。在昏黄的 夜灯下我蜷缩在宿舍温暖的床上，一字一字地读着你血写 的绝唱，颤抖地啜泣着。你笔下熟悉的中文字以陌生的方

式朝着我袭来，我大概也被这二手的坏情绪搞得手足无 措，夹在华丽词藻修饰的生命难以消解的痛苦之中无法抽 身。连着好几天，我脑海里都在想着你，想着你笔下的思

琪：想起你描摹的搪瓷娃娃面容，想起你在咖啡厅写故 事，吃永永远远的柠檬蛋糕。你和思琪的才情—满级分的

For days, you and Siqi filled my mind. I saw your and Siqi’s porcelain-doll faces; I pictured you writing in Taipei cafés, a slice of your favorite lemon cake beside you. Your and Siqi’s brilliance shimmered like the unreachable image of my childhood dreams: the perfect college entrance exam scores that became a nation’s envy; beauty seemingly carved from light;

学测成绩，信手拈来的文学典故—简直是我童年幻想中最 完美的模样。你的遗言里写到：请记得我可爱的样子就好 了；照片里你永远笑着，像是春日最柔嫩的樱花。

笑会使人僵硬吗？从记事起就被爸爸妈妈教育得乖巧听话

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懂礼貌，刚入小学还不识几个字就摇头晃脑地背起来

《三字经》，初高中笔下抄写着的一遍又一遍的《 论语》……氤氲香火下神圣的孔夫子，镌刻在骨子

里的儒家训诫。微笑永远挂在脸上，一句句“对不起”永远 挂在嘴边。于是在对世界的背面一无所知的年岁，当

成

你被猛地推入黑暗时，那份被精心培育的自尊，便

了缝在嘴巴上最结实的针线。书本里颂扬千年的礼

义廉耻，如今不过是无声的凌迟。

被老师强暴简直就是乱伦，是啊，就像你妈妈说的那 样：“性教育是给那些需要性的人”， 一件连词语都肮脏得 难以启齿的事，又怎么能说出口呢？花这么多心思栽培、 被无数期待浇灌长大的女孩，怎么能长成这个样子？

你的呼救声慢慢腐烂在喉咙里，但积压在胸腔之中的愤怒

的五言绝句早已扩写成为上了千字还停不下来的哀艳古 诗。你说你是馊掉的橙子汁和浓汤，是爬满虫卵的玫瑰和 百合，是一个灯火流丽的都市里明明存在却没有人看得到

minds that contained the words of the world’s greatest writers. The last words you wrote were: “Just remember me in my loveliest form” — and I do. Photographs always capture you smiling; your smile is like the softest cherry blossoms of early spring.

也没有人需要的北极星。

你分明记得你有另一种未来，但此刻整个世界都成了你素 未谋面的故乡。你说此刻的你是从前的你的赝品。没有本 来真品的一个赝品。我知道我不配去安慰你——纵使我努

But does a smile make one rigid somehow? From our earliest years, parents taught us to obey: to be polite, composed and well-behaved. Schools imprinted thousands of years of Confucian admonitions into our bones: honor teachers, respect elders, bow your head, yield. A fixed smile plastered across our faces, the reflexive “I’m sorry” uttered even when we were the ones owed an apology. So when the world revealed its dark underside in your most innocent age — when cruelty appeared not as a stranger, but as a teacher — that carefully cultivated dignity became the firmest thread sewing your mouth shut. To be raped by a teacher is nothing short of incest. And yet, just as your mother once said: “Sex education is for those who need sex.” How could you have spoken of what was never permitted a name? How could a girl raised with such painstaking care, decorated with such hopes, turn out to be like this?

力对你的痛苦有想象力，也无法完全感同身受。有些伤痛 是无法、也不应该被和解的。若你以血书，我唯有以泪相 和。

你离世之后，八年过去了，文学和爱并没有让这个世界变

得更好更美。灯火通明依然粉饰着太平；马卡龙店和手 冲咖啡店和进口文具店照样络绎不绝，就 山沟沟里的人也像你说的一样：“身 边人人坐享小小的幸福，嘴里嚷着 小小的痛苦—可当赤裸裸的痛苦端

到他们面前，他们的安乐遂显得丑

陋，痛苦显得轻浮。” 他们说你的书 太过悲伤以至于不敢打开来看。可 他们不愿翻开的却是你亲身经历

The pride you carried now bound your tongue; you could not speak of what your teacher had done. Yet your bleeding verses still spilled outward, unfurling into elegies thousands of characters long. The world became a hometown you never had the chance to know — lost to you before you could call it your own. In your words, you were “spoiled orange juice and thick soup, roses and lilies crawling with insect eggs, a North Star burning in a city of dazzling lights — unseen, unwanted.” You were “a counterfeit of your former self.” You remained alive, but your soul had been murdered.

的整整九年；留你孤零零被困在 废墟里不知所措。 我 继 续 活 着 ， 继 续读书 写作。

每 当 读

到 张 爱

玲，读到红

Eight years have passed since you left us. I go on living. I go on reading. And whenever I open Eileen Chang, or Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber, or Dostoevsky — whenever language moves through me like light through glass — I think

楼梦，读到陀思

妥耶夫斯基，每一次与文学相拥的

17

连远在

of you. The girl who loved words with a devotion that rose like Icarus into the sun: too bright, too burning, too achingly beautiful to last. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve become the twin of your soul, the one left wandering in a parallel universe where the story of your life might have been written differently.

战栗中，我都会想起你；想起那个同样深爱文学却被文

And I wonder how I can write your life differently.

历的每一道痛楚，去学习你为抵御这些痛楚所付出的每一

学背弃的灵魂。我越来越觉得，我变成了你灵魂的双胞 胎——游荡在平行世界中、幸运活下来的那个。

如果我是你灵魂的双胞胎，我又能怎样改写你的人生呢。 我想，我首先要真正懂得你的苦痛。我要去体会你曾经经

Maybe it begins with refusing to look away. The world has always had its ways of pretending: of tucking pain behind the bustling “macaron shops,” “pour-over coffee bars,” and “imported stationery stores” you wrote of. Even remote in the middle of the woods, your words echo: “Everyone around us savors their small joys, laments their small sorrows — yet when confronted with bare suffering, their comforts grow ugly, their pain turns trivial.” They say your books are too sorrowful to read, but what they avert their eyes from is nine long years of a life stranded in its ruins.

次努力。我要经历并铭记你所有的思想、思绪与感情—— 未寄出的爱、未说出口的厌恶、悬在喉头的恐惧、没有尽 头的失重、寸草不 要 紧 的心

生的荒芜、无处安放的柔情。我

紧拥抱着你的痛苦，让你 跳在我胸腔里找到新

Maybe the only way forward is to feel what you felt. To trace every effort you made to endure. To hold fast to every thought you had, recorded in the book; every tremor; every fragile dream. To embrace your suffering tightly, to let your heart beat in me.

