Issue 28

University of Michigan

Issue 28

w hA t t H E F YOUR IRREGULAR PERIODICAL

April 2024

Stella Fiorini Co-President Makayla Kelley Co-President Claire Gallagher Editor-In-Chief Tess Beiter Assistant Editor Morgan Butler Assistant Editor Dimitra Colovos Staff Writer Claire Emch Staff Writer Ruhi Gulati Staff Writer Isabel Hopson Staff Writer Anna Nachazel Staff Writer Isabella Oh Staff Writer Eliza Phares Staff Writer Liv Schafer Staff Writer Hanna Young Staff Writer Stella Moore Art Director Adelina Akhmetshina Staff Artist Lucy Bernstein Staff Artist Isabella Brown Staff Artist Nina Clark Staff Artist Maevis Rosengart Staff Artist

Naya Ramaswami Podblog Staff Suhani Suneja Podblog Staff Grace Fisher Co-Events Director Adriana Kelley Co-Events Director Shiloh Dunaway Events Staff Natalie Nedziwe Events Staff Bridget Scully Events Staff Rhea Sridhara Events Staff Sana Hashmi Marketing Director Logan Brown Marketing Staff Mary Corey Marketing Staff Ella Larsen Education Director Mia Staggs Education Director Autumn Drake Education Staff Alie Eardley Education Staff Arya Kamat Education Staff Emma Tiersten-Nyman Education Staff

Lydia Naser Layout Co-Director Elizabeth Wolfe Layout Co-Director Emma Christopherson Layout Staff Katherine Hurley Layout Staff Gabriella Mazal Layout Staff Nia Saxon Social Media Director Nicolette Bennett Social Media Staff Victoria Georgiev Social Media Staff Fiona Henne Social Media Staff Dylan Wade Social Media Staff Aayana Anand Co-Podblog Director Payton Aper Co-Podblog Director Paige Cook Podblog Staff Tahlia Davis Podblog Staff Larissa King Podblog Staff Shelby Jenkins Podblog Staff Grace Martin Podblog Staff

What the F is a non-partisan, non-profit publication operated

by students at the University of Michigan. What the F’s purpose is to encourage discussion on significant issues of campus, national, and world interest. The magazine, the executive board, and our sponsors do not endorse the ideas presented by the writers. We do, however, support and encourage different ideas in our community and in campus discussion.

WTF

Table of Contents

1 2 4 7 10 12 14 17 18 22 26 28 32 34 36 38 40

Letter From The Editor SITATAMD: The Husband Stitch Roots like Hands, Lift Us Up Do You Miss Wayne Like I Do? My Haunted University untitled Self-Sacrificial Friendship in She-Ra and the Princess of Power Blueberry Jam Why I Can Read Percy Jackson and the Olympians Lamb Racism Makes You Sick Fig Trees and Sleepless Nights Sustainability Shouldn’t Be a Women’s Issue When the Roots Ask You To Stay Speaking American Our Mothers Are Dying and We Are Not Doing Enough to Stop It The Nature of the Body

Letter from the editor Welcome to What The F, your feminist periodical!

Dear Reader, I am excited to share this magazine with you. I’m sad this is the last magazine I’ll contribute to, but very happy that this specific one is my last one. The theme of this issue was selected by combining two different pitches: one that suggested focusing on Mother Nature and one that suggested paying homage to What the F’s origins as a fact-based women’s health magazine. We settled on “Roots” to include both ideas.

It was cool to see the many different avenues writers decided to pursue with this theme. In these pages, you will find researched articles on the husband stitch, autoimmune diseases, and racial disparities in maternal mortality rates, articles that revive this magazine’s roots. You will find pieces on literal tree roots and stories that question what a person’s roots really mean, sharing the parts of themselves that live in TV shows, hometowns, and fig trees. *Content warning: this magazine includes discussions of sensitive topics, including violence, self-harm, and blood.

Everyone on the What the F team played a role in producing this magazine, from the artists creating wonderful illustrations of emotions and animals and bathroom stalls, to the layout team putting it all together and turning a bunch of sentences and images into an actual magazine, to everyone who reviewed drafts and distributed copies. I’m so grateful to have been a part of the What the F family.

But of course, I’m extra grateful to the writing team family who have been so amazing this year and have displayed incredible vulnerability in their writing. I always love seeing you all on Wednesday nights and am so honored to have had the chance to work with you all.

My favorite part of reading this magazine has always been feeling seen through someone else’s experiences and writing. Michigan is a very big school and the world is very big too. It’s very cool to read something that makes you feel less alone. Hopefully that happens for you or hopefully you learn something new! As sad as I am to graduate and leave college behind, I feel lucky to have been a part of these magazines, which I can keep around forever.

I know that even after I graduate, I’ll always ROOT;) for Michigan.

Love (so much),

Claire Gallagher Editor-In-Chief

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S OO AFRAID SHIT I’M I TOO R ID TO T ASK MY Y DOCTOR: CT 2

A topic where your doctor may be the most trusted source.

The

Husband

titch

By Dimitra Colovos What is the Husband Stitch?

The husband stitch is often referred to as a myth—its unethical and largely undiscussed nature leads many people to believe that it is not practiced in today’s world.1 However, it is not a myth; it is a real practice being performed on birthing people (sometimes with consent, but mostly without) in one of their most vulnerable moments.

The husband stitch refers to an extra stitch that a doctor can give to a birthing person when their vagina is being sewn back to its usual state after tearing during childbirth.2 Vaginal tearing during childbirth is normal; it occurs when the vagina is not able to stretch enough during childbirth due to pushing too fast, the baby’s size, or other factors.3 Nine out of ten birthing people have vaginal tearing during their first birth—the procedure to stitch a birthing person back up after birth is therefore commonplace, too.4 However, the husband stitch is a completely medically unnecessary stitch that is given to birthing people in addition to this normal set of stitches, all with the hope of adding extra tightness to the vagina to please their male partner during post-childbirth sex.5 During birth, the birthing person experiences a rush of hormones and new experiences that leave them vulnerable to making large decisions, or they may even be unconscious. In these moments, husbands may request the doctor make this extra stitch, or doctors may perform it without being asked. Some birthing people do ask for the husband stitch independently, but this doesn’t change the fact that the concept in itself only exists due to the pressure to return to “normalcy” for a man’s sexual pleasure with a post-childbirth vagina.

Without this concern, birthing people would have no reason to request this themselves.

Doesn’t a Vagina Do a Lot of Work Itself?

In my opinion, vaginas are magical. After a few weeks post-childbirth, the cervix will return to its usual place after expanding over the uterus, and the vagina will return to its normal shape and size—it’s a muscle made to expand and contract during childbirth!6 However, birthing people endure a lot during childbirth, and returning to the same tightness and sensation or healing any incisions or tears can take weeks or months.7 The husband stitch has no medical benefits.8 There is no reason to make the vaginal opening “tighter,” as not only will the vagina return to near- or full-normalcy itself (which is a beautiful trait about vaginas), but the stitch has not been proven to add a difference that partners can feel and can create pain during sex and urination for the birthing person.9 The practice started when episiotomies were more common, which are cuts made by a physician in the perineum (the tissue between the vagina and the anus) and vaginal wall in order to give more room for the baby to be born.10 With the repair of this tissue after episiotomies, physicians believed they could create an even better perineum than what was there before, so they added the husband stitch.11 The practice is declining in popularity today, and the decrease in the number of episiotomies could also help describe the decrease in numbers of the husband stitch occurring today.12

with vaginas more comprehensive rights related to their health.

With the varying degrees of human rights and bodily autonomy violations occurring around the world, the husband stitch must be included in the FGM/C dialogue.

Is My Doctor Going to Perform It On Me?

It is completely illegal to perform the husband stitch, and it is now considered malpractice.13 However, due to its intimate nature and the birthing person’s lack of awareness throughout the process, the procedure largely goes unnoticed and underreported. Statistics on the husband stitch are also hard to find due to these complications, and the stories that counter the belief that it is a myth are also becoming more obsolete.14 However, the slow disappearance of the practice does not represent a parallel dissipation of the gender roles and emphasis on women as sexual objects in our society.

Along with the lack of statistics on the practice, I have found most of the testimonies of the husband stitch on sites such as Quora and Reddit. Users on Quora offer responses to “How many women get a ‘husband stitch’ after giving birth? Do most women ask for it or is it the doctor or husbands choice?” with a range from jokes to physician advice to testimonies.15 One user responded, “Believe it or not, I’ve had a couple of men actually ask me to do just that. My stock response - ‘if you were a little bigger you wouldn’t need a husband stitch’ Generally shuts the conversation down pretty quickly.”16 Another user offers, “Honestly, I prefer my now ex wife, not to be Stitched, neither did she, we always had a very active sex life which included ‘fisting’ which she asked for. So stitching wasn’t wanted.”17 Differing reasons for refusing the stitch aside, the general consensus is that the people sharing their experiences on these sites oppose the procedure, so it is hard to say who is out there still approving of it.

Where Does This Practice Occur?

The husband stitch has been recorded in many countries all over the world, but these present-day stories of it appear mainly in the United States and United Kingdom.18 However, it is important to note that the husband stitch fits into the WHO’s definition of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).19 FGM/C is practiced all over the world, mainly in Africa, along different cultural lines.20 According to the WHO and prominent U.S. health organizations, there needs to be an immediate end to FGM/C around the world, and there are U.S.-involved efforts to stop it.21 This isn’t to say that these practices should not be stopped and that the U.S. cannot have a powerful part to play in this effort, but with the U.S. so focused on playing savior over other parts of the world that have this practice baked into their cultural history, the country is letting its Western-world favoritism blind itself to the practice occurring at home and the more immediate chances to stop it. FGM/C is one of the most inhumane practices occurring around the world, and the U.S.’s effort to advocate in ending it must include efforts in its own country to allow women and people

How Do People Get Away With This? How is This Still Happening Today?

Without a complete dismissal of the myths that vaginas are permanently loose after childbirth or of the pressure on women to look and feel a certain way to appease men, the husband stitch will not entirely disappear. Despite the legal precautions to guard against the practice, practitioners who should worry about malpractice are still performing it. Beyond this gendered issue, the lack of reporting of any legal action against providers who have performed this stitch represents the power dynamics at play between patients and providers, leaving vulnerable patients (such as those going through a life-changing experience like birth) susceptible to believing in their providers to a dangerous extent. Birthing people, and patients at large, deserve to feel safe in medical spaces, rather than feel it is their responsibility to make sure their male partner and provider don’t make this decision without them.

Works Cited 1.

Carrie Murphy. (Aug 2023). Why the ‘Husband Stitch’ Isn’t Just a Horrifying Childbirth Myth. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/husband-stitch-is-not-justmyth 2. Ibid.

3. Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists. (Feb 2024). Perineal tears during childbirth. Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. https://www.rcog.org. uk/for-the-public/perineal-tears-and-episiotomies-in-childbirth/perineal-tears-duringchildbirth/#:~:text=Up%20to%209%20in%20every,are%20minor%20and%20heal%20 quickly.

