FALL 2019

A Brown / RISD Visual & Literary Arts Magazine Vol. XXI XIX Issue 21

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Letter from the Editors Dear Reader, It is with great pleasure and excitement that we present to you the fall 2019 issue of VISIONS Magazine. We'd like to thank everyone who shared their incredible art and writing with us. Making art takes effort; sharing it takes courage. Whether or not you've submitted work to us before or if you are new to our VISIONS community, we are so grateful that you decided to take the plunge.

The VISIONS team received a record number of submissions this fall. With that, we were exposed to an expansive range of art and literature; from folktales to furniture designs, the submissions we reviewed covered much thematic ground. In putting together this issue, we often circled back to the art and writing that challenged us. These were pieces that, for us, pushed the boundaries of traditional aesthetics or evoked visceral reactions. We decided to stay with these works to try and explore the origins of those feelings. Even with pieces we readily took towards, we reminded ourselves to ref lect on why we felt the way we did.

For many of us on the VISIONS team, our initial impressions of a piece changed once we had the opportunity to sit down with one another and talk through each submission. Ultimately, the most engaging conversations we had were over pieces that evoked strong emotional valence. This was ref lected in the heated debates, the fierce vouching for pieces, the thoughtful pitches from each E-board member over the course of our selections meeting.

VISIONS constantly strives to be an invaluable, creative platform for AAPIA artists and writers from Providence and beyond to showcase their work. While our goal is never to "represent the AAPIA community," because that is too large and impossible a task, we think there is immense value in pushing the boundaries of what conventional notions of "AAPIA art" are. To do that, we think it imperative to showcase work that challenges.

The pieces that we have curated in this issue of VISIONS are ones that pushed us to ref lect on the role of our publication within the greater AAPIA community. It is our hope that as you read through our latest issue, you grapple with the discomfort, curiosity, amusement you may feel, too. You'll be happy you did.

Warmly,

Hilary Ho and May Gao Editors-in-Chief 3

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Mission Statement VISIONS is a publication that highlights and celebrates the diversity of Brown and RISD’s AAPIA community. We are committed to being an open literary and artistic forum for individuals who hold this identity, as well as other members of the university community, to freely express and address issues relating to the AAPI experience. VISIONS further serves as a forum for issues that cannot find a voice in other campus publications. As a collaborative initiative, VISIONS strives to strengthen and actively engage with Brown and RISD’s vibrant community of students, faculty, staff, and alumni, as well as the larger Providence community and beyond.

On the Cover Pangu Splitting the Heavens and the Earth | Digital He Yi (Cecilia Cao) ’21 is a clout chaser for mythology.

Editors-in‑Chief Hilary Ho ’20 May Gao ’21

Freshman Outreach Kenneth Kang ’23 Ava Wang ’23

Treasurer Lauren Fung ’22

Events Coordinator Lisa Yu Li ’22

Layout & Design Editors Jessie Jing ’22 Cecilia Vogler ’22

Editor Emeritus Sophia Meng ’20

Visual Arts Editor Cecilia Yoko Emy ’20

Inside Cover Organics | Micron and brush pen, marker, ink, watercolor and gel pen on bristol paper.

Andrew Wang ’22 is looking for a fancy rock to collect.

Literary Arts Editor Star Su ’21 Web Designers and Editors Emily Chen ’22 Charisa Shin ’22 RISD Outreach Sichen Grace Chen ’22 Cindy Qiao ’22

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Printer Brown Graphic Services A very special thanks to …

Contributors and staff Brown Center for Students of Color Contact visions@brown.edu facebook.com/VISIONS.Brown @VISIONS_magazine Disclaimer The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of VISIONS’ sponsors.

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FLAT WILLOWS Jolie Ngo

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Seascape Julie Sharpe

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Brancusi Windsor Chair Cecilia Emy

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Tender Blues Angie Kang

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Tunnel Vision Love Ryn Kang

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Mirrored Robin Zeng

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River Dogs Julie Sharpe

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Other Me Ryn Kang

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Makeout Creek Bowen Chen

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The Storyteller Victoria Xu

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nāga-girl and nāga-queen Sandra Moore

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Mindy & Aurelia, in Rain Sichen Grace Chen

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The Apsaras Marius Marjolin

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Buyer Beware Campaign April Dong Eun Kim

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Traveline Kaanchi Chopra

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Tea House Chair Dongzhu Li

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In the Garden Of Erin Lee Walden

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Pig Mob Joey Han

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Memoir: Draft 1.6 Agnes Tran

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Racetrack Shelf Cecilia Emy

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Bloody Dreamy Ran You

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Postcards from Home Katharine Chizuko Solien

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Two planes crash into each other midair Em Jiang

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What Word Was That?

Jasmine Ngai

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Foodlore Damini Agrawal

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Disappointed Women Jenny Kim

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Nirvana Vase Dongzhu Li

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说一段神话 Star Su Art by Claribel Wu

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The Emperor’s Bath Tsae Yung (Kelly) Wu

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proof Claire Kim-Narita

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Fire on the Shore Chong Jing Gan

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Waiting Wishing Caroline Dai

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Goodbye Fluency, In Portugal Kion You Lost But Not Alone Marlowe Pody

東 (Azuma): On Being Japanese Isabel Reyes Queer Representation in Hindu Mythology or Queer Culture Niyoshi Parekh

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Inside difference Yeonsu Park

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Untitled Alison Sherpa

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Blogpost #2 and #6 Katie Chiou 5

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FLAT WILLOWS | Stoneware, glaze luster Jolie ’20 is funny in the kitchen.

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Tender Blues | Watercolor Angie ’21 wants to go for a swim.

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River Dogs | Gouache and colored pencil Julie ’22 is from the Midwest and Proud Of It!

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Victoria ’21 is obsessed with gnarled trees.

The Storyteller My fingers trace the cracks in your bark, You tell me this line was a laugh, And this one a scar.

You have seven eyes, And you tell me the story of each one.

This one from a past life, That made you look for the sky.

These two face east and west, One to hear all the hums of morning rise, And one to see the slow decline of night.