And I may write it all down: your story; my story; the stories that gather in the quiet. Stories of love lost and found, of voices stilled, of wounds that ache — but also of the joys that refuse to fade, of survival that remakes the world.

So that I can remember, fiercely and unwaveringly, the lives that bloomed around the wound — the light, the laughter, the words, the fight.

Your life will not have passed in vain. The pain you carried alone has become a thousand voices rising together — voices that speak, write, and remember in the language you made possible. We will go on building the world you and Siqi longed for: a world that treasures kindness, courage, and beauty. We will build it with the courage of not staying silent, with the tenderness that refuses to turn away, and with words pure enough to strip the world bare of its disguises. And when that world begins to take form, I hope somewhere, somehow, you will feel its warmth — the tenderness that should always have been yours.

的律动。替你活下去，连你的一份好好地活下去。 我会把我们的故事都写下来——你的，我的，所有在沉默 中流淌成河的故事。我要写完你那本充满愤怒的书，像伊 纹讲得那样，让读到的人不必经历黑暗，也能看见世界的 背面。但我也要写下那些重新找到的温暖，记下几乎消失 的声音，画出伤痛留在心里的印记。我还要写永不褪色的 快乐，写在废墟上重新生活的勇气。只有这样，我才能牢 牢记住：在伤口周围，生命依然在生长——伴随着那些光 亮，那些笑声，那些诉说，那些抗争。

你和思琪追寻的那个“爱善良，爱勇气，爱美的世界”，或 许我们还能在无数个明天里建造。用不再沉默的勇气，用 不肯妥协的善良，用最纯粹的文字。没有人比你更值得幸 福，我要给你一百个棉花糖的拥抱。 1 2

18

Lin Yihan, “Fang Siqi’s First Love Paradise” Ibid

请记得我可爱的样子就好了 Remember me in my loveliest form

19

20

bakkhai

(after Euripides) By: Saturn Guo | Art by: Anonymous | Design by: Anonymous Bakkhai, an ancient Greek tragedy by the Athenian playwright Euripides, describes the punishment of King Pentheus of Thebes at the hands of the god Dionysos and his cult of feminine followers. Dionysos’ worshippers, commonly known as the bacchae (chorus) or maenads, were characterized by their fawnskins and pine-cone tipped thyrsus spears. Held in an ecstatic frenzy, they dismembered and cannibalized Pentheus — decked in ‘girl-wear’ — as he summited their mountain to join their worship.

this is a world without men. no – let me start from the very beginning: that heatless revolution, that flesh without sun. this is a dissonant tonality sounded by an effigy of ruinous transitions. call Her what you’d like, all epithets are Hers: god/dess, daimon, “Dionysos,” trans-sexual. let me tell you a poorlykept secret: Dionysos cares not for your formalisms. transsexuality is a child playing doctor, a surgeon wielding teeth and thyrsi. our god will cut out your pretty throat, tilted to the starless skies, and feed the tissues to the fawn of you until you quake with animal desire. the flesh will taste of heat, of home. yes, that’s a good way to put it.

I’m sorry – words are difficult idols

21

when wrested from the body of a manymouthed hunger. this is a home: a place of night, a boundless and brimming expanse, a place to take up quiet arms. I’m sure you can taste the burn – Dionysos wants to cauterize the inchoate solitude of machinic mimesis. come, place a limb on the pyre. kneel, and kiss that holy flame. this is a house of worship, a theology in vulgar key: built with needles, fed by pills, stunned stiff by shardsharp vials: 75mg, t, diy. o, Dionysos, triumphant irruption – show us the girl-guise of you. that dress, stashed in the back of your closet, the oils and teeth and blood-red hearts, beating chestless that velvet-wet hymn. or perhaps the mirror crack boy-boon, dead girl walking, dog days’ tears, chest-bound breath and liquor-throb. o Dionysus, shape-shifting Bacchus, show us how fingers, interlocked, are naught more than little utopias. this is all we have now. o Dionysus, please, show us the world of you, the slick heat of metamorphoses. how I love this love of you, lit from behind, fucked by sun, affectionate, soft, many-handed, all cum-sticky futurama.

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A Defense of Icarus: Making Space for Compassion By: Kenna O

Art & Design by: Rachel Roncka

Everyone knows the story of Icarus. An arrogant man tries to fly too high and takes a fatal fall into the sea. He’s a symbol of hubris and greed, and he presumably deserved his gruesome fate. It’s simple to accept this characterization and think ourselves above him, and few care to ask questions about Icarus’s situation. Questions like, “Why was he flying on such precarious wings? How did he find himself flying in the middle of the ocean? And how old was he, anyway?”

When reflecting on this story, I started wondering about these details. Choosing to suspend my criticisms and think of Icarus with more compassion opened up a new interpretation of the myth.

It’s always easy when reading a story — whether myth, social media post, or news article — to make judgments about a person’s life and character without knowing all the facts. Sometimes, I’m guilty of going even further and making assumptions about entire groups of people based on these ideas. Yet, as is the case with Icarus, there’s often a lot more going on behind the scenes — such as conflicting motivations, ignorance, and power plays. Accordingly, it’s important to hold compassion for marginalized or outcasted individuals or groups and to question the authorities behind them (in whatever form they may take) before passing judgment.

When I dug deeper, I started to think that Icarus was doomed to fall — that his descent was fatal not only because it led to his death, but because it was fated (and not only by divinity). Maybe, for instance, because he was flying with flawed wings in a dangerous situation created by more powerful figures. Maybe because the tremendous hubris of the society around him influenced his own beliefs.

I’m not here to offer a “correct” interpretation of the myth, nor do I think this interpretation aligns with the Greeks’ original intentions. But I believe that if we can manage to reexamine condemned characters

from myth with curiosity and kindness, it might be easier to do so with the real people in our lives. *** According to most versions of the myth, Icarus was born to the inventor Daedalus on the island of Crete, where the two were imprisoned in an impossibly large labyrinth by the King Minos. Icarus’s father built wings so that the two could escape. He warned Icarus not to fly too low, lest the sea spray wear down the wings, nor too high, lest the wax melt and the wings fall apart. Ultimately failing to heed these words, Icarus flew too high.