4. Ibid.

5. Korin Miller. (September 2023). What Is a ‘Husband Stitch’?. Health. https://www. health.com/condition/pregnancy/what-is-a-husband-stitch 6. Lucinda Starr. (September 2023). 7 totally normal ways your vagina can change after birth. Kin Fertility. https://kinfertility.com.au/blog/vagina-afterbirth#:~:text=weeks%20after%20birth.-,Does%20your%20vagina%20go%20back%20 to%20normal%20after%20birth%3F,couple%20of%20weeks%20or%20so.

7. HealthPartners. (Feb 2024). What to expect after giving birth and the postpartum recovery process. HealthPartners. https://www.healthpartners.com/blog/what-to-expectafter-giving-birth/#:~:text=How%20long%20does%20it%20take,of%20tiredness%20 to%20hormone%20fluctuations.

8. Carrie Murphy, 2023 9. Ibid 10. Royal College, 2024 11. Carrie Murphy, 2023 12. Ibid 13. Dr. Sruthi M. (Feb 2024). Is the Husband Stitch Legal?. MedicineNet. https://www. medicinenet.com/is_the_husband_stitch_legal/article.htm#:~:text=Conducting%20 the%20husband’s%20stitch%20is,through%20a%20medical%20malpractice%20lawsuit.

14. Carrie Murphy, 2023 15. Quora. (2020). How many women get a ‘husband stitch’ after giving birth? Do most women ask for it or is it the doctor or husbands choice?. Quora. https://www.quora. com/How-many-women-get-a-husband-stitch-after-giving-birth-Do-most-women-ask-for-itor-is-it-the-doctor-or-husbands-choice 16. Ibid 17. Ibid 18. Saarrah Ray. (April 2021). The Husband-Stitch: Could it be Female Genital Mutilation?.

Durham University. https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/ethicslaw-life-sciences/about-us/news/obstetric-violence-blog/the-husband-stitch/ 19. Ibid 20. World Health Organization. (Feb 2024). Female genital mutilation. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/female-genitalmutilation 21. Ibid

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By Liv Schafer

4page #

If a tree falls in the forest, do the other trees perceive it? Lonely as arboreal life may seem, the answer is yes. In a silent copse, there is vibrant chatter. Trees are in constant conversation with their neighbors, sending unseen molecular messages through their roots. These aren’t exactly social chats, though—crucial survival information is being exchanged. During times of distress, drought, or disease, a tree will signal to the others, warning them, giving them a chance to engage their defense mechanisms. When insects burrow, an infested tree will sound an alarm urging nearby trees to produce enzymes that ward the bugs off.1 In death, a tree’s carbon reserves are not lost to the worms but redistributed to neighbors, regenerating the forest even as it loses a member.2 A fallen cedar’s final gift, the molecules it passes on to live in others, a wordless goodbye.

the government to lift the fire ban and listen to Indigenous voices.8 Forest restoration efforts are now stronger because of the traditional ecological knowledge contributed by Yurok people and other Native tribes. Their cooperation with their home forests is reflective of their intimate understanding of interdependence in ecosystems.

Trees are connected to each other by vast networks of ultra-fine fungal threads that embed in their roots and extend deep into the soil. The fungi draw in essential nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen through their far-reaching tendrils and deliver them to trees. In return, trees contribute between 4 to 20 percent of the sugars produced in photosynthesis to the fungi, who are unable to produce their own food.3 To call it an alliance would be an understatement—neither group could exist without the other. This symbiotic exchange is the product of millions of years of coevolution.

Mycorrhizal fungi, as they are called, serve as a permanent messaging system between trees, referred to by some scientists as the “Wood Wide Web.”4 They are so integral to our ecosystems that 90 percent of terrestrial plants are connected to mycorrhizal networks.5 There’s an entire world beneath our feet that Western science is only just discovering. What took so long?

I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one who’s lonely right now.

I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one who finds hope to be a slippery, fragile thing lately. I look around and see so many young souls struggling to connect to each other, to something bigger, to themselves. Zoom out, and I’m met with the reality of so much needless human suffering, our world at the mercy of systems so enormous and enduring that I feel helpless to change them. Colonial greed for land, capitalist greed for wealth, tapping the future and draining its promise just to have moremoremore nownownow. The forests and the fungi remind me: none of the hierarchies embedded in our society are encoded in our DNA. We have control over what we pass on.

What we learn about biology is often framed through the lens of natural selection and competition. When we think about the wild we imagine creatures being pitted against each other to fight for resources, where only the strongest survive. I don’t deny the usefulness of this framework, but I want to call attention to the ways it has been influenced by human constructs. I can’t help but see the parallels between the “wild” and our capitalist society that teaches us to only look out for ourselves and blames us when we fail.

If we're in the business of anthropomorphizing, why don’t we discuss the way “mother” trees serve as hubs in these mycorrhizal networks, distributing the excess nutrients from their countless mycorrhizae to younger, less well-connected trees? Or how in doing this, they seem to show a preference for their kin?6 Why did I never know how the birch and the Douglas fir—supposedly competing species—share resources with each other like friends, the firs supplying leafless birches with sugars in the winter, and the birches sharing their sugars with shaded firs in the summer?7 The cutthroat survival of the fittest doctrine cannot explain these phenomena, so Western ecologists never looked for the cooperation and reciprocity that were right in front of them—it didn’t fit their narrative. If they looked past the story they’d been told, though, it would seem obvious that trees would survive better in healthy, stable forests, and that they could benefit from their neighbors’ success.

The hierarchies created by white, European settlers served their desires for domination and wealth, but greed made them blind to the careful stewardship that had gone into developing their precious commodities, deaf to the Native American people practicing controlled burns in West Coast forests and their warnings that banning fire would disrupt the balance of the ecosystem. Colonizers uprooted tribes, stole their land, logged their trees, and didn’t care that in their absence the forests withered. Species like the hazel plant, which the Yurok people used to weave their baskets, couldn’t grow without fire. Even as white settlers began to wonder why only firs were growing (their leaves blocked sunlight to slower-growing oaks, who used to have a chance when firs were burned out), it took over a century and far too many overgrowth-fueled wildfires for

A girl whose roots never quite made it past the cracks in her suburban sidewalk might wonder what all this has to do with her. A life unmoored has afforded her freedom, but never the strong ties that could harbor her through turbulent times. When they come, she decides there is something wrong with her because she can’t weather them alone. She gathers up her loose ends and holds them closer to herself, thinking it will protect her.

Not unlike trees, humans have evolved to depend on others for survival. Our brains only got this big so we could communicate with each other effectively, cooperating as a group was how we hunted game big enough to feed everyone.9 Our infants are helpless for far longer than any other mammals’.10 We live in groups. We seek approval and connection and conversation. We create for each other and enjoy what others have created for us. We, I think, can agree that other people are the only thing that give our lives meaning at all. Humans have always needed each other; we did not evolve to get in Black Friday mall fights over the last 75 percent off Samsung flat screen.

The capitalist hellscape we live in does a terrifyingly good job of turning us against each other. Interdependence sounds way less nice when it refers to the child laborers we rely on to power our iPhones.11 Privilege insulates people from the type of need that drives cooperation, so much so that when they see this desperation on someone else’s face, it is unfamiliar, too foreign to elicit empathy.

They turn away. The same way I have turned away when asked for money on the street. By trying to ignore how wrong it feels, I deny the humanity of the person I brushed off. The closer I look at my own aversion to giving (and asking for) help, the more I must confront the cushion that protected me from material need for most of my life.

The more I see just how suffocating this cushion is.

In the absence of privilege, out of the need to survive, marginalized groups across time and the world have engaged in reciprocity and used it to empower themselves under power structures that exploit and deprive them. Mutual aid, a form of organizing that involves collaborative, unconditional resource-sharing, was based upon observations made about evolved cooperation mechanisms in the natural world.12 In contrast to charity, a one-way flow of resources controlled by people who’ve never experienced the problems they seek to alleviate, mutual aid emphasizes that communities are capable of helping themselves. By strengthening solidarity through mutual support, people become more resilient to attacks on their rights by those in power. An illustrative example of this is the free breakfast program the Black Panthers started in Oakland, CA in 1969. The party identified hunger as a primary obstacle to success for many Black children in the area, and by pooling resources and building food networks they were able to provide free breakfast to

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20,000 children in just a year.13 Not only were the children finally able to focus on school instead of wondering about their next meal, but they also gained a sense of trust and support within their communities. The Panthers’ sharing of food symbolized a concern for the welfare and futures of Black children never expressed by the neglectful government, the wealthy white neighboring communities, or the police force these “concerned neighbors” had at their disposal.

So revolutionary was this type of cooperation that the FBI labeled the program as a threat14—networks established to feed Black people might just lead to their liberation. Similar models of aid have been used to achieve justice in many other movements, and as we continue fighting for the climate and our own futures, we should bear their success in mind. It’s hard for roots to intertwine when they’re all gathered hesitantly in your arms, scared this is the… wrong place? ..wrong people? ..wrong time? to set them down. We’re taught to not plant ourselves too firmly in any one spot so it’s easier to pick up and leave should greener pastures call our names. The kind of interdependence that would release us from having to carry our burdens all alone has been demonized to the point that we can’t even see how much more fruit we could grow if our foundations were stable, our soil made richer by friends a call away. Reliance on others feels like weakness, un-American even. Adulthood in our country is synonymous with freedom and independence—to do it all on our own is a luxury, a privilege (wait, no, I mean… we live in a meritocracy!

It’s totally always accessible if you just try hard enough!). But then how do so many people achieve complete autonomy and still find themselves struggling, just as empty as they were before? Maybe our definition of success is the root of the problem.

2.

There’s a certain shame associated with asking for help that cuts through our personal shit right down to the classist, capitalist foundation of our social structure. Welfare, food assistance, and unemployment checks are seen as “handouts” to “burdens” on society, tax dollars “wasted” (please see: the U.S. military budget).

You even have to work up the courage to ask a friend to drive you to the airport because well there’s always Uber or paid parking and they are so busy, their time is so precious, and will you venmo them for gas? To be in need is to be vulnerable, and when we shy away from this vulnerability we lose the opportunity to extend our hands, in asking or in offering.

13.

A picket fence separated the cherry tree in my yard from our neighbors’ birch; I’m not sure if they had a fungal bond. Still, we brought them a cherry pie in June and borrowed their sugar instead of going to the store. When I grew out of my clothes I brought them in a box to a younger girl down the road. Some of them had come to me in another box, from another girl. I didn’t think we were doing anything rebellious at the time, but I see now that even our small, neighborly reciprocity was revolutionary.

It’s natural, lending a hand. If our roots make us loyal, to our land and our loved ones, we can decide that it’s worth the trouble, to lean and be leaned on. What better to bind our communities than trust that we’ll be caught when we fall? What better to ground us to the earth than the promise of tomorrow and the day after that? I’m not under the illusion that everyday altruism will stop our forests from dying, or solve systematic oppression. Intentional, important work is necessary and already happening to combat these wrongs. I do believe that regularly tapping into our humanity, our compassion, will make it harder to sit on the sidelines while there’s still work to be done. What we decide we owe each other, our dedication to our communities, and the way we shepherd future generations will be what saves us. With roots tangled together, hands clasped in solidarity, we find our solace and our strength in each other.

Works Cited 1. War, Abdul Rashid et al. “Mechanisms of plant defense against insect herbivores.” Plant signaling & behavior vol. 7,10 (2012): 1306-20. doi:10.4161/psb.21663

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Flannery, Tim, and Peter Wohlleben. The Hidden Life of Trees. 2017, openlibrary. org/ books/OL28775734M/The_Hidden_Life_Of_Trees.

