FALL 2020

A A Brown Brown / / RISD RISDVisual Visual &&Literary Literary Arts Arts Magazine Magazine Vol. XXII XIX Issue Vol. Issue21

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Letter from the Editors Dear Reader, It’s been a rough year. The COVID-19 pandemic that quickly dominated our lives invited waves of xenophobia and racism, and continues to destabilize and cause irrevocable harm to many. Quarantine and lockdown was—and still is—a period of great uncertainty and opportunity for stagnant thoughts.

This spring, when all was steeped in uncertainty and fear, it did not feel appropriate to ask our staff to focus on producing another issue. Now as we return to Brown/RISD via Zoom, VISIONS is one place where we can listen and learn, celebrate community, and re-assert Asian and Asian American identity. In a world where it’s easy to feel crushed under pandemic stress, celebrating AAPIA art and celebrating each other is one essential act of caring for one another, of resistance.

We feel now more than ever that publishing AAPIA literature and art is critical. We demand to be visible, and we reject the narrative of the Asian as a perpetual foreigner, a hanging threat. Though 2020 has resurfaced old stereotypes, we will not be classified by anyone but ourselves. At VISIONS, we often discuss what it means to produce an AAPIA magazine: we cannot attempt to define diaspora or draw lines around the AAPIA community. Our role is simply to amplify individual stories with the hope that they will reach you in a similar way that they reached us: with a shock of recognition.

Reflecting on this past year, we are proud and excited to present to you the Fall 2020 issue of VISIONS. 2020 has been unkind to many of us, and we are grateful to the thoughtful and talented contributors who have shared their work with us this fall. Thank you for picking up this issue of our magazine and remember to be kind to yourself in these uncertain times. We hope that reading our Fall issue, you will feel seen or provoked by the work that has been shared. We hope that it will make you feel less alone.

Warmly,

Jessie Jing and Lauren Fung Editors-in-Chief

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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 AAPIA 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 Diary at Age Six | Merino Wool Knit Mindy Kang ’22 is probably observing pigeons.

Editors-in‑Chief Jessie Jing ’22 Lauren Fung ’22 Layout & Design Editors Cecilia Vogler ’22 Ava Wang ’23 Visual Arts Editor Cindy Qiao ’22

Inside Cover Good Morning | Risograph Print Kimberly Wang ’20 loves plant friends.

Literary Arts Editor Sichen Grace Chen ’22 Web Designers and Editors Emily Chen ’22 Charisa Shin ’22 Social Media Chair Jessica Simanjuntak ’23 Assistant Arts and Web Editor Christine Jeong ’24

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Events Coordinator Grace Xiao ’24 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.

Table of Contents 6

Foxes in the Dark Sichen Grace Chen

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Chimera Drawing Bryson Lee

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You Look Pretty For a Brown Girl Sophia Ghauri

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Do you want to talk about it? (imagine if I had said no) Sichen Grace Chen

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Textile Paper Bryson Lee

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Remodel Minority Salonee Singh

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Fruit Market in Shenzhen Cindy Qiao

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Wake UP! Annie Liang

Suburban Development Sarah Dunn

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Nước is Water Agnes Cẩm-Ngọc Trần

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Questions for Discomfort Ingrid Ren

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Scary Buddy Sichen Grace Chen

Mother Victoria Yin

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Para Sa Inyo Ma Adela Herce

Letter from Home Marlowe Pody

Smile For Ma Nova Chen

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Swings, Neighbors Sophia Brown

On Being Water Ruby Huh

I Think This Means I'm Getting Better Asia Cofield

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Surrounded Angela Baek

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Memory Rada Singhasaneh

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Teeth Soup Sophia Brown

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lao lao Caterina Dong

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台南 / Tainan: On my Way! Reishan McIntosh

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The Yellow City, Enigma Hansae Lee

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Redeath Caterina Dong

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What's a Reeno?

Reeno Hashimoto

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Ghost Money Chloe Zhao

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Octopus Train Sophia Brown

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Peace Offering Grace Chang

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High Contrast Side Table Cece Yoko Emy

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My Teta's Garden Aya Alghanmeh

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Feels Like Home Miya Lohmeier

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Chesapeake Diary Mindy Kang

The Quiet Life Hansae Lee

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The Durian Stand Johnny Ren

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Sigil Cece Yoko Emy

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Learning Nudity Ingrid Ren

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Kumusta Kayo Joseph Delamerced

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도리불언 [桃李不言] Hyunjoo Choung

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White Vinegar Caterina Dong

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An Aria from Madama Butterfly Kris Cho

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Deflowering, Spring Sprite Haemin Hwang

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Truyện is Story, Chuyện is Story Agnes Tran

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American Letter Stacey Cheng

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Within Violet Zhou

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Moving Box Mindy Kang

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Four Times I Hid (And One Time I Didn't) Karis Ryu

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What My Mother Gave Vicky Phan

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Foxes in the Dark | Digital painting Sichen Grace ’22 is still boiling water for tea/coffee.

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Chimera Drawing | Graphite on paper Bryson ’22 likes to sit in the sun.

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You Look Pretty For a Brown Girl | Digital Print with Gold Leaf Application Sophia ’24 is a photographer with a passion for telling untold stories.

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Ingrid ’23 is an Asian-squatter and a grapefruit-lover.

questions for discomfort how much more of a woman do i become the first time i pull a trigger in a bodycon dress how long can we stay best friends until i forget my favorite color is our laugh when will the feeling of pulling on ripped tights stop reminding me of the first person i had sex with is my mother’s struggle for english uglier than having monolids what if contemporary art tells the story of the immigrant why does remembering that i’m not white make me feel like an ellipsis is showing someone your tongue and your teeth the same as asking for their respect is speaking for my mother sweeter than the taste of my own blood is my body in the shape of the number of times i didn’t say no is loving my brother the same as wanting him to break someone’s heart is it okay to imagine myself as a mother if i don’t know how to walk in stilettos & how much pain must i suffer to understand the color red

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Scary Buddy | Animation Sichen Grace ’22 making some Oolong tea.

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Full video:

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Adela ’22 writes a poem for her mother.

Para Sa Inyo Mama, magpahinga na kayo.

Pagka dating naatin dito sa America, hindi na kayo nagpapahinga.

Alam ko pagod kayo.

Sa tingin nyo pag nag trabajo kayo ng justo, gaganda ang buhay natin.

Eh, baka tama nga ‘yun, Kasi ngayon meron na tayong pagkain, meron ng tayong bahay Hindi na tayo kasing hirap.

Pero hindi tayo handito kasi ang ganda ng America Handito tayo kasi kinuha nila ‘yun ganda ng buhay sa Pilipinas.

Yung kinuha nila sa atin ay bakit ayaw nyo magpahinga.

Magpahinga kayo.

Ang sakit ng katawan nyo, pero ayaw nyo magpagamot, Masyadong magastos.

Masyadong marami na kinukuha sa inyo.

Magpahinga na kayo.

Itong bansa, hindi para sa atin.

Pinagtawanan kayo.

Ang hirap ng trabajo na kinaya nyo Pero tingnan nyo naman lahat ng ginawa nyo para sa pamilya natin Pero ang dami parin kailangan nyo matutunan, Matutunan sa katotohanan nang America.

Wag naman puro trabajo lang, Sana maranasan nyo naman ‘yung buhay na hindi puro trabajo lang.

Sige na, magpahinga na kayo. Mahal ko kayo.

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Para Sa Inyo Since we’ve moved to the U.S, you haven’t taken a break.

I know you’re tired.

You think if you keep working hard, everything will be okay and maybe some part of that is true.

We have food, we have our own house now, and we’re not struggling the way we used to.

But we’re not here because of the “American Dream” We’re here because the opportunities that exist in the U.S. can’t exist in the Philippines.

The reason why they can’t exist in the Philippines is the same reason why you keep working.

It’s okay to take a break.

You’re hurt from working, but you won’t go to the doctors; it costs too much.

This country takes too much.

It’s okay to take a break.

This country was not made for me and you.

They made fun of you.

You took jobs that you didn’t need to, but look at how far you’ve come.

I’m so proud of you.

But you have so far to go, in unlearning what they taught you.

You can’t keep existing for U.S. labor.

There’s so much more to being here than the work you attend to.

It’s okay to take a break. Mahal ko kayo.

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Swings | Pen on paper Neighbors | Screen Print Sophia ’22 is.

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Teeth Soup | Screen print Sophia ’22 is.