The poet Ovid calls Icarus puer, meaning “young boy,” indicating that he was likely between the ages of 7-17 at the time of his flight.1 Icarus is described catching the feathers blowing in the wind and playing with the wax of his father’s wings, “not realizing that he was handling things that would endanger him.”2 To me, this description sounds less like an arrogant young man and more like an ignorant child. Having been born while Daedalus worked in Crete, Icarus was likely exiled to the labyrinth with no companions other than his father from a young age (Apollodorus). Thus, we have a child imprisoned most of his life for a crime he did not commit — suddenly given freedom alongside responsibility for his own life and death. That was Icarus in the state he died. *** But there’s more to the backstory. One may ask, “How did Icarus even find himself trapped on this island?” The first layer of authority over Icarus was Daedalus: the genius inventor and gravity-defyer who was also Icarus’s father. A native of Athens, Daedalus hated the island nation on which he was imprisoned.3 So why was he there?

As it turns out, long before the wings, Daedalus was already an expert in fleeing. When he lived in Athens, he had an apprentice: his nephew Perdix.

23

Once again, the story boils down to a powerful figure imprisoning, killing, and oppressing others to fuel their own greed and compensate for their own mistakes. The world around Icarus — including Crete, the labyrinth, and his father — was built on a foundation of others’ prideful mistakes. Not only did these mistakes indirectly push Icarus into the sky in an attempt to escape, but they may also have influenced his own reach for the heavens. In general, people are conditioned by the values of the society around us; in a world where pride is rewarded, a young man might be more likely to recklessly fly for the skies. *** In the end, I had to remember the person controlling Minos behind the scenes as well. This led me to the third and final layer of this inherited hierarchy of pride and power: Poseidon. Out of insistence on his own godly might, Poseidon cursed Minos indirectly through his wife for sacrificing the wrong animal. Because of this perceived offense, he took it upon himself to (literally) treat them like animals — and arguably to divinely manipulate their actions thereafter.

Thus, one can say that Icarus was flying to escape imprisonment for a crime committed by his father, in a prison created to compensate for Minos’s shame, forced by Poseidon according to his arrogant will. Examining the backstory of these three powerful men’s cruel and selfish deeds to nurture their own pride, I reevaluated whether Icarus’ demise should be solely attributed to his own hubris. In other words, the failures of many selfish people in this myth — operating within and according to the norms of a culture that systematically encourages violence and arrogance in the name of pride — all end up construed as the mistake of one person: the youth at the bottom of the hierarchy, Icarus.

With some empathy alongside historical and societal context, it’s clear that Icarus was not the only arrogant person in the tale — and I would argue that nor was he solely at fault. In fact, the event of his fall was influenced by the actions of the powerful figures before him. These figures directly and indirectly gave Icarus wings and put him in the sky.

Even his fatal act of arrogance, flying too high, may be seen as culturally conditioned insofar as this was the society in which he was raised. ***

Like himself, Perdix was a brilliant inventor, responsible for the invention of the drawing compass and the handsaw at a young age.4 Daedalus feared that Perdix would surpass him as an inventor and, full of jealousy and greed, tried to kill his nephew by pushing him off the acropolis. Banished from Athens for this crime, he fled to the island of Crete.5 I was surprised to learn this sordid backstory of Icarus’s ‘wise’ father. And yet Icarus is often cast as the archetype of arrogance. In the end, the reason that Icarus was forced to fly in the first place was because of this violent act of his jealous father.

This story also demonstrates that Daedalus was always a greedy and arrogant inventor. Even the act of creating wings to fly could be seen as a way to surpass his nephew: perdix translates to a type of bird, the partridge. This jealous desire to assert his superior genius and attain something unnatural — flight, defying man’s physical capacities — caused him to fashion such a dangerous escape method for him and his son. Icarus may be the one who fell, but the god-defying wings were made out of his father’s hubris. *** This backstory explains why the two were on Crete. But what about the labyrinth in which Daedalus and Icarus were trapped? The answer lies with King Minos of Crete, who ordered Daedalus to build the labyrinth before imprisoning him and his young son inside in a brutal display of power. Why did he do it?

It all goes back to a bull. Minos claimed he would sacrifice the most beautiful bull in the kingdom to the god Poseidon. However, Minos actually coveted the pristine white animal for himself as a power symbol and in his greed, sacrificed a regular bull instead. Angered, Poseidon made Minos’s wife Pasiphaë fall in love with the bull. With the help of one of Daedalus’s inventions (a cow suit) Pasiphaë soon became pregnant with the half-man, half-bull called the Minotaur. Minos was so ashamed of the creature that he forced Daedalus to build a labyrinth to hide the beast — then imprisoned Daedalus inside alongside the Minotaur.6 A tyrant, Minos also sent 14 Athenian youths, 7 girls and 7 boys, into the labyrinth without weapons to die at the hands of the Minotaur every 9 years in some sort of Hunger Games-esque ritual.

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assumption that these individuals’ struggles are due to a flaw in their character. In other words, perhaps if they had tried harder, were smarter or mentally tougher, they could have had greater success. However, rather than jump to conclusions about such individual inadequacies, we can choose to look at these matters like we did with Icarus: having compassion for disadvantaged groups while critically examining the power systems that have shaped their circumstances. A person’s struggles may be linked to historical discrimination, manifesting in redlining or other systemic mistakes, which fall as a burden on minority groups.

This idea is also relevant to the recent attacks on DEI initiatives. Although there are several arguments made for and against these programs, critics of DEI often make an implicit judgment on the character of those benefitting from DEI. For instance, common rhetoric claims that DEI recipients are less meritorious than other candidates with the assumption that the system without DEI is completely merit-based and that minority candidates who do not succeed have not worked hard enough. Yet this view misses the more complex picture of the different conditions in which success can (or cannot) be achieved to the same extent or in the same way. Thus, this view also ignores the efforts of those who have succeeded in ways not rewarded by the standard criteria. Due to the backdrop of systemic failures discussed, marginalized groups often have fewer opportunities to succeed by this criteria due to socioeconomic disadvantages or other societal conditions; that said, they may prove merit in other ways, such as with innovative ideas and mindsets that challenge the tradition. The idea that a lack of educational or extracurricular success is somehow

Now, let’s take a step back from mythology.

Today, masses are disadvantaged, imprisoned (both metaphorically and literally) and controlled by authorities in an analogous way to this myth. In a society characterized by entrenched inequalities, it is oftentimes minority groups at the bottom of a hierarchy, like Icarus, whose struggles can at least be partly attributed to systemic failures.

One historical example of this phenomenon is redlining in the United States. Redlining is the practice of denying loans or other services to residents of specific neighborhoods — historically on a racial basis. Though outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Law, racially-motivated redlining had longstanding effects: neighborhood disinvestment, limitations on social-financial mobility, and major health concerns that continue to affect urban ethnic minority groups today.7 Evidence has found that the denial of public resources to redlined neighborhoods has created poorer living conditions, in turn causing increased risk of diabetes, hypertension, and mental illness as well as reduced education and employment opportunities.8 Often, residents of historically redlined neighborhoods lack the same opportunities to succeed or rise out of their socioeconomic conditions as a result of such conditions.

