nurture / nourish - ISSUE 11

P ORTR A IT nurture / nourish

PORTRAIT issue #11 : fall 2023 nurture / nourish

design | Hannah Hu photos | Hannah Hu with Christian Wolke & Kiran Rudra

Welcome to Portrait, Vassar’s Asian Students’ Magazine

Table of Contents 5

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

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Family Portrait

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To Grow a Green Thumb Ulysses Bergel

Homesickness & Other Love Letters Sogna Louie

12 Lovelace: A Murder in Paradis Tina Ni 16 A Monster Grows Inside David Ding 17 bereft/dynamacism Abigail Wang 18 Homebound: A Collection

of Reflections Emily Tieu

40 The Change Knocking

at Your Door Caris Lee

42 Calcium Kiran Rudra 44 Making Peace in the

Eye of the Hurricane Sohyoung (SJ) Jeong

45 Beautiful Both-ness Ella Phillips 54 Roots Samuel Zhang 56 Take Care of Me (X GRADIENT) Kiran Rudra

26 Family Tree Alyssa Gu

58 Étude Lucas Chiang

29 Letter to a Friend Fallon Dern

66 A Dream in Sound:

30 Roots Don’t Always Grow Into Trees Kathleen Chang 32 to learn to feel to know Katy Wu 34 Girls Girls Girls Alicia Hsu 36 excerpts of an

american-born chinese girl Nicole Gao

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38 The Things You Cannot Say Mia LaBianca

A Collection of Poems Nina Li

68 Mangan Tayon!

Alicia Salva 71 bliss Leslie Lim 72 Portrait Online

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Dear Reader, Before I begin, I would like to give a thank you to you for reading this, and to all of our contributors for helping make this magazine happen. Portrait has been a safe space for me for the past few years, and I am so grateful that I could be a part of such a wonderful collective of writers, artists, and filmmakers. I truly love how collaborative Portrait’s process is, and how it encourages us to create beautiful spreads with one another. I am so lucky to be a part of Portrait.

As you can tell, Portrait has been quite a healing place for me. It has been my goal to give this magazine the same love that it gave me. In Portrait, you can create art that reflects home, family, growth, love, and healing. Or you can get in touch with those themes through the process of creating. The organization as a space is consistently evolving, finding new ways to create both space for others, and to create art. I have seen the magazine change in size, shape, and style over the many years, reflecting just how diverse and creative the Portrait family can be.

So, the theme for this issue is Nurture / Nourish. As Portrait itself is a space that nurtures and nourishes its contributors, I found it fitting to use this issue as an opportunity to reflect on our own nourishment. In times where we may feel overwhelmed and burdened with the chaos of the world going around us, it can be really useful to take a step back. As you dive into this issue, think about how you nurture yourself, and how others nurture you. What makes us feel at home? How do we take care of ourselves and others? What helps us grow, heal, and restore ourselves?

With that, I present Nurture / Nourish, Portrait’s eleventh issue! Dive into the stories, get lost in the poetry, and admire the beautiful spreads our contributors have made. I hope you are able to find some nourishment in this issue as you read. Thank you so much for reading and helping make this issue happen.

Signed with love, Kiran Rudra

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executive board

writers/project leads

editor-in-chief: Kiran Rudra content editor: Sohyoung (SJ) Jeong creative director: Hannah Hu publicity manager: Arlene Chen lead producer: Christian Wolke launch liaison: Sharon Nahm treasurer: Katherine Wu

Ulysses Bergel Kathleen Chang Lucas Chiang Fallon Dern David Ding Nicole Gao Alyssa Gu Alicia Hsu Sohyoung (SJ) Jeong Mia LaBianca Caris Lee

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Nina Li Leslie Lim Soren Liu Sogna Louie Tina Ni Ella Phillips Kiran Rudra Alicia Salva Emily Tieu Abigail Wang Katherine Wu Samuel Zhang

editors Tina Ai Ulysses Bergel Miranda Chen Fallon Dern Alyssa Gu Peili Heitzman Sohyoung (SJ) Jeong Claudia Lin Lerie Marasigan Tina Ni

Akshaya Raghavan Kaitlin Raskin Kiran Rudra Alicia Salva Ian Watanabe Anni Yu

designers Olivia Chang Katy Cooper Fallon Dern Sophia Kim Tori Kim Miranda Liu Soren Liu Sandro Luis Lorenzo Karen Mogami Mingjia Ni Akshaya Raghavan

Kiran Rudra Sofia Satuito Naomi Taylor Liana Wen Tortora Aspen Wang Jill Wong Katherine Wu Nicolette Wu Anni Yu

social media Kathleen Chang Arlene Chen Nicole Gao

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To Grow a Green Thumb There is a world out there, somewhere in the corners of my imagination, where I’m actually a good gardener. In reality, every plant I’ve cared for has been forgotten, abandoned in its hour of need while I caper off to some other matter. In this imaginary world, though, I read all the books, I water every plant exactly to its needs, and I enrich the soil with the right kind of fertilizer.

The orchids get just the right amount of shade. The cacti and succulents sit in the soil that’s just right for them. The wildflowers native to this garden perfectly harmonize with their transplanted neighbors. There’s a feeling of achievement there.

I came, I saw, and I cultivated.

For eight months every year, the orchids and the wildflowers surge with a unique vim!

They stretch for the sun and bask in the light of newfound attention. For eight months every year, the pruning shears and weeding gloves are donned with a unique resignation. They snip away the stray branches and uproot uninvited guests with a vengeance.

Pieces of me are scattered throughout this garden, smeared across blossom and branch and spilled into the dark earth. I pay special care to the delicate shards of me during those eight months, watering the blossoms that peek out of dark hollows and pop against the green — the ones that truly have a home during those eight months.

Meditating on ourselves is tricky, but gardening is the closest I can get to capturing its essence. Once I stumbled upon that metaphor, it took root in my mind and has stayed ever since (pun intended.)

We are constantly tending to these beautiful little places whenever we reflect, take up new interests, or discard them. They might be wildflowers with a yearslong history in the garden or newly introduced transplants found through discovery. Either way, these kaleidoscopes of blossoms are ours and ours alone.

Even gardens we have left behind and grown past remain ours, enriching the earth for what might come. In my past, I grew the thorniest vines and most uninviting foliage, wearing barbs and cautioning distance. But, a peaceful winter came, and in the chill, I saw no more need to hide behind roseless thorns. I restarted and uprooted what once was to cultivate something new.

The garden blossomed with vibrant colors that I poured my time, and effort, and soul into.

The seeds of ourselves that take root are varied. Among them, though, we can choose what we cultivate. That little plot of land might be barren or awash in green or a riot of color or anything else. The point is that it’s your garden. It’s yours to cultivate, and it will be marvelous no matter what you do to nurture it.

There’s a succulent by my window, a real one, and I watch it every day. That little speck of green craves attention, and I study how I can care for it when I can. Soil, water, and beyond. There is a world out there, somewhere in my imagination, where I become the best gardener I can. One day, it might even become this one.

Written by: Ulysses Bergel Edited and Designed by: Akshaya Raghavan

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Homesickness & Other Love Letters Writer: Sogna Louie Editor: Ian Watanabe Designer: Karen Mogami

I used to think journaling was dumb, in a very childish, rebellious way, I shunned writing, found it too sappy or meaningless to take seriously. But, as I grew older, and life began to break down from all sides, my focus began to whittle down to a pen tip. Broad strokes flowed out into unintelligible words. Jagged cursive with a horizontal slant filled page after page, documenting the fall and rise of my pending young-adulthood.

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May 5, 2023 And I’m so highschool sweetheart. And I can’t imagine surrendering my life for a change which is supposed to be celebratory, but which I have been dreading in paralyzing fear for the last five months.

Because what if I move onto a cardboard dorm mattress in an un-ac-ed dorm, and I start to forget the delicious nostalgia that washes up on me every time I sit in that chair at that table, my back to the garden of the courtyard. Isabelle called it our garden, us, the garden.

So I can’t imagine not being here with my back in the sun, laughing and screaming and understanding all the little head turns and eye movements. It’s the language we speak, sprinkled with teenage angst and quirkiness, decorated with all the obnoxious flourishes that teenage girls are allowed to relish and roll off their tongues because we are teenage girls. And the world expects us to say ‘like’ and ‘uh no’ and ‘yeah no’. I’ll savor these words in my mouth, holding their honey-sweet flavor on my tongue.

Savor sharing them as girls.

July 30, 2023 Sometimes when I think about leaving, I get nauseous, sick to my stomach. I lay awake at night at lonely hours, wishing I could grip time in my hands and sculpt it the way I want.

Pinch off a little here, mold on a lot more there, and sculpt it until the clocks slow and the crosses through calendar days get wiped away.

It sleeps under my bed and knots my insides.

I’m resistant to change but maybe it’s because change is all I’ve ever experienced. Maybe I hold onto static to preserve who I am right now for longer.

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August 6, 2023 I love Los Angeles in a completely touristy way. In a way that makes me think I haven’t actually been living here my entire life. The hills, and the rich pinks and oranges of the sunset, the twinkling lights of the city, the vastness of the sky and the canyon. Sometimes I forget how beautiful it is, getting lost amongst the mundanity of every day. I know I’ll always come back, but I wonder if my perception of this city will warp with time. If the mysticism fades the more I know about myself and the farther I am from adolescence. I wonder if I will be able to claim LA as a city that is purely my own.

To claim its beauty as a part of my living and breathing.

My favorite time in LA is the in-between hours when the pinks and orange bleed into a deep bluish green and then a velvety navy spotted with distant stars. You could always see Orion’s Belt. When I was younger my mom would point it out to me. I would wake up from driving home from restaurants, or the late night law course she used to teach. She would pick me up and walk back and forth in front of our gate. Looking up, arm extended to the sky, she would lean her head towards mine. “Do you see those three stars? That’s Orion’s belt.

It’s always right above us .”

September 19, 2023 For all of my life, when I couldn’t sleep, I would lie awake at night, with the windows open, and listen to the planes flying over my house. Or maybe birds chirping and the low white noise of my fan. I’d feel the soft, cool night air brush against my face like tiny fairies delicately peppering kisses on my nose and cheeks. I’d smell the vaguely salty air, and listen to the engines of the planes whirring thousands of feet in the sky.

