The College Hill Independent — Vol. 45 Issue 3

the

Volume

45

Issue

03

30 September 2022

03 DEFACE MY TRANSCRIPT, BUDDY 09 DOLL PARTS 15 BEYOND LOVE AND LOSS

THE REDEMPTIVE ISSUE

* The College Hill Independent

45 03 09.30

This Issue 00 “BLACK DOGS” Yujia Li

02 WEEK IN REVIEW: DESERT EDITION Masha Breeze & Nora Mathews

03 DEFACE MY TRANSCRIPT, BUDDY Ethan Miller

Masthead* MANAGING EDITORS Corinne Leong Sacha Sloan Jane Wang WEEK IN REVIEW Masha Breeze Nora Mathews ARTS Cecilia Barron Anabelle Johnston Lola Simon EPHEMERA Chloe Chen Ayça Ülgen FEATURES Zachary Braner Ryan Chuang Jenna Cooley

06 “THE RED ROOM”

LITERARY Madeline Canfield Tierra Sherlock

07 WHAT IF AN ALLIGATOR

METRO Jack Doughty Nélari Figueroa Torres Rose Houglet Nicholas Miller

Alex Schupak Andy Luo

09 DOLL PARTS Kian Braulik

11 WHERE LIFE IS PRECIOUS, LIFE IS PRECIOUS Julia Vaz

13 A TALE OF TWO PLEBISCITES Mariana Fajnzylber

14 “FACES OF FASHION 2022” Rozella Kim

SCIENCE + TECH Justin Scheer Ella Spungen Katherine Xiong WORLD Priyanka Mahat Alissa Simon X Lucia Kan-Sperling Seoyoung Kim Maxime Pitchon DEAR INDY Annie Stein

15 BEYOND LOVE AND LOSS

BULLETIN BOARD Sofia Barnett Kayla Morrison

18 DEAR INDY

SENIOR EDITORS Alisa Caira Sage Jennings Anabelle Johnston Isaac McKenna Deb Marini Peder Schaefer

Iman Husain Annie Stein

19 BULLETIN

From the Editors

STAFF WRITERS Hanna Aboueid Madeleine Adriance Maru Attwood Graciela Batista Mark Buckley Lily Chahine Swetabh Changkakoti Laura David Emma Eaton Danielle Emerson Mariana Fajnzylber Keelin Gaughan Sarah Goldman Jonathan Green Faith Griffiths Eric Guo Charlotte Haq Anushka Kataruka Roza Kavak Nicole Konecke Cameron Leo Kara McAndrew Morgan McCordick Sarah McGrath Charlie Medeiros Alex Purdy Callie Rabinovitz Kolya Shields Alex Valenti Julia Vaz Kathy/Siqi Wang Justin Woo COPY CHIEF Addie Allen COPY EDITORS / FACT-CHECKERS Ava Bradley Qiaoying Chen Dun Jian Chin Mack Ford Klara Davidson-Schmich Eleanor Dushin Zoey Grant Aidan Harbison Doren Hsiao-Wecksler Rahmla Jones Alara Kalfazade Jasmine Li Rebecca Martin-Welp Angelina Rios-Galindo Everest Maya-Tudor Shravya Sompalli Eleanor Peters Grace Samaha Jean Wanlass SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM Klara Davidson-Schmich Britney De Leon Alex Nadirashvili Ayça Ülgen

*Our Beloved Staff

COVER COORDINATOR Soeun Bae DESIGN EDITORS Anna Brinkhuis Sam Stewart DESIGNERS Brianna Cheng Ri Choi Addie Clark Amy/Youjin Lim Ash Ma Jaesun Myung Enya Pan Tanya Qu Jeffrey Tao Floria Tsui Anna Wang ILLUSTRATION EDITORS Sage Jennings Jo Ouyang ILLUSTRATORS Sylvie Bartusek Noah Bassman Ashley Castañeda Claire Chasse Julia Cheng Nicholas Edwards Lillyanne Fisher Sophie Foulkes Haimeng Ge Joshua Koolik Lucy Lebowitz Sarosh Nadeem Hannah Park Sophia Patti Izzy Roth-Dishy Livia Weiner Iris Wright Jane Zhou Kelly Zhou Elisa Kim DEVELOPMENT COORDINATORS Anabelle Johnston Bilal Memon DEVELOPMENT TEAM Alara Kalfazade Rini Singhi Jean Wanlass WEBMASTER Isaac McKenna MVP Kian Braulik — The College Hill Independent is printed

by TCI in Seekonk, MA

Mission Statement After Ling Ma $$ $$$ $$$ $$$$$$$. $$$$ $$$$$ $$$, $$$$! ¢¢ ¢¢¢¢ ¢¢ ¢¢¢¢¢¢¢ ¢¢¢. </3333 $$$ $$$$ $$ $$$$$’$!!!!!! $$$!!!!

-CL, JW, SS

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THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Our paper is distributed throughout the East Side, Downtown, and online. The Indy also functions as an open, leftist, consciousness-raising workshop for writers and artists, and from this collaborative space we publish 20 pages of politically-engaged and thoughtful content once a week. We want to create work that is generative for and accountable to the Providence community—a commitment that needs consistent and persistent attention.

While the Indy is predominantly financed by Brown, we independently fundraise to support a stipend program to compensate staff who need financial support, which the University refuses to provide. Beyond making both the spaces we occupy and the creation process more accessible, we must also work to make our writing legible and relevant to our readers.

The Indy strives to disrupt dominant narratives of power. We reject content that perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism and/or classism. We aim to produce work that is abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist, and we want to generate spaces for radical thought, care, and futures.

Though these lists are not exhaustive, we challenge each other to be intentional and selfcritical within and beyond the workshop setting, and to find beauty and sustenance in creating and working together.

WEEK IN REVIEW

WEEK IN REVIEW: DESERT EDITION Tackling the question on everyone’s mind this week: should I move to the desert?

We discuss.

Opinion: If Everyone Goes to the Desert That’s Bad Masha is in the desert this week :( and they’re probably lost because I made them spin around really fast before they got on the plane, so they’re sooo discombobulated. It’s generally a bad idea to go somewhere without cell service because what if you get a good idea for a song? Or you get cursed by a dead tree and don’t have any time to recover by Googling soup recipes?

I’m worried that everyone is going to try to go to the desert and make a mini documentary about it. Not everyone can win at Sundance!

Plus I heard that the application deadline is really soon and I already submitted my short film about how I saw a dog that had human eyes and an ass that doesn’t quit. I don’t want anyone to compete against me; all my actors quit before production started due to a “contract dispute” (they didn’t trust me after they found out I was a nepotism baby—my aunt invented the idea of drinking a glass of water before bed) so I had to CGI everyone in and it looks kind of off.

The desert’s biggest draw is that you get to hallucinate a beautiful lake when you get thirsty enough. When I get really thirsty, I just drink a glass of water before bed! Haha (my aunt just made $70). My question: why would you go to the desert when you can crawl on your hands and knees towards the mirage of an oasis from the comfort of your hometown? The oasis in question is a cronut restaurant and crawling is driving a car by yourself in the HOV lane. The material comforts I desperately need—four cups of red dye 40 every day—will not be available to me if I go off the grid. If I don’t get my red dye 40, I black out and wake up three days later in a pile of every pair of platform orthopedic sandals Zappos has to offer. This happens a lot and my carbon footprint is soooo big because I just incinerate all of the shoes on the spot in my in-unit incinerator.

I saw in an Instagram-reel-style vision (short-form video content gets beamed directly into my head and I experience videos as if they were fragments of an apocalyptic future I can see only partially) about how when you live in nature for long enough birds start to dress you. I don’t trust birds after what they did to my cousin’s husband! And I don’t want their little claws on my matching workout sets. I can only imagine birds have wreaked havoc on Masha’s collection of the cashmere dunce hats they make me wear when I say they don’t have Rachel-from-Friends hair.

Opinion: I Went to the Desert Because an Infographic Told Me to and You Should Come Visit! It’s Honestly *Vibes* and *Mood* Here Hello to all my smol beans and awkward hoomans! My therapist DM’d me an infographic (yes, we have that kind of relationship, she’s my bestie and last week she told me I’m her favorite client sooooo) that told me I need to get off the grid and reconnect with nature, so I immediately moved to the California desert. I don’t have WiFi or cell service so I’m currently writing this article in my mind and then telepathically communicating it to Nora in her dreams! That’s right, superpowers are a thing you get when you go off the grid and start only drinking alkaline water and only eating food that was prepared by someone who has *boundaries* and holds space for softness.

I’ve been really working on myself since I got here. I have now realized that my tiny dog and I had a codependent relationship, so I’m taking some space and healing from that. I live in a cute two bedroom hole with a beautiful community of nasty women! We all have the same haircut and the same relationship with our moms (good but sometimes we fight over who has a deeper connection to Alanis Morissette’s lyrics).

Me and my roomies are so close it’s crazy! We’ve strengthened that bond by taking BuzzFeed quizzes together every night (if anyone else gets “Prince Eric” on the What Your Socialization Says About Which Disney Prince Is Your Soul Mate, I stop talking to them for a week haha); all wearing only white all the time, taking psychedelics together whenever I say so; and having shame hour, the hour where everyone tells me their deepest shames! We’re so crazy lol.

The desert is also a great place to start having domain over crows!

Crows are great because they’re like Instacart except you don’t have to pay them to bring you groceries. Me and my crows love to crack open a couple Dasanis, put on an episode of Red Scare, and scroll on TikTok together, showing each other the funny ones (although sometimes Crowlivia starts saying everything has “pick-me energy” and I have to pull her aside and tell her that she’s being too much).

Anywhooooo come to the desert! It’s sandy here and I like that.

ILLUSTRATION SYLVIE BARTUSEK DESIGN JEFFREY TAO TEXT MASHA BREEZE & NORA MATTHEWS VOLUME 45 ISSUE 03

02

Content warning: depression, grief

I submitted a version of this paper at the end of the summer to resolve an incomplete English class from earlier this year. My professor has not yet read it and my grade remains NC.