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The Yellow City, Enigma | Photograph (Digital) Hansae Lee ’24

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Chloe ’24 is currently updating her playlist.

ghost money she had loved him for exactly 50 years. even though they hadn’t slept in the same bed for 15,

infatuation faded by the 3rd,

bodies never fit right again by 24— fidelity became a routine, purer than the gold in her wedding ring that she had not worn in many decades until now.

this was her favorite type of smoke, not the type from his cigarettes. the latter was the reason she had yet to sleep since his death.

she threw a 50 yuan bill into the fire, one yuan for every anniversary.

she let go of another 50.

rain flowing from her eyes finally ended the drought in the rivers of her wrinkles. my grandmother had always been so strong but even Nuwa needed respite from creating the world.

how did his smell of ash still live in every corner, every square inch of their apartment even after he no longer existed?

but no matter how still she stood, how quiet she was, how long she held her breath inside of her body, she could not remember a single instance of her life

without him. perhaps it was old age, memory loss. perhaps it was better this way.

another 50 yuan was added. the glow between the hills of her chest dimmed as the fire’s only became stronger. covetous smoke engulfed her lungs the same way it did as it stole away the years from my grandfather. if she focused her eyes on the flame she could watch her life speed by just as she’d watch the bright Tianjin street from the bus every Monday morning, carrying fresh vegetables and meat for him to cook. she could even taste his specialty:

the roast duck soup, and smell the exhaust from the kitchen.

she had loved him for exactly 50 years, but there’d be too many more to come. when she touched the gold ring on her finger it still felt foreign. she hoped there was a heaven, and that there, 150 yuan was enough for a twenty pack of Marlboros. for the first and last time in her life, she prayed.

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High Contrast Side Table | Walnut, aluminum Cece ’20 believes in a t-shirt and jeans.

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Miya ’21 dreams about owning a KitchenAid stand mixer in the color "ice".

Feels Like Home (excerpt) Andy had left home before. In fact, he left home with more proficiency than any of his siblings and either of his children. There had been college in Washington D.C. and a year of study in Berlin. After graduate school back home in the Midwest, it had been two years in Massachusetts. But Hawai’i was a new kind of distance— wider and more expensive to span. Departures aside, he was rooted in a way Naoko wasn’t.

While she had bounced between different parts of the world growing up, his home was firmly grounded in Illinois. So when he left with her for Arlington, his family watched with knit eyebrows. When they retreated even further, across the ocean, the whispers got louder. How could she take him away right now? The farewell party was tense. As the miles accumulated, Andy’s guilt nagged at him. He should be home. He liked Hawai’i, of course. Oahu welcomed him in the way it seems to welcome all. The warm breeze, the chirps of birds, and the sight of his girls playing lifted his spirits. But every joy was tempered with the remembrance that his mother was sick. And he was not by her side.

--On March 15, 1806, a flying fish had the misfor-

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tune of jumping onto the Inawaka-maru.

Hirahara Zenmatsu, one of the Inawaka’s sailors, prepared a soup with the fish’s meat, and saved the scraps to bait other fish. Zenmatsu and his fellow crew members had spent the last few weeks preparing for death, after having been blown off course by a snowstorm during a voyage between Shimoda and Hiroshima. For two months they had drifted further and further into the Pacific, helplessly floating with their disabled mast. They were still close to starving five days after the miracle fish, but an American trading vessel found them. Its captain, Cornelius Sole, spoke no Japanese, but realized what had happened when he saw the men point desperately to their empty stomachs. Aboard the Tabour, they were given cups of tea with sugar.

--The word we used to describe ourselves, both as individuals and as families, was hapa. It is a word taken from the Hawaiian language, but then, it was taken from the English word “half” before that. It means “mixed,” which was a needed word in 19th century Hawai’i, and even more so now, with nearly one in four Hawaiian citizens identifying themselves as multiracial.

Read more:

Mixed families are unexceptional in Hawai’i.

The questions that other places demand—“Do you mind telling me your ethnicity?” “Is that your real mom or are you adopted?”—are not necessary in Hawai’i. “It’s this state,” Naoko told her daughters with a sigh, “in Hawai’i, they would recognize you instantly.”

--They arrived in the 1820s in droves, eager to teach the Kanāka about their god. They decided to stay on the islands, to raise their children there. Then their children started to cultivate sugar, and with it, incredible wealth. Then they infiltrated the government–they were born Hawaiians, they argued–and eroded the monarchy’s authority. They started their militias and got their guns and told King Kalākua to sign their constitution—to sign away his power, to sign away the voting rights of residents who did not meet the new standards of wealth, literacy, and race. That wasn’t enough for them. Six years later, they took the throne from Queen Lili’uokalani. It was a coup. They established a new nation, the Republic of Hawaii, and made Sanford Dole their president.

Today, his family’s pineapple plantation is a top Oahu tourist attraction on TripAdvisor.

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Sigil | Ceramic Cece ’20 believes in a t-shirt and jeans.

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Joseph ’22 is grabbing a cup of coffee again.

Kumusta Kayo Have you ever found yourself part of a team you didn’t like?

Maybe you didn’t even try out.

Your mom just thought it was something you wanted to try.

But she told you not to dress or dress like your teammates, so talk about the fastest way to turn into something your team hates.

You already look different.

You try to fit in without fitting in, so you seem fake, but you just want to become cool with not being cool until not being cool became cool and Here We Are. Our parents wanted us to grow up in America, without the burden of becoming American.

Cheers to the Ameri-cannot ever be People-A warm welcome to the Filipinos raised in this millennium.

Chances are you can understand the language, but can’t speak it, can’t cook the food, you just eat it, Sundays are mandatory, school is needed, and planes are second nature.

If you’re here, you’re probably a dreambreaker, because our moms have had their hands folded, prayers up: “Let this child become a nurse, or a mailman, I can work with that, lawyer, maybe, but not an Artist.”

This constant feeling of wanting to stand out, pressured to fit in, the mold we thrive in.

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One day, our parents realized this country calls their kids “Asian.”

There’s something about that term you don’t like, but what’s the alternative?

“Ako Filipino,” you’re taught, “You’re Filipi-no good to me,” you’re told.

“How am I supposed to be Asian?”

Good question, so you get a list, of cultural tendencies and looks you should fit, and you sit at the kitchen counter across from Mom, as you go through the checklist trying to see, Do We Count?

Number 1: you take off your shoes in the house.

But Brian next door does that too, and Rachel says it’s a Midwestern thing, so “Are we all Asian?”

No, that’s not right. But that’s all right to not be right, to not be all right and feel bad is OK, Mom will tell us that a couple times, so Number 2: there’s a lot of seafood in your diet.

Shellfish and laughter wall off the adults at the table from children crowding around a Nintendo DS while we turned on our PS2 downstairs and had a chance to ignore a recession.

I thought I couldn’t sit at the table because I was a kid, but the allergist told me the other day I’ll have to meet Anna and Phil at six if I eat seafood, so that can’t be me, either, so “Am I not Asian?”

No, that’s not-- look at me, yes you are, no you’re not and that’s all right to not be right on this one, and Mom knows best, so

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Number 3: you look and act Asian.

Cargo shorts that don’t quite fit and a polo from Goodwill.

“Doesn’t everyone wear this?”

But your eyes are too big, your nose is too wide, your skin is too dark, your Asian-ness is too non-Asian.

You want to be like the other Asian kids, But they have things you don’t understand: “What’s kumon?”

“I thought the K in KFC was Kentucky, not Korean.”

“Why did your mom look surprised that I was Asian?”

This seems unfair, Mom, “Why do we have to be Asian?”

Our parents wanted us to grow up in America.

We wanted to grow up somewhere that felt like home.

We took on the burden of becoming American, feeling unwanted, with a checkbox for our ethnicity that never quite fit, an asterisk we like to add because our culture was colonized, so it’s a hotpot, or a melting pot, and maybe then we’re very American and very Asian since all those places tried to plant a flag, yet no one wants to remember what they did, so for the Filipi-knowing that we were drafted to the worst but one of the few teams in the league that serves Jollibee: Here We Are.

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American Letter | Oil on paper Stacey ’22 likes the smell of forest dirt.

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Within | Fabric garments Violet ’20 explores emotional struggles in this apparel collection.

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Karis ’21 is beelining to the salmon at the sushi buffet.

Four Times I Hid (and One Time I Didn't) ONE. In my senior year of high school, I recoil when my Korean American friends speak Korean to me in the presence of our other friends. I make that face, the one that says I’m sorry, we’re being rude, here, let’s speak in a language you understand, I don’t even like speaking Korean that much anyway, I don’t even listen to Kpop, I’m not a shallow Korean, I swear, I’m American like you.

“Let’s sing 8282,” an ethnically Korean friend crows at a karaoke night.

I grew up singing 8282. In Korean, “8282” is a homophone for “quickly, quickly,” and I think that’s funny, although I would never say that out loud, because no one else would laugh. I love Davichi. Sometimes I pretend to be Lee Hae-ri in my room. But my eyes dart nervously at the rest of our party, at our friends who must be rolling their eyes at the prospect of another one of those songs. “How about ABBA,” I say loudly, taking the remote and inputting song numbers for Mamma Mia, Take on Me, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Aerosmith, Adele. Things in English.