When I moved to college, I realized that I stopped hearing airplanes. Far removed from any nearby airports, and out of the pathway of air traffic, the only things I hear at night are the chirping and buzzing of nature. I pretend that the white noise isn’t one of my three fans but the soft whirring of a distant engine. If I try hard enough, the woody East coast air has a thread of saltiness.

That hollow, sinking feeling that goes from your chest to your stomach. It’s distant enough to forget about, but it still creeps up on you in weird ways and aches. Prods your ribs and pinches at your small intestine. The funny thing is I don’t feel unlike myself now. Being in college, decidedly trying to be a new person has only forced me to settle into my own skin even more than before. I think I was homesick before I even left.

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A

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s ency i d ra e Ag a n P elac i er Lov d Ni a ur the a v n M Ti Sal im A om : a by lici ia K r f n e tte y: A Soph l i r W ed b by: Ta it d Ed igne s De

dramatis personae Lovelace (The Detective) Shirlene / Xueyin The Marquis de Paradis, Lord Rene The Marchioness de Paradis, Lady Alise Cerise Bellerose Estate Staff (Ensemble)

content warnings (spoilers): blood, graphic references of violence, infidelity, abuse of power, referenced sexual assault and rape, referenced sexual abuse of a minor, referenced xenophobia, abusive language

A miasma of sharp iron clung to the air of the darkened room. The silence was almost palpable, thick in the recesses of the sin that permeated all the surfaces. Past the bleeding walls, numerous servants chattered as they did their morning routines, ignorant of the carnage that lay beyond them.

The doorknob twisted and unlocked with a gentle click.

“My Lord?”

A faint voice cut through the stillness. Hearing no response, the woman nudged the door open before freezing in her place.

A bead of cold sweat trickled down her back as her trembling hand pushed the door in further, slowly releasing the stench from its ornate enclosure out through the widening gap.

“My Lord?” she inquired again, voice wavering.

Her eyes flickered across the dark room until they landed on the slivers of sunlight that peeked through the edges of the thick window drapery. She carefully made her way over to the light and realized she could feel countless shards of broken glass beneath her feet. With little hesitation, the woman pulled the curtains open in one swift movement.

Light from the broken window washed across the center of the room. The glass shards strewn across the floor glimmered in the morning light. Behind it, an elaborate four-poster bed laid in disarray. The bedding, rich in quality and color, was twisted and torn. Burgundy spilled across the rug beneath the bed in stark contrast to the bright patterns it stained.

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The woman’s eyes widened. She took a step backward, barely sensing the jagged frame of the window that scratched against her back. A mutilated corpse of a man lay before her. He lay face up toward the ceiling with both his eyes rolled so far back only the whites showed. His body bloomed with red that poured from the crown of his head to the torn flesh that splayed down his torso.

Unconsciously, the woman stumbled to the side as if she wanted to escape, and grasped onto the wall moulding for stability. But soon, her knees gave in and she collapsed in a heap against the wall, shaking with an unexplainable force.

A high-pitched noise tore through her ears and continued feverishly even after she saw the doors slam open in alarm as the other servants rushed in.

When their cries of horror came in, she realized the distant screams she heard must have come from herself.

“I must say, it’s not every day we receive a visitor quite as lovely as you are.” The detective smiled pleasantly at the client sitting in front of her, honeyed eyes curving into sweet half-moons.

She angled her head slightly to further examine the client with an inquisitive gaze. “Shirlene, was it? You can call me Lovelace.”

Startled by the compliment, the young woman—Shirlene—set down her tea cup and lightly coughed into her fist to cover up an incredulous laugh. “Pardon me?” Her face quickly shifted back to her formerly neutral expression, but the flushed tips of her ears betrayed her true emotions.

The detective before her was the newest member of that particular detective agency.

Shirlene had initially taken one glance at the oddly smiling woman before she took a step back as if to walk out, but her desperation pressed her to stay.

The detective that greeted her didn’t seem to be more than twenty years of age. Traces of a playful youthfulness danced through her every movement, and she had a persistent air of frivolity about her.

Before Shirlene arrived, Lovelace had been sulking around the office, displeased that she had to clock in on one of her promised days off. When she heard the tell-tale sound of the bell at the front desk chime, she’d shuffled around the sitting area with half a mind to immediately wave off whoever was there before she finally mustered up the energy to greet them.

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The woman who stood in the waiting room was a curious sight to behold for the bored detective. It was a dreary day; pouring rain had suddenly come down mercilessly not long before.

Despite having an umbrella with her, she looked soaked down to her bones. Her dark, damp hair hung in straggly waves around the pallor of her face. The somewhat sheer fabric of her white blouse clung to her skin in a way that compelled Lovelace respectfully avert her gaze elsewhere.

Nevertheless, she observed with interest how the woman’s clothing style was simple, and contained none of the elaborate embellishments most people in the city favored. Only a thin silver pendant was laced around her throat.

The woman was also clearly a foreigner, but that was not unusual for this agency’s clientele.

Formally established twenty-two years ago by a particularly ambitious and wealthy wayfarer, the Lovelace Detective Agency was situated on the uppermost floor of an elegant but unremarkable building in the far east of Luverne City’s Central District. With a reputation for being rather eccentric and nonsensical, they were infamous for primarily hiring non-native Luvernian members and exclusively accepting their cases on the basis of whether or not a working member found them intriguing enough to investigate.

Their notoriety was largely contained within Luverne City, however, and the agency often only received prospectors from within the city and nearby surrounding regions.

This woman had traces of an accent more typical to the southern regions of Luverne when she spoke. Although she had resembled some kind of a specter with lifeless eyes and dripping hair when she was first approached, her dark eyes now gleamed under the warm lights of the alcove Lovelace cheerfully led her to. The detective wanted to know everything about her.

Shirlene, oblivious to Lovelace’s inner musings and intent on avoiding direct eye contact, carried on hesitantly. “May I ask, since your name is Lovelace, are you perhaps—?”

“Yes, it’s Lovelace like the name of this agency,” she sighed dramatically. “But I’m not the founder or the president or anything fancy like that. No no, that would be my dear Grandfather up there.” Lovelace nodded up at a gold-framed portrait of a bespectacled man with gentle eyes and tawny skin. She pouted. “There’s not much of a familial resemblance though, but that’s to be expected. I’m so much cuter.”

“I, ye- yes?” Shirlene agreed. She nervously glanced around at all the colorful and ornate but mismatched furniture spread around the floor and wrung her reddened hands anxiously. Lovelace found her attention drawn to faintly bruised knuckles and clean-cut nails.

A knowingly sympathetic smile stretched across Lovelace’s face. Nobody ever visited the detective agency just for a simple conversation.

“Well, never mind that.”

She sank back against the plush backing of her sofa and crossed her legs.

“Tell me what you came here for.”

Wish to read more? Scan the QR code to access the full story:

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A Monster Grows Inside David Ding

edited by Alicia Salva designed by Aspen Wang

I’m afraid I’m afraid of telling you what I’m afraid of.

I’m afraid of my bubble.

I’m afraid of acting cool in a foreign language.

I’m afraid of feeling alone on Friday nights, and getting inured to it.

I’m afraid of bad jokes.

I’m afraid of retreating to a corner but pass on old wounds nevertheless.

I’m afraid of making a lot of money, and having nothing to say.

I’m afraid of the insatiable laughs.

I’m afraid of noises at random parties, tears in front of best friends.

I’m afraid of watering an innocuous tree, and depleting it with a sneeze.

I’m afraid of the finale.

I’m afraid of losing the will to learn, to live, to love.

I’m afraid of kissing my parents goodbye at the airport, and wondering where I’ll be, I… I’m not sure yet. Right now, I’m just afraid.

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bereft

dynamicism

they warned you of the othering

yet perhaps

but the cost of difference never actually ensued in the ways we expected it to. oh, to be so sweet so kind so respectful a compliment i know but all i hear

i accidentally give them an ocean feel its depths so deeply so vast so full its inner voice so potent so wild so loud i feel it all in every ounce of my being the sadness the hate the anger the joy the love the laughter

is negative reinforcement the taking the stealing

it is boundless. perhaps the crashing waves

away of what you find unpleasant

were simply a product of my thoughts

never a foot out of line

rather than inadequacy and missteps

or an answer that isn’t

a heart so light so dark

i’m fine.

rising and falling and

twisting and turning chasing the impossible enough

rising again a pull from the stars, an ache to be free

the careful construction of something just

who are they, anyway?

pretty to look at

the peace and stillness

my elegance my éclat

in the everchanging

an illusion of perfection that never once was.

it all heals

the voices the voices most of all they so effortlessly control

little by little the hidden depths of my lonely heart.

this theft

take a breath

of my very soul

ride the waves.

and i let them.

isn’t it beautiful?

written by abigail wang/ edited by kiran rudra/ designed by olivia chang 17

A COLLECTION OF REFLECTIONS WRITTEN BY EMILY TIEU DESIGNED BY FALLON DERN

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I read Nguyen’s New Yorker article called A Departure from Reality for class last week. I didn’t expect it to hit as much as it did.

Nguyen and I both have immigrant parents. We both are from San Jose, CA. We both love writing.

Here’s a quote.

Is the root of your own willingness to leave home?

San Jose too small for you?

Nostalgia is, literally, homesickness, with those afflicted yearning for their home. But what to call being sick of home?

This put vocabulary to what I have been feeling since I decided to go to college over 2,000 miles from home. Why don’t I want to go back, even when I have the financial capacity to? Even when I miss the Bay and the food, and even when I know they want me to, despite their silence.

I wish my parents could know the version of me that I am when I am with my friends, or with the people I want to be role models for.

I wish I wasn’t hair-frizzed, screaming, and “bossy” Emily.

I wish I wasn’t the “money drain” family member.

I wish I wasn’t the absent older sister who never reaches out.

Home is hard. Home pulls me back to the “ungrateful” daughter I used to be-–or am I still that way? Home is a reminder of where I came from. It’s a reminder of the ugly and the beautiful. Of the hoarder-like boxes stacked high in my garage, the yelling, the blaming, and the lack of “I love you’s” and “How are you’s.” But it’s also the white peach sorbet, homemade and straight from the peaches in our backyard. Home is also the excited squeals from my brothers and I as we ran through the Mitsuwa and the Ranch 99 Market. Home is the smell of freshly cooked rice. Home is the way I have been loved through “Do your homework,” “Dinner is packed in the car when I pick you up,” and “Go travel, we can support you.”