Deface My Transcript, Buddy Living With Ghosts in Franny and Zooey

Undergraduate analyses are wont to lean on simple, if not entirely coincidental, parallels drawn between texts and other texts, texts and worlds, and—most abhorrently—texts and selves. Argumentative chains of logic and reason are hoisted over shoulders and dragged along behind these elementary English class analogies, and I, dear professor, have found myself in the shipyard with this paper, heaving and ho-ing my heart out to make this chain fall in line behind the parallel I intend to draw. This flowery pastiche-prose is the spoonful of sugar meant to help the acrid antidote that is this three-month-late meta-paper slide smoothly into your inbox.

I came across a copy of Franny and Zooey a few days ago in a thrift store in northern New Hampshire (it was conveniently connected to a dispensary, “Live Free or Die”). I, like every angsty teenager with literary inclinations, read and re-read The Catcher in the Rye during my adolescence. Unfortunately, I abandoned J.D. Salinger once I became aware of the pervasive and priggish sentiment amongst English class aficionados that Holden Caulfield was a dick and if you identified with him you too might be a phallic phony. Thankfully those sentiments were not present in the White Mountains. I bought the weathered copy for only one dollar and read it immediately upon my return to Providence. To put it simply, I was floored. The coincidence between what I read and the circumstances under which I initially failed to write this very paper was too perfect for me to pass up.

I, like Franny, have a dead older brother. I, like Franny, had a breakdown at college and found myself licking my wounds on my parents’ couch. I, like Franny, have a hard time understanding the enigmatic ways in which grief has affected and will undoubtedly continue to affect my life.

I, like Franny, have come to grips with the fact that the only answer to existential dread—the pain of existence in a world in which everyone and everything you know and love will ultimately disappear—is to do the difficult, little things every single day, no matter how meaningless they may seem compared to the search for your sibling’s soul. Franny, the actress, must act, as her brother Zooey insists. And I, the student of Comparative Literature, must compare literature. So here you go. This paper, Professor XXXXX, is my answer to the question I have asked myself over and over again since starting college the same year Luke died: What could this university (or the universe, for that matter) possibly want from me? I don’t know, but this is what it’s getting. +++ Once, last semester, while standing in line at a vegan ice cream place in Fox Point, I found myself

talking with an ex-university chaplain. Always distrustful of chatty strangers, I initially turned my eyes toward the sidewalk and tried to brush her off. She was undeterred by my indifference.

Yielding to her eager zeal, I learned that this spiritual woman was in Providence to sort through the belongings of her sister who had died three months before. Although my newfound friend didn’t feel ready to undertake the task of sorting through the materiality of her sister’s life, necessity compelled her. In a moment of blind faith, I decided to share my own experience. This woman, whose name I reproach myself for forgetting, listened to me in a way that few people have: gently, thoughtfully, responsively, and without a single “I’m sorry.” I bawled on Ives Street in front of a horde of vegans.

What has stuck with me the most from my conversation with this chaplain, which couldn’t have lasted more than 10 or 15 minutes, was a question she asked me before walking away with her oat-milk swirl cone (this detail, for some reason, persists): “What was his name?” Upon being asked I froze. My brother died in January of 2019, the year I started at Brown. No one from this life, which is markedly separate from my life back home in Missouri, ever met him. For the few people whom I am able to share any of this mortifying experience with, Luke is referred to as “my brother.” Saying his name seemed to bring him to life again. Instead of an empty genetic relation, a void in my life that others might be able to understand, my friend the chaplain wanted to know who he was: the real, corporeal, spiritual person I spent the first 17 years of my life looking up to. There is power in a name.

DESIGN ASH MA

ILLUSTRATION SOPHIA PATTI

FEATS

Ethan Miller Professor XXXXX Section leader XXXXX ENGLXXXX 16 August 2022

TEXT ETHAN MILLER

[REDACTED SECTION: Here, I honestly made an attempt to write a normal academic paper about a book that I felt strongly about and wanted to do justice. This lasted all of two pages (including three rather sizable block quotes) before I gave up and resumed grumbling.]

03

So now allow me to begin the single page of writing that will hopefully help you understand how I managed the effort to cobble together this Hail Mary. The problem with Franny and Zooey, as Zooey asserts, is that “Those two bastards [their older brothers] got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards” (139). No, the problem, whether they admit it

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

FEATS

or not, is that their eldest brother and wisest sage is dead. Franny explains her breakdown to Zooey as simple disinterest: What happened was, I got the idea in my head—and I could not get it out—that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven’s sake. What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge?

(146) This disinterest is familiar to most students.

It is Franny’s grief that gives this disinterest its particular potency.

At the end of last semester I found myself asking the question that every depressed person has asked themselves at some time in their lives: What’s the point? I’d asked this question many times while Luke was alive and I have continued to ask it after his death. It’s not always about him. It’s a valid question for anyone to ask. That being said, something happens to that question when I add a little preamble. Its ability to render me immobile and utterly disinterested in my own life increases by an unimaginable degree. Luke is dead, so what’s the point? +++ At one point in Zooey’s endless expounding, Franny fills an unresponsive lull with a simple statement, “I want to talk to Seymour” (151).

Me too, Franny. I want to ask, now that you’re gone, Luke, after spending 17 years making me the person I am, being my guide through life, what the fuck do you suggest I do? I have asked this question many times. Every time it’s the same answer. Whether or not I want to hear it

Page 3 of

varies. Keep going. Do it for Mom and Dad. And that, I think, is what Seymour’s advice, passed from Zooey to Franny, is really all about. In a finale that feels at once heartfelt and snide, Zooey insists that one must keep acting or doing whatever one does with all one’s heart for some imaginary “Fat Lady” who is somehow God. Fine, I get it.

Salinger won me over. But I feel that there is really another “fattie,” as Zooey nastily refers to her throughout the text, in whom the siblings might find solace: their mother, Bessie.

Losing a child is unimaginably painful. I have been in close proximity to two people who have experienced that loss for the last three and a half years. The texture of their grief is deep and rich and excruciating, and they feel it every single day. It doesn’t necessarily get better. Kübler-Ross’ five stages of platitudes are a lot less informative than you might think. It certainly can’t be easy watching another child wreck their life because of what happened either. As Zooey affirms to Franny, “this is not fair to Bessie and Les [their parents]. It’s terrible for them … if you’re going to go on with this nervous breakdown business, I wish to hell you’d go back to college to have it” (160).

My parents—kind, gentle, hard-working people—have ensured that I always have a soft place to land. In fact, I’d quite like to have another breakdown so I could go home and be babied right now. That being said, they both worked so hard and sacrificed so much to help me get into this university and I’m the only hope they have left. I’m writing this for them.

So now we have come to the unavoidable topic of my utter disregard for the assignment. Most importantly, I don’t want you to think that this lackluster half-paper comes from a place of disrespect for either of you or for your class. Professor XXXXX, your lectures were energized and thought-provoking and I looked forward to them every week. TA XXXXX, our section helped me delve more deeply into the texts and I felt challenged every time we met. I appreciate both of you, but this is all I have right now. I woke up one morning at the end of the semester, felt the lowest I have since the immediate aftermath of Luke’s death, and got on a plane the same day in order to save myself. I’ve come a long way in the last three months. No, I’m not exactly doing better. I wouldn’t call going from numbness to puke-crying for two hours nearly every day improvement, but at least I’m feeling it now. At least I’m dealing with it.

Writing these six pages was a milestone of vulnerability for me, but I also understand that this is a graded assignment for a class at an elite university. I want whatever grade you think I deserve. Before this final, I turned in a string of uninspired papers about which I felt and thought very little. This, at least, made something happen in my heart and mind. I feel better after writing all of this down. If the goal of education is to help a person think more deeply about their life and the world, then writing this paper certainly accomplished that. But don’t think for a second that I’m not emailing this to you with a smirk on my face and a middle finger to god, daring him to make things worse for me. Send this to a dean. Deface my transcript. Kick me out. My dear professor and dearest section leader, there is nowhere further for me to fall.

Page 4 of 5

Works Cited Salinger, J., 1955. Franny and Zooey. 1st ed. Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, and Co.

VOLUME 45 ISSUE 03

04

I

ILLUSTRATION SOPHIA PATTI

FEATS

don’t think that there is any normal college experience, certainly not considering the grueling and fractured circumstances many of the readers of this paper have endured since being so unceremoniously plucked from our just-getting-good first year. I know I’m not alone in making it through college under particularly difficult circumstances either, although sometimes it does feel like it’s sunshine and rainbows and keggers for everyone else. I want to affirm, however, that the social and academic demands of being at this university are more burdensome for some than others.

I would have loved to be more social throughout college. I wish I could leave my house with a smile on my face and an open mind towards all of the thoughtful people and incredible opportunities at this school. I wish that I could go a day without having visceral flashbacks. I wish my brother was still alive.

But I can’t, I don’t, and he’s not. And here I am, starting another semester woefully unprepared. You might ask, why not just take time off? Brown is oh-so-accommodating right? Well, there’s no guarantee that things will get better after a year of WWOOFing or crying at home on the couch and there’s certainly no guarantee that they won’t get worse either. I’m here and I’ve decided to finish.

The essay printed above came from a place of necessity and I think that is exactly what makes it the only piece of writing I’ve been proud of since my freshman year. At no point during college have I felt capable of participating in the toil of the academic machine, although I faked it for as long as I could. Writing this essay was the first time I admitted that to myself or anyone else. And, god, did it feel good. I wish there was some sort of lesson I could offer to anyone who might feel similarly, but lessons don’t really work unless you learn them for yourself. I’ve had to figure out, in perhaps the most arduous way possible, how to keep going.

I hope you can too. Call your parents, hug your friends, and if you’re really down, you could even try emailing me.

TEXT ETHAN MILLER

DESIGN ASH MA

ETHAN MILLER B’23 should really stop listening to Elliott Smith.

05

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

X

ARTIST ALEX SCHUPAK B’24

TITLE “THE RED ROOM”

MEDIUM PHOTOGRAPHY

06

VOLUME 45 ISSUE 03

LIT

What If an Alligator

TEXT ANDY LUO

DESIGN RI CHOI

ILLUSTRATION JANE ZHOU

34°03’42.4”N 84°10’55.9”W - Johns Creek, Georgia

07

Your stretch of Findley Road begins at the electrical box falsely labeled “FINLEY RD” and ends at a wall of four-lane traffic. Your stretch of Findley Road is a two-lane tributary feeding into Sargent Road with its traffic lights and traffic circles. As you pass Findley Oaks Elementary and come over the hill lined on either side by a subdivision and three stand-alone houses, your stretch of Findley Road offers a tree-canopied entrance, welcoming you into a safer place [+$750,000 for feeling safe]. Even if you miss this entrance, you’ll know you’re there by the carpet of pine needles, the sudden lack of sunlight, and the occasional bird calls you don’t hear anywhere else around here [+$250,000 for imagining two birds searching for each other amid these trees].