I can’t help looking like this, I try to communicate. I’m like you. I speak English. I’m American.

I’m sorry.

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TWO. Yongsan-gu and Yongsan base are separated by metal gates. The scanner beeps when it identifies my military ID, a beep of recognition: this is Chaplain Major Ryu’s daughter. The dependent of an active duty service member. American, born and raised.

Scanners don’t see my Asian face the way military families do when I pull out my violin during the South Post Chapel Sunday service. Scanners don’t see the way my white teacher at my Department of Defense high school asks the class how many schools they’ve been to, smiling and nodding at the hands in the air until his gaze lands on me, on my hand in the air, and turns into surprise.

“This is my third high school,” I say. “My ninth school. I moved here in August from Fort Jackson.”

“Where are you from, R-u?” Depending on the day, I’m R-u or Ry-. Never Ryu. It’s a constant game of what’s-the-vowel.

Are you from China? I hear voices in my head, distant and high-pitched, deep in my childhood memories. Are you from Japan? Are you from Taiwan?

What are you?

“I was born in Boston,” I tell them all. “My dad

joined the army when I was two.” I’m as American as you are.

THREE. “Haewon-ah, order chicken for dinner!” The apartment door clicks shut. My parents are attending a military ball on base, my younger sister is at a mall (IPark? Lotte Fitin? There are so many in Seoul.) with some friends, and I’m home alone for the evening until my younger brother comes back from his drum lesson.

There’s a sticker on the fridge, a circle that says “Goobne” in big letters, the Chungmuro branch phone number in smaller print underneath. I type the numbers into my phone and hover my thumb over the call button.

It’s simple enough. Just say hello in Korean, ask for half soy sauce and half spicy: ganjang-ban, yangnyum-ban. My mom has our address written on a note that hangs on the fridge door, with all the dongs and ros and hos in the right order, to make things easier for me. All I have to do is read it.

But my mouth feels like sandpaper. My throat is closing up. What if I mess up? What if I forget what to say? What if I trip over my words and embarrass myself? What if I rehearse and rehearse and still, as soon as I hear that Korean voice on the phone, the effortless hangukmal of a native speaker, I’ll panic and forget everything, because I’m American, and I don’t belong here in this unfamiliar land, where people look like me and I look like them, but it’s all just a reminder of what I’m not?

My brother gets home thirty minutes later. “You

still haven’t ordered?”

I shake my head.

My eleven-year-old brother makes the call instead.

FOUR. There’s a playground on the fifth floor of our apartment building, opened up to the city, no walls or windows. I go there to give our dog some fresh air, and while I’m fumbling through my pockets for the card that will let us back into the building, a man stumbles out of the glass door. He’s toe to toe with our dog, who stares up at him.

The man holds the door open for a brief, suspended moment, staring at me, then the dog, eyes glassy from alcohol, like he’s offering to keep it open for us. I’m about to say thank you, and then he says: “Chiwoosillaeyo?”

Chiwoo. Chiweo. He wants me to clean something. Clean something? What does he want me to clean?

I stare back blankly, but my mind is reeling. Korean, Korean, what does that mean, what is he saying— “Chiwoorago!” He yells this time. He thrusts his chin at Maichu, our tiny white shih tzu, who blinks. “I hate dogs!”

Oh! Oh. That’s what he meant. I scramble backwards, mumbling clumsy Korean apologies as fast as I can string them together.

“Aish,” he mutters, giving me a dirty look. “What took you so long? Do you not understand me?

Are you stupid?”

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I tremble the entire elevator ride back up to our apartment.

Maichu keeps squirming.

Daehan Cinema, which is less than a block away.

The next film is at 8pm: Annabelle: Creation.

“Absolutely not,” I say.

“Stop it!” I yell at him, aware, more than ever, that I’m yelling in English. I’m crying now. “Stop it! Why couldn’t you just back up?”

I’m American, I’m American, I’m American.

But something inside me aches. A voice in my heart whispers. You’re Korean, too.

I don’t know.

FIVE. It’s my second to last night in Korea. Two days from now, I’ll be on a plane flying out of Incheon Airport.

But tonight, I’m with my sister and our friends at a meat restaurant (that was featured in hit drama Descendants of the Sun! as the poster outside declares), dipping grilled cuts of pork in gochujang and wrapping them with lettuce and rice. We get some looks, but we’re used to it, and we speak in spontaneous Konglish and refill our garlic dishes because just as true as our English names are our Korean ones, whether they came to us from mother or father or both.

“What should we do after dinner?” One of us asks.

“We should spend more time together, since it’s the last time we’ll all be together for a while.” “What movies are playing?” My sister pulls up showtimes for

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But I have no choice in this matter, because I need “the experience,” and that’s how we end up squashed into six seats inside one of Daehan’s side theaters, surrounded by the scents of buttered popcorn and buttered squid, in front of a screen that looms big and close.

I watch most of the film holding onto my friend Lizzy, her grip on my arms just as tight. Someone across the aisle drops their popcorn, and the noise makes us jump. We discover that we are all, in fact, terrible at watching horror movies.

The sky is dark by the time we exit back onto the street, the summer air hot and humid on our faces.

“I’m still hungry,” someone says, and then we’re laughing and running past cars and streetlights and food stands to the nearest GS25.

As we blur down the crosswalk, gleefully unaware of everyone else around us, unaware of everything except our adrenaline and our laughter, there are no rules, no boundaries. We’re Korean, we’re American, we’re everything, and we can speak the way we speak and look the way we look without having to prove anything to anyone. We’re teenagers having fun.

We’re people living life. Tonight, Seoul is our city, and we belong.

Do you want to talk about it? (imagine if I had said no) | Neocolor on paper Sichen Grace ’22 is still boiling water for tea/ coffee

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Fruit Market in Shenzhen | Acrylic and collage on canvas Cindy ’22 is still laying in the grass.

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Wake UP! | Graphite Annie ’24 is probably napping right now.

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Victoria ’22's spirit animal is gudetama.

Mother I have never met a being more self-sacrificing than the Asian woman. Threadbare Oriental carpet in the flesh of a person. To be gawked and gazed at from afar, to be taken home and delicately tread upon in close company.

Stand up!

I want to shout.

Say something!

But there is nothing to be said.

She lies prostrate and smiles at me without rising.

It’s alright, her eyes say.

She is already somewhere far away from here. She is a tree seeing far beyond feet that trample and voices that protest. She is in another place entirely, somewhere she has reached an understanding so deep it is near the point of objectivity. An observer of experience, she watches me break the window on the back door with my hand and quietly sweeps up the glass.

Her strength is above that of fists and fury. It is diffuse, composed. A constant reassurance, a hand on your shoulder. An unassuming posture. Her silence is her power.

You always have the last word, but she is the final victor you realize later — too late, always too late.

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She tries to make herself as small as possible, as quietly as possible. The most unobtrusive presence in the room, less so than the chair that scrapes as it is pulled backwards for a guest or the light that blinks once when it is turned on. She folds and binds her feet upon themselves, she tucks her hair into a bun. You watch, as fascinated as you are shocked. The shock turns into horror as she tucks her knees into her chest, folding into herself and against herself. A smile rests upon her lips the entire time she contorts. Even thesound of breaking joints become soft, like someone cracking their knuckles quietly in a testing room.

A gymnast, skilled at avoiding obstacles, her slender muscles propelling her body to greater heights. She sucks in a breath, jumps to grasp the first bar. Chalk powders the air around her hands. Her body rotates and loops around the bar, once, twice. On the swing up, she leaps onto the second bar, still higher. She is tired by now, her triceps sore. Yet here she is the most beautiful. Her body manipulates itself around the bar with visual ease, and even she herself doesn’t have to tell it what to do. On the dismount she holds her breath. Everybody does.

She lands, with the smallest sidestep on the left. We notice, and pretend not to. She smiles. The audience applauds.

Letter from Home | Gouache Marlowe ’22 wants Dippin' Dots.

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On Being Water | Glazed Stoneware Ruby ’16 woke up from a lucid dream.

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Surrounded | Watercolor, ink, pastel on paper Angela ’24 replies to texts quickly unless she's napping.