I miss home even if I never talk about it or end up flying back to step foot in it. I miss the way I got to play in the grass amongst the rolly-pollies and the daffodils growing in our front yard. I miss the way I would roll pie dough and help knead butternut squash dinner rolls. I miss the sounds of opera, the pots and pans, and the “Who misplaced the TV remote!?” I miss the way I was shaped by home. I miss the smells and sights. I am who I am because of where I grew up and even if I never noticed, I was surrounded by so much love.

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I don’t call my parents every day. I don’t call them even once a week. Not even every two weeks. Maybe a total of 4 times a semester? Usually, it is to ask about my health insurance, that I am not coming home for whatever break is coming up, or to ask permission for something.

I think that’s sad.

I think I’m supposed to want to share my successes and the things and people I’m excited about.

But, I’m just not.

2 face 2 selves

My friends see me as this empathetic, people-loving, goofy person. I feel like I can share everything from my deepest fears to crazy happenings to my anxieties with my friends. I feel like a full person around my peers!

Someone with a big heart and who loves hard. Someone who is a menace. Someone who wants to pay it forward, uplift, and make others feel included.

I feel soSplit.

My parents must see me as the angry, bossy oldest daughter. They probably think I’m ungrateful. That I am impulsive and irrational. They probably think “Why can’t she just make good decisions?” My mother probably is tired of picking up my slack and reminding me to do things. My father is probably tired of hearing me go to the hospital so many times because I got too drunk.

I feel like 2 halves of a whole.

Nguyen wrote: You have become used to living a secret life, with two faces and two selves, only one of which you reveal to Ba Má. And that was the first time anyone had described how I had felt for my whole life.

I am forever straddling two identities: Asian and American. Japanese and Taiwanese.

I am between San Jose, CA, and Poughkeepsie, NY. I am never simultaneously a daughter and a loving friend.

I am split between the person Mama and Papa know, and the person my teachers rave about and my wonderful friends see.

Will I ever be able to put those two people together?

Or will I forever be a double agent?

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Lack of communication My dad flew across the US for me.

He cares.

It’s so hard to talk to him. I don’t know if he’s ever notices. I am a good listener and sensitive and maybe he feels at home in that. That he’s being heard.

I feel shame.

I feel shame because I chose Japan over Taiwan. I literally told people that I was from China because I didn’t know the difference. I didn’t care. I chose Japan because everyone seemed to like Japan better. It was cool to be Japanese. Not cool to be Taiwanese or Chinese. I feel bad that I only learned Japanese and not Mandarin or Cantonese. That I still don’t know Mandarin. That I chose that side. And it was almost like I chose my mom over my dad. I didn’t- I took a lot of his care for granted. I didn’t know what to do.

He flew all the way for me. To spend time with me. To just talk to me. Even if it’s really really fucking awkward. Even if the things we do could maybe possibly be accomplished over the phone. He wanted to see Vassar. He wanted to be included.

I relate to that. To wanting to belong.

Why- After everything he’s done for me, why don’t I only feel love and acceptance. I accept him for who he is. But why do I get annoyed at certain parts. Why do I wish he would smell better? Why do I wish he would be more proper? That he’d be more outgoing? Why do I wish he was something he is just not. And that’s okay. It’s okay to be whoever you are. But why do I still wish he was different?

He flew over 2,000 miles for me. Because he wanted to spend time with me.

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Older Sister お姉ちゃん 姐姐 Me.

I was born on July 13, 2002. The first of three children. I have two younger brothers, Adam and Hayden. To them and to my family I am always: エミちゃん (Emi-chan).

As the older sibling, I am always the guinea pig. I was the first one to go through puberty, and I was the first to apply and go to college out of the three of us. I am the first one to explore and find my path in the world. In every sense, I am a built-in role model for my brothers.

When we were younger, we would play with the roly-polys in the dirt in our front yard all together. We used to pretend to be bears, except Adam and I were always the hunters and poor Hayden would have to be the baby bear we would capture. In the summer, we would run around with water guns, spraying at each other and screaming. Then, we would retire in our little child-sized lawn chairs and eat homemade popsicles that Mama would make until our fingers were sticky.

We aren’t children anymore. I’m 21 years old. Adam is 19 years old.

Hayden is 17 years old. We are growing and learning about who we are in the world. We went through the “get-out-of-my-room” and “I-hate-the-world” teenage years. Slamming doors, yelling, and crying. I go to Vassar, Adam is at Skidmore and Hayden is in high school. With so much distance and so much time, our little giggles and shared secrets have been replaced by silence. And all I can think about is their last memories of me: a raging pubertal young woman. My complaints and my screams are all that echo the hallway that connects our two rooms.

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And now I don’t know how to break that silence. I text them “How are you?” in an attempt to start deeper conversations. I try to bribe them with food when I’m home, trying to take us back to me reading them a children’s book as they attentively listen.

Someone once said to me, your siblings are the only people in the world who truly know what it is like to grow up in your household and with your parents.

I’m still holding onto that hope that we’ll become friends again. But for now at least, I think about what they’re doing and collect the lessons and adviwce that I want to give them in my notes app. Maybe one day I’ll get to bare my soul and bridge the two halves of myself together in front of them.

But for now, I will just be their older sister. 姐姐. お姉ちゃん.

Vassar.

My home, currently A place of unbridled learning But this exploration These friendships These classes This greasy Deece food Isn’t just given How many minutes did my parents work?

How many teeth did my dad pull?

How many tax forms did my mom complete?

Ballet.

My passion, my first love Light pink satin ribbons raveled around my ankles Little Emily’s favorite activity A minute of stage time, face caked with makeup Feet torn Blisters, blood, and sweat All of that… for what?

How much did those hard satin shoes cost?

How much did every private lesson add up to?

How much time did my parents invest in driving me everywhere?

Family.

Being the oldest daughter, the pride and joy Accompanied by my two Rambunctious younger brothers I’ve thought about how each of us is a little “Money drain” But which sibling has “cost” the most?

But which of us is at fault for our family’s dysfunction?

But which person is to blame for the stifling of my parents’ dreams?

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MY ASIANNESS I didn’t realize I hated my Asianness till I was in college. I didn’t realize how badly I wanted to be white, blonde, and pretty. I didn’t think Asian was that.

I grew up in the Bay Area, surrounded by so many Asian folks. Every type of Asian cuisine was accessible. From the pho place right by my neighborhood, to a boba shop down what seemed like to be almost every street, to the multitude of Ranch 99 markets, I was surrounded by the Asian diaspora. My friends were mostly all Asian or Hispanic.

Many of us shared the experience of growing up with immigrant parents. I was at home.

Yet, I would save photos on Instagram and Pinterest of pretty, white girls in bikinis. I would look at myself in the mirror and wish my monolids would be replaced by large, round blue, or green eyes. I could hear the echoes of “You can’t see” and the image of my high school classmate pulling back her eyelids. I labeled and told myself over and over that I wasn’t beautiful because I wasn’t white. I was pretty for an Asian girl, but I would never be as pretty as a white girl. Boys would always end up choosing white girls anyway.

I entered college: peak COVID-19 restrictions, masks, and calling the CRC on each other. I imagined myself blossoming at college and becoming one of those pretty white girls who partied and hooked up with all of the guys. But the reality was I didn’t even have friends.

Even as I began to find my place, I tried to not hang out with all Asian friends and avoided spaces like Portrait or ASA. I didn’t want to be one of the Asians. When in reality, some of my best friends in VRDT were Asian or part-Asian.

I just felt at home with them, but I was blind to the fact that we also shared a common identity.

Then, I met someone who was Asian and we fell in love, despite all my internalized feelings about my race. I started to open my eyes to the way I would talk to myself.

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It wasn’t until I studied abroad in Belgrade, Serbia that my relationship with my Asian identity truly transformed. I was smacked in the face with “Chingchong!”, “Ni-hao!” and whispers of me being Asian and Chinese every time I’d

enter a restaurant or bar. I even had a young boy come up to me with his hands in a prayer position and bow as he said “Thank you for North Korea. Thank you for China.” (At least I got to laugh at that one!) The waiter of the restaurant came outside to check on me. It was the first and last time any Serbian stranger acknowledged the racism that I received. I began to worry about what I’d encounter on the street or on the bus. I tried to fit in, dress in neutral colors, and smoke cigarettes. Maybe then the Serbs would at least understand that I wasn’t just one of those other Asians. But it was exhausting. I missed Asian food and home-cooked meals and not getting stared at. I wanted to be seen as a person. I wanted them to understand I was just as American as my program mates. And I leaned into those feelings. I remember walking down the street one day thinking: Y’all don’t know how wonderful being Asian is. We have fire food! I began to realize that there were so many wonderful things about being Asian and Asian-American. There was so much that these strangers on the street were overlooking and generalizing. I came back to Vassar realizing how much healing I needed to do.

Today, I hug my younger self and tell her that it’s okay. I tell her that one day she will truly love her monolids. That one day she will actually believe she’s beautiful. That she will proudly wear yellow because it’s a happy color and not because it makes her seem more “Asian.” She will get to share her experiences of getting confused with the one other Asian in the room and laugh about it. She will stand on stage with other Asian-American femme dancers and revel in pride. She will even write her thesis about her identity and she will learn to heal the hatred that she felt was deserved.

FOOD AS LOVE

I learned what love was through food.

Love was steeped in the way my mom would pack me dinner every night after ballet rehearsal so I could start my homework right away when I got home. She would separate the dressing from the salad in a little repurposed jam container. She would put boiling water in the thermos before adding in the main meal so it would still be hot.

Love was the way my Nai-nai would ask us to take crate loads of guavas that she grew in her backyard.

She would serve us hot porridge with kabocha pumpkin, and we would beg her to bring out the 肉鬆 (pork floss) so we could pile our bowls high. I remember distinctly when one day she chased me around my house with a date saying it would be good for my skin.

Love surrounded the way we would gather around our table for hot pot at my dad’s request. He loved the thin slices of meat. He would let us make the sauce, consisting of peanut butter and Chinese BBQ sauce that stunk of fermented beans. My favorite was the clear noodles we would add in at the end. He would take us to dim-sum and order all my favorites: daikon cake, steamed rice rolls with shrimp, and egg tarts. He liked

the siu-mai, har-gao, and char siu buns. He would cook mapo tofu and braised pork belly with hard-boiled eggs.

I can visualize the steam from the pressure cooker and the smell of the meat mixed with a fresh bowl of rice.