Like Icarus, we can see them as victims of systemic circumstances that have trapped them in these unfavorable situations as a result of the historical failures of authority groups.

In my life, I have heard people look down on individuals belonging to a lower socioeconomic class or with mental or physical illnesses based on the 25

*** There is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder called Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. In the painting, bystanders to Icarus’s fatal fall continue their regular lives and pay it no attention, unsympathetic to the most devastating event in — and indeed the end of — another man’s life. About this painting, the poet W. H. Auden laments “how everything turns away / quite leisurely from the disaster.” In this artistic interpretation of the myth, the real tragedy is not the fall itself, but rather the world’s indifference in response.

Every person living in an oppressive situation — whether left to die, wrongfully killed or blamed for their circumstances — is experiencing a tragedy.

They are all hurtling from the sky towards a merciless blue. It is essential that all of us show care: that we don’t look away from these people as in Bruegel’s painting, but that we try to do our part in preventing more tragedies.

That said, there’s a note of hope in the myth.

Remember that Daedalus did not only have a son, but also a nephew, Perdix. As the story goes, a jealous Daedalus took the boy to the top of the acropolis under false pretenses and pushed him off the side, hoping he would fall to his demise. But at the last second, Perdix did not fall. Instead, he turned into a partridge and flew.

indicative of poor character ignores the greater systemic picture.

In the case of Icarus, a similar judgement tends to be passed without further questioning — or compassion. We tend to attribute his failure to poor character or flawed intelligence rather than to the forces that put him in this position. These kinds of character judgments are not only unsympathetic, but also dangerous. If we do not question the systems running society or the authorities behind them, who knows how many innocent people like Icarus will be doomed to failure? Instead of basing opinions on the status quo, society should exercise curiosity and compassion to underprivileged peoples.

Redlining and DEI are just a couple examples.

Hyperincarceration, racial profiling, and even simple stereotypes all have roots in people’s assumption of the worst and assignment of harmful character judgments to marginalized groups. Whether it’s guessing the clothing items of a woman who was assaulted or imagining trans athletes as villainous competitors out for victory, society is quick to assign blame to the groups with the least power. No matter the issue, it is deeply important to examine the ways in which these groups and individuals might have been unduly influenced by more powerful authorities as well as flawed systems at large.

Notes [1] P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses (London: Cornhill, 1922); Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879).

[2] P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses (Gotha: Hugo Magnus, 1892).

[3] P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses (London: Cornhill, 1922).

[4] Hyginus, Fabulae, trans. Mary Grant (Kansas: University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies, 1960).

[5] P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses (London: Cornhill, 1922).

[6] Apollodorus, Library (Epitome), trans. James George Frazer (Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, 1921).

[7] Jonathan Rose, “Redlining,” Federal Reserve History (Federal Reserve History, 2023); Leonard E. Egede et al., “Modern Day Consequences of Historic Redlining: Finding a Path Forward,” Journal of general internal medicine, vol. 38.6 (2023).

[8] Leonard E. Egede et al.

[9] W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts,” in Selected Poems (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).

[10] P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses (London: Cornhill, 1922).

Works Cited Apollodorus. Library (Epitome). Translated by James George Frazer. Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, 1921. ToposText.

Auden, W. H. “Musée des Beaux Arts.” In Selected Poems. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

Egede, Leonard E et al. “Modern Day Consequences of Historic Redlining: Finding a Path Forward.” Journal of general internal medicine, vol. 38.6 (2023): 1534-1537. doi:10.1007/s11606-023-08051-4 Hyginus. Fabulae. Translated by Mary Grant. Kansas: University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies, 1960.

Lewis, Charlton T., and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879.

Naso, P. Ovidius. Metamorphoses. Gotha (Germany): Hugo Magnus, 1892. The Perseus Project.

Naso, P. Ovidius. Metamorphoses. Translated by Brookes More. London: Cornhill, 1922. ToposText.

Rose, Jonathan. “Redlining.” Federal Reserve History, 2 June 2023, https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/redlining. Accessed 30 October 2025.

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Hats for Friends: A Reflection By: Samantha Paisley Art by: Alexander Harris Design by: Anonymous

I

teammates and from the joy that had first brought me to the sport. A couple years into college, I was still navigating these emotions as I found myself in a new world of sport: D1 collegiate women’s rowing.

grew up in the strange little world of youth ski mountaineering (SkiMo) where 13-year-olds carry avalanche gear and run around the forest at night. It’s a sport that attracts crazy, cool, motivated, and very bizarre people. On the surface, it seems like a simple thing: mountains, snow, and endurance. But underneath, there’s a less innocent reality: every lap can feel like it is only worth something if you’re winning.

As a student, I tried to interpret and define SkiMo through the lens of Economics, a framework I understand. I started drafting a piece I called “The Economic Theory Behind Youth Ski Mountaineering.” I thought maybe with the right framework, I could find ways to measure correlation between gender and competition and prevent this dynamic from happening to the next generation. As someone who cares about the future of this sport and about the kids competing now, I wanted linear definitions.

I wanted behavioral economics to offer a concrete solution — a way to fix the world I grew up in.

As a teenage girl in that world, competition doesn’t just shape your race results — it shapes your selfworth. When I was fast, it was an accident; when someone else was faster, it was proof that I wasn’t enough. I learned that success meant isolation. Other girls became benchmarks, not friends. And the reality of the sports world is that women have always had to fight for their place. Although competition across the board was always tight, the boys our age never faced the same degree of forced competition.

Then I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “The Gift of Strawberries,” an excerpt from her book Braiding Sweetgrass.

By the end of high school, I had four national titles and absolutely no idea why I was still doing it. I was tired and angry. I was disconnected from myself, my

“From the viewpoint of a private property economy, the ‘gift’ is deemed to be ‘free’ be-

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finish line. They shared snacks and stories and started believing that their teammate’s success was their own. I found a lot of joy that winter in this teaching role. I was able to reflect on my own experiences with the sport as well as coach in a way I deemed productive and supportive. In this role, I rediscovered my love for this sport and community — one that showed through the hats. They weren’t trophies or merchandise, but gifts: symbols of belonging that didn’t have to be earned.

cause we obtain it free of charge, at no cost.

But in the gift economy, gifts are not free.