Your biggest one’s still an open wound, Sap and scabs of petrified sun, From reaching too far at high noon.

The closed one was grown for a lover, Became your inner eye when they left.

That one from ants that told you look down: Feel your feet, your crown.

And this eye you made as a reminder too: Your roots lie in the ground.

This one’s your veins and heart.

Cracks and an eye, This one, you say, Will grow wider until you die.

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The Apsaras | CMYK screenprint Marius ’21 is hiding in Benson Hall.

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Tea House Chair | Wood and embroidery Dongzhu ’20 can’t live without milk tea.

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Agnes ’22 calls her mom everyday.

Memoir: Draft 1.6 The first lie I remember telling happened in the bathroom of my childhood home, the bathroom that I would later find out was inhabited by the spirit of the previous owner. Blood spilled down the length of my leg in red ribbons, pooling into a puddle at my ankle on the broken bathroom tiles.

In a spur of the moment desire to cross the threshold into adulthood, I took my mom’s 99 Cents Store plastic pink razor and tried shaving my hairless leg.

It ran across my skin cleanly for a few good glides, until a long gash also ran down the entire length of my calf. [...]

pass my family altar and see her framed picture, when her face, my face, stares back at me through dusted glass, as if that were the only thing that separated us.

My dad tells me stories of my grandma that I can’t possibly remember but can see so clearly. She had an eccentric penchant for chihuahuas and card games. She had cravings for a specific seafood noodle booth in the heart of Saigon. She had a love for learning that broke her father’s expectations of the traditional Vietnamese woman.

When my mom saw the slash in my skin, I told her that I had tripped and fell onto the razor.

All I remember about my grandmother are her large, square glasses.

The second lie I remember telling feels so real that I’m not sure if it’s a lie or a misremembered memory.

She passed away when I was six after a stroke. I stood by her hospital bed with my brother and my younger cousins, the adults standing behind us like gates.

My grandma’s face only comes to memory in three instances. The first is with the smell of bún, when the aroma is so rich and overwhelming that you’re “Đi chào,” my mom murmured into my ear. Here my hugged from all sides by her spirit in the form of memory fails me. dark broth and steam. The second is when I pass my reflection in the right angle, at the right speed, In Vietnamese, the word for greetings and farewells when my face looks less like my own and more like is the same. Chào. Did my mom tell me to go say grandma’s. The third is almost every day when I hello or goodbye to my grandmother?

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Read More

I walked slowly to the bed, releasing my brother left hand, squeeze my hand down until my thumb from the crook of my arm. My uncle, who we would pressed against the middle of all my other fingers, never talk to again after her funeral, was grumbling and gently, but steadily, drag the spine of the stone in the background. For some reason, my memory across my skin. It would hurt, but the hands of two of the hospital was warm. The room was bathed in strong women and the weight of a stone that’s slept a warm yellow, the same warm yellow I would see in the shadows for thirteen years would make it Saigon enveloped in thirteen years later. I don’t re- bearable. It would fit perfectly. member the smell of antiseptics, but I’m sure it was probably there.

“Lên nước,” my aunt and mother would tell me.

The water rises. The phrase referred to when jade My dad told me to hold my grandma’s hand. Her changes color if it matched with its wearer. Thirlarge, square glasses were off and she was asleep. A teen years after my grandmother’s jade is buried heavy jade bracelet circled her thin wrist like a cuff. with her, I would inspect my own and see the gloss Thirteen years after this day, I would return to Viet- of the stone change greens. Half of the jade was an nam and my grandmother’s oldest daughter would ink green, a shade that Westerners valued in their bless me with cẩm ngọc—jade, my namesake. jade. The other half was a foggy white, a shade that Vietnamese valued in their jade. I guess it was fit“Bà Nội cho Cô Hai mười ba năm trước,” my ting for a Việt Kiều—Vietnamese American. aunt would tell me when I was nineteen. “Nó rộng quá. Cô Hai giữ nó ở đây mười ba năm rồi.” Jade bands are a lifelong commitment. There’s no Your grandmother gave this to me thirteen years ago. It way to slip it off your wrist unless you break bone doesn’t fit anyone so I’ve been keeping it in my dresser or jade. They’re said to only break to protect you for thirteen years. from bad luck. My aunts have stories of their jade shattering in accidents or falls that left them unThirteen years after this day in the yellow hospi- hurt, minus a small scar from where the jade broke. tal room, my aunt and my mother would pull the But I guess jade can’t protect you from the lulls jade band over my own hands. They would soap my of time, and I hope my grandmother’s jade is still serving her well in her next life.

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But thirteen years before I would make my vow bing and my mom asking me why I was crying, I to my own jade, I would hold my grandmother’s felt frustration bubble from the inside of my gut. hand and see my reflection in the foggy water of A frustration too big for my six-year-old, gangly her jade. Her hand was as cold as the jade brace- frame to handle. let around her bony wrist and the pale green of her veins looked like the stone rivers that cut through “I saw Bà Nội today,” I said between gasps as I the bone of the jade. That was the last time I can dry-heaved for air. My mom gave me a hard look, clearly remember seeing her. unconvinced and unsympathetic. To my own surprise, I continued with my story, spinning it with an The next time I saw her was a lie, hidden some- extra flare. “I saw her today at Target. Mama, she where in the fog of a child’s grief and Target’s cloth- was looking at me. She was standing between the ing aisles. It was within the 49 days after her death, clothing aisle and moved her jade hand to tell me when her spirit was probably wandering after the to go with her. ” trail of the incense smoke we lit for her every seventh day.

The third lie I remember telling was not so much of a lie as it was an omission of the truth, an un-truth, After a trip to Target with my mom, I found myself but it sat in my gut wrong in the same way a lie in tears, as distressed as a six year old could be. I would have. When I was about 9, plus or minus 2 sobbed, with tears running down my cheeks and years, my mom pulled me aside in the master bedsnot dripping from my nose. Even now I don’t re- room. She told me not to tell my dad that she had member what spurred this sudden combustion of sold her wedding ring. tears. After a period of heavy, chest-heaving sob-

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Postcards from Home | Intaglio etching Katie ’20 is cat-like but not a cat person.