I still get envious of the way my non-Asian friends receive love. The constant hugs and “I love you’s” and “I’m proud of you’s” were things little me craved, but didn’t know how to ask for. I wanted to fit in and I wanted my family to be like “everyone else’s.” But all families are complicated.

I didn’t realize I was surrounded by love, in my own way.

Leaving home taught me that love can look like different things. Love can be as simple as a fresh bowl of white rice and miso soup. Love can be the homemade white bread my mom would make every morning in high school. Love is “Dinner is served!” in Mandarin. Love can look like a multitude of culinary treats and a sink piled high with dirty dishes.

So now, I come home to San Jose and feast on slices of sashimi, from tuna, salmon, hamachi, and more, as my family and I sit in near silence and make our own handrolls.

And now, I’ll know that I am loved in the way my plate is empty and my stomach is full.

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Family Tree Written by Alyssa Gu

Edited by SJ Jeong Design by Mingjia Ni

Dear Mom and Dad, I’m writing this in the back of Mom’s Chinese school classroom thinking about the trees. The big one that blooms pink and pretty every spring, the tall branching one you’re always worried will tangle in the power lines, and all the new ones that seem to magically appear every time I visit.

I’m glad retirement is treating you well. Mom, with your Sunday Chinese classes and book club; Dad, with your gardening and mahjong tournaments at the Y. You shop at the new Chinese grocery store that opened in the same strip mall where the old Chinese grocery store closed when I was twelve. You sleep on the same big wide bed I used to crawl into on weekend mornings, just with a stiffer mattress and thicker blankets. You eat at the same restaurant every Saturday – even yesterday, for your Mother’s Day dinner.

And you keep planting trees.

About a year ago, I was reading a manuscript by a Chinese American author. One of her characters says at one point, 虎 父无犬子 – a tiger father has no canine sons. I remember asking the author about it later, and she said it was something she learned in Chinese school that stuck with her. She said the English equivalent would probably be something like, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Chinese school taught me the idioms of your language, but this is one of the few in English that you and I both understand. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – I have Mom’s mouth and Dad’s round face. When I smile, I look like Mom; when I’m angry, I look like Dad. But I’m never angry, like Mom, just always tired, which I get

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from Dad. I like mahjong (thanks Dad) and books (thanks Mom) and I’m stubborn about everything in between (both of you take the blame there). I am equally the best and worst parts of you. So it’s no surprise that I inherited arguably your best (and worst) trait, which is this: All you ever wanted was to make me happy. And all I’ve ever wanted was to make you happy.

To make me happy, you pushed me towards medical school, believing in a stable career. To make you happy, I took physics in college long after I had decided becoming a doctor was the last thing I ever wanted to do.

Here’s something I learned in physics: Newton’s first law of motion states that a body at rest remains at rest, unless acted upon by an external force. You want me to be happy, I want you to be happy. These are our laws we cannot break, not intentionally at least. So we are stranded bodies at rest, unable to meet in the middle.

For a long time I thought that making you proud would make you happy. So I was an obedient daughter, who went to Chinese school and practiced her piano and ate her vegetables when you said to.

I love you, so I worked hard at the good college I got into. I tried to become the doctor you wanted, until I couldn’t. You love me, so you cut and brought me fruit while I was studying and you worked long hours to afford all the prep classes and tuition and you told me all the ways I could improve, until you couldn’t. You worked hard to make me happy, so I worked hard to make you proud. For a long time, I believed that I had failed you.

But now, I’m unsure. When you call in the middle of the day to tell me you saw my name in the acknowledgements of a book, are you happy? When you pointed me out to all the 阿姨s and 叔叔s at school today, your grown up daughter with the literary job, did I make you proud?

You stopped pointing me to other careers a long time ago. I thought it meant you had given up. And maybe you had, but maybe

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it also meant that you had seen how happy I was with the choices I had made, the stubbornness you once rued now the external force that saved us all in the end.

I’m sitting in the back of your Chinese school classroom, Mom, watching you teach. When we smile, we look like each other.

Happy Mother’s Day Mom. I hope I make you both proud one day.

In the meantime, I’ll settle for making you happy.

Love, Bliss

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Written by: Kathleen Chang Edited by: Claudia Lin Designed by: Sandro Lorenzo

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Asian Americans are formally defined as “Americans of Asian descent.” This denotation does not specify what type of American, whether native or naturalized, nor does it acknowledge the nuances of Asian descent, which can encompass being born and raised in Asia or simply having Asian ancestry, regardless of how distant it may be. To me, being Asian American is more than a vague descriptor—it is a dynamic relationship with my heritage that demands ongoing nurturing and effort to embrace it fully.

Living as an “American of Asian descent” in Connecticut my entire life, I have always had trouble connecting with these two cultures equally. I sing along to Mandopop songs, but only know the chorus and recognize them solely from my mom’s incessant playing. Whenever my friends ask me to read something in Chinese, I can identify—at most—forty percent of it. I speak Mandarin with my parents at home, but can’t finish a conversation without using English to substitute the terms that slip my mind.

Because of the disconnect between my environment and family background, I wanted to show that I could overcome it. I wanted to be better than the typical white-washed child of immigrants, one who is just as Asian as she would’ve been if her parents never immigrated to America. I put the Taiwanese flag in my Instagram bio and went to Chinese school just to prove that I “knew my roots” if anyone questioned it. Whether I was aware of it or not, I believed that claiming my identity superficially meant that I was automatically entitled to it.

I never questioned if this was how I wanted to relate to my cultural background until my cousin from Taiwan came to live with us this past year. When she arrived, I realized that she was a stranger I could hardly relate to. Everything about her, from the language she spoke to her taste in food, was foreign. All the effort I thought I had put toward maintaining my Asian roots lost its weight. Her presence made me realize I was appropriating an identity, one I no longer felt confident to call mine.

I know now that I do not want the extent of my Taiwanese-ness to start and end with my parents’ regurgitation. Even with this realization and promise to live up to my personal definition of what it means to be Asian-American, it still feels as if the Asian part of identity will forever be stunted. Will I only be as Taiwanese as they bothered to teach me to be? It is hard to not feel as if I am merely an American with Asian roots at times. I want to feel actively Asian-American, through my everyday choices and intentions that will make me remember why my background makes me, me. Still, I know I will never have the chance to experience Taiwanese culture in the same way my extended family has. Even if I were to take up a fully Taiwanese lifestyle in the future, I’m not certain that I will be able to make up for lost time. Will I ever feel secure enough in my knowledge and experience to see myself as Asian-American?

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Writer: Alicia Hsu Editor: Kaitlin Raskin Designer: Miranda Liu

Used to know girlhood from washing up on concrete: sweet summer skin and nimble bodies, monstrous hunger sticky in our young stomachs.

Learn time from your stoic smile to your sleepiness–

When we swing hands in kindergarten, hold the branches of trees in our small fists, I find purity in the smooth of your teeth; what are the words that precede friendship?

In that room we slept side by side like silver fish breathing in a new kind of quiet. Next time you said “sorry,” “busy,” and I salted my wounds in the bathtub, left your hand-me-downs in their white trash bags.

I feel the last of your fingertips like a sly joke, summon strength not to latch on. These fresh voices are stronger than our elementary whispers; nostalgia is an anchor for stagnant girls.

Do you remember me? No, not that one. The one holding onto the toilet, clicking past your flashlight nights.

In out, in out. In my childish games I’m the only who notices your hunger; do you remember?

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Our mouths open like My dreams every night, black holes Siphoning secrets We sit here among

Hot trash strewn across the floor

Chopsticks jab and pull

Noodles curl in our Bellies like young maggots, just Trying to become We learn politics:

Gossip, cliques, and hometown boys Parents, food, and love My muse is grotesque; Still in girlhood, we complain While we create art.

The blush of young, embarrassed cheeks A rattling engine that combusts too fast Softened regret, my feet firm in the gaps A sweet Eurasian plant unfurling in grass To decorate, cut a scalloped edge Our arguments ribboning into sleep The intermediary between white and red To embody the highest degree Your eyes winking like sand in the distance

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“Nicole?”

“Here.”

“How do you pronounce your last name? Gay-o?”

“No, it’s Gao.” – Interaction between six-year-old Nicole and her first-grade teacher Between the ages of two and seven, my family and I lived in a suburb in Indiana. I went to school in Indiana from pre-k to second grade. Living there, I knew I was different from the other children; in a specific kindergarten picture, my dark hair stood out amidst a sea of blondes.

In the early 2010s, my parents ran the only Chinese takeout restaurant in the area. The restaurant’s name was China Wok and it was in between an army recruitment center and a Payless ShoeSource. My parents worked seven days a week from morning to night so my brother and I could live comfortably.

As a child of immigrant parents, I grew up eating my cultural foods and speaking my native language, Mandarin. I often ate classic Fuzhounese dishes, including fish balls, ice rice, and wok side paste with broth. Nevertheless, I wasn’t comfortable with my Chinese heritage.

In school, people knew me as “that one Chinese girl.” My teachers always mispronounced my last name. People asked me if I ate cats and dogs or if I was born in China. My classmates chanted, “Ching Chong!” They stuck their pinkies at me during recess. They pulled back their eyes to pretend they were also Chinese.

In my early schooling, I was a nuisance to my teachers and a problem child to my parents. In kindergarten, I trespassed onto private property. In first grade, I cut my bangs in class while the teacher was talking. Almost weekly, my parents received phone calls in the middle of work about how “Nicole did something wrong in class!” My parents tried everything to change my behavior, and constantly scolded me, but nothing worked. Thinking back, I would rather be known as the troublemaker than as the token racial minority.

I wanted to be white. I wanted to look like everyone else, with light hair and double eyelids. I wanted an easy-to-pronounce last name. I wanted someone to talk to. My parents were too busy running their restaurant, and my little brother was too young to understand these feelings.

In December of 2012, my parents had big news for my brother and me. We were moving back to New York City, where I was born.

We settled in my uncle’s house in Queens, and I began attending an elementary school in the area. All my friends from my new school were Chinese. From them, I learned of the term “ABC,” which stands for “American-born Chinese.” I was around people who looked like me. I could eat Fuzhounese peanut noodles and flat wontons without being judged by my classmates. For the first time in years, I felt comfortable with my identity.

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When I entered middle school, I began to use social media. It introduced me to two makeup styles. One style was ABG (Asian Baby Girl), which consists of long, fake eyelashes, tan skin, and a sexy image. The other style is Douyin/Chinese makeup, with big eyes created with contacts and glitter, pale skin, and a youthful impression.