Grant, Richard. “Do Trees Talk to Each Other?” Smithsonian Magazine, 15 Sept. 2021, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084.

Grant, “Do Trees Talk to Each Other?”

Behie, Scott W et al. “Nutrient transfer to plants by phylogenetically diverse fungi suggests convergent evolutionary strategies in rhizospheric symbionts.” Communicative & integrative biology vol. 6,1 (2013): e22321. doi:10.4161/cib.22321 The Mother Tree Project. “About Mother Trees in the Forest - the Mother Tree Project.”

The Mother Tree Project, 28 Mar. 2023, mothertreeproject.org/about-mother-trees-in-theforest.

Simard, Suzanne W. et al. “Reciprocal Transfer of Carbon Isotopes between Ectomycorrhizal Betula Papyrifera and Pseudotsuga Menziesii.” New Phytologist 137.3 (1997): 529–542. Web. Buono, P. (2020, November 2). Quiet fire. The Nature Conservancy. https://www.nature. org/en-us/magazine/magazine-articles/indigenous-controlled-burns-california/?utm_ source=Western%2BCohesive%2BStrategy%2BNews&utm_campaign=075c094767Cohesive_Wildland_Fire_Strategy_Western_1_5_2018_C&utm_medium=email&utm_ term=0_46a4d00425-075c094767-208612505 Tomasello, M., Melis, A. P., Tennie, C., Wyman, E., & Herrmann, E. (2012). Two key steps in the evolution of human cooperation. Current Anthropology, 53(6), 673–692. https:// doi.org/10.1086/668207 Kidd, C. (2016, October 13). Did human-like intelligence evolve to care for helpless babies? News Center. https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/did-human-like-intelligenceevolve-to-care-for-helpless-babies-162202/ Popescu, A. (2023, April 13). Your iPhone Was Built with Child Labor. https://www.thefp. com/. https://www.thefp.com/p/your-iphone-was-built-with-child Kropotkin, P. A. “Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution, by P. Kropotkin.” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 4, Dec. 1903, pp. 702–05, doi:10.2307/2140787.

Pien, Diane. Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast Program (1969-1980) • 6 Mar. 2023, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-panther-partys-free-breakfastprogram-1969-1980.

Do You Miss Wayne Like I Do?

By Morgan Butler

M

ichigan Avenue runs right through Wayne, my hometown. No, not Wayne County. Wayne. The city.

It only stretches itself to six square miles and sits between the bigger and more economically prosperous Canton and the just as small but more widely known Inkster. Wayne’s population, as of 2020, is around 17,000 with a poverty rate of 17 percent.1 Michigan Avenue straddles Downtown Wayne leaving four lanes of traffic on either side of the city center.

The area consists of a Chase bank, scattered businesses and neighboring abandoned storefronts, a church, a bar, the post office, and a McDonald’s that was once a family-owned pancake house. You’ll find every major retail and grocery store outside of city limits. It takes anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes to drive from one side of the city to another. I lived, slept, and studied in Wayne for 18 years. I grew up there and grew to hate it all the same.

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When I was picked to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at city hall, like my older brother had four or five years before me, I remember writing an essay. I wrote about wanting to graduate valedictorian from Wayne Memorial High School, be the first in my family to go to college, and become an anesthesiologist (because my mom told me they made over 200,000 dollars and I didn’t know anyone except my mom’s boss that made anything close to that much). Teachers noted my ambition and gave me extra work, extra praise. They recommended me for advanced classes in middle and then high school. My mom took note too and before even beginning 9th grade, she told me Wayne Memorial had a college preparation program for prospective first-generation college students called Upward Bound. A girl she knew had done Upward Bound and was a chiropractor now. So, I applied, was accepted, and went on to do as any high-achieving, people-pleasing student would from the ages of 8 to 18: I did all my homework, took every volunteer opportunity and AP class I could, was elected Class President all four years, and graduated a valedictorian. When my mom went to Wayne Memorial and the class of 1998 gathered at freshman orientation the principal told her to look to her left and then look to her right; “only one of those people will graduate in four years.” The speech has since faded, but the sentiment lingered.

I was one of three Wayne Memorial students to be accepted into UofM my year, and the only one to attend. When I arrived in Ann Arbor, I missed my family, but their absence was temporarily replaced when campus' lush lawns and verdant trees filled my senses. I was spending time outside, walking everywhere, even on the sidewalks of downtown. It didn’t even matter that the soles of my feet ached at the end of each day or that my backpack was suffocating my back, slicking it with sweat as I walked into my first college classes. For the first time in my life, I was asking people where they were from. Most people who live in Wayne have always lived in Wayne. My mom grew up on Winslow Street, rented a house around the corner with my aunt, and eventually bought her own house, back on Winslow Street. I grew up two houses down from my grandparents, a one-minute walk to my mom’s childhood home. When people in Ann Arbor asked where I was from, I always answered the same way: “No no, it's in Wayne County. It’s like 30 minutes from Ann Arbor. Do you know the Ikea in Canton? Yeah, it’s next to that.” I met people whose parents went to the University of Michigan, whose parents had jobs that had to do with art, or were doctors and CEOs. I had a network. They liked my pink glasses, took me to Sava’s to eat when

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their parents visited, and helped me create my first resume.

On my first car ride home, I sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window as the landscape grew grayer, trash piled up to line the streets, and no one walked past on the sidewalks downtown. I compared it to the green city of trees and bike lanes I was becoming used to. Gone was a familiar route to Wayne Memorial, in its place was something I didn’t know how to be proud of. I turned to my mom and said “It’s ugly here.” We laughed.

I spent my first college summer in Ann Arbor, exalted by the freedom I possessed. I got up early each morning and walked to the bus station for my commute to the summer camp I was working at. When I got home, I’d walk again, but this time in the opposite direction, to the Arb. I would sit and breathe in the fresh air. I’d usually grab my journal and jot down a thought or two about not feeling understood by my family. At night, I’d venture downtown, donning the tan I got from a day’s work and play.

Sophomore year, while I cut command strips in half so I had enough for the posters on the walls of my dorm, my mom had to pack all our things into a storage unit and move into my grandparents’ home for “the time being.” Now it’s her, my uncle, my nana, my papa, and me under the roof of a one-story bungalow. My mom lives in the basement. My bedroom doesn’t exist. So, I spent last summer living in Detroit, taking classes with UofM, and doing an internship with the education justice coalition “482Forward.” The move was a desperate plea for independence, but I thankfully got much

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more out of it than my own bedroom. I met people who lived in a city that many have few good words for. Yet, they all stayed.

I returned home from Detroit in August, in more ways than one. My papa rebuilt my bed in the basement with the help of my brother, hung up a curtain, and moved a cabinet to give me some privacy. My mom came home, hollow-eyed and tense from work, and made me go on walks. When I spent all day in bed, skipping any meals I could, she would make me take one lap around the block with her for fresh air. Even at 10 p.m. She’d answer my questions about my childhood, laughing over the time I sleepwalked into a pile of laundry as a baby and comforting me when I cried because her immense love hadn’t been enough to make my dad stick around 12 years ago. My nana held me together when I realized that everything I believed was bad luck for our family, all the dropouts, addictions, and early deaths, could be explained by my shiny, soon-to-be Bachelor’s degree in Sociology.

When I came back to Ann Arbor this past August to start my third year, I was dealing with the worst skin I’ve ever had and a gnawing hatred for the city itself. After 3 months in Detroit and one at home, I wasn’t convinced that Ann Arbor was as genuine as it was pretty. With all its lawn pesticides and trash that it hands off to Wayne County.2 With all its “victors” that can’t define inequity in our discussion section and tell me I’m brave for being first-gen. But then again, this year I’m meeting more first-gen students, taking a class dedicated to it. Their eyebrows don’t raise when I tell them my mom graduated high school 9 months pregnant. Or that my family doesn’t understand discussion sections and GSIs. Or that I have no clue what graduate school even is. The network continues to grow and connects me closer and closer to home.

Ann Arbor could never make me hate Wayne forever, but it could ask me why it matters to grow up there. And it could answer for me. I missed a class to attend an open house with my mom. We’re moving back to where we lived when I was a kid, back in Wayne.

amongst people who never walked around the corner to spend the afternoon at my aunt’s house playing The Game of Life, but only The Simpsons’ version. Who never walked from Hoover Elementary to my nana’s house to play mahjong on the TV and eat comically large bowls of cereal and grilled cheese that my papa cut into squares. I couldn’t breathe in the company of people who never sat in Stockmeyer Auditorium to watch the spring musical or attend a school board meeting and call for the removal of their superintendent who was setting a new low for teacher retention. People who never went to every football game despite the fact we almost always lost. People who didn’t care that my parents didn’t go to college because theirs didn’t either—almost no one’s did. I missed the broken tiles and tattered couches from my home and my high school library. I missed my friends that I made 10 years ago when I still thought I could sing on Broadway. The ones I still talk to, the ones who I made read this piece before it was published to make sure I captured Wayne as is.

When my appreciation for the opportunities that Ann Arbor gives me and my true love for the city that gave me my life collided, it made me feel like I had to save one from the other.

I begged the universe to let me go on loving Wayne. I wished for more time to be a kid, riding my bike to my mom’s work, competing with my brother over who could recite the alphabet the fastest. I wanted to go back to before someone made me feel like the best decision I ever made was leaving. Before I thought I outgrew the city entirely. I hopelessly wished that the entirety of my dreams could live within the city limits and cried in my kitchen when I knew they never could.

So, I’ve settled on taking Wayne with me.

Works Cited 1.

2.

U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). QuickFacts. United States Census Bureau. https://www. census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/waynecitymichigan/PST045223 Garcia, W. (n.d.). Circular Economy. City of Ann Arbor. https://www.a2gov.org/ departments/sustainability/Sustainability-Me/Pages/Circular-Economy.aspx

I left to get better, to recover from what I thought was a generational curse, but I only found that I could barely breathe

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10

my haunted university

By Em Laffey there’s a murmur / in my head in my ears / my eyes / can almost make it out strained / to make it out foot. step. foot. step. foot. step. foot. step back / lights out as the desks become tombstones / stones farther than my eyes can make out with names of people i don’t know / i’ll never know / how can i know how hard they tried but i know they tried how much blood can you lose until it’s too much outnumbered and unwanted and — i don’t know which is worse blatant hatred or meaningless promises of of what? even they don’t know their words spew out so beautifully so well rehearsed / so rehearsed / these words and statements and promises and / they’ve lost all meaning in these holy grounds after all it’s not theirs / they didn’t make it out / can you / make it out my voice will anyone hear it will you hear it c-can i make it out alive can i —

this poem was not finished due to the author’s absurd amount of work* *work for a paycheck because they never knew a savings account *work on studying because there’s no backup for failing *work for good grades to win scholarships *work on applying for scholarships to pay for school * work until i’m —

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By Claire Jumper— My father used to ask me if I’d had sex yet Gallagher every time I saw him. Order whatever you want

sweetheart, have you had sex yet? Merry Christmas, have you had sex yet? Which exit should I take, have you had sex yet? The answer was always no and even when I got older and the answer was yes, the answer was still no— my father gave me the cross that hangs from my rearview mirror and I defended him to my friend Jenny when he slapped her ass at my ninth birthday party. Her eyes were big and round and I told her, a bit irritated, that he did that to me all the time.