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Foodlore | Zine (film photography) Damini ’20 gets upset when Chai is called Chai Tea.

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Claire ’21 is often asked whether she roots for Japan or Korea in the Olympics, but her answer is always the U.S.

proof On August 23, 2019, as my dad celebrates his 55th birthday, E. Tammy Kim writes for the New York Times: “it is difficult to see how Japan and South Korea can ever rebuild trust.” I want to scream at my computer screen, “Don’t give up on them!”

On January 12, 1942, my ojiisama is born in Korea.

Soon, his family will relocate to Japan. He won’t remember his early years in Korea.

My halmoni is in a Korean elementary school learning Japanese. In a few years her teachers’ rulers will snap down on her knuckles if she dares to speak that language at school. This will confuse her.

What happened? What changed?

After then and before now, my haraboji lies to the Korean army. He tells them he has two years of translation experience and saves himself from the front lines. Every day, he hears Japanese, English, Korean. Every night, he yearns for chocolate ice cream. In his late eighties, he will be sure to eat a bit of chocolate every single day.

In 1964, my ojiisama is selected to run the Olympic torch through Hiratsuka on its way to Tokyo. He is honored to be the fastest runner in Hiratsuka. They find out he is Korean, and someone else carries the torch instead. Decades later, the words will catch in his throat when he tells his grandchildren the story.

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In August, my father is born 704 miles away.

On March 22, 1967, my obaasama, who is Son Gyo-ku who is Inouye Mitsuko

who is Narita Tomomi bears her first child in Yokohama, Japan. She has always wanted two things: to become a lawyer and to have a son. Instead, she will become the mother of four daughters and will teach them to hold their heads high.

At age 13, my mom moves to Aurora, Missouri.

There are 3 Asian kids in her school: herself, her cousin, and another international student. 5 years later, she will attend USC and will have trouble deciding between KSA and JSA. She will be surprised that California has racism too.

On June 4, 1994, Young Chul Kim—born in Korea raised in Mexico

nurtured in Brazil educated in the US—says “why not add Japan to the mix” as he kisses his zainichi bride in Mountain Gate, California. (Actually, his daughter just imagines this part.

He probably didn’t say this.)

Mie Narita, the USC student, the zainichi bride, has worn many names, just like her mother. She legally changes her name to Mia so that Ameri-

cans will stop pronouncing her name like “my.” My what? Only her family knows her Korean name, Miyoung. She switches back to Mie years later, despite the headache of paperwork she knows it will cause.

And it does.

On May 6, 1997, and July 16, 1999, twins were born two years apart. People always assumed that LucasandClaire were born within ten minutes of each other. Secretly, Claire always reveled in this mistake.

Every year on February 5, LucasandClaire call their halmoni for her birthday. The only lingua franca they have is Japanese. The teachers’ rulers were not enough to make halmoni forget. LucasandClaire stumble through American accents and nod politely when their halmoni begs them to learn Korean.

She has so much she wants to say to them. They can’t hear her heart breaking through the phone, so they pass the receiver to their dad.

E. Tammy Kim writes for the New York Times: “it is difficult to see how Japan and South Korea can ever rebuild trust.”

I want to scream at my computer screen, “Can’t you see? They already know how!”

They have been doing it since July 16, 1999 and May 6, 1997.

Since June 4, 1994, And March 22, 1967, And January 12, 1942, And every year on February 5.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, still. In every cell of my body­—in the hollows of my ankles, at the tip of my tongue.

I, Claire Akari Kim-Narita, cling to the title “second generation Asian-American” as if it were my own name. I ask my uncle to show me my Korean name printed on an official document. I have never seen myself never seen Kim So-Hui printed on an official document. I know that if someone called this name on the street, I would not turn.

On August 23, 2019, as my dad celebrates his 55th birthday,

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Fire on the Shore | Digital photograph CJ ’23 has incurable bed hair.

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Waiting Wishing | Gouache Caroline ’22 desperately wants it to snow.

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Kion ’20 wants to find it.

Goodbye Fluency, In Portugal Day I lowered myself into the grass measuring it against my body. one last mouthful of la tierra and a final breath of two gripped tightly but gently exhaled that morning, I thought I had attained Goodbye Fluency believing I could kick wide the door pitch my voice, out and out goodbye, goodbye, a goodbye is goodbye but instead my larynx crunched first and then my lungs Goodbye to the people in boats

we said. bachelorettes inrhinestone tiaras miss britains carrying inflatable bananas miss chinas strapped in balenciagas but these are the easy bygones make it, last forever, sings

Al Green as we attempt to lasso duration and the sun’s glissando (which obviously failed). here is my knife, my books, my snacks take the good buys take it all

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Dusk the British life expectancy is 81 years but I weaved through their 18 softly, proximate

outside now, two shadows rolling big trunks into and out of drunks tentative grasping of the hand, limp

summarily, dense recaps turned trifle: who/what/when/where/why good year / New York / great Friends / I don’t know / I can’t know

Morning

glancing constantly towards the sky hoping for red streaks, cure by bloodletting but only white clouds, then grey clouds, dismissed

wake up early, and / dream

fluent, yes, but conversational?

summarily, ten hugs two flies in my IPA saying goodbyes Night Goodbye fluency means: I unlocked the gate but she was already inside we sat on trifle recaps until they turned inert, and she played me the short movie she starred in:

Who was I looking at? Who was she looking at? there was no longer conversation; it was late and things were only ‘good’ or ‘bad’

the year: ‘good’

England: ‘bad’

unmitigated feeling: Al Green’s crooning, take me with you the room grew dim as we hushed (I turned off the lights), trying to burn her charred outline into my brain worked - I had seen her, really seen her

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Lost But Not Alone | Watercolor, colored pencil, and pen Marlowe ’22 just wants to sleep.

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Seascape | Gouache and colored pencil Julie ’22 is from the Midwest and Proud Of It!

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Tunnel Vision Love | Mixed media Ryn ’20 loves sweet potatoes.