The essence of the gift is that it creates a sense of relationships. The currency of a gift economy is, at its root, reciprocity.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass The absurdity of my ‘Econ theory’ hit me; what I was trying to remedy with applied economics and concrete definitions wasn’t going to work. At the end of the day, I couldn’t force anything upon the world about which I cared so much. All I could do was provide love and support.

And when those same kids swept podium after podium at the national championships, the joy wasn’t about the medals. It was about that supportive, collective energy that had been built that winter and the joy in racing that resulted from it.

A couple years into college, I took a winter off and returned to my club team in Utah as a coach. Sixty kids and endless energy met me at the start of the season. On a whim, I started hand-sewing fleece hats for them — blue and fuzzy, imperfectly shaped and finished with the coolest logo ever, “FreeMo” (free-ride skimo). By March, every kid had one.

Now, in my so-called “victory lap” year of college, I’m not chasing times or titles. Instead, I’m learning how to measure value differently. Not in wins, but in the small gestures that stitch people together — the way the “FreeMo” hat showed me and all of Silverfork SkiMo.

I saw something change that season. The kids cheered louder for each other; they waited at the

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by: Anna Costello

art by: Samantha Paisley design by: Idaly Barajas

thedead, dead, the thedying, dying, the andthe theenemy enemy and

inspired by the title of Susan Williams’ special editorial in the medical journal Neurology, “The terrorist inside my husband’s brain,” about watching her husband

gentle: gentle:

my teeth at the base of your fingers swallowing the twitch careful and selfless resentment drips from my mouth like an animal but I stay like a good girl

suffer from Lewy Body Dementia

something sick, me moving you your hands onto my body so you can feel me pray that you fall and crush me

flat like like aa dead dead bird bird flat

II put put on on my my apron apron and and let let you you look look at at me me with with glass glass eyes eyes that that hold hold nothing nothing

watching you in our bed from the corner brings hallucinations of my own, you becoming so good to me again acting out strange dreams, the arc of your shadow blocking out the stars that flicker with your body-thrusts the universe closing its eyes on something unholy,

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my ribs opened like a flower soaked cold by the night-dew on the grassy distant hill

I guess you did not deserve the nobility of an auto crash, a death that people write about all beautiful and bloodied for the sympathy of strangers

now I know we are all damned because the world must end in private because even when death is patient single breaths are small apocalypses, distant thuds of meltdown

because we treat time as a gift though it leeches radiation because a real blessing would be someone horrible to blame

I am just the one who loves you; like a child that knows only of sweet dreams you’re begging to be put down,

still

I numb my hands with cold water roll you onto bleach-clean sheets serve your tea without sugar

and kiss you just to the left of the mouth 30

We Need to Care More About our Careworkers By: Rachel Roncka Art by: Maya Dombroskie Design by: Maya Dombroskie All day, every day, therapist, mother, maid Nymph, then virgin, nurse, then a servant Just an appendage, live to attend him So that he never lifts a finger 24/7 baby machine So he can live out his picket-fence dreams It's not an act of love if you make her You make me do too much labour — “labour,” Paris Paloma, 2024 “Carework” can mean many different things. In its broadest sense, the term refers to the labor that it takes to meet human needs, whether it be social, physical, emotional, or medical.

This definition encompasses a variety of labor forms, including housework and childrearing. In Spare Rib, our carework includes providing mutual aid and emotional support to members of our community.

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This can look like delivering food to a sick friend’s dorm, or taking on extra tasks to help out a friend who has too much on their plate. Ella Grim ‘25 wrote about this ethic of care in “Care is a Direct Action” in the Unravel edition.1 Historically, carework has been associated with the home and domestic sphere. Interwoven with this association is the assumption that carework is women's work, performed for the family with no pay in return. Today, carework is becoming increasingly professionalized with expanding options for waged jobs in carework. Despite these changes, gendered expectations about both paid and unpaid carework persist, shaping the quality of life for those workers whose essential labor sustains our communities.

Women make up the majority of low-wage careworkers (this is one major factor behind the gender pay gap between women and men).

These carework professions are consequently feminized. Think of daycare workers, maids, nurses or home health aides — jobs that prevailing societal attitudes have led us to associate with women.

These assumptions are based on demographic statistical realities: 93.8% of childcare workers are women. 89% of maids and housecleaners are women, and more than 89% of home health aides and nursing assistants are women.2 1

2

Ella Grim, “Care is Direct Action,” https://issuu.com/spareribdartmouth/docs/spare_rib_25s_

Colleen Shaddox and Joanne Samuel Goldblum, Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending US Poverty, 158.

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This work is both physically and emotionally demanding. These careworkers rely on their bodies to perform their tasks, pushing the limits of their physical strength and energy each day. For example, staff at nursing homes often have to support the full body-weight of their elderly patients when assisting their movement — which can lead to immediate injury or future health issues. Additionally, these careworkers must carry the emotional burden of working with patients who are nearing the end of their lives or enduring other hardships. Watching the health of one’s patients deteriorate each day at work can produce grief that can seep into other corners of one’s life.

Despite all this, the compensation earned by careworkers does not reflect the immense toll of their labor. The median hourly wage has recently been measured at $11.65 for childcare workers and $14.25 for nursing assistants, which is below the minimum wage of several states.3 The insurance benefits received by careworkers throughout their employment are often insufficient, resulting in the tragic irony of many lowwage healthcare workers being unable to afford their own healthcare.4 Taking a closer look at the labor low-wage careworkers perform, most of us would agree that it is difficult, essential, and admirable work.

3 Ibid 4 Ibid, 163

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So then why are careworkers so financially vulnerable? To understand the societal devaluation of low-wage carework professions today, we can look to the socioeconomic history of housework. In the chapter “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective,” activist-scholar Angela Davis illustrates how the distance between the housewife’s domestic labor and any tangible profit obscures the value of housework.5 In a capitalist economic system, labor’s societal value is determined by the economic gains it produces. Since “housework does not generate profit, domestic labor was naturally defined as an inferior form of work as compared to capitalist wage labor.” 6 It’s important to note that the term “housewife” can be misleading; it does not capture the experiences of women who have had to work outside of the home in addition to performing domestic labor for their families.

Throughout U.S. history, many working-class and enslaved women were forced to work out of economic necessity or violent coercion.

Nevertheless, the domestic labor of these women was similarly perceived as separate from the profit-generating production cycle of capitalism, and thus of lesser value. This outlook, Davis writes, “diminishes the social status of women in general.” 7 That diminished social status and devaluation of domestic labor has carried over to the case of modern day low-wage careworkers, who continue to often be women, performing labor akin to that of the “housewife.”

5

Angela Davis, “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective,” in Women, Race & Class.