My father told me that once when he was ten, his mother had shaken him awake before the sun rose, buckling him in the car and driving him through pale morning rain. She’d pulled over on the Golden Gate Bridge and gotten out and hiked herself up

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onto the edge and leaned. And he’d gotten out too and cried and held onto her ankles and waited for the moment to pass. The moment passed and his mother never tried anything of the sort again all the way up until she drank herself to death.

I never put much weight into the story. My father lied to an almost pathological degree. I don’t know if a ten-year-old boy’s hands can reach that high.

After I had sex for the first time though, I did feel like waking up somebody’s son and buckling him in a car and leaning off the Golden Gate Bridge. I still feel like that sometimes after I have sex. And after I’ve washed my sheets and my pillowcases and my comforter and I’ve scrubbed my skin pink and changed my underwear, I can still feel a hand between my legs and a nose behind my ear and I never feel new again.

Coyote—

A coyote ate my neighbor’s little dog last year. They’re omnivores, they’ll even eat carcasses. My neighbor found her dog a puddle of mismatched bones and skin. Coyotes are monogamous. They mate for life. I had this boyfriend I thought about eating. I thought about feeling his veins empty themselves on my tongue and about chewing the fat in his cheeks. I pictured the tendons at the backs of his knees threading between my teeth. I wanted to gnash his bones and suck their marrow. I worry that I’m similar to my father in this way, in the way that he couldn’t ever let a girl go until he’d eaten her whole. In the way that he could live off of the salt in the sweat on their skin.

In the second grade, we made paper models—they had to be as big as we were—of our favorite animals. I cut two sheets of paper from a roll and colored it red and brown. I stapled one side and stuffed it with old shirts and cotton balls and stapled the other side. We brought our animals to class, sharks and cats and giraffes and ladybugs, and waited in line to get a length of string from the teacher. My coyote swung above my desk for the rest of the year.

Wife—

Your father thanks you for not crying when your dog dies because your sister is crying enough for the both of you. You’re so very grown up, so very strong. He praises you for folding the laundry in the neatest way (he could never do it like you) with his boxer briefs tucked in at the corners. He asks you which shirt looks best for his job interview. When you complain about being taller than all the boys in your class, he tells you that he’s always found tall women the sexiest. He looks disgusted at your short skirt, the first time you realize someone could be looking at your legs as anything other than practical.

I thought I might sneeze. My cheeks were smashed to hers again. And the mosquitos zipped around. And I thought of my father.

I’ve thought of my father at many inappropriate times, when I’m staring at the ceiling and it feels like I could fit myself into the water damage in the corner, and they would go on fucking my body below without noticing. I’ve thought of him on walks home and thought of him when I’m tired, when I twist his ring, and when I pray in my room to stop wanting but to be wanted forever. I’ve tried to find him between boys’ ribs, beneath my skin, but I feel closest to him when I feel most myself and I feel most myself when I look in the mirror and am surprised that my reflection moves when I do. When I talk and can’t place the sound of my voice and I give myself orders.

Blink, sniff, scratch, kiss, bite.

Bleeder—

My blood won’t stay in its place. It floods my body and bloats me. I am full of blood. Uncomfortably full. I think that if I can get it out of me, I will feel better. I want to leech myself clean of it, to do away with it and be lovely, bloodless sheets of skin.

I could be filled with old shirts and cotton balls instead.

I picture my body rotting in water a lot. My skin bloated and mottled with green and blue and seaweed ribboned through my hair. It’s in my dreams, flies carving at my eyeballs I think would eat me clean, eat me clean, eat me new. I like the word hereditary. There are sharks in the San Francisco Bay. There were fathers and stepfathers, a teacher with a tumor in his brain, boys in hot tubs and friends with confessions. There was the one I almost ate. They’ve been lovely and foul-smelling and all liquid hard to hold in my hands.

He finds lots of things at the bottom of a glass, the beautiful, crystal glass you use like a kaleidoscope. He finds appreciation and girlfriends and recipes and tiny, wonderful clay figurines and vows to get clean and electric blankets. Mostly he finds warnings for you about what this world will want with you.

You’re the meat on the spit now, the fire in someone’s loins.

He lets you eat pizza, chips, ice cream (with chocolate sauce).

He buys you a ring you don’t take off. He goes to rehab a few times. You google what rehab is. He cries easily these days.

Apologizes for it, which makes him cry harder.

Lover—

I had a crush on this girl whose eyes reminded me of a snake’s.

Once, some guys invited us over for a party, but it was really just the four of them chipping our teeth with liquor bottles and telling us to kiss each other in the hot tub. I’d wanted to kiss her for months. Wanted to know how soft the skin in the indent of her collarbone was. So when one boy’s hand palmed the back of my head and shoved my face against hers, I didn’t resist. I could hear them around us, shoving each other, splashing the water, chattering nonsense that filtered into mosquitos flitting in the space between my ears. I pulled away when vomit pooled at the base of my throat. I thought about letting it come up and wondered if I would prefer their disgust to their desire. Someone gripped my chin and poured more liquor down my throat. It splashed up into my nose so that

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Self-Sacrificial Self-Sacrificial Friendship Friendship in in She-Ra She-Ra and and the the Princesses Princesses of of Power Power

By Anna Nachazel

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ND Stevenson’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power exists in an interesting cultural space. Netflix released the TV show in collaboration with Dreamworks in 2018, likely assuming it would be a surefire success given its status as a reboot of a show that the millennial parents of today’s kids grew up watching. More accurately, She-Ra is a reboot of a spin-off of a show based on the He-Man toys, a fact so painfully postmodern that it makes me physically cringe. Given the long history of the She-Ra IP, you might expect Stevenson’s reboot to be a middle-of-the-road, milquetoast cash grab. I was certainly suspicious before I watched it. But, I had heard about the show from a community I trusted, my fellow children’s animation queers, so I gave it a shot.

strength as She-Ra to the rebellion, betraying and abandoning Catra in the process.

There was a period in the late 2010s where the best representation many queer people could find was in shows like Steven Universe, Voltron: Legendary Defender, and The Dragon Prince. Queer, online spaces were filled with edits of characters from animated children’s shows and posts recommending the same four or five shows to watch. She-Ra was among the most popular shows to discuss, especially in sapphic spaces (where it reigned supreme until 2020’s The Owl House joined the mix). Its popularity was bolstered by its hilarious side characters, distinct art style, and its sometimes-villain-always-love-interest, Catra.

In this piece, though, I want to focus not on the silly quotable moments, but on the show’s main character, Adora.

Though she’s not the most popular character in the series–that title definitively belongs to Catra–Adora is very important to me.

Throughout my entire life I’ve always felt strange. I mean that in the least “not like other girls” way possible. I wish I was more like other girls. I wish I was more like other people in general, but my brain chemistry cocktail seems firmly set against me in that respect. My own mother once called me “a niche interest.”

When I was chatting with two of my friends about what actors we would want to play us in a movie, I was told I would be “hard to capture.” I get what they mean by that. I’m contradictory.

The logic of my actions and choices isn’t always clear to others.

But there is a logic to them and watching Adora’s story–her contradictions–helped me better understand myself.

When we first meet her, Adora is a teenage soldier for an evil army called the Horde that is trying to take control of the planet Etheria from its magical princesses. She is an orphan who was taken in by the Horde as an infant because one of their leaders sensed potential in her. Adora’s upbringing is far from perfect.

She is held to impossible standards and when she doesn’t meet them, her best friend Catra is punished. But, she is about to be promoted to Force Captain, something she has been told was always her dream. Then, one day, Adora decides to sneak out of the Horde’s base in an effort to cheer up Catra. They commandeer a hovercraft but quickly end up in a forest with trees so tight it becomes difficult to steer. Adora is knocked off the craft by a vine and she falls into a clearing where she sees a mysterious sword.

She picks it up and her world changes.

The Sword of Protection turns Adora into a princess (or at least that’s what she thinks). Specifically, she becomes the eightfoot-tall mighty warrior princess of legend, She-Ra. When two members of the rebellion against the Horde (aka the Princess Alliance), one of them a princess herself, chase down the sword and Adora, hijinks ensue and friendships begin to form. Adora finally sees the world as it is and realizes that the Horde’s conquest is hurting Etheria and its people. By the end of the two-part pilot, Adora has chosen to leave the Horde and lend her

Adora is, to some extent, a classic fantasy hero. She’s naive thanks to her isolated upbringing. She has a special power she doesn’t understand and a heart of gold. But, she’s also traumatized from her upbringing and She-Ra isn’t afraid to engage with that. Adora is a contradictory character. She can be arrogant and controlling while still doubting herself and her value. Adora takes everything seriously while still being goofy enough to lead a comedic cartoon for kids. These contradictions aren’t jarring, however, they mesh together to make her a more well-rounded character.

As a child, I had a best friend who I was routinely made responsible for the way Adora was made responsible for Catra. In a flashback in the season one episode “Promise,” we see a young Catra and Adora playing in the Horde’s base. They eventually find the door to their abusive mother-figure’s room open and they decide to investigate. When they are caught, their abuser uses her magic to hurt Catra. Adora protests and is told by their abuser, “Adora, you must do a better job of keeping her under control. Do not let something like this happen again.” The harm done to Catra is thus framed as Adora’s fault and, since she’s a child, Adora internalizes that framing and takes it upon herself to prevent further harm.

My childhood best friend–who I’ll call Rose for this piece–and I didn’t have an adult threatening violence against one of us, but I felt responsible for protecting her. Rose had a lot of health issues when we were kids. She had severe allergies to several common ingredients like milk and wheat as well as a habit of fainting. She was also impulsive and took risks that she maybe shouldn’t have.

Because I was around her all the time and I was regarded as the mature one, adults expected me to protect her. I learned to read before she did and I remember being asked to check food labels to see if the ingredients were safe for Rose as early as Kindergarten.

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In second grade, she fell off a play set while playing tag and cut open her lip. The sight of blood and the dizziness from the fall made her faint. I called off the game and gathered my friends to help me carry her over to our teacher, who hadn’t noticed that there was anything wrong. When all the girls were gathered for “the talk” in fifth grade and made to watch a film about periods, Rose passed out into my lap. Her eyes were still open so I thought she was joking. I pulled her back into her seat and she vomited all over her desk.

We grew apart as we got older but I still watched out for Rose. In middle school she had a different type of health issue. She and a couple of other girls from my grade started meeting up in the bathroom to slit their wrists with rusty nails. Two other girls and I set up a watch so that none of the girls who self-harmed went to the bathroom alone. At the end of seventh grade, I toured a different school. I was starting to get bullied pretty badly. Another girl had thrown a formaldehyde-soaked starfish leg at my head during biology class. Throwing things at my head was a common pastime for my classmates, but the starfish seemed excessive. Rose messaged me and told me that if I left her she would kill herself.

So, I stayed. Eighth grade was worse than I expected but Rose lived through it and we parted ways when we entered high school.