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Caterina ’24 loves poetry and craves vegan pumpkin pie on a daily basis.

lao lao of all things it was the smell distinct, nostalgic, heavy with past lives mixed into skeletons of crushed cigarettes puffs of motorcycle fumes, and a slight southern sea wind with lingering traces of sweet and sour a delicate balance of blooming peonies and human sweat in this foreign land i call home i am a stranger tracing back my roots through venerable palaces and endless family trees as we climb out of the taxi, the hot air and its mistress of scent greet us eagerly; they guide us to our destination under the blazing path of the round yolk sun dripping into the silky white sky a burning egg omelette - ji dan bing i taste it in my mouth and in my bones the lotus green building shows sign of wear but its ancient tile walls remain untouched by human flesh and hearts alike they swell towards the heat and as we walk in, they bow to us in deference i stumble as we walk up the stairs and almost give in to the fall but in this ghost town, no one notices kuai yi dian she says, and i keep going when we finally reach the door i can smell her hesitancy as her hand softly grips the bitter door handle as if asking for permission that’s how they used to do it 90 years later, have things really changed?

my mom greets my grandmother and i stand there in between years of history love sacrifice joy hardship my naivety crumbles completely it spills over and out like the tea leaves brewed into junshan cha that fall apart when burned, disintegrating onto the rusted linoleum floor, etching itself between the tiles worn in by the slow, steady footsteps of my grandmother the silent killer they say, the one that eats away at your brain but not your soul still, when my mother caresses her mother’s face and asks her who she is yong na, yong gang, yong jie she finds her daughter from the pile of scorched names blessed to live and die, born in a generation of poverty, determined to rise to anything but; when my mother sees her forget, i know she too is crumbling inside my mother grips her hand tightly as if holding on to her will keep her there forever roles reversed, she takes her mother into the bathroom and gently sits her down like a fragile child when she begins to wash her flossy hair i know my mother is letting the water run down her face so the tears can flow freely and soak themselves into her mother’s wrinkled, timeless skin i turn away out of respect there is nothing more i can do in this land of strangers who look like me, of food which tastes so unfamiliarly nostalgic, of language that stifles my native tongue, a grandmother who doesn’t know my name but at least i know hers Lao Lao.

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Redeath My grandfather died right before I was born.

She almost dropped it all to see him one more time But the poisonous seed in her stomach grew and she stuffed it with oranges and bread and fish and pickles and everything he could never give her.

There was nothing left for her to do except to suck in and bleed out an entire hour of agony, seventeen times over, his legacy burning a tiny crater tucked into my stomach.

Everything to her was black and white The way my eyes pouted obsidian jade and my skin curdled into milk The way poverty followed her like a ghost trailing behind, breathing heavily, almost dying again of a stroke or diabetes or was it both.

I wonder if he is buried in the golden fields consecrated with dirty peasants’ spit Or in the sea she once looked over into which she almost tip-toed Never forgetting his steady heart-step I was born in a cold month, during the rebirth of day.

She will never let me forget how I almost made two heartbeats into one.

That day, I died the moment I was born.

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Octopus Train | Pen on paper Sophia ’22 is.

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My Teta's Garden | Digital painting Aya ’21 misses her grandmother's orange trees.

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Chesapeake Diary | Silkscreen on muslin Mindy ’22 is fond of pink wig, thick bass.

Give 'em whiplash.

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도리불언 [桃李不言] | Oriental paints on oriental paper Hyunjoo ’24 misses everyone.

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Caterina ’24 loves poetry and craves vegan pumpkin pie on a daily basis.

White Vinegar To think that I will ever be happy is to tell a child that the moon follows them as they gullibly stare through the car window.

Neither of us are important enough, simply naĂŻve enough, and naivety is what keeps fools like me swollen with lunar beliefs.

Unlike a child, I know wrong from right, I know that the moon doesn’t follow you except on certain cloudy nights, when it stirs like a bright orb in a soup sky and I almost believe it all over.

These nights I see the moon as the blazing living room light under which my mom and I compare temperaments, our voices waxing to its shadow.

My mom is a child, I believe, because she crawls through life without regard for others and drinks white vinegar thinking it is water at half-century age, lonely and always looking for more than the moon to gently hold her hand back home. But I am worse, a heartless mother who lets their child stumble and fall eclipsed to the same trick over and again.

I always wake up with two things: an ephemeral hope, a veil for the washed-up sins of the night before, and a gnawing ache in my stomach that only a childless mother could have, and what is worse to be so lonely that I detest even the childlike mother who gave me life or to be so lonely that I may just become her friend.

The moon shines down and beacons for me to follow.

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Kris ’22 has too many tabs open.

An Aria from Madama Butterfly ENTER, MADAMA BUTTERFLY

I have a dream of the orient, where I am the perfect woman Where I don’t wear a hanbok, or a kimono, but something in between And my bones are half as fragile as my porcelain face

MADAMA BUTTERFLY SINGS (But who does she sing for?)

the Italian audience Puccini wrote this opera for?

for the Koreaboos that super liked me on Tinder?

for my parent who wishes I would play the part of the Perfect Woman?

Audience across world stages still meld across time And in the spotlight My throat strains at the highest notes, An aria, to sew melody into a garment that spells femininity

(Gender is a performance, Are you not enthralled?)

MADAMA BUTTERFLY FALLS IN LOVE (and hopelessly too)

She strips for the audience Geisha robe slipping down shoulders

Self-exoticization is self-sacrifice Is to wish to be consumed is to self-butcher Cherry blossom print siding down round, shank, hock

My mother’s favorite opera is Madama Butterfly And I wonder if her favorite daughter is too — or hoped to be too So I plated myself to be palatable

(But Butterfly doesn’t know how the finale of Puccini’s opera goes) 48

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MADAMA BUTTERFLY HAS HER HEART BROKEN

I forget my lines I carve myself messily I tear muscles with sharpened chords

My voice strains at the highest notes in an aria That is to say, it betrays me

To simply be told to play a part isn’t always enough Even if you want to follow the script

Puccini writes how Madama Butterfly kills herself When she’s not enough for a white man When she’s not enough for his white Italian audience In hopes that her fragility is preserved in death

(I wondered if I could preserve ignorance in death too) MADAMA BUTTERFLY TAKES OUT HER KNIFE

And holds it delicately, the way one does with the last words of a loved one

Fate wrote the knife handle to fit in her palm perfectly (But I’ve never been good at following scripts) MADAMA BUTTERFLY ISN’T A SOPRANO, BUT A LOW ALTO, SOMETIMES A TENOR MADAMA BUTTERFLY ISN’T WEARING A NOT-HANBOK NOT-KIMONO SHE WEARS PATTERNED BUTTON DOWNS FROM THE MEN’S SECTION OF UNIQLO MADAMA BUTTERFLY ALSO USES THEY/THEM PRONOUNS TOO AND IS TIRED OF PLAYING A ROLE

And the knife—

MADAMA BUTTERFLY LOOKS AT THE EDGE OF THEIR KNIFE WITH GLEE MADAMA BUTTERFLY KNOWS THE KNIFE ISN’T A PROP OR A PERFORMANCE MADAMA BUTTERFLY KNOWS HOW TO USE A KNIFE AND DOESN’T FIGHT TO SIMPLY DEFEND 49

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Moving Box | Monofilament, wool, cotton, and rayon Mindy ’22 cannot reach her toes, even at night.

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Vicky ’21 loves asking out her crushes.

What My Mother Gave No one really leaves Dyker Heights. This was a recurring thought I had throughout high school, solidif ied after returning from my f irst semester away at college. I think about my classmates from the Catholic grade school I attended just two and a half blocks away from my family’s home. At the intersection of 74th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway, 26 students (always the same 26, from learning addition to graduating junior high) clad in uniform dutifully recite the Our Father, peeking out childproofed windows at McKinley Park across the street, the Verrazano Bridge on the horizon, cars soaring below to cross the border into neighboring Bay Ridge.

I try to imagine how far we’ve stretched ourselves since then. What would happen if I plotted our educational paths and futures on a map? Most of us will likely remain in New York, attending the same Catholic or state colleges as our siblings or parents, no further than an hour or two away by car. A handful might attend trade school or prepare to inherit family businesses, ranging anywhere from running auto repair shops to running nuclear families. The last of us do not know what exactly our plans are, just that they will be taking us away from the only place we have ever known. I cast my predictions with certainty because here we are ref lections of our families; history tends to repeat itself in Dyker.

I know the f irst boy to make fun of the shape of my eyes and the sound of my grandmother’s poor English did so with vigor and certainty, like the smartest person in the world taught him how to do

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this. When his mother came into the classroom to drop off cupcakes for his birthday, I knew he had probably learned those ideas from her. Steven will probably inherit his father’s bar and the family home when he gets married. I know my mother says I am all my father’s child: all anger and relentlessness. She does not know I have her roaming spirit, learned by mimicking her over the years. I will probably follow in her footsteps, run far from a home where everyone stayed behind, for no particular reason other than the fact that we could.