You might feel a spider web clinging to your legs [-$2,500 for the uncomfortable sensation], or—if you’re unlucky—get the web right in your mouth] [-$7,500 for finding it impossible to expel the uncomfortable sensation from your mouth. But you should keep walking or jogging, careful not to slip on the pine needles and paying no mind to the spider webs. The ghostly drop in temperature that comes with the dim lighting is unnerving at first, but you soon embrace the chilled air, remembering that this feeling of being unguarded is the whole point.

The three-way stop up ahead is where you pass other pedestrians [-$30,000 for being reminded this place isn’t all your own]. But sometimes these pedestrians are accompanied by their dogs [+$400,000 for dogs—what more needs to be said?]. You resist turning to look through the windows of the cars that pull up beside you. The hope is that you can trick yourself into forgetting that there are cars and other people you have to share this space with.

A yard sign for a cross-country meet at Northview High School—whose sports teams are nicknamed the Titans—is planted by the sidewalk. You see this sign and for some reason think of the movie Remember the Titans. You’ve never seen the movie, but, nonetheless, you picture Denzel Washington and try your best to remember those Titans, whoever they are [+$70,000 for random memory associations that pop into your mind].

Findley Road then begins to bend to the

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

right, obscuring whatever lies around the corner. Approaching this curve, you realize that there lies a marshy clearing through the thin layer of trees straight ahead. You’re able to make out floating pieces of driftwood, and you wonder how deep the water extends below the murky surface. Sometimes it smells like swamp [-$1,000 for swamp smells], but most of the time you don’t mind because wow, it’s just so darn cool that there’s a swamp out here and why don’t people talk about it more [+$50,000 for the far-fetched idea that an alligator could live there]?

What lies around the corner turns out to be a humble overlook of the humble Johns Creek— your hometown’s non-apostrophed namesake.

When it rains, the water flows with volume and speed. Otherwise, it’s stagnant and concerningly shallow. You can stop to lean over the fence and peer into the creek if you’re in one of your moods, or you can walk by and enjoy a quick glimpse if you’re not [+$350,000 for a place to brood when you’d like to].

Eventually you see the winding street leading to the hospital’s back entrance on the opposite side of the road. You might spot a deer among the trees on that side, and if you do, you find it hard not to stop and watch, in awe of being so near a wild soul [+$175,000 for the calmness that watching deer brings you]. The cars whooshing by make you worry about the dangers conspiring against the deer. You have to force yourself to keep walking, but you crane your neck back to watch for as long as you can.

After convincing yourself that the deer will probably—hopefully—be fine and returning to your Findley Road headspace, you notice the change that’s come over you. Your mind feels clearer, your breath easier. You might think, wow, what’s better than this? But just as you do, your calves start to burn, and you find yourself leaning forward to propel yourself onward and upward. The sidewalk has suddenly risen to a twenty-degree incline. You gently encourage and then plead with your quadriceps to keep going [-$10,000 for the ache in your calves and quads]. Returning to the physical world might— actually, will—feel jarring.

At the top of the hill, you relax and notice brilliantly pink flowers growing off to the side.

Then you realize they lined the sidewalk the whole way up [+$120,000 for the beauty of the

flowers]. You shake your head and chuckle, marveling at the endless gifts this little stretch of road keeps giving, gifts that you hope it will keep giving forever. +++ 34°03’43.8”N 84°10’39.8”W - Johns Creek, Georgia Somewhere after the Johns Creek overlook and the hospital back entrance but before the hill with pink flowers, the sign reads “Luxury Homes for 700k.” For years you’ve seen this sign and scoffed, thinking if they hadn’t built those 700k houses yet, it was doubtful they ever would. But the sign advertising the 700k houses still stands. And those houses that once remained confined to your imagination are now on the brink of reality.

In a stretch of what was once forest, the luxury home builders have shaped the earth into the ideal form for human habitation: a barren plot of flattened, muddy ground. The sight of this unnatural clearing stuns you; they’ve carved a hole into the tree canopy, an alien window to the sky. Light pours into the woods, breaching the sanctity of your stretch of Findley Road. All for three luxury homes.

Now, every time you walk here, your reprieve from the outside world is interrupted by this bleak image of bulldozers and felled trees.

You realize that one day when you leave this town, this state, you’ll still think about what’s become of your stretch of Findley Road. You’ll ask your family if the construction has been completed. You’ll check Google Maps and see the gray triangular intrusion into what was once green.

Current You is frightened for Future You. Standing here now, you realize Future You will never be able to return to the past version— your version—of this place. And worse, Future You will one day be unable to remember that version. Before Current You can do anything rash, you see a sign detailing the punishment for trespassing on the construction site. Your head droops, and you slump away, dejected.

You struggle to find the motivation to conquer the pink-flowered hill. You almost have to drop to your knees and crawl. What will happen to the deer? What about the birds? And the pink flowers?

LIT

LUXURY HOME

700000.00 x3

TOTAL

2100000.00

FEELING SAFE

750000.00

BIRD CALLS

250000.00

SPIDER WEB ON LEG

-2500.00

SPIDER WEB IN MOUTH

-7500.00

SHARING WITH OTHERS

-30000.00

DOGS

400000.00

RANDOM MEMORY ASSOCIATIONS

70000.00

SWAMP SMELLS

-1000.00

WHAT IF AN ALLIGATOR

50000.00

SPACE TO BROOD

350000.00

DEER

175000.00

ACHE IN CALVES AND QUADS

-10000.00

PRETTY FLOWERS

120000.00

TOTAL

2114000.00

+++ You’re doing the math, but more like fudging the numbers, constantly going back and adjusting the dollar values you’ve arbitrarily decided upon. You repeat this process until the total value for your stretch of Findley Road adds up to more than the total value of those three luxury homes. After a few iterations, you’ve made it work, the difference between the two numbers supposedly proving some point. This comparison was supposed to be satisfying—indisputable and empirical evidence that you’re right to feel as you do, that they’re wrong for doing what they’ve done. But at this moment, you don’t really care about the numbers or who’s right and who’s wrong. You’re desperately trying to remember every crevice of your stretch of Findley Road. You try to recall the deer, but all you see is an uncertain outline. Your mind substitutes the blurry picture for a clear stock image of a white-tailed deer, standing erect, gazing at you, ears quivering alertly.

Surely it’s close enough. It would fool anyone else—in fact, it almost fools you. But you know something’s wrong. You tell this deer and its perfect sunny background to scram, go somewhere else. You’re holding out for one more glimpse of the deer from your stretch of Findley Road.

ANDY LUO B’23 wants to get better at sharing with others.

VOLUME 45 ISSUE 03

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S+T

Doll Parts Kawaii Fashion and Trans Appropriative Embodiment

TEXT KIAN BRAULIK

DESIGN AMY LIM

ILLUSTRATION KELLY ZHOU

R

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epresentations of trans women, particularly of trans actresses on TV and in film, are few and far between.

That’s not to suggest notions of ‘good’ representation or argue what some mythical ‘good rep’ entails. Popular shows like Transparent may highlight relevant fears that accompany trans-becoming, but on a surface level I can’t stomach Jeffrey Tambor attempting a representation of a purported “my” experience without cringing.

I keep blockbuster Euphoria as one of the few exceptions: a show that features a trans actress in a trans role, keeps her transness in focus, and allows her ample opportunity to write her own experience. I can’t help but admit to some swooning at Hunter Schafer’s performance as Jules, the contemporary brand of plucky transbian, so identifiable, so emulable. I can drink in her amateurish lines for hours because, yes, okay, the ocean might just be strong as fuck, even feminine as fuck. I can’t hide from my yearning for flawed mirrors to my experience— for few and far between doesn’t begin to describe the absence of trans women across pop culture.

That uncritical gaze lasts only so long; I begin to wonder whether ‘good rep’ for the Trans Woman even remains relevant, let alone achievable. She has yet to be subsumed within what critic Lisa Duggan terms “homonormativity,” the criteria by which queer individuals become part of the heteronormative temporality: birth, adolescence, marriage, reproduction, death.

Having had access to surgeries and therapies the proverbial mass can only dream about, and having made clear her own cis-passing privilege, Hunter Schafer herself appears to concede to the cis world. On one hand, her character Jules foregrounds an apparent normalization of regimes of biomedical self-making: “I want to go off my hormones,” she claims in her special episode. On the other hand, in Teen Vogue and other interviews, Hunter offers only begrudging gestures to her transness—a what does it mean to b-be trans whimpering generality—and certainly avoids the grotesque, abject, or otherwise unpalatable. +++ Schafer’s foray into acting in the second-most-

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

viewed HBO show in the network’s history, Euphoria, marks terrain for the Trans Woman’s entrance into polite culture.

Beyond that, paying close attention to decisions made by the directorial, costume design, and makeup design teams, one might also notice how Euphoria’s Trans Woman is rendered through smatterings of East Asian tropic femininity. Her kawaii fashion quashes the idea of her as a ‘universal’ subject. She’s a queer woman whose ‘relatability’ to cis, straight audiences is made possible by her white affluence. It is through those associations that the sutures between racial and gendered categories, and the inequities and exploitations therein, read loud and clear.

In the wake of Euphoria’s burgeoning popularity, I’m interested in how the Trans Woman teeters as an unmakeable subject on the matrices of racial capitalism. I come to Euphoria to interrogate its model of trans-femininity which revolves around a propensity for kawaii fashion and Japanese media commodities.

As for the dominant aesthetic that Euphoria inscribes onto its Trans Woman, I’m interested in addressing the intentionally demure image that kawaiiness offers the West. Proliferation of kawaii (literally: cute, spec. saccharine, sweet) thingness grew alongside the emergent electronics bubble in the 1980s. I use the term thingness not to obscurify but rather to underscore the massive scale of said proliferation: manga, anime, video games, advertisement, now city-mascots, and military propaganda. Kawaii looks like endlessly remixed Hello Kitty and Pikachu commodities, visible everywhere from a local konbini to contemporary fast fashion warehouses. More broadly, though, kawaii gestures to iconic material culture: the big-eyed anime avatar, Lolita fashion, Nintendo.