When I experimented with makeup, I could never make my eyes look good. If I lathered my eyelids thick with eyeliner, the ink would disappear when I opened my eyes.

If I applied eyeshadow on my eyelids, only half of the color would appear. Even when I applied mascara, my lashes would never stand out.

I grew insecure about my eyes and constantly considered using eyelid tape or undergoing double eyelid surgery. I would use super long and thick falsies to lift my eyes and give me the illusion of double eyelids. I would beg my mom to let me get eyelash extensions. I would post on social media to feel validation, yet it was never enough.

In the eighth grade, one of my friends said my eyes “lit up like crescent moons when I smiled.” I also started getting into music by Asian artists, and after seeing beautiful women with monolids just like mine, I began to appreciate my monolids. Nevertheless, I still struggled with my insecurities.

In early high school, I would post on Instagram often. In my photos, I always wore false eyelashes and used face-altering filters. Despite being so young, I wanted to portray a sexier image on social media. I wanted to be like an ABG yet I also wanted to be a “cute Chinese girl.”

Now that I’m older, I’ve grown to accept and appreciate how I look. I’ve begun to love myself.

Although I still have some growing to do before I become fully comfortable with myself, I’m so proud of myself for accepting my Asian identity and learning to love my appearance.

Written by: Nicole Gao Edited by : Tina Ni Designed by: Anni Yu 37

Last year, on a Friday night while the sun set in the windows and my friends were out, I wrote this piece. There were things so deeply a part of me that I wanted to say them to everyone I knew—but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. So instead I wrote this.

When talking about her album Sour, Olivia Rodrigo explains how, at 17, she felt

everything very intensely. She explains that those feelings were worth writing

about, even though she didn’t feel them as acutely anymore. This is how I feel. I

am no longer the person who wrote this piece, but that person became me. Many

things I feel the same about, and some things I don’t. Yet I want to be loyal to

them—I want to share their passion. I am proud of this person and proud of who

I have become. It is my genuine pleasure to share my thoughts with you; this is

what I wrote, for you and for me, on that Friday night.

There are things I cannot say, as a sober person, because they’d make my

non-sober friends uncomfortable.

Funny, isn’t it? Usually it’s the other way around. Especially for me—I’m a

pretty anxious person, and I can’t hide it very well. Drinking makes me

nervous; smoking makes me nervous. It’s the sort of thing everyone can see.

They walk on eggshells around me, cast sidelong looks or fix their gaze

on the ground while they pass around the joint. Funny, then,

that my discomfort begets their own—a torturous, infinite loop.

I’ll give you an example: my friend wanted to try cigarettes. Just once, she said. Who could blame her? My two non-sober friends immediately spoke. Cigarettes are my hard limit, said one. Those things’ll kill you, said another. The first friend nodded, ashamed. But in my head, I thought, How strange. I could never say those things. I could never say how my grandparents died from cancer, one after another. I could never talk about their rotted lungs buried in Long Island, their house daily filled with the smell of smoke. I could never talk about how in the end, my grandad knew he’d killed his wife. Because then I would be on my soapbox. Or then I would infect the conversation with my barely-there trauma. If you’re sober, you have to be cool about it. If I am anything, I am not cool about it.

It’s the reminder, I think, that I am sober; that substances make me uncomfortable. I think people wish that I was not so uncomfortable, and they feel some guilt about that. Why? Don’t they know that I wish I was not so uncomfortable, too? A friend of mine was talking about an upcoming show of ours, and said, “Ultimately, it’ll be fine. We’ll all be drinking.” And then a hush fell over the improv group. In the silence, one of the guys made eye contact with me and said, “But not Mia!” At times I am comfortable with it. I am making progress, I hope—my therapist seems to think so. But sometimes, it feels like this will be a forever thing. I find myself settling into a sort of hopeful resignation. It’s a feeling that’s familiar to me, but I can’t pinpoint why—until I remember. I remember sitting at a table of White male comedians who are talking about their favorite White male comedians.

Mitch Hedberg. Bert Kreisher. John Mulaney, who, thankfully, I know. “One of the comics I like is Emily Catalano,” I confess privately to the guy to my right. “She’s got a fun, deadpan delivery.” “Why didn’t you bring that up when we asked who your favorite comic was?” the guy responds. It’s like shouting.

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“Mia, have you heard of Atsuko Okatsuka?” one guy asks. “Hm,” I say. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” he says, “I know you’re Asian, and a woman, and you like Asian women. I was wondering what you thought of her comedy.”

How terrifying it was, to go up to him later and confess my discomfort. How terrifying, the knowledge that racism did unfortunately touch me. The schools that I went to were no longer 40% Asian. “Vassar is a safe space,” says one of the people in my Korean class, “for White queer people.”

And I cannot solve racism. I never will. People will continue to be racist in my life, to, gasp, me. I will have to keep explaining my discomfort to them.

But perhaps there are things I can learn from both.

The fear I had was that I would lose my White friend.

That I would discover a latent, but active, racism in him, something I could not condone and would have to excise from my life. My fear was that he would be so guilty and ashamed that his discomfort would be more important to him than my own. Still, I told him—because I value myself. Still, I talk about my sobriety—because I value myself. I have tried to make this a funny piece, not for you, but for me. My sobriety is funny! And nobody seems to understand that. It is important to me that my sobriety is funny.

As an oppressed person who goes on anxiety spirals, I hear a lot of pessimism—from myself and my community. “Things seem to just get worse as the world opens up,” says that girl from Korean class. “There will never be space for us. Things won’t get better.” And maybe they won’t. But by god, I am going to make space for myself. I am here, in whatever embarrassing and anxiety-inducing capacity I can be, and I am not going to shut up about it. I am going to be loud and stupid. I value myself. I think myself funny. I know myself to be loved.

And people don’t really learn, but they try. My friends and I hung out on

Founder’s Day, and they passed around a joint. The guy, the very

same guy, offered the joint to me and said, “Mia? Today, maybe?”

I laughed aloud. “No,” I said. “Not today. Ask me again

tomorrow, though—the answer is probably going to be

the same, but I want you to keep asking.” And I do—I

do want him to keep asking. I want him to approach me

with a smile and curiosity. With a willingness to be

laughed at. This is not a teachable moment; this is me spelling out something you already know, deep down. You silly fools.

And even if you don’t, I do. I stand at the precipice of my life and I go forward. Once more, for me and the people I protect—my life is vibrant and meaningful. There is always space for my anxiety—the space I make, which no one can inhabit or erase. I in myself am my own structure; my own home. I am here for me.

Writer: Mia LaBianca Editor: Ulysses Bergel Designer: Jill Wong 39

Plain soon-dubu. Watered-down tteokbokki. Stripped kimchi. In the past, I would order everything with either mild or no spice. It is only now that I realize that I have grown to tolerate those sharp, burning flavors that I yearn for and enjoy the sting. My previous palette didn’t allocate room for heat of any sort; it was afraid of getting lost in the smoke.

I wasn’t open to trying new flavors—I loved looking into the pale colors of my bowl and finding no reflection. I liked the familiar, I fretted when I strayed from the norm, and yet, throughout the tumult of my youth, I longed and wrestled for something new—

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In that great chasm of comfort, I called for change in a voice so quiet that the water around me didn’t ripple and the geese above didn’t look down. But change came and stirred the wind so it whistled in my ears and my hair concealed my eyes. Before I knew it, my bowl had darkened and jagged red flakes bathed on top.

Before I knew it, I had changed.

—Ah, there’s the rub. The catch about change is that you don’t know it’s occurring until after the fact. It’s that moment when, say, your flat metal chopsticks reach for the kimchi in the small ceramic panchan dish in the middle of the table and you crunch into its sour, spicy tang, that it dawns that your younger-you would be mortified. Your past self is suddenly and irrevocably divorced from your current self so much so that one version judges the other—the current self ruminating over its past in pity, the past self gawking at the current in shock. Where the middle self stands is unknown, lost between the bookends of change.

And this is only one tangible aspect in which I have changed. Parts of myself I have lost—or rather grown out of—may never be found as I sift through the grains of my identity. I question whether I even want to remember those lost parts of myself, the parts that made me feel embarrassed seeing everyone’s vibrant, colorful bowls of bibimbap or spicy jjigae while my plate swirled in a white wash with the occasional green onion. The facets of myself that leaned into complacency became stagnant—what should have been a phase hardened into a concrete piece of my youth. Perhaps I should forget this old version of me. It’s only when my past self comes knocking at my door in the early hours of the morning with plain soon-dubu, watered-down tteokbokki, and stripped kimchi that I can see the value in remembering, in acknowledging my past self, for better or for worse, as someone I used to be content in. Because soon, it will be my turn to knock on someone else’s door, bearing whatever vestige of my being, and another version of myself will open it to greet someone unrecognizable, indicative of yet another change I wasn’t able to foresee.

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written by Kiran Rudra edited by Miranda Chen ~ designed by Katy Cooper my love grows like hair. slicked back. braided. hung loose. growing on my arms, my legs, my chest. more recently on my chin, inching its way across my cheek. sometimes my lovers connect. i shed my hair so all my lovers can find traces of me. i braid my best friend’s hair. the boxed wine has hit my fingertips and her hair falls like water through my hands. i do a fishtail braid. it reminds me of girlhood. of glitter lipgloss and dreams of shopping at justice. my hair will never be that long again. i braid her hair like it’s my own.

i used to find my longest lover’s hair in everything. their love followed me everywhere. in the pages of a borrowed book, at the bottom of my sock, trapped on the shoulder of a hoodie. there is a kind of love that sticks to you even as it changes shape.

my friend’s long, messy, wavy hair falls over her in reckless abandon. she practically drowns in it. how truly bengali. it’s always a little wiry and unkempt, but she has it all under control. i like to think it’s because that’s how she loves. i like to think i know how she loves.

a past lover kisses the hair on my thighs. suddenly i am aware of all of the hair, and i’m ashamed. i’m hot and i’m wet and i’m red. all of this hair sticks to me and i am aware of the beast that i lay inside of. how ashamed i am to be so full of love. i used to hate this hair so much. i felt so monstrous and hurt. i shaved my legs, arms, even my head. how sleek, clean, pure. i felt untouchable. but to be unloved is to be unarmed. naked.