6 Ibid, 228 7 Ibid, 225

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Yet the story of the devaluation of carework within late-stage capitalism today is even more complicated. There’s another economic force at play that keeps the wages of careworkers down and perpetuates sub-par working conditions: private equity. The harmful influence of private equity firms is especially apparent in the case of nursing homes. The Senior Justice Law Firm explains: “Private equity ownership [of nursing homes] often introduces operational changes aimed at maximizing profitability. These measures can include reducing staff numbers, limiting staff training, or lowering employee wages and benefits. Such costcutting initiatives compromise the quality and continuity of care, leading to understaffing, increased turnover, and decreased resident satisfaction.”8 In addition to jeopardizing the health and safety of nursing home residents, understaffing increases the strain on careworkers. As outside actors, private equity firms have no stake in the wellbeing of those whose lives and livelihoods they impact. This process reveals how capitalist values and care ethics are fundamentally incompatible with one another.

8 “Drain of Funds: How Private Equity Siphons Money Out of Nursing Homes.” Senior Justice Law Firm.

https://seniorjustice.com/drain-of-funds-how-private-equity-siphons-money-out-of-nursing-homes/

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This incompatibility is underscored by the counterexample of the gender equity that arose in societies with non-capitalist economic systems. For example, prior to contact with European settlers, traditional Indigenous societies in the Americas had land-based, nonindustrial economies that also lacked patriarchal gender hierarchies. In these systems, “Native men’s work was never considered to be more valuable than Native women’s work.”9 Recognized as their community’s primary re/producers, women typically performed carework in the form of food production and distribution, child-rearing, and maintaining the home. Yet even with the presence of this gendered labor division, women’s labor was respected and valued, for it was understood that “the work of every individual was necessary for the well-being of the family, the community and the nation.”10 The absence of capitalist institutions such as the wage economy, rigid property rights, and the public/private split enabled this understanding. As a result, people of all genders had political, economic, and social authority. However, as Euro-American settler-colonialism progressed, “the shift from subsistence to production-for-exchange economies marginalized Native women from economic participation and the authority that went with it.” 11 Across tribal nations, traditional structures of gender equity and matrilineality were diluted and dismantled by the imposition of western societal norms that continue to marginalize carework today.

9 The Dismantling of Gender Equity in Anderson, Kim. A recognition of being: Reconstructing

Native womanhood. Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2016, 60.

10 Ibid 11 Ibid, 62

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From workplace conditions to compensation, the current state of carework in our society is clearly unacceptable. So what would have to change for carework to be properly valued?

Davis proposes the socialization of domestic labor, including carework. Such a shift would not be as radical as it may first appear. In fact, we are already taking steps toward it. Universal pre-K (already the norm in many foreign countries) is gaining support across the U.S., for which fledgling programs have already been implemented at state levels. Calls to expand access and quality of long-term care for the elderly also echo across the political spectrum and necessarily involve improved conditions for facility staff. As we move forward, we can refer to the example of traditional Indigenous land-based cultures for guidance. Although less widespread due to the enduring legacy of settler-colonial violence, these more equitable values and societal structures are still alive in many Indigenous communities today. With a steadfast commitment to valuing all labor at its true worth, our society may finally be able to reciprocate the care these individuals have provided to others for so long.

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Anchored in the world’s constant spin

Tucked By: M. E. Art by: Samantha Kang Design by: Hannah Krueger

muffled cry under a weighted blanket in grey So tightly wrapped, I have to stay Patched it together worry by worry – With needle and thread-stab-tighten-I’m sorry

Shakily taking a peek for the skies

Caring to much about every ashen piece

Clamor in ears like thick smoke to eyes

My terrors carefully crafted the choking fleece

Fear and chaos twirling around

Sharp and suture uniting grey with my shape

To flame’s crackling sound.

Each move pulling on me like heartache

Of course I care

seams with every motion leak red

Witnessing everything close to my heart right there

As it tightly fixes body to bed

What happened to my little wonder?

Now in heated tongues it will go under

Tucked in with my worst fears

Frightened by my heart’s desire

Been here month and years

Daydream of helping a world on fire

Overcrowding my lonely bed With the words running in my head

can I dare?

Here is nothing bright nor light

Show patch by patch that I care

- Heavy constant night

Loosen the thread a little bit

No sunlight ever falls through crowded dense

Just making a tiny space to fit

A blanket: my suffocating forlorn defense

Where thoughts don’t get swallowed in grey

Musty dark conquers every glimpse

Where night stands down to a gleam of day

At the sight yearning to unwind my tangled limbs As flesh turns stiff like stone

“But maybe we can change the world somehow?”

That cover became my haunted home Certainly no art of culture Me- Purpose lusting sculpture Only being of use When impelling on my face the smile I so refuse In the end we’re all gonna die What’s the point, why even try?

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in

I will recognize your scars

Instead everyday a fight

If you’re trapped where I was

Year by year slipped away,

Together we will untangle us from sheets

All of them wasted to grey

Going somewhere we can stand and breathe

No one can give that back - ever or now

The most beautiful years of your life they said

But maybe we can change the world somehow?

Yet fear and dread is all we had wanted to collect memories bright

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Decolonizing Self-Care: Community, Culture, and the Politics of Healing content warning: This piece discusses sexual violence and mental health struggles.

By: Nyashadzashe R Jongwe Art by: Isabella Sotorrio Design by: Isabella Sotorrio

As a Shona woman, I come from a deeply communal culture guided by the philosophy of Ubuntu, a belief in collectivity that means “I am because you are.” It is the understanding that a person’s identity and well-being are inseparable from their community and relationships with others. In our worldview, kinship extends beyond blood; your neighbor’s joys and struggles are also your own. We say,“Munhu munhu muvanhu,” which translates to “A person is a person through other people.” This mantra stands as a quiet yet powerful resistance to colonial notions of individualism and the “every man for himself ” ethic of self-reliance. I would be dishonest if I claimed that I always embraced this philosophy while growing up in Zimbabwe. In high school, I didn’t fully appreciate the sense of collectivity that defined my community.

I often wondered why an older neighbor who wasn’t a relative could assume a parental role for children who weren’t their own. To me, it felt like people were simply too involved in everyone’s lives. Yet since starting college, I’ve come to look back on that communal spirit with deep fondness, realizing how much I miss it. Coming to Dartmouth was a huge culture shock. I had chosen the school for the tight-knit community promised on every admissions tour, yet I quickly realized I didn’t fit into that community. I told myself that the loneliness I felt was just part of the typical freshman fall experience and that, by the next term, I would have found my people. But winter was worse.