Once a byproduct of early animations, which were cheap by necessity in the scrappy postwar economy, kawaii continues to perpetuate gendered, national dynamics in the wake of atomic subjugation. Never separate from its neocolonial origins, underneath kawaii remains a specter of the Pacific Century. The idea that kawaii aesthetics serve to disguise fear of Asia remains nothing novel.

Aesthetics theorist Sianne Ngai suggests that kawaii names the transpacific “encounter with difference,” the colonial ever-presence that haunts the postwar moment.

Sculptor Murakami Takashi believes the style “[aestheticizes] Japan’s occupation-era emasculation.” This commentary, from his 2005 art book, was particularly inflammatory for anthropomorphizing Japan with “Little Boy,” the name of the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki. Beyond the icons

themselves, Western imaginations of cuteness often serve an illusory ideal: the feminized East. +++ Throughout season one of Euphoria, Hunter dons a series of pastel looks. She reads like a manic pixie dream girl, arriving in town as rescue—and respite—for our protagonist, Rue. In episode one, Hunter Schafer’s character Jules gets introduced without her name; instead, Angus Cloud’s character Fez likens her to Sailor Moon. Across the remainder of the show, Jules remains the only character who takes on references to anime: she mentions that she’s going to go home to “binge watch some Madoka Magica” in episode two, and her phone background features Madoka’s co-protagonists.

This association in Euphoria is one in a long list of connections between trans subculture and anime signification. Subreddits like r/egg_irl and Instagram meme accounts like @cruel______moons are rife with comparisons of trans-becoming, feminization, and trans lesbian relationships with moefication: becoming cute. r/egg_irl overwhelmingly traffics in anime meme formats and gravitates toward animated characters as stand-ins for panel-by-panel jokes. The format “realistic transition goals,” for instance, not only uses an animetic avatar (Sayori from the game Doki Doki Literature Club!) but also evinces a desire to construct a feminine aesthetic that emulates animated characters’ looks.

By emulating anime tropes, these women reflect what University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Asian American Studies Leslie Bow terms “risky kawaii.” Risky kawaii rides a line between “affection and mockery” and additionally signals the “fluidity of global commodity” to the extent that the product’s national origin appears obscure. Mukokuseki, or the “[perceived] whiteness of human anime characters,” for instance, allows Western audiences a space to forget race in favor of unabated consumption or, here, emulation.

Hunter’s character Jules has a similarly identifiable body. Beyond connections between magical girl anime and Jules’ kawaii style, episode four explicitly renders her transition as a movement toward Asian commodity signifiers. The transgender subject is a fertile ground for examining reproductions of race as they morph alongside gendered modes of embodiment.

Within rigid beauty standards that demand individuals to performatively ‘pass,’ the transgender body illuminates what constitutes prop-

S+T

er femininity and masculinity in the first place.

This includes voice, fashion, and the biomedical ‘edits’ that now construct the trans body. +++ Episode four starts with Jules’ childhood institutionalization and subsequent transition. Jules’ child actor Clark Furlong wears a Hello Kitty backpack and a vintage “Catch Your Dream” T-shirt. Hello Kitty, for critical theorist Leslie Bow, serves as an example of deterritorialized Asian commodities—meaning those whose ties to nationality, ethnicity, and race are obscure. To the Western imagination Hello Kitty’s Japanese national origin seems negligible. In her essay “Racist Cute,” Bow cites journalist Douglas McGray’s commentary on the reciprocally lucrative nature of the Hello Kitty mega-commodity: “‘Hello Kitty is Western, so she will sell in Japan. She is Japanese, so she will sell in the West.’” The success of Hello Kitty lies in its bilateral appeal—a chameleonic nation-fetish. A marriage between the nostalgic and exotic, Hello Kitty might simultaneously signify racist kitsch and just another ‘global’ commodity.

A series of shifts in Jules’ costume design makes her representation inseparable from appropriative embodiment. In a 2020 video conversation between Schafer and Euphoria costume designer Heidi Bivens, Bivens explicitly references Sailor Moon as an inspiration for Hunter’s wardrobe. She says that the children’s show appears in creator Sam Levinson’s costume cues on Jules: Schafer “is into Sailor Moon,” Bivens says. Bivens also describes Schafer’s wardrobe as “candy-colored” and rife with pastels: the episode one Vanna Youngstein “atomic” top comes to mind. Still, Euphoria’s creators never cite kawaii fashion or Japanese brands in interviews, and the burden falls to criticism to notice a plausibly deniable japonisme nouveau.

A handful of other contemporary on-screen representations of trans women feature representations of trans womanhood that appropriate Asian commodities and femininity. In The Silence of the Lambs, director Jonathan Demme uses Asian kitsch on the trans-coded character Buffalo Bill: Bill’s costumes include a bomber jacket emblazoned with a pictoral Mount Fuji and a kimono that he raises like a butterfly.

Analyzing Asian kitsch in The Silence of the Lambs, Japanese film critic Miri Nakamura points to the overlapping yet unequal tropes between trans and Asian feminine embodiment. Bill’s jacket might signify for Demme the character’s inability to achieve Asianness and womanhood: as Asian kitsch ‘approximates’ the veracity of Western commodity, so does the Trans Woman meet womanhood only through a kind of estimation. By constructing suspiciously yellowish skin suits, Bill attempts to meet Madame Butterfly, adopt Asianness. Gross representation thus makes Butterfly, Cio-Cio-san, legible as the ultimate feminized blueprint, the perpetual seducer-victim to colonial patriarchy.

+++

+++

In Bivens’ costumes, Hello Kitty is divorced from national signification (Kitty is meant to evoke a British girl), effectively encrypting its racial underpinning. The question of appropriation might become irrelevant in the face of such indecipherable commodity origin.

If someone were to ask me, “Are you saying that wearing sheer pink implicates trans expression in an appropriation of Asianness,” I might be unable to answer “yes” without a well-worked network of associations: examples from media and subculture, all the scroungings necessary to locate a self-orientalizing trans subject. I wonder, though, whether anyone embodying trans or racialized flesh questions the validity of these discourses. Even though self-orientalization often remains central to trans embodiment, it’s difficult to analyze the origins of cultural objects and their appropriation in a way that satisfactorily condemns the apparent appropriators.

The nature of Hello Kitty’s orientalism implicates itself and similar objects in the vain notion of ‘global’ commodity. The ‘global’ commodity is revealed as an empty boon to U.S. commercialism, its racialization visible only when turned inside-out. Few see brands of ‘trans cute’ as endemic to Western unconsciousness, let alone as eyebrow-raising. These appropriative objects mandate a lens beyond the oriental-ornamental—they fail to coherently produce race but nevertheless instantiate it. Once again, it’s in the apparent white space where race is erased that race becomes invariably conjured. Marxist scholar Terry Eagleton describes commodity’s ‘disdain’ for such social overlaps—racialization, gendering, queerness.

The now-gravitational commodity nestles up to its buyer.

For instance, in her master’s thesis, trans scholar Emmy Vaught pursues an interview-based approach to interrogate the relationship between trans-feminine identity and East Asian appropriative embodiment. About a third of Vaught’s thesis “Cute Racist” centers on Morgan, a trans sex worker in whose fashion Vaught interrogates the fetish of seifuku (Japanese school uniform). Morgan narrates how kawaii fashion waters her down during sex and contributes to her interpretation as submissive and vulnerable on-and-off screen. She additionally describes donning the seifuku in her porn as a hyperbolic mechanism that clarifies (or compensates for) a heterosexual matrix.

Vaught’s thesis settles on an associative conclusion and definition for a term that I’ve used four times thus far: appropriative embodiment. While it’s relevant to ruminate on how the Trans Woman reproduces race, I ultimately feel weary about Vaught’s toothless, call-to-action conclusion that the future trans self-making totally doesn’t have to be so, so problematic, you guys. Vaught’s interviews produce intrigue through their mundanity, through how they fail to concretely articulate uncomfortable fetishes.

Sure, I might consider Morgan’s propensity a seifuku fetish, but her explanation for her fashion choices is almost childlike in its simplicity: it either mimes an iconic (that is, animated) woman, or is an almost sympathetic attempt at safety through heuristic hyper-femininity. Her choices signal to a similarly constituted, deeply nested image of the Asian Woman: after a century, she’s still cute, submissive, a perpetual child.

We might consider the appropriative embodiment of kawaii style as less damaging than Demme’s crude Buffalo Bill symbology. In any event, the ‘global’ commodity is key to Western commercialism’s viability, at once perpetually producing and fetishizing the Other while simultaneously reducing or erasing any path toward reclamation. Costume choices for Euphoria lodge in the sometimes subconscious, sometimes conscious idea of a feminized East, made visible by the trans body’s illumination of the instability of gender style.

Author Anne Anlin Cheng comments on the “China: Through the Looking Glass” Met Gala that “what is at stake [in the museum space] is not just the objectification of people but [also] how that objectification opens up a constitutive estrangement within the articulation of proper personhood and life.” Cheng sees the Chinese female body in particular as subconsciously petrified in vases and dresses, increasingly found in pillaged collectibles. Cheng’s commentary reveals feminization as orientalization: a landscape for becoming a woman is also one for —subconsciously or consciously—becoming Asian. Popular conceptions of the Trans Woman reinscribe racial inequities across and between transpacific commodity networks. Only through thick semiotic swamps can we manage to refocus a concept as blurry as kawaii back to its “material” roots in neocolonial subjugation. +++ In 2018, Brown University student Finch Collins wrote a blogpost on the semiotics of Doc Martens under the title “Objects as Texts,” particularly on their legibility as a queer commodity.

Through the lens of “reading” objects, we can envision how the costume itself brings attention to what is beautiful, utilitarian, and marketable. If neoliberal globalism merely introduces more stuff to the United States, it is necessary to recognize how object choice remains implicated in specters of coloniality.

In her conclusion Vaught suggests that “tremendous potential exists for trans self-making.”

But it is naive to imagine that gender self-construction is possible without compulsively repeating corrosive models of femininity, those which mold the Asian body to the contours of fetish.