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Other Me | Graphite and digital

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Sandra ’21 has succeeded in making a creme caramel, and it's all downhill from here.

nāga-girl and nāga-queen “So of course, Pauk Kyiang was able to save his skin and ruled happily ever after. What the queen felt, I do not know.”

— From “The Cowherd,” a Burmese folk tale

nāga had been preying on her soul for so many years that her sanity was riddled with holes. She gave her workers a thousand pieces of silver to skin the nāga, watching as they peeled the skin away from the subcutaneous fat beneath, baring smooth red muscle and cutting open the chest to reach the bloody heart that was beyond possession in death.

She gave them a hundred pieces to sew the cleaned skin into a jacket and from the breastbone, had a hairpin fashioned.

“My queen,” said Pauk Kyiang, his voice laced with triumph and conquest. “No longer shall this nāga loom over your city and marriage.”

Her nāga’s green eye, luminous in the moonlight, was frozen in death. She closed the lid. Her hands were blistered from the hot blood and Pauk Kyiang During that time, she refused to see Pauk Kyiang. sucked in a harried breath when he saw the wounds. Instead, she saw her city. She dressed in her plain“You’re injured,” he said with those big, dumb cow- est clothes and walked after dark—but she walked herd eyes. She wanted to scratch them out. not in the areas she explored as a little girl, but instead to the places where the darkness pooled and “Yes,” she said, because twenty years of tutelage clung to the walls like grease. She breathed in the under the finest orators of the country had been air in the block of the city where the lepers were relreduced to this stammering, this girl in a sleeping egated, their apathy mirroring hers as they all sufgown covered in the blood of her one and only love fered in torment. She went to where the prostitutes and with a heart cracked in two. walked, and lingered until they chased her out, and then she kept running, running until she came “Yes,” she repeated and then it was her voice crack- to the Irrawaddy river, and to a bower of thanaka ing, a betrayal of the torrent of emotion within her. trees, shining naked in the dark, their bark stripped And then, as Pauk Kyiang reached for her and she for cosmetics. fought not to recoil from his murdering hands, her mind cracked and she screamed.

She stared at the river, contemplated its depth and her ability to hold her breath, and said out loud, in The city whispered that the queen grew mad when a voice waterlogged with misery, “I would do anyshe was released from the nāga’s spell. That the thing to see her again.”

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Little mortal, said the river, in that wonderful way a river speaks with the caressing of watergrass, the burbling of fish, and the rush of water. Death never ends, not for humans like you.

ceased their careless drifting. An unnatural calm fell over her surroundings, as if the world around her was holding its collective breath, and the surface of the river turned mirror-like in its black glassiness.

Humans like her. The blood of a hundred princes But what looked back at her from the surface was and, now her nāga lover, was on her hands. Before, not herself. back when they were just princes and she was just a princess, their deaths had been almost inconse- It was a nāga—it was her nāga, with the same quential. Laughable. A demonstration of jealousy green eyes, the same curl to the horns adorning the from a lover, made amusing by her own reciproc- fringe of silver extending outward from the face. ity of love. But now, she could feel the collective But when she lifted her hand to reach out, to greet, weight of their deaths, dripping off her blistered to say, “Hello, my love, I’ve come home,” her nāga fingers which, in their injury, were curled like claws, reached back. And then she had to confront the bitvisceral and red. ter reality: that her nāga was really her reflection, a poor mimicry of a former love in the memory of Deities, however, continued the river, like your nāga, her eye. never die.

Do you understand? asked the Irrawaddy, but she Her feet drew her to the edge of the river, where she didn’t. Deities never die. A river’s water is new every peered over and into the lapping black waves. She day, but I do not die. I transform. realized, abruptly, that her face was wet from crying—she touched her cheek with trembling fingers Her nāga’s image trembled in the river, and then and tasted the salt on her lips. burst into a million moonlit waves, as the river resumed its flow. The fish returned to the water. The A tear dropped from her face and landed in the leaves drifted away in the breeze. river below. From where it collided with the water, stillness rippled outward—fish halted where they “I transform,” she repeated, lifting her fingers to her breached the surface, the fronds of the plants just mouth, before backing away and running back to below the water froze in their waves, and leaves the palace.

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Buyer Beware Campaign | 3D motion graphic April ’20 doesn't eat vegetables.

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Erin ’20 wants to bake bread for you.

In the Garden Of What did you think family would be like? Like falling into a lake? Cobalt, no ripples, no sheen, matte like grandmother’s hands. What did you think home would be like? Like being wrapped in moss? Soft and unending, still matte, still like po po’s hands.

What did you think? What are you reminded of? What is the first memory?

A garden. There was a lawn, large, narrow. With street in front and home behind. A plot, surrounded by slate, thinly cleaved stones and dirt. Soft to the touch. Soft and dry and f luffy. There is the child in the diaper. She settles into stillness under a noontime sun. The dirt falls from her hands like cotton balls. She can break the clusters and they explode, out into so many pieces, how the sun can illuminate dustiness! Like bugs f loating around until they settle, tentative in touching earth she is surrounded in a haze. Foggy, dark, shimmering edge.

Murky margin. There is the father walking. In circles he goes, around and around, pulling weeds, piles of green lines and strawberry-stained fingernails. A f lagpole from the plot. Stretches into forever. Flagpole, weeds, f lowers, dirt, slate, yard, child. The father hands her a

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watering can. Plastic and orange and dotted with green.

She screams and the dirt becomes heavy. It is slick it is wet. Like a pudding, like a batter, like toothpaste and creams. The wetness is uncomfortable. Unnerving, sludge-like and it continues to spread. How can it stop.

The wetness is on the child’s face, she is brought inside.

Mother sits her on a beige couch, crease filled and crease-ridden. She feeds her the things the store said is normal. Are normal. To calm her with biscuits and mashed things and milk from a powder.

Mother sits her down. She didn’t tell anyone but she has had dreams. Ones where her daughter is old and goes to school during the day instead of doing things like sitting outside in the grass, eating bits of eggs one small bite at a time, falling asleep in a large bed, napping in the heat of light that streams through a dusty window. Instead her daughter gets on a bus and goes to a building not so far away. One day she goes with her to school, she brings dumplings. She walks into show-and-tell she is met with children in a circle forming squinted faces, at the taste of the dish, she doesn’t know why she is afraid. The dream is over and her daughter is still here. Crying over wet dirt from the garden.