Dyker Heights comprises generations of mirror images, family folk intent on never straying far from this center of gravity in their universe. As the years pass, I f ind it easier and easier to replace memories of childhood innocence and belonging with memories of jarring outsiderness. My family will likely not last another generation here. Like my mother the immigrant, perhaps this neighborhood was secretly not the place for me, accepting of our differences but never quite enough — and so I inherit her instinct to run. A yearning for someplace, somewhere else.

To get from my end of Dyker Heights to the heart of Chinatown at the mouth of the Manhattan Bridge, take the uptown N train from Fort Hamilton Parkway and transfer to the D at the Barclays Center, or the stop before it at 36th Street if you’re f inicky about f inding a seat. Get off at Grand Street, the very f irst stop after you’ve caught the skyline while crossing the East River and entering Manhattan. Make sure to exit quickly. There will be swarms ready to push their way past you to get where they’re going: young

and old professionals travelling farther uptown or to Queens for off ice jobs, elders rushing to f ind a seat for their underground travels to their favorite market or butcher or mahjong game, students as young as nine or ten years old tracing their familiar route to school or standardized test prep. There will also be families of white tourists taking up an ungodly amount of space on the platform; be sure to dodge them.

The journey is familiar, undertaken countless times with my mother and sister or by myself. Each time I emerge from the Grand Street station and into the sun and smells of the vegetable market around the corner, a sense of familiarity and ownership after years of carving this path falls over me, and I begin walking with conf idence. It’s a feeling I never had in Dyker; how could I claim it as my own when I have no way to blend into its crowd? On days where I trail behind my mother (perhaps I am following her to work), we make multiple stops. She pauses at a fruit stall where the vendor smiles, gives her a discount, and tells me how the older I get, the more I resemble her and how lucky am I for that? She gets the same familiar welcome at a bakery. She is stopped quickly on the street by a passerby who wants to give a simple greeting and remark how big I’ve gotten.

I feel ownership over this particular stretch of Chinatown, from Bowery to Lafayette, but I am nothing compared to my mother. My mother has worked in pediatrics in Chinatown since I was born.

She has watched hundreds of children walk in and out of their elevator doors over the years, cultivating some of the most intimate knowledge about them as their small bodies grew and grew. People in the area know her, think of her as some sort of gatekeeper to their child’s health. She has seen parents at their weakest, frustrated at insurance policies detailed in

English, hysterical over infants’ fevers that won’t drop, helpless about what to do next for their baby.

Here, my mother is undoubtedly in charge, striding across Elizabeth Street with conf idence, her tongue never tripping up over consonants or slang. Here, I do not have to translate for her; if anything, she is the one always explaining me, the ABC girl — American-born Chinese — who has foolishly lost touch with her Cantonese. When she seems to own Chinatown, I cannot help but feel I’ve inherited it from her.

It is never intentional, but it seems bitterness seeps into my voice when I speak about Dyker Heights. I should say that I am grateful to this neighborhood for raising me. I walk its streets, know its people, understand their behaviors like my own. You cannot deny your home. But when home conjures nothing but conf lict, what is there to do but leave?

There is a mold in Dyker neither my family nor I could ever f it. I couldn’t comprehend the yellowness of my skin or my thin eyes; I couldn’t comprehend not having as much money as our neighbors to go to Aruba or the ski lodge or the beach club. My mother couldn’t comprehend many things: English, religion, or even something as inane as wanting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch instead of rice.

My confusion and loneliness festered into something angry. I resented us for failing to adapt to the mold and spent years imagining stepping out of my body and into another’s, waking up white and belonging to someone else’s household.

I grew up stif ling my heritage, the source of all difference in my sore thumb existence. My grandparents could not speak a word of Cantonese if they came to pick me up from school. I skipped

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lunch if my grandfather had packed dumplings. If people asked me to explain Chinese New Year, I told them I only celebrated for the money. Even spending time with my mother grew to be too much at times; the sound of her thick accent could physically hurt something within me. I was proud to lose touch with my culture because it grounded me in Dyker. Years later, after attending high school an hour away from home and gaining mental distance as well, I saw the damage for what it was. I mourn the years of connection lost with my culture, so instrumental in def ining who I am. I do not look at Dyker Heights the same way anymore. I return home but my hackles are raised each time.

We are no longer the only Asian, immigrant family on our block, and my mother says this with disdain.

Our neighbors try to keep their commentary lighthearted if the topic crops up in conversation, but I hear the fear and nervousness in the slight waver of their voices. I wonder if my mother knows she was also an invader to them once.

I only accepted Chinatown when I accepted being Chinese. It was only once I could tolerate hearing myself speaking Cantonese, my f irst tongue before I ever spoke English, that I did not recoil at the harsh sounds of Mandarin in the streets. When I found comfort in the culture my father had passed on to me, I found comfort in lighting incense in honor of his life and passing at the temple.

But Chinatown is disappearing — being gentrif ied, to be more specif ic. Old garment factories, bakeries, herbal medicinal shops, and other small businesses

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worked and owned by immigrants are being swallowed by SoHo and its wealthier white residents.

I remember the moment it clicked that there were many more young white people, art galleries, and trendy bars than I previously remembered, as if they had gradually been creeping toward us. I remember realizing how uncomfortable it is to pay your respects in temple with white tourists watching what you do, treating the neighborhood like an exotic theme park. It infuriated me, set my blood boiling. My mother laughed when I brought this up, remarked in Cantonese, “Chinatown’s already been gone.”

Watching the neighborhood fold into the existence of SoHo — young, white, and def ined by no particular culture other than wealth — right before my eyes reminds me of years spent trying to erase my heritage to blend into white culture, that implicit mold of Dyker. I weep for Chinatown and cling to its existence like I am trying to cling to what’s left of the heritage I shunned for years. I hope someone can forgive me and spare this center of the universe, one of the few places where I feel I exist fully.

A vanishing Chinatown is just one image which occasionally f lashes across my mind. Others include weary Chinese grandparents, Chinese women collecting cans and bottles, Chinese children walking alone to school. These are all sights that elicit something physical from me. They tug at the heart strings and bring tears to my eyes. I’m not sure whether that’s out of guilt for neglecting them or silent understanding or an unspoken connection running deeper than most, encompassing centuries of shared struggle.

Textile Paper | Handmade Kozo Paper Bryson ’22 likes to sit in the sun.

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Remodel Minority | Acrylic on canvas; digital art Salonee ’24 has Coca-Cola running through her veins.

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Suburban Development | Lithograph Sarah ’21 realizes chicken noodle soup can't fix everything.

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Agnes ’22 misses going to Costco with her parents.

Nước is Water

Nước is water.

Nước is country.

The streams and seas of nước

that my parents crossed in 1979

to reach a new nước.

When my mom tells me stories of her childhood in Vietnam, the streams and seas of her words flow into veins and a heartbeat. The streams that my great-grandparents floated down to settle in Rạch Giá. The sea that my grandmother caught in her broken fishnets and small hands. The river that saved my uncle. The ocean that brought my family a new life, but took the lives of others.

After my great-great-grandmother passed into her next life, my great-great-grandfather, heartbroken, took his children and floated down the river in search of their next life. They lived off of the nước until the stream’s fingers carried them to Rạch Giá, where my grandmother would grow up. My grandmother also lived off of the nước, travelling from dock to dock to repair the nets of fishermen with her small hands. She married my grandfather, a lieutenant, and traveled with him across the nước to a small island where he was stationed. When she became pregnant with my aunt, later the eldest of eight, my grandfather gambled away his earnings and drank everything but nước and she stood by the docks and cried and begged to the passing boats until eventually one took pity on her tears and took her across the nước back home to Rạch Giá and she would never go anywhere with my grandfather again. Except once in 1979 across the nước to a new nước called America.

Now when my grandmother presses her hand against my cheek to snuff kisses against my hair, I can feel the wrinkle of her fishnet fingers, as if she stayed in the nước for too long.

Ma is ghost.

Mạ is rice seedling.

Mả is tomb.

Má is mother.

Depending on how you let go

of your breath,

ma can mean life or death.

My family history is submerged in the smoke of hungry ma and village shamans, in unmarked mả and bony earth, in fields of mạ and leaf houses. My grandfather is still an alcoholic. He comes to California from Ohio every summer and sits in my backyard with all the uncles and drinks everything but nước. As his drawled words mix with the smoke of his cigarette, the smoke begins to flow into the shape of figures, of my grandfather leading his soldiers, of an ambush by the communists,

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of my grandfather using a grenade to save his men, of my grandfather checking the smoked bodies for anything to send home, of a whole platoon of wispy ma that were only fourteen years old, of a whole platoon of wispy fourteen year old ma that each only owned a fistful of rice to send home. After the smoke of his cigarette and grenade clears, I can begin to understand why he doesn’t drink nước.