Even after Adora left Catra and the Horde, she couldn’t shake the impulse to take responsibility for others and the feeling that she was only worth what she provided to others. In the final episode of the show, Adora decides to sacrifice her life to save her planet and her friends. Before she does so, she is confronted by the previous She-Ra, Mara, who asks her what the cost of her sacrifice will be. Adora replies, “It doesn’t matter. [She’s] She-Ra. This is what [she is] supposed to do.” In a way, it’s the only thing Adora knows how to do. Her strength leads people to expect her to tackle the problems that are too scary for everyone else. The childhood lesson she learned–that she is responsible for every bad thing that happens–taught her to accept any and every burden she can find.

Like Adora, I have trouble not taking responsibility for others’ safety and happiness. My best friend’s threat of suicide linked those two in my brain. If someone is unhappy, they are unsafe, and it is my responsibility to fix that. I let my sister take a puppy I’d trained and raised because she was depressed and said she needed a companion. In my sophomore year a couple of my “friends” figured out that I would listen to them whine about literally any problem they had for as long as they wanted without kicking them out of my room. I ended up pulling multiple all-nighters because I was scared they’d get mad if I kicked them out. A guy led me on for months and then told me he didn’t feel the same way. I ended up comforting him during the conversation where he ended things because he looked sad.

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While I’m grateful for the empathy that my childhood with Rose instilled in me, I hate the anxiety that comes along with it. I can’t stop befriending broken people. I can’t leave people even when they hurt me. I can’t even leave Rose. She texted me during the writing period for this piece. I responded and she trauma-dumped about her life and made me feel guilty for not looking out for her more over the years. Even my positive friendships feel deeply onesided because I am afraid to be honest or to share the problems in my life. I don’t blame my friends for our dynamic, but part of me resents them. I get tired of people only coming to me to complain or to ask me to fix their problems for them.

I have become hypervigilant. Sometimes, in crises, that benefits me. Junior year of high school, a different best friend fell unconscious into my lap and started to seize. Everyone else, including the teacher, had no idea what to do. I kept my head on straight, laid her down, and called for help. But most problems aren’t crises and my brain doesn’t understand that anymore. I started having panic attacks my junior year every time I thought one of my roommates might be mad at me. I’ve had two separate, months-long periods of suicidality in college and both were caused by someone telling me I wasn’t a good enough friend.

To be honest, as cruel as those comments were, they were fair.

I’m not a good friend. I don’t know how to love without a motive.

When I express kindness or affection, it’s a defensive move. It rarely comes from a genuine place. Other people notice someone is upset and say or do something kind for them because they love them. I say something kind because I’m scared of a danger I can trace but not name. It feels like whatever capacity I have for platonic love has been completely overtaken by my anxiety. I’ll be there for someone when they’re in crisis, but I often end up ignoring my friends when they seem okay because I don’t even know how to interact with someone who isn’t crying or screaming anymore. I almost never seek people out. I count it as a good week if I spend most of my time sitting alone in my room.

I am not an eight-foot-tall glowing warrior princess. I can’t be responsible for everyone in my life and I shouldn’t have to be. Sure, I’d love to solve every problem in the world but that isn’t realistic. But I can’t live my life to be someone’s (or even everyone’s) friend. I end up a worse friend when I try. If you read this piece and know the exhaustion and anxiety I’ve described, I’m sorry. I don’t know how to fix that protective instinct or the many side effects it brings along with it yet. But, I can refer you to a piece of advice given to Adora by her predecessor, Mara, “You’re worth more than what you can give to other people. You deserve love, too.”

Blueberry Jam

By Hanna Young

i was made by my mother’s side at the kitchen counter warmed under the soft lights and molded by gentle hands marked by cuts and calluses it was a place of creation and gathering there my mother and her friends stirred and chopped gossiped and lamented it was a sort of unspoken covenant a secret coven where i was welcomed with a bushel of fresh herbs held to my nose and a taste-testing spoon pressed to my lips i was afforded a place of honor perched on a stool cocooned within the steam floating from the stove and echoes of women’s laughter there was a certain sanctity in the way they danced around each other across the cracked wooden floors practiced and timeless the room held its own rhythm filled with the clanging of pots and the bubbling of fresh blueberry jam simmering alongside the congregation’s voices which rose and fell in time with the excitement garnered by each secret shared between grown women with white at their temples giggling like young girls as they pressed heaping spoonfuls of roasted berries into my small hands it was an education in the sharing of sweetness

this room was their temple cooking a sacred rite performed selflessly and joyfully i was an eager disciple absorbing the shining smiles and mischievously rolled eyes i breathe in the scent of fresh fruit and melting sugar feel it settle in my bones it feels like belonging and home now i dance about the kitchen alone my bare feet pad across the seamless tiled floor as i stir and chop my hands gentle but firm bubbles pop across the surface of molten berries and sugar and it sounds like a chortling laugh the warmth of the oven cradles me in a soft embrace the scent of sweetness surrounds me pecks me lovingly on the cheek my roommates come home and i welcome them with pastries slathered in jam waggled under their noses we sit at the counter and talk between too-big bites laughing till we cry then crying till we laugh sugar coats our smiles blueberries stick to our teeth and i realize belonging and home feel like my friends’ soft smiles and taste like my mother’s blueberry jam

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Why I Can Read Percy Jackson and The Olympians

By Anna Nachazel

I know I’m certainly not the only one out there with a deep emotional connection to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians books, but given the theme of this issue and the recent announcement of the renewal of the television adaptation, I can’t help but talk about Camp Half-Blood. For the sake of keeping things fresh, I would like to write this piece not only as a fan, but as a less-than-credible, deranged theorist investigating what exactly made these books so loveable.

I come from a family of readers. My grandmother was an elementary school English teacher and she instilled a love of reading into her children, one of whom even became an English teacher himself. My siblings tore through Harry Potter, The Inheritance Cycle, and The Rangers’ Apprentice.

But, though I’m an English major now and spend hours every day reading literary theory by choice, I could not read as a child. It wasn’t that I lacked the skill. Thanks to my then-undiagnosed ADHD, I had trouble focusing on long pages of text.

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But then—and this is embarrassing for me to admit now—I watched The Lightning Thief movie with my siblings (who had read the book) and eight-year-old me developed a crush on Logan Lerman. So, I gave the Percy Jackson books a try, and found that I could read them without my brain drifting off to other things. In fact, I could tear through one of the books in just a day. For those who haven’t yet read them, the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books follow their titular main character—a half-human son of the Greek god Poseidon—as he discovers his identity, embarks on quests, and fights Kronos, king of the Titans. In the first book, he embarks

on a quest to retrieve Zeus’ master bolt and prevent a war between the gods. It’s also important to know that demigods like Percy almost universally have ADHD and dyslexia because their brains aren’t wired for modern society. They’re meant to be reading Ancient Greek, not English and they have trouble sitting still because of their battle reflexes.

It is my personal belief that one cause of the series’ popularity is that they are easy to focus on.

If a kid like me who didn’t even have the patience to get through a Magic Tree House book was enthralled by a 300+ page novel with no pictures, there must be something special about it. Or, perhaps, multiple special things working together to make the book as interesting as it is. Since this is a piece about focus, I have arranged my ideas for what contributed to the books’ accessibility into a helpful numbered list to keep both this essay and its readers focused.

1. Percy’s Wit 2. Strong Emotions and Action 3. No Filler Chapters 4. Mystery Before I proceed, I want to share a brief disclaimer. I have ADHD-combined type, which means that I experience both hyperactive and inattentive symptoms of ADHD, but my brain isn’t going to work exactly like the brains of every person with ADHD or even those with the same subtype. In this piece, I am simply theorizing about why these books worked for my brain and brains similar to mine. It’s entirely possible that someone with ADHD could hate Percy Jackson or like the series for different reasons than I do. Like any group of people, ADHDers are diverse.

Percy’s Wit

Percy Jackson is a hilarious narrator and the way he thinks makes it so clear that Riordan— who is a parent of a child with ADHD (and dyslexia) and a former teacher—is familiar with ADHD. I find Percy very quick-witted. His jokes come quickly enough that I don’t get bored between them. But, while you have to take my word for the quality of his jokes, I can provide evidence regarding their quantity. One of my favorite YouTubers, Drew Gooden, made a video back in 2018 called “Efficiency in Comedy: The Office and Friends” where he compared The Office and Friends to see which show had more jokes in a 22-minute episode. When counting jokes, he included any clear attempt at humor even if it didn’t make him laugh. Using that definition of a joke (a clear attempt at humor), I counted the number of jokes in Chapter 6 of The Lightning Thief, “I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom.”

I chose this chapter solely because it’s my favorite and I wanted to reread it (I told you I’m less-than-credible). Large chunks of it are taken up by serious conversations Percy has with Annabeth and Luke. But in total, I counted 58 jokes in this 18-page chapter, most of which come from Percy.

It’s difficult to know how efficient this comedy is without something to compare it to.

Since I used Drew Gooden as a reference point for my methodology, I figure I might as well compare Percy Jackson’s efficiency to

that of Friends and The Office, but to do so I will need to convert my data from jokes per page to jokes per minute. When I first read this book back in the third grade, I was testing at an eighth-grade reading level, which meant I could probably read about 200 words per minute.­1 I picked a random page from Chapter 6 and c ounted the words: 240. I’m guessing it was a little longer than the average page, as there was minimal dialogue, but using 240 we can estimate that Chapter 6 is 4,320 words long, or that it would take eight-year-old-me about 21.6 minutes to read. This is roughly the same length as the runtime of the episodes of Friends and The Office that Drew Gooden used in his video, which had 121 jokes and 166 jokes respectively.2 Now, I know that 58 sounds small compared to 121 and 166, but I want to remind you all that Percy Jackson is not a comedy series. It’s a middle-grade fantasy that manages to be funny while telling a well-constructed

dramatic story. It’s also a textual medium and not an

audiovisual one, so it misses out

on the opportunity for visual and

audio gags, which Friends and

The Office both employ. It’s

honestly very impresive

that a fantasy book is

able to tell almost half the

amount of jokes in a

Friends episode in one

chapter. I still

believe that its

comedy is

efficient given

its genre and

medium, and

that efficiency

certainly kept

my wandering

brain engaged.

strong emotions and action

Percy Jackson is funny but I also want to acknowledge

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how good the series is at handling emotional and action moments. Percy’s fatal flaw is personal loyalty. The first three books focus on quests where he has to rescue a loved one—all of whom are characters the audience cares about as well—so the stories feel important and high stakes. If eight-year-old me put down The Titan’s Curse, then I would have to wait to see how and if the heroes rescued Annabeth, a character I adored and hated seeing in distress.

The books have strong emotional moments, but Riordan doesn’t usually linger on them too much, especially in the early books. Percy is pretty out of touch with his emotions and awkward when he’s young, which is kind of perfect. In The Sea of Monsters, Percy meets his half-brother Tyson, who is a Cyclops. The two are friends, but Percy is a bit embarrassed by his brother, who the other kids see as strange and monstrous. At the end of the book, Percy tries to apologize for the way he’s treated Tyson but gets embarrassed and trails off. The young audience knows that he’s sorry but doesn’t have to sit through a big emotional conversation.

Instead, Tyson misunderstands him and explains his perspective, in which he sees Percy as a gift from their father Poseidon to whom Tyson prayed for a friend.3 It’s incredibly sweet and the conversation moves really quickly and has a twist in it, so it doesn’t get boring and sappy which eight-year-old me would’ve found irritating.