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Racetrack Shelf | Bent ply with curly maple face veneer, house paint, poplar, spray lacquer Cece ’20 plans to die in New York City.

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Two planes crash into each other midair | Red lead pencil on handmade hemp paper Em ’20 time is the only feeling.

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Isabel ’21 learned how to ride a bike at seventeen.

東 (Azuma): On Being Japanese I. Some of the few memories I have of my grandmother are the ones of her bringing shabu-shabu to the dining room table. She had a big apartment on the Upper West Side because she and my grandpa were wealthier than any of us have ever been.

There were no walls to separate the dining room from the living room, so I always listened as the plates were placed on the table, the arrangement fabricating, as I dangled upside down off the couch watching the Korean soap operas that my grandma always left on TV. From what I could tell, they always followed two young love interests whose families didn’t want them to be together. I never really understood what happened in them, because the subtitles either moved too quickly or they were in Japanese—I can’t remember which one. But, whenever we were on the couch together, her feet up on the glass coffee table, I never asked her to change the channel, because she seemed to like them a lot. I sat beside her in silence, usually watching her more than I watched the TV. I would wait for her lips to curl when something interesting happened on screen and I listened to her breathing, a little labored because of the chemo. There were times in which I wanted to rest my head in her lap, or on her shoulder, but that wouldn’t have felt right. I think my act of just sitting there quietly, leaving her undisturbed, that was my way of showing affection to her—that was the way that was acceptable.

The Japanese way of caring is very covert. My grandmother and I didn’t talk much, except for practical reasons. “Are you ready for ofuro?” “Hungry?”

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I don’t think she ever told me she loved me, but I know that isn’t what love is. After my great-grandfather died during World War II, my great-uncle moved to the U.S., where he started working at eleven, began studying at UCLA at eighteen, and became an aerospace engineer at twenty two, all to be able to support his sister and his family. That’s what love is.

II. My grandmother’s shabu-shabu ingredients used to come out on a ceramic plate she had made out of speckled brown clay, and typically consisted of yakiniku, enokitake, cabbage, tofu, and udon. I learned this much later. At seven years old, the array was simplified to the beef with the sweet taste, a bunch of vegetables to avoid, and the noodles. The raw ingredients are nothing special, but when the Japanese delicacies hit the hotplate, bathing themselves in shoyu and sake sauce, they sputter, pop, and come alive, letting off the characteristic sweet and savory steam. In fact, the name comes from the “shabu-shabu” sound produced by stirring the ingredients around.

Shabu-shabu is a communal activity. You sit around a table and stick your long chopsticks into the hot plate in the center, eating small bits at a time, laughing with udon in your mouth, and dropping food on the way to your plate. Sometimes my grandmother laid out the dishes for many people: family members, friends from Buddhist temple, or my grandfather’s fellow artists. But, more often, she put out the array for just us. We sat quietly, placing our food in

the hotpot and listening to it sizzle, without saying a word. We looked around the dining room, at the prayer bracelets on the shelf, the incense burnt this morning, and the framed picture of my grandfather smiling, resting behind the food and drink offerings. I would sit and eat as much as I could, but she always put out more food than I could finish. I think maybe this was her way of showing affection towards me.

III. My parents have a hard time taking care of themselves. I work three jobs and send home money every month.

IV. In hindsight, I wonder if my grandmother saw herself in those girls in the soap operas. She came from Kamiyas, a status-obsessed Japanese family that couldn’t stand the idea of her marrying someone so beneath her. She was tall, thin, and beautiful—the most important things a Japanese woman could be. She married Norio Azuma, a poor, short man from a fishing village, who believed that he would be a successful artist one day. My mother told me that when they were in art school together, my grandmother knew he couldn’t afford lunch, so she always left a couple of dollars on his chair.

From the beginning, she always took care of him.

She passed away a short time after he did, and I think she let go because there was no one left for her to take care of.

V. My great-uncle makes me sandwiches with California avocado, cherry tomatoes, a little bit of bacon, and arugula from his garden—because I said I liked it once. He tells me he sees himself in me.

VI. “Norio Azuma was born in Kii-Nagashima-cho, Japan on November 23, 1928.

New York Times art critic, John Canaday, once described one of Azuma’s serigraphs as “so beautiful a manipulation of shape, color, and texture that it eliminates my lingering objections to serigraphy as a technique.”

His work can also be found in numerous collections, including: Whitney Museum of Art, Tokyo Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institute, Library of Congress, and the White House, to name a few.

Norio Azuma died in New York, New York, on February 4, 2004.”

—The Annex Galleries VII. To be Japanese is to be tragic and triumphant.

It is to mold a steady foundation from ruins.

VIII. One summer, when my grandmother was still alive, she dressed me up in yukata for the Obon festival in Bryant Park. We spent an hour in front of the mirror, and I watched as she draped the colorful robe on my shoulders, red and pink cherry blossomed fabric, secured by the obi wrapped around my middle. We put on those painful sandals, made for feet much thinner and much more delicate than mine, and headed to the subway station on 103rd.

On the one-train, we sat down. A 70-year old woman who had fled from a war-torn country, and a little girl who may never really know what it is to be Japanese.

IX. You don’t talk about yourself. You let what you do talk for you.

That’s as Japanese as you can be.

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Queer Representation in Hindu Mythology or Queer Culture | Digital Niyoshi ’22 is eating Jo’s salad at 3am while writing this.

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Inside Difference | Sculpture with AR Soo ’22 is trying to scan the inside of the object.

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Untitled | Graphite on paper Alison ’20 loves asmr and capricorns.

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Katie ’21 is a STS concentrator and enjoys taste-testing different flavors of tea.