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i pull my hair out of the passenger seat of a girl’s car. i don’t even think she knows i’ve shed in here. i feel my curls wash over my face and i wonder if i look boyish enough for her to like me. or too boyish. sometimes it’s better not to know. i grow this hair for myself. a sky full of stars and a city of boys. one slips an earbud in my ear and the hair on my neck begins to rise. music gets so lonely sometimes. it’s better with a friend. boy love does not have to be brash, 3-in-1 dark musk. sometimes boy love is tender, soft, platonic. coconut oil and conditioner. i style my hair in pigtails for the first time in years to go to a concert that gets drowned out in rain. as we melt, my friends link hands to solidify in the crowd. i’ll take care of you. my scalp is being pulled by the tiny elastics my friend produced from their purse earlier that night. i don’t mind. maybe it’s the four loko or the bench joint. maybe it’s the company. summertime brings bouncy curls and hidden hands. knees under the table. skin and skin and skin. running my hands through her hair in the dark. she could only see who i was when my world was asleep. what are we doing right now? it ends with me walking to fleetwood with everything in my laundry bag and my tears in my back pocket. teal and red hair dye spill into the winter and i don’t think i’ve recovered from a chop quite as big. do they know i still have their hair scissors? manic panic dreams over tinted sunsets smell like nivea and axe body spray. this is probably when my hair changed its shape the most. i love(d) you and i don’t forgive you sound a lot alike sometimes. but i am my best lover. no one loves this hairy monster like myself. no one can. i run my hands through my hair, my legs, my arms, my stomach. going on t has given me a happy trail. how joyous, how gay. i am the lone observer of this body as it lives and mutates. hair on my chest, my back, crawling out on my toes. i am a hairy beast of love.

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To my mixed race identity, It’s taken a long time before I’ve even begun to come to understand you, accept you, and be proud of you. For a while, I instead felt confused and unsure about you as coming from two identities did not seem like something to be celebrated but rather a source of pain and fear in conversations.

Projector: Ella Phillips Editor: Lerie Marasigan Designer: Karen Mogami To nourish in this sense, is to set intention behind appreciation. Commend the difficult, hostile and aggressive experiences that you have learned to navigate, likely with little to no guidance. Nurture the knowledge you have cultivated. Admire your resilience despite ambiguous and fluctuating expectations and perceptions. Validate your experiences being mixed through toasting to yourself in the form of a love letter, dedicate it to yourself and your racial identity.

Do you remember in fourth grade? That was one of the first times I really felt strong doubt about my identity. We were all in small groups for a project, and for some reason, everyone went around and said their ethnicity.

All the other kids had neat, clean, one-worded responses. “I’m Italian.” “I’m German.” And so forth.

When it came to my turn, I felt like I had to decide between my two racial identities as I was not even aware “mixed” was a thing.

So I contributed to the group, “I’m Chinese”. I thought I could fit in by providing a short and sweet response, but was instead met with shocked and confused stares, with a few kids incredu

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lously remarking that I didn’t look Chinese. Did not looking Chinese make me any less Chinese?

If I had identified more with my other racial identity and said, “I’m Ukrainian”, would that have changed their responses?

Or what about in middle and high school?

Even though I came to understand the meaning of being mixed, the doubt I had about you only intensified as I grew older. I happened to do well in Spanish classes, so much so that on three separate occasions from different Spanish teachers, they pulled me aside and started talking in rapid Spanish, thinking I was fluent because I seemed proficient in Spanish and looked Hispanic.

Let’s see, what ethnicity have people (unprompted) said I was? Mexican, Guatemalan, Egyptian, Salvadoran…the list goes on. It feels silly to attribute mixed identity almost solely to physical appearance when in reality it is so much more. And yet, based on what I’ve experienced, subconsciously or not, people tend to assume so much about you from how you look.

And though it seems shallow, not being believed when you explain your identity or being assumed you’re something you’re not can cause an overall questioning of who you even are.

So at a certain point, it all became like a game to me. Near the end of high school, when the topic of ethnicity came up, I would be the one asking people to guess the ethnicities that comprised my mixed identity. No one ever got it right, except one girl, who correctly said I was Asian and European. I had created this game simply because I wanted to add to my roster of incorrect guesses about my ethnicity. So I was surprised when the girl got it right and for one of the first times, I felt so, so validated. A wave

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of relief washed over me and I felt like I was truly seen.

When I got to college, I felt more comfortable with accepting the fact that I am mixed. Joining orgs that celebrate and nourish identity certainly helped, but mostly, I began to recognize the fact that regardless of how other people perceive me, I am part Chinese and part Ukrainian. And nothing anyone says or assumes can take that away from me or change that immutable fact.

Someone saying that I am Mexican does not diminish all the bright and cheery Lunar New Year celebrations I’ve had with the Chinese side of my family, the memories from attending Chinese School, or even the dinners and festivities I’ve had with the Ukrainian side of my family, to name a few. And that is something I truly wish I knew back in fourth grade.

This is not to say that I’m in a place where I am completely confident in my mixed identity.

Sometimes, I still feel like it would be easier to not correct someone’s false assumption about my identity and try to fit myself into rigid categories. But I’m working on that. And maybe I’ll be working on that for the rest of my life, but even if I don’t reach a point where I am fully confident in my mixed identity, I am glad to be finding the space for embracing and finding pride in these two ethnicities.

With love, Kaitlin

I discovered collage in college. Well, discovered is a strong word. I have always been interested in the idea of collaging – making art from preexisting images and items. I grew up with a creative spirit, always making art in some way and finding beauty in life.

I pursued art somewhat seriously in high school, however I quickly felt burnt out by the constant pressure to create. I always wanted to work with collage in my art classes, but my teacher constantly rejected that idea, claiming it was not “real art.”

This always rubbed me the wrong way, as I felt deeply connected to the medium although I had little experience with it. After high school I stopped taking art classes and while I recovered from the pressure of originality, I again became curious by collaging.

One evening my sophomore year of college I sat on my floor with my best friend, flipping through Vogue magazines, cutting out images, textures, and patterns I enjoyed. The sense of peace I felt in that moment was astounding – it had been years since I had enjoyed making art, and even longer since I had made art purely for myself. I felt such a strong connection to the art form, one that was difficult to explain for a long time. It was only recently that I made the connection between collaging and my identity. Like a collage, I am bits and pieces of different people, places, and cultures glued together to make something new. I come from two people who should never have met, but fit together like a puzzle. My identity is confusing and chaotic, but it is beautiful and full of patterns, colors, and life. In hindsight, the criticism of the art of collage by my old teacher felt like a criticism of my background. Mixed race people are constantly invalidated by others for not being “enough” of something, yet we are more than enough. We have our own unique identities, perspectives, and beauty that complement our various cultures, and we should be celebrated for that.

Attached is the first collage I made here, on the night I discussed. It wasn’t the intention at the time but I feel like I unconsciously created a self portrait.

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Dear Julianna, Do you remember that day in first grade?

The art class with Ms. Dawson––the only teacher of color you’d have before high school––when you realized that you were different, that your family was different, from the rest? The task was to draw a family portrait. You and your classmates fought over the “skin color” crayons: apricots and peachy beiges. Once you got your hands on one of them, you started drawing four smiling light-skinned faces. You added details: mom’s curly hair, Anji’s bangs, and dad’s favorite watch. When you finished, you brought it over to Ms. Dawson; she held it in her hands for a while before saying, “This doesn’t look like your family.”

With Ms. Dawson’s help, you redrew your family portrait. First you redrew dad, swapping apricot for a medium brown. You drew mom in light beige, and you used the same black-brown crayon you used for dad’s hair to draw mom’s mane of curls. “Your skin and your sister’s are shades between your mom and your dad’s. A perfect mix,” Ms. Dawson said.

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You always knew that your parents came from different countries and cultures, but it wasn’t until that day in art class that you realized how intensely your identity set you apart from your peers. At the end of class, Ms. Dawson hung the family portraits up in the hallway. Amidst a sea of smiling white faces, your family portrait stuck out––every figure in your portrait a different color.

You now noticed the way you and your family were perceived by the world. It made you feel uncomfortable and insecure. You always thought that the four of you were pieces of a puzzle––together a complete set, a perfect image. But then you started taking stock of the assumptions that were made, the questions that were asked. Like when you’d all wait in line at the hostess’s counter in a restaurant, but the hostess would never assume all four of you were eating together. Or the time when you went to the nail salon with mom and the lady next to you kept asking you, “where are you originally from?” Or what in the world people meant when they described you as exotic. You never questioned that your family belonged together as a unit, but now you started to realize that the rest of the world didn’t see it that way.

You started to feel like you and your family were puzzle pieces from different sets that miraculously fit together.

You started to question your place within your own family, too. Whether you belonged fully to either side of it. The differences were obvious.

You were either too dark or too light. Too Italian or too Filipino. There was always a joke you wouldn’t understand, a sentence in a language you half-spoke that couldn’t be comprehended completely. Besides your sister, no one else in your family could understand how it felt to be mixed––two halves of a whole, but a third thing all together. No matter how deeply your family and your cultures anchored you, you couldn’t help but dwell on how much easier your life would be if your family was like the others you saw in those family portraits from Ms. Dawson’s first-grade art class.

You have come so far from those days when you felt so untethered to yourself and your identity. You didn’t change your mind overnight: you grew into yourself and who you are.

As you got older, you started to meet more people like you. You started to open up to them about the mixed up jumble of emotions you felt, and you listened to their stories––seeing glimmers of your own in each one. You learned words like biracial, interracial, and multicultural, and you started to use them to describe yourself and your family. And, although you were never ashamed per se of

your identity, you started to embrace it. To truly love being mixed, despite all the tough things that come with it. You know that you’ll always have to endure the uncomfortable questions and the pangs of otherness.

But now you realize how amazing it is to contain two cultures, two histories, two countries inside of you––how incredible it is that the world worked together to bring your parents together and create you.

What was once your biggest insecurity is now your favorite thing about yourself, and for that I could not be more proud.

Love, Julianna

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Hey bud, It took me a long time to write this, mainly because I wasn’t sure how to start. What do I name you? I had my name at the top for a while, but I changed it because I feel as though you are just as much a part of me as something separate. Mixedness is something I both choose to interact with and am forced to at different times. You have made me feel so unbelievably visible and invisible all at the same time and for the same reasons, and I used to loathe that. I don’t anymore.

English class, but the world opened up.

We were both ethnically ambiguous, both existing in the in-between with little direction and less support, but we saw each other and we understood. Our high school was over 80% White and ignorant at its best and hostile at its worst. No one had known what we were, and honestly, no one had cared. It was the first time I had felt kinship like that, and the first time I realized how desperately I needed it.