KIAN BRAULIK B’24’s a new girl in town.

VOLUME 45 ISSUE 03

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METRO On August 22, people incarcerated in Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) went on a hunger strike. Facing unbearable conditions—heat strokes due to lack of ventilation and air conditioning, exploitative wages, reduced recreational time, outdated facilities, black mold, and abuse from correctional officers—those incarcerated in Maximum Security approached DARE’s (Direct Action for Rights and Equality) Behind the Walls Committee. The group, made up of individuals impacted by incarceration including family, friends, and allies, soon organized a car rally in support of those on the inside. On August 22, more than 30 cars loaded with people showed up at the Cranston facilities.

Despite this mobilization among leftist, anticarceral activist circles in the state, the Rhode Island Department of Corrections (RIDOC) continues to deny a hunger strike ever took place. J.R. Ventura, the department’s spokesperson, told the Providence Journal that “there have been no actions to indicate a hunger strike inside our facility, and no reports of inmates declaring to be on one. Everyone here has either come out to eat or have chosen to stay in their rooms and eat the commissary food they have purchased to keep in their cells.” Cranston’s mayor and Rhode Island’s governor have not commented on the matter.

Tunji, a member of Behind the Walls, went on the Providence Leftist Radio podcast to discuss the hunger strike and highlight the demands of those incarcerated in Maximum Security.

When the host brought up RIDOC’s constant denial of the happenings inside the facility, Tunji answered: “We have one gentleman who I know personally, I know his family, I know his mother, he calls me on the phone … He was the one who

TEXT JULIA VAZ

DESIGN ANNA BRINKHUIS

ILLUSTRATION JANE ZHOU

Rhode Island’s ACI Hunger Strike, Public Health, and Traditions of Resistance

11

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

suffered from a heat stroke.”

In that brief sentence, Tunji challenges a system that labels those incarcerated as the ‘dangerous other.’ For Tunji, the incarcerated individual is not a shapeless figure, representative of an evil that must be severed from society and punished, but a member of his community entitled to care and dignity. An individual with ties and history. DARE’s support towards those incarcerated in Maximum Security is a local action demanding immediate relief, but it is also part of a larger conversation about the American carceral state and the importance of working to make its violence apparent. +++ In 2020, Tiara Mack, the current senator for Rhode Island District 6, visited the ACI. “It was jarring,” she said in an interview with the College Hill Independent. Mack described the lack of open spaces (while the facility has huge green areas, they were not being used due to understaffing), absence of recreational opportunities, and writings on the walls that read, “They are trying to kill me.” Mack recounted what she witnessed then as “disturbing,” but has been preparing to tour the facility again since the hunger strike began.

“The first thing I did was text the members of DARE,” Mack said. She eventually managed to speak with the state liaison for RIDOC, Ryan Crowley, who denied not only the hunger strike but also that any individuals had suffered from heat-related illnesses. When Mack pushed back, providing names and specifics, Crowley said that continuing with the conversation would be a violation of HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which protects patient health information from being disclosed without authorization). “It has been a frustrating matter trying to get to the truth because RIDOC has, time and time again, lied about the care and treatment people behind

the walls are receiving,” she said.

RIDOC’s silence is part of a long tradition of state-sanctioned violence that seeks to shape our perception of justice. For most people in our carcerality-inclined culture, “bad people go to jail,” Mack said, and our political behavior tends to reflect that assumption. News stories end with words such as “arrested,” “seized,” or “sentenced.” Headlines rarely recognize the humanity of incarcerated individuals, much less the reality of the punitive, profit-focused system that has swallowed them. There is even less space for stories about how the incarcerated survive and resist such a system within its walls.

The reality—the one underlying every conviction—is that the majority of people who end up in prisons are low-income, housing-insecure, and suffering from mental health crises.

But the prevailing narrative in the U.S., pushed by centuries of punitive politics, focuses on individual actions and labels them as signs of moral deviation. “It’s not a sexy topic,” said Mack. “No one wants to talk about confinement and torture … It’s a harder narrative to create for people who don’t see poverty as state-sanctioned violence.”

But reframing popular conceptions of criminal justice is only part of the problem.

According to current Rhode Island law, people arrested on a simple probation violation may be held at ACI for up to 10 days, and often longer, while awaiting a hearing. Incarcerated people in the state face wages between $0.50 and $3 a day. They lack access to education, and are often stripped of their right to vote. Prisons reproduce the poverty that fills them, even though, Mack said, “some of the egregious crimes that happen in Rhode Island … are white-collar crimes,” which involve corruption, wage theft, and fraud—and are rarely investigated. +++

METRO

In 2017, according to data released by the Vera Institute of Justice, 55 percent of Rhode Island’s incarcerated population was Black or Latinx. But those populations comprise only 21 percent of the state’s total population. “Our system of mass incarceration is built upon racism,” Amanda Klonsky, a fellow at the UCLA Law COVID Behind Bars Data Project and an educator in prisons for more than 15 years, told the Indy.

“It is clear to me that if the majority of people behind bars were white these conditions would be addressed,” she said.

For Klonsky, the system treats individuals’ lives, specifically those of Black and brown people, as disposable—an attitude that current public health crises have only accentuated. She remembers, during the emergence of COVID-19, the torturous conditions in which incarcerated people were confined. The prison system shut down everything: visitations, extracurriculars, educational programs, and more. What followed was a complete lockdown, she said: people were being held in their crowded cells for 22, sometimes 23, hours a day, suffering from poor ventilation and heat. The outcome of such conditions? By April 2021, over 2,500 incarcerated Americans had died of COVID-19, a rate of 199 deaths per 100,000 people, according to a JAMA Network research letter published in October 2021. By contrast, the U.S. population writ large faced a death rate of 80 per 100,000 people. Jails became “viral incubators,” said Klonsky, contaminating the communities around them.

According to Klonsky, “the conditions of mass incarceration themselves are a threat to public health.” Now, with monkeypox spreading quickly throughout the United States, the country has once again failed to prioritize the lives of the vulnerable. In response to a vaccine shortage, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has confirmed that those incarcerated will not be vaccinated unless there is confirmed exposure. While Klonsky stressed that vaccination post-infection can prevent illness, she noted that the strategy is not effective within the reality of prisons. “You can have someone in your cell who has [monkeypox] and you have no idea they have it,” she said. Federal campaigns have targeted gay, transgender, and nonbinary communities, but those communities are also disproportionately represented among the incarcerated population. Much more than those on the outside, incarcerated individuals are exposed to inhumane conditions that heighten the spread of diseases. “We shouldn’t do that to people even in the absence of [monkeypox],” Klonsky said.

For Klonsky, the Rhode Island hunger strike was a landmark, an example of how we should approach transformative justice. “It shows us that incarcerated people can themselves lead movements for justice,” she said, and that we should be following the lead of those directly impacted by incarceration, instead of suppressing their voices with our own demands. “The way to enact change is to make sure we are centering the voices of incarcerated people and their families,” she said, “that we are taking their leadership seriously.”

In Rhode Island, DARE seeks to confront systems that divide communities and profit from their oppression. To do so, DARE has focused not only on advocacy, but also on creating networks of care and support, taking up the role of rehabilitation themselves. DARE’s history dates back to 1986, when it was founded around a kitchen table, according to their website. From registering voters, improving bilingual education, campaigning for police accountability, and more, DARE has been an example of the power of non-state actors in Rhode Island.

DARE’s campaigns for decarceration have centered people impacted by the carceral system.

Through the organization’s contact with incarcerated individuals, DARE exposed atrocities during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as resistance within ACI walls, such as the hunger strikes. For example, last year DARE was instrumental in publicizing a hunger strike at the ACI that sought to disrupt a facility-wide lockdown planned for a correctional officer celebration.

“There can be no vision of a better world if we don’t believe primarily and wholeheartedly in people and their stories.”

Instead of describing themselves as a ‘voice for the voiceless,’ DARE is a megaphone to those most vulnerable to practices of silencing. Thanks to community organizing, narratives such as Zackary’s, a young person sentenced to 35 years at the ACI who was among those subject to brutal conditions during the pandemic, will remain part of an archive of resistance. “I have been in prison for about 6 years now and my experience here has been what someone would expect a prison to be like, difficult, disgusting, vile, and sickening,” they wrote in a letter published by DARE. “So I ask the public, don’t you want people here who are getting out to be treated like human beings … How can a man focus in a wicked place like this?”

Responsibility for Justice criticizes what she calls “the liability model of justice.” Such a model, she claims, is “backwards-looking,” concerned with assigning blame after an injustice has been committed and mitigating its harms. It focuses on singling out individuals who deviate from the law, laying responsibility at the feet of the individual alone.

But for Young, responsibility is communal.

Young sees humans not as self-sufficient but as intertwined within a myriad of structures that shape the reality we share. The recognition of those structures is what Young calls “political responsibility,” intrinsically collective, public, and transformative. Instead of blaming the evils of society on certain individuals, Young wants us to recognize how we have, consciously or not, contributed to dehumanizing carceral systems.

Of course, Young’s ideas are part of a much longer tradition—echoed by DARE, Klonsky, Mack—of Black activists. W. Haywood Burns, Angela Davis, Martin Luther King Jr., Edwin Ellis, and thousands of others, named and unnamed by history, have long addressed how any system of oppression sustains itself on an exclusive conception of humanness. There can be no vision of a better world if we don’t believe primarily and wholeheartedly in people and their stories. And a rally of cars letting abused incarcerated people know they are not alone is definitely a start.

In our interview, Klonsky mentioned the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore: “Where life is precious, life is precious.” Once we understand that, no voice will go unheard, no story will go unread. Then, we can find justice.

JULIA VAZ B’25 will support people behind bars by participating in DARE’s phone zap action (more information on Instagram @dare.pvd).

+++ Earlier this year, I encountered the work of Iris Marion Young, whose posthumous book

+++

VOLUME 45 ISSUE 03

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A TALE OF TWO PLEBISCITES Histories of liberation and stagnation in Chile

TEXT MARIANA FAJNZYLBER

DESIGN ENYA PAN

ILLUSTRATION HAIMENG GE

WORLD

Sunday, September 4, was a day of unrest in Chile. As many across the globe settled into a typical day of the week, Chileans across their slender stretch of land shuffled into voting booths. Rather than running through a seemingly never-ending list of candidates, those voting checked one of two boxes: yes or no.