Blog Post #2 when a white walks into my home he may pinch his nose and ask what is that smell? it permeates—the sweater that you wore to the last hot pot excursion, the suede of sofa inhaling and emanating the scent as white person sits down and is offered tea. that smell has found its way into the tea, whose leaves are kept in the egg slots of the refrigerator. that smell wraps its furls into the bedroom, ferment unfolding from the pillow as you lay down to breathe in. I mask it with my night lavender spray. when a white walks into my home, he asks if he should take off his shoes. duh, take off your shoes, it’s called when in rome do as the romans do. he’s usually a lil too tall so his head hits the pagoda chandelier hanging from living room. this pagoda was not a luxury placed by my family. this pagoda is a representation of what we have appropriated from

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the asian cultures because Japanese style implies a minimalistic sleekness and Chinese style implicates red and lion statues and terra cotta soldiers (@PFChangs) and Korean style is a little nebulous in the American imagination. did you stop and realize that we only spoke for the east asian cultures prominent in the American cultural imagination of the asian world? when a white walks into my home, what he is smelling is fermented kimchi, handmade by a grandmother who had to roll the stem of the napa cabbage until the water was released and the gochujang could be handmushed into every little crevice. when a white walks into my home, the smell is overpowering and a little disorienting but he is loathe to comment the same way I am loathe to comment because he can neither put his finger on the smell nor can he voice his distaste because to say “ew your house smells like kimchi” has become clearly inappropriate and no white wants to be labelled RACIST.

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Blog Post #6 when white people cannot understand what you are saying because the professor’s accent is so heavy and they wish they had signed up for the other section for their chemistry class because this chemistry grade is life or death and medical school is looming on the horizon but of course, they would never say that. they might say, well sometimes I just have a hard time with asian accents. but they cannot say that they prefer the white professor because that is racist and you must be careful of how you phrase this. most whites will not bring this up at all besides saying the professor is hard to understand or the professor needs to be more clear or they may just stop showing up to this professor’s section and go to the other section. when white people cannot understand what you are saying, sometimes they try to guess and then it is laughably funny how off they are but they do not laugh because to laugh at an accent is racist. my dad was once referencing my education and the white mom in the room thought I was on a medication and it made no sense. he has a Portuguese Chinese accent that is a mix of wording that nobody besides me who has grown up with his accent is able to understand but clearly the white cannot say, sorry what I cannot understand your accent. this leaves both parties embarrassed either way. when the Asian person says sorry after they were not understood the white person must quickly come in and wave that concern away—no, no I just couldn’t hear you, or no, no, the background noise was drowning you out but never is it no, no your accent was a bit heavy then but if you say it slower it will be fine. sometimes the Asian-American raised in America has

an accent too. it comes out when we are gesticulating. when we are debating and the energy in the room is high and we are trying oh so hard to get the judge to understand our side. sometimes the white person will ask: was K born here? to ascertain whether or not they should give the feedback: try to enunciate or if that is racist. what you must know is that the asian parent has recently been told that he/she/they must not speak to their child as they are growing up for fear that their Asian American child will have an accent, and those with accents do not get the jobs, the interviews, the merit for their ideas that they may or may not deserve. so the Asian parent is told to speak in their mother tongue as much as possible for the dual purpose too of teaching their child to adhere to their roots— what kind of Asian child cannot speak their Asian language? that is the sign of bad parenting! not even the asian language school? the Asian parent takes this continuation of culture seriously, rapping their child on the back of the knuckle when they speak in English to their siblings or when they use their chopsticks improperly. but unfortunately, the Asian parent was not taught to avoid speaking to their child until recently and that is why there is my generation of Asian American children who have asian accents when they are excited but no one will take them seriously.

I am fortunate that my parents worked two jobs and could not spend time with me, so then I was shipped off to after school programs with the white kids and could learn proper English.

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Brancusi Windsor Chair | Cherry finished with danish oil Cece ’20 wants to die in New York City.

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Mirrored | Embroidery Robin ’23 is watering her plants.

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Bowen ’21 clearly didn’t listen to the second half of the album.

Makeout Creek

A Collection of Short Stories and Poems Inspired by Mitski’s Bury Me at Makeout Creek Porcelain (Listening to First Love/Late Spring) The town of Inuya is hidden within a mountain valley.

Grandma called it Nuwa’s cradle, named after the fable of the goddess who created all people from clay.

After Dinner Grandma would take a seat in her chair by the window and gently rock as she gazed out the window. Mei would go and sit at her feet, and after a while grandma would pick her up and seat her on her lap. She told us stories of winters when she was a young girl, how snow would pile up to the thatched roofs, and how they would chase animal spirits through the woods on their bamboo snowshoes. Her eyes would glimmer as her lips formed a sad smile.

The Wei family who lived next door were the first ones to go. They left in the middle of the night with no notice. When Grandma heard the news she cursed at them and made a ruckus. How could they leave the land where their ancestors were buried, she said, what cowardice. That Spring several more families left Inuya. Each morning I walked into my classroom counting the number of empty chairs, wondering when the number would increase again.

During the winter Grandma’s health took a turn for the worse. Her condition had been deteriorating the past couple years, but mother always held onto hope that it would improve with good care. For a few

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months it seemed that Grandma was getting better.

On some days she would even go on a stroll after dinner with Mei. But when winter came, she couldn’t stop coughing and could barely stand let alone sit in her chair. Mother argued that she be brought into the city for treatment, but Grandma wouldn’t allow it.

She said she would die in the town her mother died in and her mother before her. Nothing we said could change her mind.

That Spring, Grandma passed away. We put on our ceremonial robes and marched her coffin on our shoulders into the woods. The sun’s rays shone through the canopy into the clearing where generations of our family had been buried prior. The rain wet our faces as we lay her body into the ground. That night after the rain stopped, we lit a small alter fire and burned heaven money for her to spend in the afterlife.

Mei and I are also leaving Inuya today to go to school in the city. Everyone has moved to the city to find work except the young and the elderly. Even mother and father have left in search of jobs. The walls of our house are barren, and when we walk down the street to the bus stop with our belongings, no one sees us out. The winter snow has all but melted, and the water runs down the face of the mountain in streams. On the bus, Mei falls asleep on my shoulder, and I look

out the window back at Inuya and wonder. When I pass, who will be left to lay my body in the ground?