I wasn’t used to the cold, gray months, and I fell into a deep depression. Everyone around me seemed to be doing just fine, all caught up in the relentless rhythm of classes, internship applications, clubs, and Greek life. I had never felt more isolated. I began to wonder if something was wrong with me, since everyone else seemed to be managing so well. My sophomore year began with hope. I finally felt like I was finding my footing at Dartmouth and settling into routines, building friendships, and starting to feel a sense of belonging.

But that sense of stability was taken away from me during the winter term when I was sexually assaulted after attending a frat party. For two years, I had been active in SAPA and SVPP, supporting other survivors of sexual violence. The previous I summer, I had even traveled to South Africa to work with a nonprofit supportingsurviing survivors of gender-based violence. I was certain that this was the work I wanted to dedicate my life to. Yet when it happened to me, everything I thought I knew about healing and strength unraveled. My sexuality had always been an essential part of who I am. I had fought hard to embrace it, to feel at home in my own body. But after the assault, everything felt strange, as if my body no longer belonged to me. It was like waking up inside someone else’s skin — trapped in darkness, searching for a way out with no sense of sight, only my hands. My relationship with my body had been taken from me, and I resented him for it. I was ashamed to talk about it. I withdrew from friends, barely made it through my classes, and moved through my days in a fog of numbness.

Some days, I went through the motions — attending lectures and turning in assign41

ments — only to realize by evening that I couldn’t remember a thing I had done. The person who assaulted me was still on campus, still living his life as if nothing had happened. Watching how easily he fit in, how warmly others spoke about him, I began to question my own memory. Maybe I had misinterpreted what happened. Maybe he hadn’t meant to hurt me. However, my denial could not silence what my body remembered.

Whenever I saw him, my hands would tremble uncontrollably, and panic attacks and nightmares became a constant part of my life. Even in public spaces like the library, I would sometimes feel a sudden wave of fear, certain he was standing behind me. I hadn’t told anyone on campus; my relationships felt too surface-level, built on small talk about classes and internships. I felt completely alone. The only people I could confide in were my therapist and friends from home. Deep down, I knew I couldn’t heal in the same place that had broken me. I needed to leave Dartmouth. On a whim, I applied to a study abroad program in Ghana and a DCSI program in South Africa, which meant spending two consecutive terms away from campus. Those two terms healed me. Even with a deI felt held by community again. A quick trip to the store in Ghana could turn into a ly curious half-hour conversation with a vendor about their craft. People were genuineabout who I was; what had brought me there; how I was finding the experience. Friends I’d known for only a few weeks invited me to family gatherings, showed me their childhood neighborhoods, and once, a Tinder date I’d met just two weeks earlier even took me to a Congolese wedding. For the first time in a long time, I built relationships where no one asked about internship prospects or what school I attended. They simply wanted to know me, and that was enough. Part of me wanted to block out the painful memories tied to Dartmouth, so I threw myself fully into the world around me. I spent afternoons wandering through galleries, going to concerts and weekend markets, trying new cuisines, and connecting with people doing similar activist work. Slowly, I began to come back to myself. feeling of true coI felt like I was making progress, and what changed everything was the mmunity. Weekly therapy alone couldn’t give me that. Healing came from meeting people who cared; people doing the work I had once loved but abandoned after the trauma; people who truly. saw me. Those who could see through my façade when I said I was fine, even when I wasn’t.

Coming back to campus after those two terms was harder than I anticipated. I returned during winter break to a campus that felt quiet and empty. Within twenty-four hours, I had gone from Ghanaian summer to New England snow. The sudden change left me feeling defeated as I felt myself slipping back into depression. I began to wonder if all the time I’d spent away hadn’t helped after all.

Before I could regain my footing, winter term began and classes, jobs, and extracurriculars quickly piled up.

I started seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist, but their advice often felt disconnected from what I truly needed.

They told me to go to the gym, take my antidepressants consistently, and load up on vitamins. But what I needed needed was community.

I refuse to subscribe to the colonial notion that self-care is an individual pursuit. For me, healing has always been communal. I come from a culture deeply rooted in community, and I was raised to understand care as something shared. True care means leaning on chosen family and drawing on ancestral practices of healing, whether through kin, queer elders, or artists and creators who help us feel seen. I’ve long rejected the commodified version of wellness marketed through expensive “self-care” products, elaborate skincare routines, and quick fixes centered on the individual rather than the collective. Healing, I’ve learned, is not something we accomplish alone; it is a shared, ongoing practice of remembering who we are, where we come from, and how we hold one another.

To decolonize self-care is to return to that truth: that our well-being is bound together, and that real care is a collective act of resistance, love, and survival.

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The Things We Carry by: Aditi Singh

I.

art by: Denisse Gonzalez-Marquez design by: Idaly Barajas

Concrete and Curls

When I was seven, my family friend’s teenage cousin told us there was a crocodile lurking in the giant concrete storm drain near my friend’s house. The cylinder burrowed into the Earth, the other end an uncharted secret.

Armed with flimsy sticks and finding strength in numbers, my friends and I marched into the drain in the dead of night, staring down anticipated glowing yellow eyes. We didn’t flinch. Our tiny bodies enveloped in the concrete spiral of menace, we laughed in the face of death, watching the elusive beast shrink away from our might.

We never did find that crocodile. I imagine it found a few audacious young girls much more frightening than a teenager ever could be, feeling that tsunamis of naive joy could ambush its peace.

Yesterday, as I walked home from the bus station on the phone with my mother, I thought I saw a snake. I jumped three feet before realizing it was a braid of jet black hair. Flat and dead in the center of the sidewalk.

When my grandmother visited our home in Texas, we sat on the olive green porch swing on my patio for hours, lamenting the melodrama and heartache in a nine year old girl’s life. In our broken languages, we shared our womanhood, and we shared our desire to be close and cared for. She rubbed coconut oil into my scalp, her fingers veiny and powerful. We fought for our intimacy.

My mother’s curls echo my grandmother’s, delicate and wispy springs of black bleached brown from the sun. As a child, I refused to cut my hair. My waves were wild and unruly, tangled and messy — mine. Within its strands, I still smell the thick coconut oil she smoothed into my hair and feel her leathery fingers caressing my skin. I hear her laughing in the face of time.

I used to practice french braiding on her, a cheap repayment for her care. Tiny fingers buried in a wilderness they couldn’t understand. The wrinkles that dance across my grandmother’s face have deepened now, and her soft body will never again sink into the porch swing of the house we are about to sell. I still can’t french braid my hair.

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Because

“Wild women don’t get the blues / But I find that / Lately, I’ve been crying like a tall child” (Mitski) II.

Dear Walnut Grove

Our apartment in Louisville was small. There was only one bedroom, so instead of my own room, I had my own walk-in closet. My stuffed animals lined every surface of that closet, makeshift beds and blankets for each of them filling the space with endless love.