After the war ended, my grandfather took his family deep into rural South Vietnam to escape reeducation camps and persecution. There was still nước, in the form of rivers, but there was more land, stretches of sugarcane fields and graveyards between each home. My má tells me there were more ma than people. I believe her. She tells me of the pebbles that would hit her everytime she passed the leaf house of a widow, where every evening, the widow would sit by the mả and ma in front of the leaf house. She tells me of the legless Cambodian woman that my grandpa pretended not to see while he worked in the sugarcane fields. She tells me of the other shadows and voices that lived in their leaf house with her, my two aunts, my uncle, and my grandparents.

My aunt died in that house. She was younger than I am now. I don’t even know her name.

There is no trace of her, no pictures, no memories, no mả or ma. She only exists in the story of her death. My grandmother asked her if she wanted to return to the city to live with her sister. My aunt whose name I do not know and whose face I will never know decided she would return to the city once the season for her favorite fruit came, so that she could eat it before she left. She died before her favorite fruit ripened. On a day that my grandfather left the leaf house to work in the sugarcane fields, she suddenly didn’t feel well. My mom told me that she sat by her bedside with their older brother and talked and laughed with my aunt like normal. They were in the middle of a conversation when she died with her eyes open.

My mom told me that my grandfather’s aura is strong, strong enough to repel the hungry ma.

When my aunt contracted her illness, my grandfather was gone. But in the early morning, he returned suddenly, on the basis of a bad feeling. By the time he came back, she was already dead.

They spent the rest of the day breaking the earth. Digging graves. Digging up graves. Digging up graves in search of a grave for her. Digging mả. Digging up ma. Digging up ma in search for a mả for her. Every hole they dug was filled with the bodies and bones of others. Bones streamed through the rotting earth like a river. They had to bury her in the bones of another, of a few others, drown her in the sea of skeletons because there was no land or nước.

Land broken by an old Cambodian battlefield. Land broken by bodies of nước. Land broken by bodies of hungry ma. I wonder what the Vietnamese and Cambodian fought over. It was probably over who owned the nước. The ma own the land now. They make up the land now, the bones and flesh of the earth. The land owns them now. I wonder if their families lit incense and paper money and put out mangos and tea for them at the altar, honored their memory and fed their hungry souls until their stomachs and hearts were full enough to make the journey to the next life. I wonder if their families didn’t, and if they turned into hungry ma, lost and far away from their nước without even the faintest trail of incense to guide them home or into their next life. They are forgotten and forsaken in both altar and memory, tied in body and spirit to the land that they owned that now owns them. Ma can’t

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cross bodies of nước. Bodies of spirits, bodies of land, bodies of nước. Bound by bodies in life and in death.

I wonder where my aunt is now, wonder if her bones are under some new private resort construction or if they’re still there, drowning in the sea of skeletons and spirits in a place where there is more bone than land or nước.

Digging mả.

Digging up ma.

Digging up ma

in search for a mả for her.

On the same night of her death and burial, my uncle suddenly got the same illness. My grandfather took his family away to the nước that the ma couldn’t cross. He put them all on their little boat and they went down the nước, away from the sea of skeletons. They were in the middle of the river when the boat’s motor and my uncle’s breathing stopped.

My grandmother screamed and cried for help as they drifted. My grandfather cursed and swore and told Ông Trời -- the Man in the Sky -- that he would give his life for his son’s. Fate had it so that a woman, in a place where there were more spirits than people, found them drifting in the nước and told them about the famous herbalist who just happened to live nearby.

In the broken yellow light of his home, the herbalist submerged my uncle in a tank of nước.

My má remembers vividly when my uncle started to breathe again. He broke out of the nước and out of death and spluttered, chest heaving again with life.

After coming back to life, my uncle would tell my grandmother that the hungry ma wouldn’t stop following him. My grandmother sought out the help of a shaman.

“Let me take him as my godson,” the shaman told my grandparents. They obliged.

For years after this incident, my uncle would remain at a state of sickness. But whenever his godfather came up the alley that led to their new home, his illness would immediately clear. But my grandfather’s promise to the Man in the Sky was neither forgotten nor forsaken. For decades after, when one of them became ill, the same illness would haunt the other, regardless of the nước that separated them.

Nước is water.

Ma is ghost.

Ma nước is water ghost.

My grandfather decided they would cross the nước before they became ma and couldn’t. He decided this on a night when he hadn’t drunk nước. “We are leaving this nước tomorrow,” he promised.

Come with us and cross the nước or stay here until the ma of you is bound to this nước forever. Die for this nước, die in this nước, die because of this nước.

Only the really desperate believed him and came the next evening. My grandfather, true to his drunken word, stole a small fishing boat that the new government had claimed ownership of. They had to leave those that were bound to the warm land or sweet thunderstorms, those that were bound by too much age or too little age, those that could not or would not swim in uncertain nước to a foreign nước.

My grandfather took his children and my grandmother and a few other families. They floated in the nước for days, weeks. Pirates circled them but left when my grandfather brandished his only grenade.

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Not all boat people are as lucky. My father’s fishing boat was ransacked by pirates who took generations of wealth and left them nothing but nước. My godmother fell off her family’s fishing boat and drowned and when she was hauled back up from the nước and from the dead, she asked her mother why she could suddenly see so many people on the boat—the boat people who had not been as lucky and had become ma nước, the unfortunate that had died watery deaths, that are bound to the nước, that cannot cross to land.

My má’s fishing boat floated in the nước for weeks until the nước looked like land, like an island in the Philippines. When they crossed the nước to the refugee camps, they could have been mistaken for ma. They were hosed down with clean nước because they stank so badly from their time floating.

They spent months on that island, unable to cross the nước like ma because they had nowhere to go, no trail of incense smoke to follow. The only smoke came from black clouds above burning boats in the middle of the nước. Occasionally they saw small boats almost make it to shore, only to be reeled back into the nước by Thai pirates. They saw those boats pulled all the way to the horizon where nước and sky were indistinguishable. For days, those boats would stay trapped at that blur between nước and sky. There was nothing to be done until the pirates left and those boats slowly drifted back to the shore that they were so close to days earlier. The women had to be carried off or limp to land with broken bodies, and no men ever made it past the nước. Ma cannot cross nước, but the living can, and oftentimes, the living are to be more feared.

Nước is water.

Nước is country.

Nước is where

we,

then and now,

here and there,

are bound to.

Some of us are floating, drifting down the streams of nước as we get from here to there or from there to here and try to make here or there home. Some of us are drowning, struggling to stay afloat in the heavy waves of foggy nước as neither there becomes here nor here becomes there. But some of us are swimming in the nước, almost grounded in the new nước, as here and there become one. Nước has become both home and the space between home and here, or home and there. We are the ma nước, forever bound to the nước, haunted by the ma of aunts whose names we do not know whose faces we will never know, haunted by hot summer smoke and fistfuls of rice, haunted by the histories of our families. We are the ma nước, forever bound to the nước between here and there, with Vietnam’s streams and seas and rivers and oceans surging through our veins.

Nước is water.

Ma is ghost.

Ma nước is water ghost.

Ma nước is us.

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Smile For Ma | Oil on canvas Nova ’23 was a chubby baby.

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Asia ’23 loves ladybugs.

I Think This Means I’m Getting Better For the first time in a long time I was hungry I mean hungry-Not like when he knocks on my door and tells me to come with or Like when I go early because I know I have class at 6 no Not like when I make myself because I know they’ve noticed I haven’t all day or When they have those fried plantains and that’s the only thing on my plate No! Today!

I was hungry!

It wasn’t a chore It was more Like a spark The start Of something There was part of me that thought the grumbling in my stomach wasn’t there Part of me that was unaware of this semi-acquainted sensation And that’s when the impatience kicked in:

I was going to get a sandwich.

Have you ever managed to get hangry enough that you roll your eyes at the choices in front of you?

I wanted hummus

I’ve never tried fig spread

They had turkey

But maybe ham was better on this bread?

What’s the difference between arugula and spinach?

Should I also get an almond croissant?

What if I don’t finish?

Forget it, I’ll finish

Of course I want it cut in half,

What kinda maniac eats a whole ciabatta roll like that?

Anyways, What I’m trying to say is What I’m trying to say is Today For the first time in a long time I I felt like my body was mine Was hungry Like I was living in it In the best way possible Oh it was a welcomed obstacle: And maybe that feeling only lasted thirty minutes Like a tree I hadn’t climbed in months Maybe it subsided by the time I finished my chips Felt like I was shaking off the rust But it was there Swept every cobweb in my little head And fed myself And I hope it comes around again soon 63

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Memory | Gouache on paper Rada ’22 loves spinach croissant.

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台南 / Tainan: On my Way! | Digital collage Reishan ’20 is filled to the brim with pineapple cakes.