Tuesday (Listening to Jobless Monday) Every third Tuesday of the month I take the bus at 42nd and Chestnut after I get out of work. I ride it for five stops, get off, make a left, and walk for three blocks until I arrive at the Good Samaritan Nursing Home. I play chess with Mr. Wilkens for an hour. He doesn’t make any moves, so I play for him. After one of us wins, I leave.

I stop by the 7-11 my way home to buy cat food. The cashier tells me they don’t carry cat food. My mother calls and tells me to be careful. It seems like it will be windy tomorrow.

I hope it doesn’t rain. I watered my plants today, and too much water is never a good thing.

A List of Root Vegetables (Listening to Drunk Walk Home) potatoes. tomatoes. toes. new jersey. my prom date mr. Smith who teaches physics.

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Mindy & Aurelia, in Rain | Watercolor Grace ’22 is busy brewing tea.

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Traveline | Geometric prints made on Adobe Illustrator Kaanchi ’21 aspires to be Iron Man one day.

सहस ् रधारा

Meaning: a thousand waterfalls

अविरतपरिक ् रम Meaning: infinite loop

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मोक ् ष

Meaning: liberation

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Pig Mob | Ink and digital Joey ’22 is waiting for the weekend.

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Bloody Dreamy | Digital Ran ’20 is a fan of Eric Cartman.

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Jasmine ’21 enjoys fall foliage and long walks with no destination.

What Word Was That?

This is a story of homonyms.

There is a popular Cantonese nursery rhyme set to the tune of “London Bridge is Falling Down.” My parents used to sing this song to me, and under their expert recitation, it was quite beautiful—simple yet profound when interpreted as a cautionary tale about consequence and fate: “There was a little bird who fell into the water. The current carried him away.”

As a young child, I would burst into a fit of giggles because this is what I understood of the song (and boisterously sang back to anyone willing to listen): “There was a little bird who fell into the water. His snot flowed away.”

It was several years before I finally realized that this was not a correct translation of the rhyme; I was simply mistaken over the tone of a single word, completely altering my understanding of the lyrics in its entirety.

The mortification I felt upon this discovery resurfaces into my consciousness every time I utter a word in Cantonese.

Water to wicked. Salty to sobbing. Vinegar to grass.

Smiling to burning. Four to dead.

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The Cantonese translations of these words are not all perfect homonyms, but have merely taken on this classification under my embarrassingly rudimentary Cantonese speaking skills. All are examples of accidental homonym exchanges I have made in front of my parents, f luent peers, restaurant owners in various Chinatowns throughout the country, and most humiliatingly, esteemed, elderly relatives in Hong Kong. I’ve received the full spectrum of possible reactions: confusion, disappointment, laughter, amusement, bewilderment, encouragement, and contempt. However, by far the most common reaction I encounter when I make a communication blunder is the dreaded blank stare: a momentary pause, glazedover eyes, furrowed eyebrows, the slightest head tilt.

The sequence of these signs is distinctive and all too familiar to me. When the initial pause occurs, I know it is still possible to salvage my dignity, so I begin to desperately rephrase my sentences and find meandering ways of using simpler words to describe my thoughts. But by the time the furrowed eyebrows appear, I know it is a hopeless cause. This serves as my cue to frantically begin miming my words in a futile attempt to break across the suffocating language barrier. Every faulty tone I produce is a clear hazard—I’m acutely aware of how each word that

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escapes my mouth is an opportunity for mishap and miscommunication of the highest degree.

When I was twelve years old, my mom dropped me off at the curb with a restaurant order and a twenty-dollar bill in hand, a block away from the Chinese restaurant we frequented in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. I’d been to this establishment countless of times with family and friends, but never alone. I sheepishly entered the busy restaurant and took my spot at the end of the line, mentally preparing myself to order in Cantonese and already imagining my crude attempts at stringing together a barely comprehensible sentence within the next few minutes. Without the security of speaking the language f luently and without the crutch of my parents’ presence to quickly translate my attempts at Cantonese into actual Cantonese, I felt vulnerable and exposed as I approached the counter to order. I knew that on the surface, I looked no different from the multitudes of other customers in the restaurant that day, loudly chatting in rapid-fire Cantonese. Yet I also knew that any phrase coming out of my mouth would betray any semblance of assuredness I once possessed.

The hypothetical triumphant ending to this story would commence as follows: I confidently step up to the counter, order in f luid, f lawless Cantonese, and walk out victoriously, with take-out boxes in each hand.

Needless to say, this is not what transpires.

Instead, I manage to mumble an incoherent statement, somehow butchering the tone of a single word so atrociously that I accidentally order a “face” instead of “noodles.”

I was horrified. I am horrified. I feel as though I will be eternally horrified.

What does it really mean to find the right word?

The power to transform a sentence often lies with a single word, but 找到完美的单词并不总是必要的。 Did you understand that? Neither did I, but perhaps I will now.

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Disappointed Women | Oil on canvas If you ask Jenny ’21 where in Texas she’s from she just says, “the forest.”

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Nirvana Vase | Steel with patina Dongzhu ’20 can’t live without milk tea.

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Star ’21 dreams of being small enough to swim in soup

说一段神话 Let us speak of a legend. In my childhood, I watched Nezha, a Chinese animated series. I first met Nezha through the song that was played in the beginning of every episode. This is the song that will play in 段 in the essay.

fabric, on the playground, in the words we held. My mother told me it was 怪 if I played with boys. I cut my hair to play with boys. I wore my dresses still, for they let me run faster than anyone with pants. I felt this was forgivable, for Nezha wore a dress.

There are not many words to describe the past in Chinese. When it is necessary to speak of the past, we say 一段时间. I began writing this when a new movie on Nezha came out this year. It has been 一段时间 since I last watched Nezha, since I last spoke Chinese.

We were 娃娃 to our mothers. They wove dresses, ribbons, bindings into our hair, our bodies. A 娃娃 to position and dress with care. We were 怪, watched for something strange. 扎两个冲天鼽

段 is the same word as parts, apart, breaking.

I had to call my mother to understand this line. 话说那么一家 光这俩小脚丫 These words speak of a family. 这家夫妻,两生了个怪娃娃 This couple gave birth to a 怪娃娃.