13

The public gathered that Sunday to vote on whether or not to replace Chile’s current constitution with a proposed document that would reenvision the state’s approach to civil rights, authored and brought forward by a popularly elected constitutional convention.

If approved, this plebiscite—an initiative that allows the electorate to decide whether or not to implement a law—would enshrine the newly drafted constitution into law, replacing the current iteration instituted in 1981 under Augusto Pinochet, the former right-wing despot of Chile.

While each option may have been monosyllabic on the page, the choice they represented—approving or rejecting a new constitution that had been almost three years in the making—carried the burden of history. It would reverberate with the sounds of mountains eroding, rivers rerouting, and the deafening silence of those lost to the violence of a Chile post-colonialism, a Chile post-Pinochet.

Voters were invited to partake in transforming the state and its relationship to its people.

Alternatively, they could allow the dominance of extractive corporations and the insufficiency of the current welfare state to maintain control. Ultimately, the Chilean people deferred the mountain-moving to the men in suits; on Sunday, September 4, this radical text was overwhelmingly rejected by the public. +++ This story of nation-building can be traced back to September 11, 1973, the day the military junta took the Palácio de la Moneda in Santiago, Chile, and then-president Salvador Allende died by suicide inside the besieged palace. During his time in office, Allende instituted bold economic reforms—such as the nationalization of Chile’s rich mining industry—that angered his political opponents. Under the Nixon administration, the United States invested ample resources in disempowering Allende, engaging in covert operations to prevent his election in 1970 and helping his political rivals (such as the Christian Democratic Party) consolidate power. While there is no record of direct U.S. involvement in the 1973 coup, declassified reports describe an “extreme option” the United States had considered: a “covert effort to overthrow” Allende that would ensure “the role of the United States would not be revealed” and that “the action be effected through Chilean institutions,” specifically the Chilean military.

After the coup and Allende’s death, Pinochet took power. His reign lasted

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17 years, during which over 3,000 Chileans were ‘disappeared’ by the state.

But perhaps Chile’s current political reality finds its beginnings later, on October 5, 1988. On this day, Chile engaged in another plebiscite, another yes-or-no question: whether Pinochet should extend his rule for eight years. This 1988 plebiscite would not relieve the Chilean populace of the dictatorship in the immediate or in the long-term political sphere. If the “no” vote— which would enforce democratically held elections—were to succeed, there would still be another election to win, and the state would still be trapped within the repressive constitution passed in 1980.

However, it provided the electorate with a sense of both the agency that had been stolen from them, as well as an opportunity to regain confidence in the institutions that had previously betrayed them. Along both time horizons—the short and long term—this vote in 1988 was a breath of freedom, a glimpse into a future Chile envisioned, not by a single leader but by a multitude. Finally, ‘el No’ won the referendum, with 56 percent of voters demanding accountability from a previously untouchable government. +++ Over the past few decades, the country has been stuck in limbo between what has been and what could be. In the last three years, the constitutional convention has formulated their response to the latter. The proposed constitution is transformative: it guarantees sovereignty for Indigenous peoples, universal healthcare, gender parity in state employment, and legal recognition of some non-human entities, extending rights to nature. It lays out constitutional rights to housing, education, internet coverage, sanitation, and care “from birth to death.” Such a constitution would be a sharp departure from the dominant neoliberal policy, an unabated remnant of the military regime that has allowed economic inequality in Chile to grow while wages, quality of life, and welfare have remained stagnant.

The conception of this new constitution, however, was its most radicalizing force. The referendum to draft this new text came only as a result of massive social unrest, coupled with a violent state response. The protests, dubbed estallido social, began in October of 2019, when the capital city Santiago’s metro fares were increased while minimum wages remained the same. A year later, over 30 demonstrators had died, and thousands were injured—their calls for justice met with rubber bullets, torturous arrests, and sexual violence.

When the referendum to devise a new document passed, 155 people were elected to the drafting body, many of whom were leftists, activists, and Indigenous peoples, including Elisa Loncón Antileo, the convention’s president and a prominent Mapuche linguist. The original nine-month horizon of completion extended itself by almost a year and a half, with the new constitution arriving to the public and their ballot boxes just a few Sundays ago.

But the proposed constitution— the product of these tumultuous protests and years of arduous deliberation—died in the course of a day.

With 62 percent of the vote, ‘el No’ triumphed once more, this time denying a path toward liberation.

Both the 1988 plebiscite and the one held earlier this month promised the Chilean people a newfound freedom. Why did one pass while the other didn’t?

Evidently, the conceptualization of liberation in these two contexts are very different. The 1988 plebiscite provided a chance at freedom from

oppressive entities, whilst the vote from earlier this month motioned toward constructing a nation that is systemically free. In authoring such a radical text, the Chilean left counted on the scope of freedom broadening over time, its purpose being to go beyond survival, to guarantee a life well lived. But how could this be the case for the Chilean public—for their collective imagination—when the neoliberal economic and political systems that the Pinochet regime installed have gone unchanged? +++ Holding a plebiscite suggests a degree of action.

Rather than an assessment of how the people feel, this kind of vote interrogates what they want to do. Yet Chileans were not ready to make a decision, at least not one of this gravity. Before the Sunday in question arrived, polls suggested that as many as 15 percent of the voting population remained undecided. It could be that the stagnancy exhibited by the country’s political and economic systems are entrenched, embodied in its populace. But if that is true, what do we make of the thousands of people who flooded the streets over the last several years, who rejected a nation gone idle? We recognize them, seeing them alongside those who refused the new constitution, hesitant to usher in this dream of Chile whilst still dissatisfied with the country that lay before them.

Liberation is never linear. Even though the 1988 plebiscite passed in favor of freedom, even though over 30 years later el estallido made visible an inflamed public, there are still undeniable structural issues in Chile that prevent equality. The country’s legacy of state violence looms over the current government’s response to social unrest. Thus, this proposal of increased state involvement in public life, though rooted in care, triggers lingering memories and aggravates fresh wounds.

Even though the recent plebiscite was rejected, the convening of leftist leaders within a sphere legitimized by the state reveals the momentum contained within this moment. In 1988, the plebiscite cloaked the political and economic realities that resided behind a veil of hope. In 2022, the recent plebiscite and the rejection of the new constitution underscore the work left to be done, and the freer, more engaged Chile that is yet to be constructed.

MARIANA FAJNZYLBER B’23.5 wants their beef empanadas with raisins and olives.

EPHEMERA

ARTIST ROZELLA KIM R’24 TITLE “FACES OF FASHION 2022” VOLUME 45 ISSUE 03

MEDIUM PHOTOGRAPHY, STOP-MOTION ANIMATION

THIS ANIMATION IS MY EXPLORATION OF AN AMBIGUOUS IDENTITY THAT THE FASHION INDUSTRY HOLDS—WITHIN THE FINE LINE BETWEEN, CLOTHING AND INDIVIDUAL, AND FASHION AND MODEL. WITH A SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON HAIR IDENTITY AND TEXTILES TEXTURE, THIS TIMEBASED MEDIA STOPS AND EXTENDS A MOMENT IN TIME.

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ARTS TEXT IMAN HUSAIN

DESIGN RI CHOI

ILLUSTRATION LILLYANNE FISHER

Beyond Love and Loss

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Returning home through Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala When I was a little girl, my mother used to call me her “Mississippi Masala.” A term of endearment and, as I would later come to find out, a reference: the nickname almost perfectly encapsulated my particular diasporic experience. My Pakistani parents moved to the United States in the 1990s, settling down in Mobile, Alabama—a town, as I often claim, that is just about as south as you can get before plunging into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Time and again, people are shocked when the fact of my birthplace is revealed. To many, a Muslim South Asian family has no place in the flattened conception of the Southern United States. The South, thick with the scent of magnolia blossoms and studded with jewel-toned swamps, remains the symbolic site of the Black and white racial binary within the American imagination. This notion has a historical basis.

The Southern United States is plagued by the persistent aftershocks of its heavy and violent history—the history of racial slavery, the Confederate project, the Jim Crow era, and the vicious persistence of white supremacy. Yet, these legacies aren’t confined to the South and are far more complex than a binary could ever capture. As Indian-born director and filmmaker Mira Nair’s film (and my namesake) Mississippi Masala (1991) shows, we exist within a racial hierarchy with innumerable rules, boundaries, and baked-in contradictions. Black Americans and South Asian immigrants in the South are both marginalized under white supremacist society but in different ways. And sometimes, the social confines of racial hierarchy are erected and policed by people of color themselves.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Nair’s film grapples with the ugly assumptions and potential for understanding between the two groups—all while weaving a vibrant narrative about the phantom pain of displacement, the intricacy of Black and South Asian (non) solidarities, and how boundary-crossing love fights to prevail. +++ Mississippi Masala’s portrayal of a Black and South Asian romance—and its blunt refusal to center whiteness within a narrative of interracial love—is rare to see today, much less in 1991. Nair, who moved to the United States in the 1970s to attend Harvard University, knew she wanted to use the medium of filmmaking to explore the subject of race while decentering a white perspective. Getting a film with two nonwhite leads financed was no easy feat; when film industry executives asked Nair to rewrite the script to include a white main character, she refused and instead promised them that “all the waiters in this film will be white.”

In Nair’s resulting cinematic world, we instead receive the gift of a free-spirited female South Asian protagonist who takes up enough space to be both a beloved daughter and a desirable, sexually autonomous being. Mississippi Masala, which has just been remastered and re-released by Criterion Collection, is certainly a historic achievement for on-screen representation and Black and brown filmmaking. But projecting (albeit gorgeous) Black and brown characters on our screens was far from the film’s only objective. Nair’s genre-bending second feature film sought, instead, to explore the thorny subject of racial relationality within the United States, which in turn reverberates into a wider global context. Histories of colonization established a white supremacist world order; yet, complexities emerge in the interstices, the

in-betweens, the plethora of racial and ethnic identities not fully captured within the invented binary of Black and white. +++ Nair uses the central narrative of Mississippi Masala to explore the “hierarchy of color” she observed while studying in the United States, which mirrors and replicates itself in different iterations across time and space. She does so by telling the story of a Ugandan-Indian immigrant family, a history that is not widely known. We learn in the film that, in the time of the British colonization of India, the British sent South Asian laborers to Uganda to aid in the construction of the Uganda Railway. In 1972, after almost a century of Asian presence in Uganda, the Asian minority was expelled from the country by the military dictator Idi Amin. Asians had prospered in Uganda, typically holding a higher class status than most indigenous Ugandans.