The action of the series is somewhat thin in the early books but quickly amps up as Percy grows more powerful. The fifth book is almost entirely dedicated to the Battle of Manhattan between the demigods (led by Percy) and the evil Titan forces.

It was the least humorous book of the five (in my opinion) but the strong action kept it interesting.

No Filler Chapters

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Another factor that kept my young brain engaged while reading The Lightning Thief is the consistent strength of the chapters. Every chapter in this book is either funny or action-heavy and most are both. The weakest chapter, in my opinion, is Chapter 14, “I Become a Known Fugitive.” The first half of this chapter is on par with the rest of the book. It depicts a scene where Percy discovers he can breathe underwater and is told by a mysterious

voice that his father believes in him and to come to Santa Monica. It’s dramatic, engaging, important for the rest of the story, and Percy learning about his powers is funny. The second half is weaker, but not weak. We learn that the press is taking notice of Percy and he summarizes what happened in the previous chapter to his friends. It’s about as boring as the book gets, given that the reader already knows what happened in the last chapter, but Riordan knows his audience. He condenses most of the summary into just one line: “I told them the whole story of the Chimera, Echidna, my high-dive act, and the underwater lady’s message.”4 In fact, all of Chapter 14 is condensed— it’s the shortest in the book at only seven pages.

Even when the book slows down, it’s only for a pit stop. The next chapter introduces Ares, the god of war and a major villain, and throws us back into the action.

Mystery

In addition to being a fantasy story, The Lightning Thief is a mystery. Percy is trying to retrieve Zeus’ lightning bolt, but he’s also trying to figure out who stole the bolt and framed him as the thief as well as which friend is going to betray him (which a prophecy told him would happen). There’s nothing my brain loves more than a puzzle. There aren’t a ton of clues—it’s no Nancy Drew novel-–but there is still a challenge in the mystery. Knowing there was a traitor around Percy and a thief on the loose made me look investigatively at every character and gave me something to read for. If I’m being honest, I cared more about the traitor’s identity than I did about the impending war between the gods when I was a kid. I didn’t really understand what war was—and I know I’m very privileged for that—but I did know what it was like to be betrayed by a friend. Like the other two points, the mystery helped keep me engaged in the story by promising a payoff and providing a puzzle for me to fiddle with in the meantime.

Conclusion

Percy Jackson and the Olympians started as a story told for a kid with ADHD and that influence can be felt through the series in both its form and its content. It’s well-paced and its chapters are tently high quality. Percy is maybe the only main character of a book or movie series that is also a huge

huge chunk of the fandom’s favorite character.

How many people say that Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker are their favorite characterss from their franchises? Percy manages to be a naive main character whose shoes are easy for readers to put themselves into while also being the series’ main comic relief, the emotional heart of the story, and the strongest fighter in basically every scene he’s in. He’s a force as a character and Riordan struck gold with him. Percy never gets boring and that’s an amazing thing in a narrator. The format of the series—quest narratives with a mystery at the core—is intellectually engaging and the series benefits from it greatly.

Bonus: Annabeth Chase

I would like to tack on a fifth point to the list of reasons I love Percy Jackson. I didn’t include it in the initial list because I don’t think this love stems from my ADHD—I think it stems from my gender. When I was a kid, I was a bossy, academically-focused, blond little girl with blue-gray eyes and a fear of spiders. Like a lot of little girls, I thought I was the second coming of Annabeth Chase, a daughter of Athena and one of the main characters of the series. Even our first names are similar. Annabeth was everything that I was while still being cool, something I never really achieved. She was a role model for me and an easy Halloween costume. I was so excited when Mark of Athena finally came out and we got to focus on her. Her battle of wits with Arachne is my favorite thing Riordan has written.

Part of the reason I bring up my childhood allegiance to Annabeth is to prove that it is possible to love book Annabeth and Leah Sava Jeffries’ version of Annabeth in the new Disney+ show simultaneously. Jeffries’ speech in Episode 5 is one of the strongest acting moments in the show so far and yet I’ve seen so many people say horrible things about this 14-year-old actress online. A lot of it clearly stems from racism, misogyny, and the intersection of those two. Even if she was a bad actress, which she’s clearly not, most of what I’ve seen is unwarranted. I understand that by putting yourself in the public light, you are opening yourself up to criticism but, again, she’s 14. When I was that age, I felt like there was a permanent spotlight on me

highlighting my flaws for everyone to see and mock, and I was a random high school student in southeast Michigan.5 Jeffries is actually in the spotlight and some people who proclaim that they love Annabeth have levied so much hatred towards her.

If you want a blonde Annabeth, go read the books—she’s still there and she’s still an excellent character. Don’t add to the pile of hatred against a talented young woman who has done nothing to deserve it. We did not lose representation for smart, confident blonde girls. We gained representation for smart, confident Black girls.

Nothing was taken from those of us who saw ourselves in the books’ version of Annabeth because the books still exist. The show has to be allowed to do new things or there wouldn’t be any artistic point of making it. It would just be an unnecessary cash grab if it didn’t add or change anything. Personally, I’m really glad that Riordan and the team took the risk of casting Leah Sava Jeffries and I hope she knows that this smart, white, gray-eyed, former blonde is rooting for her.

Works Cited 1. Terry, Bonnie. “Average Reading Speed (WPM) by Age and Grade Level.” Scholar Within, 30 Nov. 2023, scholarwithin.com.

2. Gooden, Drew. Efficiency in Comedy: The Office vs. Friends. YouTube, 30 Apr. 2018, Efficiency in Comedy: The Office vs. Friends.

3. Riordan, Rick. The Sea of Monsters. Disney Hyperion Books for Children, 2006. (263) 4. Riordan, Rick. The Lightning Thief.

Paperbacks for Children, 2005. (217).

Disney/Hyperion

5. In case you need another reason to love her, Leah Sava Jeffries is a Michigander, too! She went to school in Novi before becoming famous.

6. Hinds, Julie. “Metro Detroit Tween Lands Role on Disney+ Series, Faces Racist Backlash on Social Media.” Detroit Free Press, Detroit Free Press, 14 May 2022, www.freep.com

21

Lamb

By Claire Gallagher

One

Summers in Gold Valley were lazy from the heat. The town was small and close-knit, with TVs that picked up five channels. The houses were short, the lawns manicured, the high school football team revered, and the residents gossipy. To survive the

summers that burned dogs’ paws and melted makeup like wax, wives poured lemonade and husbands talked golf and kids spent all day peeing in the public pool.

In the forested area at the edge of town, Camp Gold Lake ran for three weeks in July. The air smelled of sweet bark. The lake was big and great and

sparkly, dusted with a ring of pebbleless sand. The trees were a wonderful shade of green that the grass on the lawns in town would not turn, to the residents’ great chagrin. At Camp Gold Lake, campers canoed and swam and made lanyards and competed for a plastic trophy painted gold with nail polish. The Gold Lake Hangman struck in 1976. Handjob Helen was the first to go.

A lamb was following Ollie that summer, his first as a counselor. He’d just finished his second year in college and had no alternatives to returning to Gold Valley. It was free of charge to stay at his mother’s house.

The lamb appeared at camp— at the foot of his bed at night, curled peacefully into a crescent roll, hooves tucked and ears soft.

It appeared under his lifeguard stand, brown eyes scanning the sand and the water beyond. It appeared in the dining hall and in the showers and by the volleyball net like a shadow snatched from his body. Ollie didn’t believe there had ever been lambs in Gold Valley. No, he was certain of it. He had never

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seen a lamb before now. He thought perhaps the heat was going to his head.

On the night of July 13th, far past curfew, Ollie walked along the dock.

Helen walked backward before him, swaying slightly and throwing her head back when Ollie made her laugh.

The white of her sundress seemed to glow in the dim light of the moon and Ollie thought to himself that Handjob Helen really was quite pretty. Ollie had been neither cool nor uncool in high school, remembered as nice if not a bit strange, given his fascination with picking the wings off flies. He was still a bit taken aback by attention from girls, but he felt he could relax around Helen, and that night he’d made a daisy chain that he fastened around her first two fingers. They sat on the edge of the dock with their sneakers skimming the top of the lake, kissing and sharing a cigarette.

Ollie ran his fingers along Helen’s collarbone and wondered what the bone would feel like on his tongue.

Helen told Ollie that she’d wanted to be a ballerina, but that she’d had scoliosis and ballerinas can’t have scoliosis.

Ollie asked Helen if she saw the lamb watching them from the water, the top of its white head breaking the inky surface. Helen shivered and told Ollie to stop trying to scare her.

Ollie pinched his forearm and looked again. Ripples circled the lamb’s head. A drop of water perched on its nose. Helen slipped the straps of her dress from her shoulders and pressed her lips to Ollie’s neck. The lamb’s ears twitched.

In the morning, Helen’s campers found their counselor floating in the water, a veil of early fog encasing her body. Her long hair parted itself evenly and hung low in the water.

Three mayflies skimmed the skin on her back.

The counselors sat in the dining hall that night and whispered to each

other and one counselor slipped in their speech and said Handjob Helen instead of Helen or Helen Summers or my sweet, beloved friend who braided my hair for me just hours before her death. The other counselors tsked and said shame on you. One accused the other of having thought of the nickname in the first place and the accused argued that he wouldn’t have had to think of the nickname if Helen simply had not given out so many handjobs. Two laughed and one burst into tears.

The authorities ruled the death an accident. There was alcohol in her system and Helen wasn’t a good swimmer. There was no danger to the camp, beyond girls with loose morals, but nonetheless, the camp was advised to close for the summer.

The campers had friendship bracelets to finish and so they wept and begged their parents to let them stay, and the counselors calculated how much money they still stood to make and spit in their palms and shook on it and decided to stay too. Helen’s campers were moved out of their bunks and into cabins two, three, and five. The camp set an earlier curfew and the next day there were waffles for breakfast.

A week later, Ollie and the lamb sat in the trees behind a clearing and watched the three young boys who huddled around a bush they’d set aflame. The pudgy red-haired boy that the other kids called Ginger Lightning lay on his stomach with his chin resting on his hands watching the fire that flickered in the center of the trio. To his right was Pippy, one of Ollie’s campers who always won the canoe races and made the girls blush and was all-around kind of an asshole. On the left was a boy who’d bleached the ends of his hair and whose name Ollie could not remember.

Ollie pulled a blade from his pocket and began slicing an apple, alternating between cutting pieces for

himself and cutting smaller pieces for the lamb, who chewed its treat with its mouth closed. The lamb cocked its head at the boy with the frosted tips, who was examining a speckled lizard that he’d skewered on the end of a stick. The lizard thrashed, its tail painting wide arcs in the air as the boy watched.

Pippy scowled and turned his head away while Lightning watched the lizard burn. The lamb turned away and nuzzled its head against Ollie’s knees. Ollie patted its back affectionately. He enjoyed the company of the lamb more than he’d been enjoying the company of his fellow counselors. Around them, he found he had to think very hard about what to say and how to sit and what the proper amount of beer to drink was. The lamb was not so difficult.

The boys around the fire spoke of who they would choose for their tugof-war team and of Pippy’s whore mother who’d cheated on his father.