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Reeno ’22 loves pink gel pens.

What’s a Reeno?

Author ID: Reeno is a 20-year-old student from New York City.

At 13-years of age, I enrolled at a tiny all-girls Catholic high school on Manhattan’s vaunted Upper East Side. A fresh new spirit in side-swept bangs announced my semi-hip West Village persona. It was a look that, to my dismay, failed to evoke the wispy insouciance of 1960’s icon Jane Birkin—at least not at this granite real estate gem on one of Fifth Avenue’s many gilded corners.

One sunny afternoon, my theology teacher began our class with a lecture about the etymology of agape. We arrived tangentially at the subject of names and Ms. Van de Berg—even the name demanded scholarship—asked each student to share her name’s personal inference. A few girls were named after a late grandmother or a flower, but most offered an exegesis that did not satisfy Ms. Van de Berg’s curiosity.

She carefully examined me, as an entomologist would an exotic beetle under a magnifying glass. “Reeno,” she said in her thick Dutch accent, “A boy’s name...”

Frozen, I failed to conjure an eloquent retort.

“Girls’ names end in ‘A,’ and boys’, in ‘O.’ Why not Reena?” she probed further with an animated chuckle that had me wishing the hour would hasten.

Eighteen teenage girls’ chilling eyes now stared at me. Like a piñata, I became the playfully battered object of their scrutiny.

Well, Japanese names don’t strictly follow classical, Western

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patterns. Many Japanese names, whether they sound feminine or masculine, end in ‘O.’ When the initial cross-examination was exhausted, the jury sent a second wave of questions.

“What’s your middle name?” the girl adjacent to me inquired.

I candidly replied, “I don’t have one.”

I could tell she was shocked at this concept, one so alien to her Westchester pedigree, because her mouth contorted wildly and she let out a nervous cackle. Try as she might (though I assure you, she didn’t), she could not fathom why in 1999, my parents had forgone the dogma of the middle name. I did not have an instant response on that late-autumn day, but now, years of contemplation have armed me with a potent rebuttal.

Contrary to the student’s misguided perception of my first name, Reeno is a distillate of my parent’s thoughtfulness. The spelling of my first name conforms to neither of my ethnicities, granting it inherent uniqueness. Though it would have been pronounced similarly to the Japanese equivalent, my mother and father decried the name Rino, fearing that my peers would associate my name with a certain odd-toed ungulate of the Rhinocerotidae family. Reno would have been a contender but for its kinship to that gambling mecca north of Lake Tahoe. Doubling the “e” was their imaginative solution. Reeno does not exist in Japan. If I were to employ Romaji, the written English representation of Japanese syllabic sounds, my Japanese first name 麗乃 would be Rino.

The 26 letters in the English alphabet comprise a

limited array of sounds, while the Japanese alphabet consists of nearly 50,000 characters, each with a different graphic and auditory history. My mother carefully selected the characters of my first name. 麗乃 translates to elegant, beautiful, graceful, resplendent princess. Quite the mouthful.

Japan boasts a more rigid naming culture than the United States, where naming has become an expression of random preference. American names generally omit or neglect the gravitas found in other parts of the world because they are liberally selected from an expansive, nearly infinite pool with low thresholds of meaning, a pool in which the modern guardian-to-be is inundated with options. A name implicitly reveals one’s identity and how one complements his or her surroundings and should thus be conferred with great deliberation and maybe even democratic limitations. Perhaps there are inadvertent downsides to the American liberty of haphazardly assigning children with (allegedly) powerful or extraordinary names, regardless of the consequence. Names announce who one is, from where one comes, and where one is going. We should think more critically about our given names, for they might easily be the best PR representatives one can have.

I am without a middle name, which might be considered a deficit in the United States, but my first name is sufficiently imbued with more objective meaning than I would likely obtain from most triumvirate signatures.

My parents’ omission of the middle name is consistent with Japanese culture in which middle names are exceedingly rare.

To that traditional Catholic landscape in which I found myself, Reeno is a flippant defiance of cherished Western custom. It does not adhere to the feminine

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form of romance language names which end in “a” and its unstressed vowel sound. However, to acquiesce to this stringent interpretation of name origin denies the significance of many international names and hinders their acceptance here in the United States.

My name is an eclectic mélange of residual ingredients from a North American behemoth and an East Asian subtlety. The history of the United States is one of multiculturalism: Americans are unified by shared democratic values—though that is questionable in the current milieu—and not by standards of artificial homogeneity, physical appearance, and name. By crowning an individual with an international name as “other,” one might invite aggression, exacerbate alienation, and subject the person to quasi invisibility in a manner that is inherently un-American.

A great bastion of variety and choice, our free market induces and promulgates the quantity obsessed nature of the American consumer. We have more shoes than we could possibly need, the latest Apple gizmo, and at least a trio of first, middle, and last names, yet we recognize our materialistic tendencies and hope to remedy them, whether by embarking on a closet cleanse or refining our cohort of friends to a few loyal confidantes. Why not approach nomenclature with the same deliberate consideration of quality over quantity? Fads come and go, but one’s name is an enduring classic, a timeless accessory that must be carefully administered. To brave the wintry cold, would you clothe your child in a ridiculously festooned bonnet, flimsy sweater, ripped jeans, and a pair of nonwaterproof gloves? Or would you adoringly drape the youngster in an insulated down jacket with fur-lined

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snow boots to match? To allow babies to go crawling about without meaningful names is like dressing them for the wrong weather, enough to ruin them for life, or at the very least, contract a very bad cold.

But what criteria must be met to constitute meaning?

A name that is seemingly vapid to one individual can ring with sentimental significance to another.

Maybe the solution to the problem of meaning and its subjectivity is simply to understand that the issue does exist with many nuanced considerations, and heed Walt Whitman’s counsel, “Be curious, not judgmental.”

Names certainly have much to say about a person, yet they can never fully inform. After all, the individual is the premier author to his or her life’s story. When approaching international names, let’s insist not on their oddity, but on the aptness of their novelty. It’s understandable that one mistakenly mispronounces a name or asks for clarification; however, one must remain conscious that a comment or assumption not intended to be judgmental still might be a problem to the recipient.

A naive classmate—who despite not being born on December 25th, went by the French word for Christmas (an innocent misnomer, perhaps?)—once inadvertently belittled my name. She might someday read this manifesto and proceed to lavish Reeno with unconditional love. From naming offspring to making new acquaintances with names that diverge from Tom, Dick, and Jane, let us embrace and live by the pillars of nominative nonconformity, purging our constitutions of both implicit and explicit self-righteousness and judgment.

Peace Offering | Watercolor and colored pencil on paper Grace ’21 likes Korean pears.

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The Quiet Life | Photograph (digital) Hansae ’24

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Johnny ’23 prefers plain yogurt.

The Durian Stand Across the sodden, muddy lane Where tulips never grow, I peer beyond the windowpane To watch the morning glow

For what an odor! How it reeks The wretched durian, A treat for masochistic freaks And Epicureans

And then I hear beyond the glass The toll of heavy feet, As hawkers swarm the trodden grass To line the solemn street

I do not know how one can bear This storm of foul disgust A smell and sight that do declare “I am not worth your trust”

Their joyful cries do shatter swift The silence, ever bare, As they begin the early shift To sell their fruitful fare

But then I look around the store At hungry patrons near And notice that they do adore This fruit, so it appears

In scarlet dew and honey light Are apples in a mound, Befriend the bees and fend the bite Of thieving gnats around

They treat it like it a treasured prize, Ambrosia (maybe worse) And in their gleaming, ardent eyes Find blessings in its curse

And mangos plump do perch upon A stand beneath the sun, In golden glory, like the dawn Their sweetness overrun

Each bite infused with sunny bliss The taste, so ever sweet In smell they find a fragrant kiss (And not a putrid heat)

The gleaming jewel of berries too Do join the pleasant scene, And add their iridescent hue To that of market mien

And so I stand, my mouth ajar Though breathing not the air, To marvel at this world bizarre Where durian is fair

But from afar, I also spot A thorny blight, a brute Of moldy green and summer rot Among the other fruit

If such a fruit can find a role ‘Mongst grateful teeth and tongue What does prevent the lonely soul From seeking hope unsung?

I step outside, and then approach This beast of bony shell Of frightful furor, worth reproach, And also frightful smell

The day is bright, the market loud The fruit all in a row Does love exist within the crowd?

The durian will know 71

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Ingrid ’23 is on the search for quality sushi in New England.

Learning the Power of Nudity i.