My friends had huge houses, but in my closet, I had my entire universe at my fingertips.

When we moved, abandoning lush green hills for oil rigs and cowboy boots and more space, I never thought I would miss my closet. I relinquished that perfect, contained joy far too easily. But the house we moved into is something else entirely.

I am whimsical and I love to love. Just as she has loved me.

She boasts a river granite fireplace, her walls stained with an irreplicable, strange shade of green-gray. Her red recliner’s paint has been chipping off for half a decade, hideous and bothersome. My room is sterile and large and wonderful. Her master bed is always perfectly made, courtesy of my mother’s neatness. I loved and lived under her roof for ten years, but it is the pain she has witnessed that makes her embrace a home.

I fell when I was fifteen and often found myself on the floor pressing fingernails into my skin to breathe. It was her hands that brought carpet to my eyes to soak my sorrows.

When I experienced my first teenage heartbreak, her recliner’s arms held me before my friends, the red specks of paint on my body a reminder of her care.

Terrified of moving across the country for college, I retreated to the neatly folded covers of her master bed, knowing the warmth of her body would always accept my disorder.

She has taught me what it means to be cared for.

As we have cared for her.

She is a far cry from the flawless utopia and intrigue of the first closet space I called my own, but the ugliness she has witnessed — my ugliness — is what makes it so difficult to relinquish her love to her next tenants.

Her mind, like mine, is a divine monstrosity.

I hope she cares for them as well as she has cared for me.

I know she can’t write me back, but I have learned that she can listen. That her strangely colored walls have ears, and that the flecks of her paint pulse with the heartbeat of life.

Imperfectly, Her messiest inhabitant 44

III.

Sprouting

Last fall, we sat together on the green, nestled in the comforting blue of a picnic blanket at the intersection of two gravel paths. (A fitting location.) A lawn mower circled us, scattering half-blades of grass that decorated our hair like stars.

In the winter, we climbed the icy golf course hills, sliding down in inflated tubes and collapsing into the powdery snow. We built a snowman, named Frederick of course, and searched for sticks to adorn his perfectly sculpted body.

Last spring, we flocked to the quiet darkness with flashlights, music and friends. We sank into the prickly grass and wet Earth, let her swallow us as we drank her joy. We sang, loved and beautiful.

When I braid your hair, I feel phantom coconut on my hands — slick with coconut oil and laughter — and feel our connection rooted in the Earth. The air smells like sun-dried papyrus, as ancient and leathery as the hands that raised me.

We are tall children playing dress-up, disguising our truths with the intellect that brought us together. But the things we carry poke holes in the fabric. They tear small holes in the concrete veils we adorn and allow the truth to sprout in small crevices.

We are bigger now, but our laughter has scared away a monster once again.

We are invincible.

The things I carry are not small:

my grandmother’s kindness, my mother’s orderliness and my own chaos — all gifted to me in delicate doses of love. These small graces are baked into my being, and one day, they will be the inheritance of my daughters.

Together, we carry the things a single woman could not, and in doing so, we carry forth the care of generations.

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46

care /ker/ noun verb

1. the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something.

1. feel concern or interest; attach importance to something.

2. look after and provide for the needs of.

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48

<OUR S

ART: created art for articles | DE

EDITING: gave peer writing feedback | WRITING: a Abby Byrne ‘28 Logistics*, Writing Aditi Singh ‘28 Writing Alexander Harris ‘27 Art Angela S. ‘27 Art, Design* Angela Zhang ‘28 Logistics* Anna Costello ‘28 Writing Avery Lin ‘27 Writing*, Editing Camila Sánchez ‘27 Design Denisse Gonzalez-Marquez ‘28 Marketing*, Art Dillon Cain ‘29 Writing Emma Hwang ‘28 Art Geena San Diego ‘28 Art, Design* Hailey Maloney ‘28 Writing*, Editing Hannah Krueger ‘26 Design Idaly Barajas ‘28 Logistics*, Design Isabella Sotorrio ‘29 Art, Design Kenna O ‘28 Writing Lillia Hammond ‘26 Design Lily Aspen ‘27 Art, Design 49

STAFF>

ESIGN: created layout for pages |

authored an article | *: acted as department lead Lucy Heidenry ‘28 Design Maya Dombroskie ‘29 Art, Design M. E. Writing Mischa Telesford ‘27 Art, Design Nyashadzashe Jongwe ‘26 Writing Orum Pettid ‘29 Art Rachel Roncka ‘26 General Managing*, Art, Design Sabrina Chu ‘26 Community Development*, Special Projects* Sally Young ‘26 Marketing* Samantha Kang ‘27 General Managing*, Art Samantha Paisley ‘25 Writing, Art Saturn Guo ‘28 Writing Selina Wang ‘29 Design Soraya Fonseca ‘28 Writing T. W. ‘27 Writing

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Letter From the Design Leads Care seeps into everything Spare Rib is. Care is the force that molds words into poetry. Care is what allows art to spring forth into existence. Care is what urges us to carve out a part of ourselves and share

it with the rest of the world in words, lines, and color.

As artists ourselves, we understand the love that is poured into every creation. It is an act of utmost selflessness and sacrifice — for once art is made, it is no longer yours alone. No longer guarded by the abstraction of thought, it now also belongs to the eyes that behold it. It is an act of trust and Care. And in this issue, we felt the thread of Care weaving into every stroke and splatter of ink.

The color palette of Care is named focaccia — incorporating high-saturation canary yellows, carmine reds, and olive greens that invoke scenes of nature. We believe it is not a coincidence that our staff gravitated towards these earthy tones: the all-encompassing embrace of nature reminds us that we are inextricably tied to the mycelial network of life, that we are born from something ancient and magical and will eventually return to it, and that we are not alone, after all, in this vast cosmos. But more than anything, focaccia is tactile, abundant, radiating warmth — always full of Care. We hope that through these vibrant colors, you can feel the whispering touch of wheat fields and the scent of sunlight-drenched autumn afternoons as clearly as we did.

We want to express gratitude to our wonderful staff, who nurtured this issue with their boundless dedication and creativity. We also wish to extend our love to all of the new ribbers, and we are extremely excited to see their work in the future.

And finally, dear you: you who are reading this letter, you who contributed to this beautiful issue, you who showed up to craft circles and soup dinners — you are living proof of the radical potential of Care.

You showed all of us that there is always a better potential. And for that: thank you, thank you, thank you.

With love, 25F-26W Design Leads, Angela & Geena

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26WColor Palette: Focaccia

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INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST ZINE AT DARTMOUTH VOLUME 6 | ISSUE 1 26W EDITION

The Care Issue

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