The one with frosted tips turned the lizard round and round and round, belly to back to belly to back like a marshmallow he hoped would catch aflame so his friends would shriek and puff their cheeks until they’d blown it out. The circular motion was lulling, blunting Ollie’s senses until all he could hear was the crackle of the flames and all he could feel was the thin fur above the lamb’s nose.

The three boys’ bodies were not found until the next evening, faces milky and leeched of the blood that dampened their clothes. The small community flew into a panic. One drowned girl was an accident but three gutted boys and one drowned girl was murder. The papers named the killer the Gold Lake Hangman, which the Hangman thought was quite silly seeing as he hadn’t hung anybody, but he supposed Gold Lake Hangman had a better ring than Gold Lake Killer. The camp closed and everyone was sent home. And though the Hangman had grown fond of his

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friend, he believed this business with the lamb was finished.

Two

The lamb followed him to his bedroom. It lay on his bed with its hooves tucked beneath its body like a loaf of bread. The Hangman smiled and sat down beside the lamb. He heard his mother and his sister downstairs in the kitchen, their voices distant like they came from the radio on the coffee table. His mother had fussed over him when he first came home, saying he looked skinny and pale despite the time he’d been spending in the sun. The Hangman had called her annoying, but when he looked in the bathroom mirror, he saw that the circles under his eyes were purple and blue and ugly. Some good rest was what he needed. He lay back on top of his comforter and closed his eyes. The darkness behind his eyelids seemed to move and fall like waves pulled by tides. The lamb nudged its nose under the Hangman’s head, burying its face in the crook between the Hangman’s thumb and forefinger until he lifted a hand to pet the top of its head.

The Hangman spent the week in his room, opening and closing his shades and only opening the door for the sandwiches his sister left for him. She forgot to add lettuce sometimes, and once the sandwich was only bread and mayonnaise, but she was only ten and she always cut the sandwiches into hearts, so the Hangman did not mind. He peed in bottles that lined the space under his desk. The lamb went for walks on the roof outside the Hangman’s bedroom window.

He tried to talk about the dead kids with the lamb. The Hangman told the lamb that he could not remember.

He remembered Handjob Helen’s collarbone and Pippy’s smug face and the speckled lizard and in the mornings following, his hands had been pruny and wrinkled or left with blood beneath his fingernails. He’d

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look at the lamb very sternly and very disapprovingly and the lamb would close its eyes and jerk its head away from him. The lamb would protest that Helen was a slut and Lightning was lazy and Pippy was self-obsessed and Frosted Tips was mean and there was so much evil in the world, so, so much evil, but that he, the Hangman, was good. This would satiate the Hangman until the next time he felt remorse. And nobody came for him.

Male Counselor 1 had a party that weekend. And when someone suggested that that idea was disrespectful to the dead or maybe just stupid with a killer on the loose, Male Counselor 1 replied that it was precisely because of the tragedy at Camp Gold River that they had to have a party. They had to have a party in honor of the dead eighteen year old and the three dead ten year olds. They had to have a party to celebrate that they were in fact still alive.

So that Friday, the Hangman weaved through cul-de-sacs and front lawns with his hands in his pockets, swaddled to the point of sleepiness by the wet air that lay thick around him.

And a lamb followed in his wake.

The Hangman found Male Counselor 1 first. He had drank himself to unconsciousness and lay slumped in the bathtub missing his pants.

The Hangman peed and washed his hands. On his way down the hallway, the Hangman spied Male Counselor 2 sneaking into the master bedroom and taking a watch from the bedside table. The Hangman pulled the watch from Male Counselor 2’s limp wrist and placed it between the lamb’s teeth, who trotted over to the table and put it back in its place.

He then went outside to rest on a pool chair. He had only just sat down and begun to watch two girls swimming topless when he saw Holly from cabin three lead Amy from cabin three’s boyfriend behind a tree. They came out from hiding twenty minutes later with their faces considerably more

flushed and Holly’s hair in tangles.

The Hangman sighed and rolled his eyes. The lamb told him his work was never done. When he’d finished with Holly, he saw the light to the upstairs bathroom flick on and heard a scream.

The Hangman was angry at the lamb as they walked away from the party down the lamplit streets of Gold Valley. That was silly, the Hangman told the lamb. Not very careful or clean. The lamb hung its head as it walked alongside, accepting its reprimand with downcast eyes. The Hangman did not want to be fried, lying behind the glass with the black eyes of his victims’ families melting his skin. No, when he had fantasized about his death he had imagined wading into the water of Camp Gold River, the camp he’d spent every summer at since the age of five, with rocks tied to his feet, sinking to the bottom to sleep with the fishes.

And now the lamb had ruined everything.

Three

When the Hangman reached his house with the blue curtains and the wrap-around porch, he sank down onto the couch with a sigh, patting the cushion next to him where the lamb hopped up to sit. His head felt very heavy as though it might loll off his shoulders if he tilted it one way or the other and it seemed as though his vision had been fractured into four lines of sight rather than two.

After his arrest, the Hangman’s mother hired the Lawyer and they sat and discussed a football team’s chances of making it to the Superbowl and then the Lawyer told the Hangman that he was a nice boy from a nice family and the jury would see that. The Hangman told the Lawyer that the lamb had made him do it.

The Lawyer said they’d have a hard time with that angle. The Hangman asked what angle that would be and

the Lawyer frowned and squinted and the Hangman looked a bit frightened.

From there, the Lawyer found and gathered together all the Hangman’s scripts for Klonopin and Haldol and Imipramine and Tegretol and Miltown and briefly pondered if he’d ever had a truly insane client.

On the first day of trial, the Judge said The People vs. Oliver Walter, and juror number five, mouth very gummy and right eye frosted with cataracts, turned to juror number six and said that she didn’t trust anyone who had a first name for a last name no sir, not one bit. When they televised the Hangman walking out of the courtroom, his suit was sharp and his teeth were white, and when he addressed the cameras his voice was smooth and low and the reporters thought to themselves, why would a handsome man like that want to murder anyone?

It was after a couple days of trial, during which photos of the Hangman were circulated around the nation, that the organization Women for Oliver Walter (WOW) was formed in support of the Hangman. WOW maintained that the Hangman was a victim of his mother, poisoned by pills that ate away at his mind until he finally snapped. They pointed to the Hangman’s father, who had left his family when the Hangman was twelve, as evidence, drawing the conclusion that the Hangman’s mother had driven his father away.

They wrote blog posts that featured black and white photos of the Hangman as a little boy paired with photos of his mother with her eyes scratched out. They held fundraisers to pay for his legal team and sent the Hangman so many gifts in prison that he thought himself richer as a prisoner than on the outside. The Hangman had a great number of these women propose to him, so many, that by the end of his trial, the Hangman had made promises of marriage to fifteen women, to be fulfilled as soon as he was released.

The trial was slow. Photos upon photos of the crime scene were shown to the jury and it was difficult to decide which was more compelling— photos of dead children or the length of the Hangman’s eyelashes. The Hangman told the jury of the lamb while petting its ears beneath the stand and frowned when members of the jury snickered. At some point in the trial, a tabloid magazine leaked Handjob Helen’s naked photos and the Lawyer’s friends took him out to celebrate. The Prosecutor told the Judge that they wanted an eye for an eye, The Hangman’s life for the seven he took. The Hangman protested that he was the punisher.

He asked how he could be punished for being the punisher. And everyone sat back for a moment and thought about that question and the Hangman piped up again and asked who would punish them for punishing him. And someone in the jury covered their mouth and booed. In the end, the Hangman’s teeth and his pills and his bitch mother were all well and fine, but there were still seven dead kids and only one handsome face. The jury took a day to deliberate before the Hangman was declared guilty. His mother wept from the stands.

thought he might have truly loved Handjob Helen, more than he loved any one of his fifteen fiancées at least.

Four

On the walk to his death, the Hangman looked from side to side for his lamb and could not find it. His brain was a bit foggy from thoughts of impending nothingness and the starch content in his last meal, but he was fairly certain the lamb had just been in his cell with him.

As he sat in the chair, the Hangman told himself that the lamb would return as soon as he blinked or in the next minute or in the next three minutes and there was really no need to kick up a fuss. But as the time ticked by, and no little white lamb stood by his chair, the Hangman felt a sense of abandonment that made death seem like relief.

Through the window, he saw Handjob Helen’s mother, wet-cheeked in all black and he remembered seeing her from behind a glass pane quite some time ago, when she’d told him that her Helen girl had been good. She was good through and through.

The town of Gold Valley recovered.

The survivors of Camp Gold River and of Male Counselor 1’s party went on press tours and signed book deals.

The camp’s structures were converted into a murder mystery immersive experience. For Halloween, kids dressed in Camp Gold River counselor’s shirts and spattered themselves with blood, wielding axes and knives on their trick-or-treating routes.

During long nights in his cell, the lamb comforted the Hangman and reminded him that nobody truly great was ever celebrated in life. They’d all had to die to get their prize. His visitors and loyal WOWers dwindled until he had only a nun and five diehards to look forward to seeing.

The Hangman told the lamb that he

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Racism Makes You Sick

By Claire Emch

S

ickness doesn’t operate on equality and it’s not strictly confined to the laws of biology. The mechanism of disease is interesting to learn about, but what we don’t often get taught is how disease can affect people differently, just based on identity. Recently, I started a new job at a rheumatology office. If you’re like me, I had absolutely no idea what rheumatology was before I started working there.

Turns out rheumatology is one of the most complicated specialties because it deals with the study of inflammatory diseases that can affect one’s joints and organs. Inflammation can cause all sorts of problems like chronic pain, swollen limbs, and even organ damage.

For many rheumatology problems, there is no “cure.”1 On top of that, it’s difficult to diagnose and it can severely limit what one can do in their daily life. As I was learning about the main diseases of

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rheumatology, I kept getting stuck on how most of them affected far more women, especially Black women, than men. Some of it has to do with genetics and estrogen, but it’s also been shown that the environment can play a crucial role in activating these diseases.2 Take systemic lupus erythematosus or lupus for example. Maybe you’ve heard about Selena Gomez’s struggle with it or maybe you’ve never heard of it at all.

Bottom line: lupus is not fun. Like with all immune system disorders, lupus affects your body so that it can’t tell what is a foreign invader (like harmful bacteria) and what are your tissues. An autoimmune disease could just wake up one day and start attacking your cartilage for no reason.

Cartilage is the soft tissue between joints that stops your bones from rubbing together.

That’s why it doesn’t sound like a gravel machine or hurt every time you bend your elbow.3 But that’s not even the scariest part of lupus, it could also start to attack your organs like your kidneys or your brain, sometimes leaving permanent damage.

That all sounds scary, so now think about it this way: 9 out of 10 lupus diagnoses are women. Black women are 3 times more likely to have lupus, 3 times more likely to suffer kidney and heart damage from lupus, and 3 times more likely to die from complications with lupus than white women2. These are extremely worrying statistics.

You’re probably asking yourself, what about a Black woman’s body would put them more at risk for this disease? It turns out that the main reason is not mainly genetic, but environmental.

In a study done in Atlanta to observe the relationship between racial discrimination and lupus, Black women who experienced more microaggressions and overt racism exhibited more active presentations of lupus and more instances of severe organ damage.4 When ranking racial discrimination, 65.6 percent of the women in the study said they mostly experienced racial discrimination when trying to get service in a store or restaurant.5 This type of discrimination would most likely fall under the subtle racism described by microaggressions.