As a second-grade artist, my first best friend Emma Lewer showed me an illustration that she made of an adult woman showering. I stared hard at the curve of the woman’s breasts, the penciled lines of her hips and legs, in wonder at the naked female body and also in wonder at my friend’s knowledge of it. In the drawing, the showering woman’s groin was obscured by a soft, multicolored scribble of colored pencils. “My mom told me to cover it,” she explained sighing. I wondered if the scribble, mistakable for pubic hair, actually made the drawing more realistic rather than covering up the woman’s nakedness, if the creation of this illustrated woman’s pubic hair was actually a bold and honest reclamation of the natural body, of how women really look and how they should be presented.

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ii.

I used to take baths with my brother. We would undress without shame or second thought and revel in the warm water and bubbles. We were aware of the differences in our bodies but only saw it as a source of amusement and curiosity. When my mom announced, “You two are too old to take baths together,” I understood. I understood how divisive a role gender played and how different bodies meant different ways of living, but I still asked, feeling the need to prove my defiance through questioning, “Why?” My mom explained simply, “He’s a boy, and you’re a girl.” I expected as much but wasn’t sure if this was an unspoken rule or something so obvious it could be said out loud.

I then began taking baths with my mother. A woman and a girl, acceptable compared to a boy and a girl, we would undress, and I would look at her body with curiosity and perplexion. Would I look like that one day? Hair on my legs, under my arms, covering my pubic area. Soft trail of hair under my belly button, lines across the backs of my thighs. I looked so unfinished in comparison to her.

iii.

At the end of the day at my elementary school, teachers would walk us to a nearby park ominously named Gang Road, where parents could navigate the larger parking lots to pick us up. In second grade, two friends and I would make our parents wait, patient small talk amongst each other, while we chatted and wandered around the park’s trails.

We often saw loose articles of clothing under the park’s tree clearings, but we never saw the people who the clothes belonged to. On one occasion, my friends and I went out exploring the trails with my brother walking a couple feet behind us. We came across a magazine lying open on the ground, colorful and proud, the pages in blues, whites, and reds. White women in blue and red string bikinis posed frozen across the page, the largeness of their breasts emphasized by the smallness of their bikini tops, seeming to float in front of their bodies.

Their skin shone under the camera light, hairless legs and performative makeup. We stared at it, not saying anything, trying to comprehend the gleefully vulgar images, unsure what the pictures were supposed to incite in us besides our wonder

and fear. I had never seen nudity portrayed in such a confident and showy manner, wanting and needing to be seen and absorbed. I’d been learning to keep my legs crossed and to cover up my body parts from the public view, especially from the other gender, and here on the ground were pages and pages of women uncrossed and uncovered.

My brother came up behind us, and I spun around to block him from seeing the magazine, lying between my two friends who crouched down to get a closer look and try to make better sense of it.

Despite my brother being older than me and his pure curiosity in our discovery, I refused to let him see down and past me. I refused to let him look down. On one hand, he was a he, meaning he was the intended audience, and I knew this. I knew this and knew I wanted to stop him from seeing and absorbing the images, from feeling whatever feelings they were supposed to incite in him.

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iv.

I walked into my parents’ bedroom, lit in an almost sterile manner. My mom had just gotten out of the shower and was about to get dressed, her thin towel still wrapped around her torso. I stared at her back, her cropped black hair revealing the freckles across her shoulder blades and under her neck. “Help me,” she said, putting her arms through the bra straps.

“What is this for?” I asked, my hands trying to figure out how to hook the band on the loosest rung. She told me of feeding newborns and of needing a bra for support but nothing that I felt related to me. Afterwards, I wondered how she put her bras on when I wasn’t there to help her.

Now, having dressed and clasped and twisted my bras, I wonder if my mom wanted to introduce me to this lonely but intimate part of womanhood.

This time when you get dressed and only you know your body best, its curves and dips and rolls.

This time when you’re alone with who you are and prepare yourself into the woman you need to be.

v.

At some point in elementary school, my first best friend Emma and I became curious in each others’ underwear choice. We saw all of each others’ clothes except our underwear, and we’d somehow become devastatingly interested in this. Tumbling past the bathroom door together, we’d giggle and tell each other, “I’ll show you if you show me yours.” We had the decency to blush. One of us would stand against the bathroom door, using our body to bar anyone from walking in on us. The other would stand against the white tiled wall on the other side of the bathroom, the row of sinks, constantly wet countertops, and grey bathroom stalls extending between us, as if the greater distance could lessen our bashfulness. I remember how embarrassed I was the second day we did this and Emma said, “That’s the same one as yesterday!”

Shame is the best teacher, and I learned that our bodies and the way we present ourselves, even the parts we think are hidden to others, need to follow certain rules. Somehow, as these things do in elementary school, our parents found out. My dad pulled me aside after talking to one of our teachers and put a hand on my shoulder. He crouched down to meet me at eye level even though I looked away, and said, “You are not a monkey.”

I am not a monkey, meaning I am not allowed to show my natural body. I am a human, meaning I need to cover up and hide who I am.

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vi.

“Do you want to know how babies are made?” my brother’s thoughtful voice said from the bed above me. When he had a bunk bed in his room, I would pester my parents to let us have sleepovers on the weekends so we could talk about things we were too scared to discuss in the light.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to assert my confidence as a first grader. My brother, two years older and desperately intelligent, was always reading from books and computers about the smallest dinosaur, the human body, what constitutes a language...

“The guy’s thing goes into the girl’s thing.”

This made no sense.

I’d been learning that nude bodies have the power to make people uncomfortable, angry, vulnerable, disappointed. Bodies in their most natural form leave a loud and negative wake. And yet, the root of reproduction lies in the nudity between two.

Life, the visible proof and confirmation of our existence, comes from the thing that we are told to hide about ourselves the most. Human nudity has the power of being simultaneously controversial yet essential, of being shunned yet needed.

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Deflowering | Oil on wood panel 8"x10” Haemin ’22 is eating tiramisu.

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Spring Sprite | Oil on wood panel 8"x10” Haemin ’22 is eating tiramisu.

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Agnes ’22 loves eggs.

Truyện is Story, Truyệ Chuyệ Chuy ện is Story (excerpt)

I am writing a story.

“Story” has two different, but similar words. My parents and I, with our time-capsuled Vietnamese, cannot hear nor pronounce the difference.

Chuyện refers to stories that are spoken.

Paperless stories.

Truyện refers to stories that are written.

Papered stories.

I am writing a truyện.

If you write the accent wrong, truyện becomes truyền. To pass down or inherit. If you write the accent wrong, chuyện becomes chuyên or chuyển. Chuyên is to move one’s body from one place to another. Chuyển is to move, to transfer, to shift.

These stories have been truyền-ed, passed down and inherited, and chuyên-ed and chuyểned, from body to body. And now I have inherited these stories, that have traveled down, from body

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Read more:

to body.

They say a person that can’t keep a secret is nhiều chuyện. Nhiều is many, a lot. Chuyện is a spoken story, a paperless story. If stories were secrets, then my mother is nhiều chuyện. If my mother is nhiều chuyện, then I have nhiều chuyện — many stories.

My mother fed me many stories as a child.

Stories of the Monkey King and his magical staff, of Hoàng Phi Hồng and his umbrella, of hopping vampires and their paper charms. Before bed every night, my mother would retell, from memory, stories from a blue book of Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales. She would cook up her own version of Jack and the Beanstalk, of a boy and girl named Agnes and Phil who planted rice that reached the sky. My brother and I, hungry for words, would soon do the storytelling, the two of us taking turns to add on to the story every night.

Outside of eating stories, we also bought and sold stories. My mom sold used books out of our home. Together, my brother, mother, and I would walk down the street to the public library and peruse the used books sale in the library’s lobby. These books sold for a quarter each on an honors system where buyers paid by putting their money into an unattended box by the checkout desk. After an hour of thumbing through yellowed pages and crumpled covers, my mom would gather a pile of used stories as my brother and I sat and lived as blue-eyed and yellow-haired characters in The Boxcar Children. My brother and I would take turns every library trip in dropping off the money for the used books. That was the highlight of the trip. Sometimes we’d drop off only a dollar’s worth of coins, but other times, the coins would spill out of our hands as we trudged over dutifully to sacrifice our silver tributes to our paper gods.

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The Family illustrated by sichen grace chen

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Ava ’23 probably hasn't started yet.

Cindy ’22 is still laying in the grass.

Emily ’22 wants to be a lizard.

Grace X. ’24 is trying to keep her plants alive.

Christine ’24 cannot pronounce "literally" and "literary" differently.

Lauren ’22 is on her fifth cup of tea.

Jessie ’22 is asking for suggestions on what to do with her hair next.

Jess ’23 is scared of the dark.

Lisa ’22 is making playlists for every mood.

Charisa ’22 is still in her pajama pants.

Cece ’22 eats too many eggs.

Sichen Grace ’22 is boiling water for tea and coffee.

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