Amin accused the South Asian community of acting as “bloodsuckers,” calling for their lands and businesses to be dispossessed and returned to the stewardship of the Ugandan government.

South Asians were ordered to leave the country within 90 days of Amin’s decree, resulting in unfettered chaos, violence, and the sudden displacement of thousands. And, like the various threads of displacement caused by British colonialism, this became yet another chapter in South Asian diasporic history that has untold ripple effects to this day.

Notably, Nair’s film opens not in 1990s Mississippi, but in Kampala, Uganda in 1972— right in the panic, unrest, and disorientation in the immediate wake of Amin’s decree. Military men armed with rifles inspect passing cars, and radios buzz with the unrelenting sound of Amin’s voice in the backdrop as Ugandans say rushed, tearful goodbyes. Already, Nair’s visual

ARTS

language is saturated with color and sense of place—the audience catches the Ugandan-Indian Loha family’s final glimpses of the exceptionally verdant Ugandan mountainside, the silent softness with which they view their everyday environment—their home—knowing they may never see it again.

After tense goodbyes, tears, and harrowing threats of violence, the Loha family (alongside hundreds of other South Asians) boards a plane. The opening credits hint at what’s to come—names are superimposed over a world map which pans slowly from Uganda… to England…and finally to Mississippi. Mississippi Masala’s playful compression of time and space—achieved through the sometimes jarring juxtaposition of shots that vary in geography, temporality, sound, and mood—is what allows the audience to see the scope of this diasporic narrative. Sudden, disjointed jump cuts defy linearity, allowing the audience to, alongside the characters, pick up the pieces of the past and reckon with them. Resurfacing remembrances become a form of history-telling. Past is interspersed with moments of contemporaneity, the two developing in parallel; we gain tidbits of important historical context before being tossed back into the modern day that was fashioned in their wake.

Nair entwines what is past and what is present in ways that are sometimes comical, and at other times deeply moving, bending not only time but also genre.

Incorporating typical Western-style narrative tropes— like the forbidden desire between two star-crossed lovers—and using the medium of memory to unveil details of the past, the film plays like a romantic comedy, a tragicomedy, and a historical drama all at once.

Its protagonist, Mina (Sarita Choudhury), is a discerning, somewhat rebellious 23-year-old who cleans the rooms of an Indian-owned and -operated motel in Greenwood, Mississippi. She was only a young girl when her parents, Jay (Roshan Seth) and Kinnu (Sharmila Tagore) fled their homeland of Uganda, leaving behind not only property but also their chosen family—in particular, Jay’s lifelong friend Okelo (Konga Mbandu), whom a young Mina lovingly called “Okelo chacha” (or Uncle Okelo). Now, all grown up, strikingly beautiful, and distinctly American, Mina, like many South Asian American women, must navigate the mores and expectations of her Indian community while at times strategically defying them.

Her selfhood is mediated between kinship and rebellion, familial obligation and self-assertion.

Meanwhile, within the context of Greenwood, Mina’s multi-hyphenate identity—Ugandan-Indian-American—is misunderstood by folks who are Black, white, and Indian alike. How does one navigate these slippery in-betweens that elude definition? Through layered, humor-laden storytelling and sultry visual language, Mississippi Masala asks us to leave room for nuance and contradiction.

+++ The strengths of Mississippi Masala lie in its hyper-specificities, rendering a once hidden legacy of British colonialism distinctly legible to its

audience. The consequences of colonialism are dizzyingly complex, and the history of Asians in Uganda is no different. Complicated hierarchies informed by white supremacist colonial structures were functioning in the sociopolitical backdrop of Uganda pre-Amin, just as they were and continue to be around the globe. Though the initial migration of South Asian laborers to Uganda was coerced by the British empire, later classes of Asian migrants to Uganda functioned as compradors. A mediating force between ruling whites and subjugated Black Africans, some South Asians maintained close ties to colonial rule. The Ugandan Asian minority had also managed to control a majority of the economy.

These historic dynamics underpin our understanding of Jay, a descendant of South Asian laborers who likely migrated to Uganda in the 1890s. Working as a well-to-do attorney in Kampala, he had spent his career defending

Black Ugandans. He viewed himself as “Ugandan first, Indian second,” knowing no country other than the one of his birth. Still, he wielded class privilege over the indigenous population.

Jay’s character illuminates contradictions that abound within the displacements of colonialism—colonized subjects, though they did not possess full agency, were transformed into settlers.

Nair portrays Jay’s natal connection to Uganda through overwhelming flashbacks to boyhood, flooding the screen with innocent moments shared between two young boys, one brown and the other Black, dressed identically, splashing each other in a river flanked by plumes of greenery. Okelo, Jay’s playmate, is more than just that—a chosen brother. Remembering these old times is painful for Jay. When Amin came to power, Jay was well into his 30s.

He openly resisted the dictator’s ruling despite the threats to his life. “This is my home!” he vehemently maintained. “Not anymore,” his brother Okelo replied. To Jay’s dismay,

Okelo echoed one of Amin’s central sentiments—“Uganda is for Africans. Black Africans.”

Jay perceived these words as a betrayal from his brother, and they would continue to haunt Jay for decades after they were spoken. In his final moments in Uganda, Jay cried silently, gazing tenderly across the landscape. Yet, he refused to look Okelo in the eyes when it came time to say a proper goodbye. He snatched young Mina out of her Uncle’s arms bitterly. +++ Uganda was Jay’s home, sure, but he had to face that it wasn’t his homeland. Jay, once an important figure in Kampala, is now unemployed in Mississippi, hanging around the family liquor store, convinced that he has fallen from grace— all because of political factors out of his control.

“From where to where we’ve come, Kinnu,” mutters Jay despondently, eyes glazed over.

Though (and perhaps because) he maintains a hardened silence when it comes to the past—especially refusing to speak of Okelo— he is debilitated by his nostalgia. Jay spends his days mailing painstakingly written letters from Greenwood to Kampala, convinced that the new Ugandan regime will hear his case and restore his confiscated property and money. Like many South Asian men, Jay locates his selfworth and forges his identity in his ability to provide for his family. His emotional retreat from them, then, is underpinned by a vast guilt that stretches out in front of him like an ocean in all directions. At a tense father-daughter dinner, he implores Mina to consider college rather than “wasting” her life cleaning bathrooms at the motel—a higher education they both know he cannot afford. “It makes me feel I failed you as a father,” Jay admits.

Jay never anticipated this reality of Mississippi bayous, motels, and liquor stores, and, desperately, he clings to the possibility of returning to how things used to be. He is tormented by the phantom pain of his own displacement which never leaves him be, much like the persistent dull ache of a severed limb.

Drunk in a motel room, Jay phones Kampala.

Why? “To tell the person who is living in my house to get out!”

Ironically, that’s quite similar to the ideology behind Amin’s expulsion of Asians back in 1972. Jay himself was not a member of Uganda’s indigenous population despite his familial roots in the country, though he struggles to reckon with this. Complexities and ironies aside, the pain of diaspora as expressed through Jay’s character—through his underlying shame, his fervent desperation, and his toxic stoicism— is very real. Any diasporic subject could tell you so—but in this film, Nair makes it visceral.

VOLUME 45 ISSUE 03

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ARTS TEXT IMAN HUSAIN

DESIGN RI CHOI

ILLUSTRATION LILLYANNE FISHER

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Boundaries of hierarchy can only endure, as Mississippi Masala suggests, if we maintain them.

And through ignorance, misunderstanding, and fabricated ideas of racial difference, they are certainly maintained in Greenwood. In her book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, American journalist Isabel Wilkerson made the argument that a caste system, an artificially constructed and subsequently policed hierarchy, though often applied solely to India, also describes the inner workings of American systemic racism.

Though nonwhite members of the caste system all share a common oppressor—white supremacy—non-Black people of color have, throughout history, emphasized their proximity to whiteness and distance from Blackness to forge a relatively privileged identity. This dynamic was at work in Uganda and is reinscribed in Mississippi.

In Greenwood, Black 20-somethings go to the club to do the electric slide and South Asian children run amok playing Cowboys and Indians (and Confederate-flag-flying white folks want nothing to do with either of them).

While there are moments of solidarity between the so-called “colored” people in Greenwood (“United we stand, divided we fall!” exclaims one Indian uncle), the Indian community maintains an internalized sense of superiority over Black Americans—an uncomfortable truth that is exemplified by their collective reaction to a budding romance between Mina and the handsome, charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius (Denzel Washington). While at first Demetrius is hung up on his ex and Mina is asserting her own youthful defiance, the two become entangled in a semi-clandestine affair that thickens with sultry desire.

The growing relationship between Mina and Demetrius unravels both the pressures they face within their own communities and the misunderstandings that divide the two racial groups. Mississippi Masala candidly showcases the colorism and classism that, in my own personal experience, is endemic to South Asian culture. Both are ugly outgrowths of anti-Blackness—which itself is borne out of the white supremacist world order that conflates proximity to whiteness with goodness and worth.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi’s Black community, the immense weight of respectability politics hangs heavy in the air. Straight-laced and polite, Demetrius never missteps—he simply can’t afford to as a Black business owner in Mississippi.

As Demetrius learns the hard way, Black people in Greenwood must bend to white conventions in order to be legible or even tolerated. Young and caught up in the tangled mess of navigating their respective realities, Mina and Demetrius find some semblance of refuge in each other.

They both must mediate their identities in the context of the American racial hierarchy—a system that exists in the wake of the violent

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

histories of white domination, of colonization and enslavement.

Perhaps it is in a misplaced act of escape that the two lovers fall into each other’s arms, attempting to use romantic love as a means to free themselves from the norms and expectations of their social and racial positionalities.

However, I don’t read their relationship as a story of true love so much as a conduit through which Nair probes at American racial dynamics.