I told someone recently that I didn’t know you, know the word mixed, until high school and they were shocked.

I met up with Sophie about a month into our freshman year of college, and the first thing she told me was that she was in a club for women of color in engineering at her university. I told her I had joined the mixed heritage society at mine. We grinned at each other like we’d gotten away with something, and in a sense we had. College has made me love my identity, has made me feel settled and anchored in a way I never realized I hadn’t, and it’s because of the community I’ve been able to cultivate.

“You weren’t given that vocabulary?” They asked.

I shrugged. I didn’t reckon with you until I was 15, until I had a word for you and it all came together and apart. Do you remember that conversation with Sophie? She was one of the few people of color at your school and the only other mixed person in your grade.

It was so quick, just a few words during

To my mixedness, I’m excited to keep growing with you. I’m so sorry I ever thought that we should shrink away. Thank you for teaching me how to take up space.

Love, Jas

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You with the hair so dark almost dyed Blood runs thick with memory Like the deep lines carved in your grandmother’s skin Skin of a healer, a mother Swift fingers weaving textiles into stories she never told you Plucked orchid buds from a too taut stem Crown of cotton white clouds When she watches you eat You’re unsure Of salty sweet mooncake eggs on scattered linoleum Does she remember rubbing your wet hair between two dish towels?

You’ll get sick she said What if you forget the way the soft skin stretched over each finger bone?

What if her hellos don’t echo in the depths?

You won’t forget Can’t The crinkly smile Knowing eyes Swish of hair running through braided fingers Sticky Zha Jiang Mian Drip dripping down chins Knit hats Gong Xi Fa Cai Bow low low lower The folds of your brain unfurling A secret scroll unread When you look up, eyes reflecting the universe Do you see me?

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growing up mixed race means growing up in between dust in between is the substance composite brick i have built, am building a home with in between is shapeshifting morphing like the molting snakes and moths, faith in each side of the form of myself, fingerprinted soft to the touch, clay girl like Earth is made of, Earth that puddles and germinates and crystallizes and grows rooted and reaching like the trees, aspiring to be a beautiful both-ness

Prompt: Write a love letter to your mixed race identity and create a self portrait if you are so moved.

Guiding questions: What does it mean to be you? How does it feel? What is something you are proud of? Reflect on a moment when you appreciated your identity. How was that experience affirming? If you could describe this moment with a scent, what would it smell like? Who has provided guidance and how have you provided guidance for yourself? Do you have any statements of affirmation? Is there any knowledge you possess now that you would have liked to have known/been told in the past? What do you love about being you? Can you describe it in a sound? If you were to make a self portrait what medium would you use? I encourage you to create your own. What is a question not yet asked you would like to speak to?

This is not intended for you to justify or explain but rather create an opportunity to speak to yourself, give appreciation, reflect, nurture, and nourish.

Thank you to Nia Bethel-Brescia, Olivia Chang, Jasmine Gates, Kaitlin Raskin, Talia Roman, and Malia Weiss

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Samuel Zhang Edited by: Tina Ni

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I’m a part of the many Chinese families who immigrated to the United States for a better future. I have two homes; One in bustling New York City, and the other in a small village in the province of Fujian.

I was born in the States but when I was a couple months old, I was sent to China to spend time with my grandparents. In doing so, I was able to connect with my heritage and learn Mandarin and Fuzhounese. My most cherished memories include riding around the village on a bike with training wheels, and the plump, green pu gua that grew on horizontal bamboo poles laid around my home. When I was five years old, I headed back to the US. I left behind my Grandma’s, rice flour cake soup, and my Grandpa’s calloused hands.

When people ask me where I’m from, I say New York City. This city has taught me to walk fast and mind my own business.

However, I was still surrounded by many Fuzhounese people who had also immigrated to the US for better opportunities. I still eat authentic peanut butter noodles, and flat meat soup. They are just made by the hands of someone else. I’m thankful for my parents who raised me this way. I’m proud of my upbringing.

The rare times I go back to China to visit and greet the elders who watched me grow up, I firmly say with a straightened back and a smile: Wai a bai gong fu jiu wa, dan sei gong di mo ya ho (I can speak Fujianese, just not very well.)

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Take Care of Me

A Portrait X GRADIENT Collaboration

For this issue of Portrait, I decided to work with GRADIENT, an org that supports Male-Identifying students of color on an interview and photo series asking men of color what makes them feel beautiful and taken care of. Men of color are often not given the compassion to be soft, beautiful, or held. I wanted to do a photo series that highlighted men of color when they felt beautiful, and learn what makes them feel beautiful. While we took photos around Sunset Lake, Samuel and Sriram responded to questions I asked them about what makes them feel taken care of and beautiful. The pictures included in this spread are the results from this project.

Samuel Rebuelta-Sanchez

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Photography & Design

by Kiran Rudra Cinematography

by Christian Wolke Models: Samuel Rebuelta-Sanchez and Sriram Soundarapandian

Sriram Soundarapandian

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Writer: Lucas Chiang, Editor: Sohyoung (SJ) Jeong, Designer: Miranda Liu

I wish I could play you a song.

It could be on a majestic Steinway, or a worn-out upright. It could be on a beautiful summer day, a soft breeze blowing through the window, or on a rainy evening, where the piano forms our shelter, our comfort, from the world. It could be a happy song, one that could brighten the rest of your day in light, or a sad one, but in most likelihood it would be a soft and beautiful one – one that at first wipes away your tears before summoning them back to glaze your eyes. Not from grief this time, but from the melancholy

wave that rushes over your heart when stricken with the greatest beauty.

A picture is worth a thousand words. How much is a song? How many words does one piece from start to finish – each note, each chord, each tap of the finger, each press of the pedal, each rising melody and falling arpeggio – contain? Can we even think of quantifying every emotion we feel from a song into a certain amount of words?

I will not be able to play you a song.

So instead of the beautiful song that rests in my mind, waiting to be heard, here is what I make of it on paper – I hope that it retains its beauty.

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I feel like something should be cleared up first. For an introduction on music as pretentious as the one I have written, one would probably assume that its writer was a talented musician. At least talented enough to play a song that can make you cry. So prepare to be disappointed.

I am a… decent pianist. I’ve certainly had enough practice and training to not be a bad one, at least. And I consider my natural sense of music and music theory to be pretty good, though definitely not anything special. I can probably play a song good enough to make people (at least non-musicians) say, “that was really pretty, how long have you been playing?” But my piano playing has certainly never made anyone stop crying, or make anyone cry at all, for that matter I started playing piano when I was four. I was the one who wanted to learn how to play, having always been interested in music and playing instruments. My parents signed me up for lessons at a local conservatory.

On the day of my first lesson, I remember walking with my parents down a path of stones and trees to a set of faded periwinkle stairs. Autumn leaves crunched beneath our feet as we opened the white wooden door. The facade of the building depicted an old repurposed colonial-era manor that had seen better days, but when we stepped in, walking upon creaky floorboards, the interior of the building welcomed us with intricate Victorian wallpaper and polished wooden furniture. As we headed into the room on the right, in front of me stood a magnificent jet-black Steinway grand piano. The instructor raised the piano bench for me and placed a stool by the pedals so my feet wouldn’t dangle, before beginning my first lesson, which turned out to be more of a basic musical test – listening to two notes and determining if one was higher than the other.

I passed the test.

Thus began six years of weekly lessons after school. I went through the quintessential classical piano experience, learning scales and arpeggios and, eventually, simplified versions of Für Elise and Pachebel’s Canon, asking my teacher to teach me the melody of songs I heard on the radio, and never practicing unless my parents made me. By 5th grade, I had grown tired of the piano. I was frustrated by that one song I could never play right, and was ready to quit as soon as my parents would allow me to.

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But when I entered middle school, my parents decided

to transfer me over to taking lessons with the piano teacher at

my school. My new teacher, as it turned out, was also the leader of the

middle school and high school jazz band, and an incredible jazz pianist

himself. Instead of the same never-ending classical pieces I was used to, he

taught me the foundations of jazz piano, from the deep music theory behind the chords

to the multitude of techniques and skills used in improvisation. As I joined the jazz band, honing my skills as a jazz pianist, I slowly improved at improvising. Compared to my experience as a classical pianist, jazz piano felt liberating. Both while playing solo and with the band, I loved how I could turn these jazz pieces into my own versions with my improvisations. Instead of following every instruction the sheet music gave me, I had time to craft my own version of the song, playing in a way completely unique to myself.

Throughout high school I proudly labeled myself as a jazz pianist. I did start taking lessons under a new classical piano instructor, making my way to an intermediate level, but while I certainly appreciated the beauty of the classical pieces I learned, I was never able to replicate the same feeling I got while playing jazz. I’ve come to know since then that this is a common place for amateur pianists to get stuck in. Those of us without the drive and devotion to break through plateau here, as the next tier of classical piano literature can be notoriously difficult without rigorous practice. With the move to college approaching, many choose not to continue, retaining their skills but not gaining regular practice and lessons, at least not for a while. As freshman year sat on the horizon, I made this decision too.

As a freshman, I would still walk to Skinner every so often to play a song, normally the relaxing, serene type of Studio Ghibli song that fallen classical pianists like myself seem to love, the kind of piece that offers the tranquil beauty of simple yet moving songwriting without having to develop carpal tunnel. But, in my mind, my journey as a classical pianist was over, or at least on a lengthy hiatus.

In the end, this all changed with one song.

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Of all the places where I could have first encountered Chopin’s “Wrong Note” Étude Op. 25, No. 5, I first heard it in Your Lie in April, a Japanese anime about a concert pianist dealing with the trauma of his childhood and a free-spirited violinist he meets. Only a few episodes in, the violinist signs up the pianist for his first solo piano competition in years. As his rival performs the thundering melody of the infamous “Winter Wind” Étude Op. 25, No. 11, the pianist walks to the stage, and performs “Wrong Note.” Although he falls apart midway and gets disqualified, he revitalizes himself thanks to the inspiration of the violinist, proudly finishing the song nonetheless.

It was a good story, and the song was so beautiful that the next day, I found a PDF of the sheet music online, rushed to my favorite practice room in Skinner, and got to work. But as much as I loved the song, what struck me the most was the way the music was portrayed in the show. One of the reasons why musicians love Your Lie in April is how it’s able to show the way that music is able to express the musician’s heart. As the rival plays her piece, the characters comment on how they can hear her angriness and loneliness. In the main character’s performance, his teacher feels through his music the love and peacefulness of his time with the violinist.