When I was the same age as Nezha, my mother would do my hair. Nezha was the only character who I watched with hair that looked like mine—dark, straight, stubborn. Though they lived in the Shang dynasty, I asked my mother to make my hair in Nezhastyle buns. Sometimes I would make her redo them, because I didn’t want to be mistaken for an alien. I was Nezha.

I cut my hair in third grade. By then, I had realized that Nezha was a boy. By then, my mother would make a point to put her hand under my chin and tell me I looked like a 娃娃. Once noticed, gender surfaced in

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Although Nezha’s footfalls where light, everyone in the house knew the steps of mischief. Everyone in the village knew who was coming to play a game. Even everyone in the ocean, where there are no footsteps, knew the reverberations of Nezha.

Nezha never wore shoes. He touched the world the same way he was born. When his brothers forbade him from playing with them, he stepped into an abandoned courtyard, where he found one of his greatest companions, a small pig-bear. When the emperor’s guards came to imprison his parents, he stepped on their feet. They groaned so that even the gods could hear.

People feared crossing paths with Nezha. However, when they did meet, he never wandered from stepping into good.

Claribel ’21 is thinking about you.

踩着俩风火轮 On Nezha’s third birthday, his teacher gives him a gift of a mount. With his master, the mount is a pig. When transferred to Nezha, the creature become wheels of fire under his feet. It transforms to suit the likeness of its owner. The smoke, the light, the anger drives him to the skies. He cannot see the disappointment in the sky.

When I watch Nezha f ly, I understand why 飞 cuts through the air. Flight requires the precision of a dagger, beginning with the point of feathers. I ache to drink in the blue, to belong to the wind. But more than anything, I want to understand how to be unbounded. 乾坤圈手中拿 It is hard to describe 乾坤圈. When the gods first gave it to him, it looked like a large ring. He carried it as you would a frisbee. It was in the air more often than it was in his hands.

In battle, it was always Nezha’s first choice. Whenever he was about to throw it, 乾坤圈 lit up, like it was breathing Nezha’s life. When it met its target—the neck of a dragon, the body of a panther, a particularly stubborn rock—it chimed. It had a sound like all the wishes being granted in a fountain at the same instant, the coins burning dry. 混天绫护着他 When I don’t know words in Chinese, I look at their shape on the page, how they f ly through the air. The

character for 护 resembles a house. Although the roof is thick, there is a single wall that slopes outwards like a cape.

For a long time, I imagined 护 to be a blanket. It gathered its surrounding words under its blocky roof.

They would come and go when the meaning was right.

Others would slide off its roof, tracing where it met the sky, the world beyond.

In the air, 护 sounds like an umbrella. It unveils a silence that has an interior.

This is how I arrive at the conclusion that 护 means to protect. 轩辕箭满弓拉 Before I went to watch the new movie, I was afraid that I had forgotten the story. The movie was only showing in East Providence, at a time of night when there were no buses. In the car on the way, I watched as the steel of the city turned into the brick and shutters of one-

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story homes. The yards, strewn with scooters and overgrown evergreens, reminded me of home. When was the last time I had raced my sister on a scooter?

When was the last time I had felt pine needles in my palm, in my pockets?

I held in my mind the things I had left to compare.

I remembered how Nezha’s brothers played without him, because they didn’t believe he could wield a sword. I remembered how he snuck into the armory to find a sword, but found only a bow. I remember how his family didn’t tell him their history. I remember that when Nezha strung the bow with arrows, he cracked open more than air.

At home, scooping up photographs or books, I knew that asking questions was a dead language. I was aware of what was visible—this face that looked like my mother’s, this character that looked like a bird, but heavier. I am not afraid of the words that my parents buried. I am afraid that they will grow into a sound that no one remembers.

双腿是追风马 My Chinese could fit in a fountain. Sometimes, it is dry when I’m at school. Sometimes, it swells with the words I find in a TV show or cartoon. I am certain that if you were to comb through the water, it would be illuminated with words I learned from Nezha.

If asked to describe this sentence, I would say that horses run with wind under Nezha’s two feet. Making sense of this is difficult, so I will exchange these words for what is in the pictures. 上天下海本事大 Nezha’s power is large—in the skies above, in the oceans below. 本事 is part power, part skill, part hard work. When I read the end of a road, my mother asks me to give 本事. The work of remembering dreams, is learning to use 本事. To let it take you everywhere, with the promise of a world beyond just the earth. 千征百战头魔法

When I pulled myself up trees and over rooftops, at least I knew what had scraped me raw. The sky did not seal away its color and life. When it bruised violet, or stripped with red, I understand at least there was blue underneath.

The only characters I recognized were 千 and 魔法, a thousand and magic. This time, my mother described the unfamiliar characters with other Chinese characters. She filled them in with words that she knew I hadn’t forgotten.

Nezha’s parents never told him of the bow. He split open the sky, their love. Open, close, and close again.

I have these now: magic, thousands of fights, ceaseless. 要问他名字叫什么

两眼是照妖精 If you asked for their name...

I sent a picture of these characters to my mother. She replied with an audio clip.

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哪吒, 哪吒... 小哪吒

The Emperor's Bath | Oil on canvas Kelly ’22 loves watching cute animal videos at 3 am

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The Family illustrated by ava wang and sichen grace chen

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Star ’21 dreams of sleeping on cake.

Hilary ’20 wants an egg on top.

May ’21 wonders what color the grass looks like on her side.

Charisa ’22 is starting yet another sketchbook.

Cece E. ’20 measures twice, cuts once.

Emily ’22 thinks that mushrooms are the future.

Sophia ’20 is seeking the perfect egg bite.

Ken ’23 eats like a Kaonashi.

Cece V. ’22 is eating Halo Top. Jessie ’22 is always ready to fight.

Grace ’22 is still brewing tea.

Lisa ’22 is kinda really superstitious.

Cindy ’22 wants to go back to San Diego.

Ava ’23 doesn’t know how to use coins.

Lauren ’22 has fever dreams about tomato-egg noodles.

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