The so-called love between them cannot simply be a love story. It cannot remain—like it can for white characters—a sequence of whispered latenight phone calls, exposed belly buttons, and pink-skied romantic rendezvous. After a trio of Indian uncles violently discovers the interracial romance, Greenwood erupts in condemnation, which is meted out by boundary-policing figures Black and Indian alike. Mina is chastised by her family for “bring[ing] shame” upon them, while the Black community condemns Demetrius for thinking he’s “big” and forgetting his “place.” Characters spanning across the film sit by their telephones, exchanging disapprovals disguised as gossip—Demetrius’s ex feels that he has “let down … [his] entire race,” fearful Indian aunties hurriedly make plans to send their daughters to India, and white bankers seriously reconsider Demetrius’s business loans.

Most importantly, Indian motel owners rush to find new carpet cleaners, effectively destroying Demetrius’s business. +++ “There is so little love in the world. And yet, so much,” writes Jay to Kinnu after he is finally able to visit Uganda again. Sometimes love transcends boundaries. Other times, it fails. In Mississippi Masala, a film that feels so real, so textured, and so tangible, there must be room for love to do both. While Mina and Demetrius run away together in a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque act of social suicide, Jay returns home and finds closure. I will be the first to admit that Nair’s narrative fails to showcase true Black and brown solidarity—no racial divides are overcome, no misunderstandings fully healed. No matter where the lovers flee, white supremacy is still ubiquitous and caste still dictates social life in the United States. And the Uganda of Jay’s recollections is long gone—in the 20 years since his expulsion, the home he dreamed of returning to no longer exists. The traumas of displacement and racial subjugation still loom. And yet, by acknowledging the truths of their dynamics and the fullness of their capacities to love, Nair’s characters are able to move forward. +++ The title of this film sat dormant in the back of my mind for over a decade before I was compelled to search for it. Watching it for the first time felt like hearing my own name, like entering a jasmine-scented liminal space some-

where between my childhood home in Mobile and my grandparents’ lush courtyard in Pakistan. Now, made available again 30 years after its release, it can create this sense of returning home for generations of diasporic folks like me. Nair’s Mississippi Masala is far from a perfect story about love transcending the realities of race. But perhaps, somewhere within its messiness, the film invites us to imagine how it is possible—if we can learn to see each other more completely—to create an alternative future where love prevails.

IMAN HUSAIN B’23 hopes to always smell faintly of jasmine.

DEAR INDY

Presents...

THE PDA SCALE Dear Indie,

TEXT ANNIE STEIN

k and ion last wee ct u d se t u o b lly be column a ou must rea Y e.

I read your ic v d a r have ke you rked! I now o w decided to ta it se u a e’s one love, bec tic, but ther a a genius of st ec m I’ . n of oyfriend n making fu ee b an official b e v a h s d PDA. I y frien “excessive” problem. M r u o r fo e s probd and m it’s a seriou if r my boyfrien o g in k don’t they’re jo onate, but I ti ec can’t tell if ff a ly en e’s the eing op uples. Wher co lem. I like b * se o h *t one of y too much? want to be PDA is reall ch u m w o line? H gs?), aybe just hu Kisses (or m ur erate Amate Pretty Desp

DESIGN SAM STEWART

Dear Pretty Desperate Amateur, You’re right—I am a genius, and like all geniuses, I like to sit around and draw diagrams in my free time. I strive for constant innovation, for new and powerful ways to express deeply complex ideas. In order to conceptualize something as abstract as the social appropriateness of public displays of affection, I’ve created a simple yet elegant system, one straightforward to use yet sophisticated in the information it provides.*

ILLUSTRATION SAM STEWART

*INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE The PDA scale only requires you to answer three questions: 1. On a scale of 1–10, how public is your display of affection? Consider how many people might be subjected against their will to your happy relationship.

2. On a scale of 1–10, how much of your public affection is a display?

Consider whether you’re trying hard to keep it on the down low (maybe literally, like under the table), or whether you’re metaphorically holding up a big sparkly banner that says LOOK, I’M KISSING A DUDE IN THE BLUE ROOM RIGHT NOW! 3. On a scale of 1–10, how much affection is being publicly displayed? Consider me intrigued.

If the average of your three results equals 6 or higher, it’s time to tone down the PDA!

VOLUME 45 ISSUE 03

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BULLETIN ILLUSTRATION YUJIA LI TEXT SOFIA BARNETT & KAYLA MORRISON DESIGN ANNA BRINKHUIS 19

Upcoming Actions & Community Events

Arts

Friday 9/30 @ 5PM-8:30PM: Food Truck Friday Swing by Food Truck Friday for a variety of treats from over 15 local locally owned food trucks and live music outdoors. Admission is free; you pay for what you eat!

Location: Carousel Village in Roger Williams Park, 1000 Elmwood Ave, Providence, RI 02907

Thursday 9/22-10/2 @ 4PM or 7PM: Matilda the Musical Watch a musical of the famous story of an extraordinarily talented girl.

General admission tickets start at $22 and can be purchased online at this link: tinyurl.com/matilda-tix Location: James and Gloria Maron Cultural Arts Center, 180 Button Hole Drive, Providence, RI 02909

Saturday 10/1 @ 10AM-3PM: First Saturday Art Market Commemorating the first Saturday of every month, The Steel Yard is hosting an outdoor art market featuring self-made works from local artists and artisans. Pop by to support your local artists and enjoy the fresh air!

Location: The Steel Yard, 27 Sims Avenue, Providence, RI 02909

All Day until 12/18: Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration This art exhibition, featured daily until December 18th, portrays and explores the relationship between the U.S. prison system and visual art.

There is no cost to attend the exhibit.

Location: The David Winton Bell Gallery in the List Art Building, 64 College St, Providence, RI 02912 & the Cohen Gallery in the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, 154 Angell St, Providence, RI 02906

Saturday 10/1 @ 3PM: The Woman Worker: A Public Study on the Struggles of Working Women, Past and Present Facilitated by the Party for Socialism and Liberation Rhode Island Study, this study will “involve readings from the summer 2022 issue of Breaking the Chains magazine, the only socialist feminist magazine in the U.S. The study materials will be provided. We will have food along with the study,” according to the event’s Facebook page.

Location: Burnside Park, 40 Kennedy Plaza, Providence, RI 02903 Wednesday 10/5 @ 4:30PM: Contested Freedom and the (Un)timely Uses of Black Childhood Habiba Ibrahim, Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle, will explore Black childhoods and will more specifically explore the question: “What is Black childhood when it is separated from Black children and lives a double, untimely life as a refuge from what Jack Halberstam has called the ‘straight time’ of maturity, or the national time of electoral politics?” Attendance for the seminar is free and open to the public.

Location: Pembroke Hall Room 305, 172 Meeting St, Providence, RI 02912 Friday 10/7 and Saturday 10/8 @ 8PM: Korean Festival Come enjoy cultural food, music, and dance at the Korean Festival in Cranston. The festival will go on for 24 hours, beginning at 8PM Friday and ending at 7:59PM Saturday.

Location: Korean Cultural Center, 1140 Park Avenue, Cranston, RI 02910 Sunday 10/9 @9AM-1PM: Cuddles of Hope CAR SHOW Fundraiser Like cars? Want to help out children? Then the Cuddles of Hope Car Show Fundraiser is a great fit for you! Swing by to check out some unique cars, fun raffles, and music—general attendance is free, and car registration is $20. Profits will benefit the Cuddles of Hope Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing children with stuffed animals to cuddle in uncomfortable or frightening situations.

Location: The Overlook at Meehan, 2 Governor Notte Parkway, North Providence, RI 02904 Tuesday 10/11 @ 6PM-8PM: Advocacy Night @ UpRiseHer Reproductive Rights and Action The Womxn Project and UpRiseHer, two women’s empowerment organizations, are collaborating to host this event aimed at explaining Rhode Island reproductive legislation and share ways to support abortion and reproductive rights. Attendance is free, but online registration is required—sign up by searching the event title in your web browser of choice!

Location: 335 Hope Street, Providence, RI 02906 Sunday 10/2 @ 11AM-2PM: Buddy Walk & Fall Harvest Festival Come join the 27th Buddy Walk to celebrate Down Syndrome Awareness Month. Enjoy a live DJ, pumpkin painting, crafts, lawn games, balloon twisting, raffles, and more! Raffle proceeds will go toward local programs that benefit people with Down Syndrome and their families.

Location: Goddard Memorial State Park Field C, 1095 Ives Rd, Warwick, RI 02818

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Saturday 10/1 @ 7 PM: Illusions, the Show Pop out to celebrate Rhode Island queerness in its most extravagant form!

Whether you’re looking for a celebration or just a fun night out, Illusions is the drag show to see. Watch some celebrity impersonations, eat, drink, play, and enjoy. General admission tickets cost $30; get them by searching up the show on Eventbrite.

Location: Lit Lounge Nightclub, 971 Broad Street, Providence

Mutual Aid* & Community Fundraisers *Mutual aid is “survival pending on revolution,” as described by the Black Panthers. Join in redistributing wealth to create an ecosystem of care in response to a system of institutions that have failed or harmed our communities. +

Help a Community Organizer Avoid Eviction Donate at tinyurl.com/helpstopeviction A longtime community organizer and housing justice advocate is facing eviction in October. He has had to survive on a low income, and a recent car accident has increased his challenges. We deeply appreciate his tireless work with people experiencing homelessness, and we need to prevent him from losing housing himself!

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Project LETS Providence COVID-19 Relief Fund Donate at projectlets.org/covid19 Project Let’s Erase The Stigma (LETS) is working in coalition with various grassroots organizations in Rhode Island to support marginalized groups in our community in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. All donations will directly help individuals, children, and families meet their basic needs.

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Ocean State A$$ Mutual Aid Fund Donate at tinyurl.com/oceanstateass Support sex workers statewide, priority given to BIPOC sex workers, trans sex workers, and sex workers who have been impacted the pandemic.

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Queer & Trans Mutual Aid Providence Venmo: @qtmapvd; Paypal: qtma.pvd@gmail.com / Info: tinyurl. com/qtma-pvd QTMA PVD is a small, volunteer-run mutual aid fund for queer and trans folks in the Providence, RI area. They do payouts once per week and have distributed over $80,000 since their founding in June 2020. They currently have over 30 outstanding requests for aid and would appreciate any donations!

Do you have an event, action, or other information for the Providence community that you’d like to see shared on this page?

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