This concept certainly wasn’t new to me. One reason why I had loved jazz so much was the way that my emotions can show in my improvisations. After all, making a piece yours didn’t just mean that it belonged to your distinct self, but also to the current state that you were in. My solo one day could be entirely different from my solo on that same song on a different day depending on what I was feeling. But this experience was something that I only felt in jazz before. Your Lie in April depicted the same feelings I felt about jazz towards classical music. As the violinist performs, the main character even says, “It’s Beethoven’s Kreutzer, but this piece no longer belongs to him. Here and now, she owns it.” I had prided myself on “owning” the countless jazz songs I had learned. But I never felt like I had ever owned a classical piece.

My objective, then, was to own “Wrong Note”. I looked up to see how hard it was relative to what I knew, and, from what I could gather, although “Wrong Note” didn’t require some of the absurd technical skills other études did, but its difficulty came in the deep musicianship needed to master its intricate balance of dissonance and dynamics. I considered my theory and musicianship to be better than my technical skill, so I decided to go for it.

“Wrong Note” roughly follows an ABA structure. The “A” section features a relatively simple waltz melody filled with dissonant grace notes, giving it its name. I was mostly interested in the mesmerizing middle section where the right hand softly shifts up and down the keys while the left hand plays the resonant melody. I set a goal for myself: I had started in February, so by April, I would be able to comfortably play the middle section.

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Getting back into the routine of a classical pianist, I worked at the song, learning first the fast and precise right hand part, then the left hand, then the two of them combined, working measure by measure, line by line. Soon enough, I was practicing more often than I ever had before, even when I was practicing jazz. And when I was finally able to get the first few lines right, I was able to feel it – that resolute sense of pride you feel when you shape a song into your own piece.

I wish I could have been able to keep that.

I really would have loved to say that, inspired by my second wind in classical piano, I practiced intensively, mastered “Wrong Note” by April, and moved on to even more challenging pieces. That really isn’t the case. Instead, all I have to show is a list on my Notes app. It looks like this: •

Chopin “Wrong Note” Etude Op. 25 No. 5 • Chopin “Tristesse” Etude Op. 10 No. 3 • Chopin “Ocean” Etude Op. 25 No. 12 • Liszt Lieberstraume No. 3 • Chopin First Ballade in G Minor Op. 23 • Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 2

It’s a list of songs I want to learn, starting with “Wrong Note”, which I’ve added to every time I’ve found a classical piece I want to learn. They’re more or less organized by difficulty, with Rachmaninoff’s 35-minute Piano Concerto No. 2 being a lifelong goal. On the Notes app, it’s not formatted in bullet points, but rather a checklist. None of the songs have been checked off.

I originally wanted to finish the middle section of “Wrong Note” by April. It’s September, and although I’m certainly more comfortable with the song, I still can’t say it’s near the level that I want it to be. You may say that my initial goal severely underestimated the piece’s difficulty, or that I was overzealous to even try playing the piece in the first place at my current skill level. And those are both valid points that are probably correct. But deep down, I know that, if I spent the past few months practicing even a fraction as much as I did in those initial February weeks, I would probably be able to play the piece by now.

Now, those days spent in Skinner feel like years ago. I remember my excitement every day after classes were done to practice, spending hours every day in the practice room.My starry-eyed childhood dreams of being a pianist were reawakened, as I daydreamed about performing the piece and moving on to greater works. After the semester wrapped up, I all but begged my parents to resume lessons with my former piano teacher.

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But by the time summer came, all the excitement was gone. I had hit a plateau in the song, where I could play most of the middle section pretty well, but other parts felt too far of a jump away. I resumed lessons, which definitely improved my technique so I didn’t get carpal tunnel every time I played the song, but I simply just wasn’t putting enough practice in. As I became distracted with an internship and a vacation, my practice quickly fell off. At its height, I was practicing for 2-3 hours a day, skipping meals to get more practice in. Now, I was lucky to get 2-3 hours in a week. It had all collapsed. “Wrong Note” no longer gave off the marvelous wonder it had when I first heard it. I considered switching over to a different song to reset myself, but falling to the sunk-cost fallacy, I decided to stick to it in the name of completing my initial goal, which had taken on an indefinite extension.

My journey as a classical pianist seems sort of roundabout, then, in a sense. After nearly two decades of frustration and indifference, I was able to rediscover the sense of freedom and inspiration that initially made me want to be a musician in the first place – only to lose it all again. But if there’s one thing I can guarantee, it’s that my journey is far from over. Things will change. One day, I might revisit “Wrong Note” with a revived passion and energy. Or perhaps, I may abandon it entirely and rediscover what I lost in a new song. I don’t mind either way. Because in the end, while I no longer have the same feelings of expression and power that I initially had while playing “Wrong Note”, those feelings still remain, buried under layers of chords and melodies within my heart. They can – and will – be reopened.

A quote from Chopin rings out in my mind.

“Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvelous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.”

I’ve always seen classical music as an attempt to discover the most marvelous stars and the deepest parts of the universe. I thought that the reason why pianists practiced for hours upon hours was to reach the greatest level and perform for the greatest audience. Through “Wrong Note”, I found that classical music, just like jazz music, could make you look inwards. My audience was only the humble interior of a Skinner practice room, and my own self. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is the musician I have grown to be. When I sit by the 88 keys that I have devoted a large part of my life to, I no longer feel the need to perfect each piece as the world watches. All I have is my own mind, my own heart, my own hands, and 88 keys to open the depths of my soul, the contents of which will be released musically to my ears only – but that’s all I need.

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An étude, meaning study in French, is a composition written for the purpose of being played as a technical exercise to master a certain skill, from finger dexterity to sweeping wrist motions. Chopin wrote 24 études – 12 in Opus 10, and 12 in Opus 25 – all of which are considered to be among the most challenging tiers of classical piano literature. Some are notorious for their stunning melodies that storm over the keys, thundering up and down with the intensity of crashing lightning. Others appear simple at first, but slowly reveal an infinite spiral of mind-numbing musical complexity. In a sense, études are, by design, meant to invoke exactly what I had gone through playing “Wrong Note”. Chopin wrote the étude as a way for even the most skilled pianists to refine their skills dealing with awkward dissonance and a subtle display of dynamics. Does that mean I was foolish to think that I could “perfect” a piece meant to be a constant challenge, with never-ending layers of complexity? Is it even possible to perfect the skills “Wrong Note” asks of the pianist? At the very least, that level of perfection must be reserved only for the greatest pianists.

For as long as I’ve

been a pianist, my least

favorite part – the part that initially frustrated me to the brink of abandoning classical music, and later ended my run with “Wrong Note” – is the continued development and nurturing of skills through practice. Of course, I’m sure it’s hardly an uncommon sentiment to dislike practice, but as a musician, I could never wait long enough and work hard enough before jumping to the next level. I was always too excited to see what the next stage holds, to the point where I never fully developed the skills and knowledge that I needed to succeed once I made it to that point. One of the reasons why I loved jazz at first was because I thought it would let me leap-frog the boring technical drills of classical training. I would later come to bite this bullet, of course, as without sufficient technique my improvisations met an eventual plateau. Even today, I dream of playing the finest pieces composed by humanity – the final lines of my checklist, but I’m not putting in the practice. Études, then, are my greatest enemy. It’s ironic how it was an étude that made me love classical music, but the reason why I could never finish “Wrong Note” and move on with my checklist is that “Wrong Note” was never meant to be finished.

I feel somewhat similar with writing, meant to be my attempt at translating the

in that regard. These words I write are emotions of the song I would play to tell

this story. But while I may be a fairly decent pianist, I’m not nearly as confident in my writing – or with using words in general. I find it much easier to play a song to tell you how I feel instead of trying to put it in words. Music, even amongst nonmusicians, is a universal language. English is not. There aren't always the perfect words to describe what could be conveyed in the intricacies behind a single note – the power, the dynamics, the length, the fullness, and every other minor detail that can have a major effect on the

output. Where music is smooth, full, and moving, words are not.

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In that sense, I want everything I express, regardless of medium, to be considered art, by the Tolstoy definition. I want you to be able to feel what I feel through a shared artistic experience. But even more so, I want you to be able to walk away with your own unique feelings. Just as I tried to “own” Chopin’s work, I want you to “own” mine with your own conclusions. Tolstoy could certainly achieve this effect with his writing. It’s easier for me to do it on the keys of a piano, but for me to give you this experience with the keys of my laptop, I still have a long way to go.

This piece, then, is my first attempt at trying to materialize the songs that play in my mind into words.

It’s not perfect, but don’t worry, because it was never meant to be. My writing is a continuous process, one that can be practiced and practiced, constantly, but still never perfected. An opus, an essay to be replayed and rewritten over and over again, until my words, just as much as my music, are nourished into an imperfect, yet strong and beautiful product. The product that sits in my dreams, on my unmarked checklist, that can seem so far away, but, at the end of the day, is what brings me to keep playing, keep writing, in hopes of finding it.

These words are my étude.

Over the summer, I had the pleasure of going on visiting the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris, where, alongside Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, Frédéric Chopin rests. My family was initially confused at my suggestion of spots to visit while in Paris, but when we got there, we were all struck by the cemetery’s charm and serenity in the bright summer breeze. As we made our way to section 20, in front of a beautiful tomb lined with flowers and adorned with the statue of a kneeling woman, I paid my respects to the composer whose music brought so much emotion and beauty to my life.

I wished that I could summon a piano out of thin air and play a song for Chopin to show my appreciation, but considering the possibility that Chopin would quite literally roll over in his grave if he heard my broken attempt at “Wrong Note,” I decided that words would be enough.

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bliss shimmers in the air waiting for little fairies to grasp it in their spindly hands

bliss writer: leslie lim

it melts when it touches their icy palms springing down their hands

collage: naomi taylor

bliss, waterfall, giggles as it flies

through their arms and into their porcelain skin they go on, to imbue new bits of bliss into the spindly flowers that. percolate the land twin smiles erupt from one small fairy and the lion beneath her feet yet the darkness lurches forward coating the sky and earth with deep, rich darkness the fairies leave, tucked into their dirt hutches and they melt into the ground perhaps waking up as a flower, or a leaf or nothing at all but if to nourish the soil 71

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thank you for reading and creating.

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PORTR AIT

issue #11 | nurture / nourish fall 2023