Microaggressions refer to acts of discrimination that can sometimes seem unintentional or explained away by those engaging in it. For example, clutching your purse when you see a Black man is a microaggression.6 In the study, the relationship between discrimination experienced and the presentation of lupus stayed consistent even after adjusting for indicators of socioeconomic status like education and income.7 What does this all mean? The term used by Arline Geronimus, a public health researcher at the University of Michigan, does a good job of summing it up. As she puts it, “weathering” is chronic stress that Black people and other historically marginalized groups experience throughout their lives from racial discrimination8. Stress is good at keeping you alive, but only in short bursts. If stress hormones are constantly pumping through your body, it’s like poison to your immune system9. It eats away at it until your

body is worse at responding to things like disease. In the context of this study, it means a body with lupus and chronic stress will start attacking one’s tissues even more than they usually would.

What’s truly important about “weathering” is that it’s not an all-out attack; it’s calling attention to the fact that small acts of racism, just like a little rain or wind on stone, can still make a huge impact in the long run.10 For those with lupus, it starts early, in the teens or early twenties, and it lasts the rest of your life.11 That means a life of wondering when you’ll experience a flare-up, if it will stop a kidney from working, if it will damage your heart.

Chronic diseases like lupus can also bring on anxiety and depression, which can then worsen the disease causing that worry in the first place.12 It can seem like a never-ending cycle, so it’s important to find the beginning.

“If you know the problem, you can find the solution.” It’s a popular saying in the office I work at. It’s sort of a joke because it’s so difficult to find the problem in the first place, much less the solution. The doctors perpetuating this phrase were talking about autoimmune diseases, but I think it also applies to the concept of microaggressions. Microaggressions are named because of how small and hard to spot they can seem. First named in the 70s, some definitions state that neither the perpetrator nor the victim can be consciously aware of the pain caused. This quality makes it even more dangerous.

When microaggressors aren’t held accountable and victims go on unaware of the chronic stress built up over time, it makes it harder to wmanage that stress.13 Overt racism exists and needs attention, but what the women in the study referenced (racism in the service industry), needs attention too. What people say, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem, can have monumental effects. Not only can it chip away at mental health, but it can also wear down the body. It makes people sicker.

Works Cited 1.

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Dee, J.E. (2021 May 11). 5 Reasons Why a Patient Should See a Rheumatologist. Yale School of Medicine. https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/5-reasons-tosee-a-rheumatologist/ Office on Women’s Health (n.d.) Lupus in Women. CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/lupus/basics/women.htm Cleveland Clinic Medical Professional (n.d.) Cartilage.

Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/ health/body/23173-cartilage Chae, D. H., Martz, C. D., Fuller-Rowell, T. E., Spears, E. C., Smith, T. T. G., Hunter, E. A., Drenkard, C., & Lim, S. S. (2019). Racial Discrimination, Disease Activity, and Organ Damage: The Black Women’s Experiences Living With Lupus (BeWELL) Study. American journal of epidemiology, 188(8), 1434–1443. https://doi. org/10.1093/aje/kwz105 Chae, D. et al.

Limbong, A. (2020 June 9). Microaggressions are a big deal. When to talk them out and when to walk away.

NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/08/872371063/ microaggressions-are-a-big-deal-how-to-talk-them-outand-when-to-walk-away Chae, D. et al.

Limbong, A. Davies, D. (2023 March 28). How poverty and racism ‘weather’ the body, accelerating aging and disease. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/healthshots/2023/03/28/1166404485/weathering-arlinegeronimus-poverty-racism-stress-health Davies, D. Lupus Primer (n.d.) Johns Hopkins Lupus Center. https://www.hopkinslupus.org/lupusinfo/#:~:text=The%20first%20symptoms%20of%20 lupus,skin%2C%20kidneys%2C%20and%20joints Lebel, S., Mutsaers, B., Tomei, C., Leclair, C. S., Jones, G., Petricone-Westwood, D., Rutkowski, N., Ta, V., Trudel, G., Laflamme, S. Z., Lavigne, A. A., & Dinkel, A. (2020). Health anxiety and illness-related fears across diverse chronic illnesses: A systematic review on conceptualization, measurement, prevalence, course, and correlates. PloS one, 15(7), e0234124. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234124 DeAngelis, T. (2009 February). Unmasking ‘racial microaggressions’. American Psychological Association, 40(2), 42. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/02/ microaggression

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FIG TREES AND SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

By Tess Beiter

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the conservative ideology that I was raised under. It’s one of the facets of my upbringing that has affected me on a fundamental level, and the persistence of its effects still shocks me to this day.

T

onight is shaping up to be the kind of night where I have to convince myself not to go for a drive. The living room around me is muted and empty, my roommates are asleep upstairs, and the only sound beyond the tapping of my fingers is the thoughtful creaking of the house around me. The night isn’t young—in fact, I told myself I’d go to bed more than an hour and a half ago. I’m supposed to be up in less than six hours, but despite my exhaustion, I can’t bring myself to pack up my things, brush my teeth, and get into bed. No, something deeply rooted inside of me demands that, against all reason, I leave the warmth of my home in the dead of night and drive aimlessly until I am lost on a country road with only my headlights and the dim glow of the stars to illuminate my way.

This, unfortunately, isn’t an uncommon occurrence for me. Ask anyone who knows me well about my sleep schedule and they’ll laugh at you. I don’t sleep all that much, and it certainly doesn’t follow a schedule. My problem isn’t quite insomnia, as I’m typically asleep within five minutes of allowing myself to crawl into bed. No, it’s more of an internal urgency that compels me to stay awake for hours later than I should and wake up after far too little sleep, bleary-eyed but determined to take on the day.

A part of this is certainly comical—an embarrassing number of people can tell you about the alarms I’m unable to hear or the time I fell asleep next to them, my head pillowed in my arms, at our table in the library. But the fatigue that has curled inside of me, gnawing away at my bones, isn’t all that funny. Every year, every semester, every month I tell myself that I’ll be better, that my chronic exhaustion is quite avoidable if I could just force myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour. And yet every night I find myself reading, or scrolling aimlessly on my phone, or flying into a panic and cleaning the room I’ve neglected as the hours slip away—whatever I can think of to fight against the basic necessity of sleep and wring every last drop out of life while I’m still conscious.

When you consider your roots, what comes to mind? Perhaps your hometown, your family, your ethnicity? All of these aspects, and so much more, are integral to who we are as people, but one of the first things that I think of when asked about my roots is

My parents are devout Catholics, which explains a few things about me: my six siblings, the private high school I attended, the religious roots of my birth name. For the first seventeen years of my life, I attended church every single Sunday morning—the nine members of my family would fill an entire pew, clad in modest dresses, sweaters, and button-down shirts. From a young age, a dangerous cocktail of rhetoric was poured down my throat. The blatant sexism, homophobia, and judgment of others paraded as spiritual concern that I was exposed to had quite an effect on my mind. I was taught to listen quietly, to never question what I was told, and to not only remember all of my sins but confess them out loud to an authority figure. I grew up attending pro-life marches and protests; I didn’t know that gay people existed until I was in the sixth grade. I lived in a bubble for the formative years of my life, and while the blissful ignorance was peaceful, it was just that—ignorance. I left that guilt-ridden mindset behind after years of shame and silent panic attacks in wooden pews and the unsettling feeling that how I’d always been taught to think was wrong. And yet I can never fully escape the effects of my religious upbringing; I am forced to confront it whenever I visit my family.

I can clearly recall the time my older brother explained the concept of parallel universes to me. I was around twelve, maybe, and went to ask him to explain the term to me when I first stumbled across it in a book. He was mowing the lawn and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirt as he cut the motor. He explained to me the theory that the choices we make split our reality, spawning a new universe in which you, for example, chose a different shirt to wear that morning. The larger the choice, the more divergent that universe would be, with the impact of your one choice rippling outward forever. As I began to grasp that concept, it chilled me despite the intensity of the July sun. After I thanked him, the hum of the lawn mower started up again and I returned to my book, haunted by the thought of countless versions of me living and laughing and suffering.

This concept has followed me since that day, and I often find my mind branching off into various paths of “what ifs.” Take my decision to study nursing. This was something I’d settled on back in middle school, and yet I can never quite articulate why.

Perhaps it was some innate knowledge that my fascination with anatomy and medicine and my critical thinking meant that the medical field was where I would be able to serve others to the best of my abilities. But despite my vague internal assurance that I wanted to be a nurse, I seriously doubted this decision in high school. It felt right, but since I couldn’t logically explain myself, was I making a mistake? Did I even have the capability to care for others that nursing requires? Why did everyone act like it shouldn’t be enough of an accomplishment for me? Should I instead apply to colleges with the intention to become a lawyer, editor, doctor, or any of the myriad options listed on the

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sheets the counselors handed out during career assemblies?

What if I ended up choosing the wrong path and regretting it for the rest of my life?

A large contributor to my affinity for nighttime is genetics, I think. All of my family members are night owls—we’ve been known to start board games or movies together past midnight. When we were younger, it was an unofficial right of passage to be allowed to stay up with the rest of the family. I still remember the night in early June when I was first allowed to ignore my bedtime and triumphantly play cards with popcorn-slick hands. Now that we’ve all been initiated into the nighttime festivities, our house is typically bustling later than most. And yet, despite my family’s shared tendencies, I am still always the last one awake, isolated in a bubble of light while the rest of the house stands dark and quiet. Wherever I am—home, college, vacation—I inevitably find myself awake and alone long after everyone else has turned in.

One reason for this is the peace of nighttime—the lack of external expectations for my time, the absence of my social anxiety since no one else is awake to judge my actions or appearance. The starlit calm of the night is lonely, but beautiful. The twisted part of it, though, is the more internally rooted type of anxiety I am overcome with during these sleepless hours, one that compels me to stay awake and squeeze every last drop of enjoyment I can from life. It’s the darker side of my perfectionism—a desperate, panicked feeling that I haven’t accomplished enough with my day and therefore don’t deserve to sleep until some nebulous measure of living has been reached.

My therapist, Faith, noted this when I was in high school; she told me that my sleep deprivation seemed almost intentional, perhaps a form of punishment I levied against myself. I’ve never been able to decide if I agree with her on that. Her statement brought a few memories to mind, though: the taste of the scalding decaffeinated coffee I sometimes drink in the evening to trick myself into staying awake, the bruise-colored circles beneath my eyes that never fully fade, the creased notebook paper my hand cramps over as I unnecessarily finish assignments at two a.m. If my sleep deprivation is a self-inflicted punishment, it’s a clever one—tempting hours of peace while the world slumbers, spent at the expense of my well-being during the following daylight hours. But all addictions are enjoyable, I suppose, at least until the side effects begin.

It’s a hard line to straddle, balancing the love I have for my parents with the knowledge that their beliefs are harmful and counterintuitive. And unfortunately, the line can only be toed so much; even as the most argumentative and assertive of my siblings, I still find myself keeping my mouth shut during many conversations that I fundamentally disagree with. The guilt that my silence has

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instilled in me is overwhelming, at times. It’s a strange perversion of the shame that religion instilled in me for every transgression I was made to confess while kneeling in enforced supplication before a black-clad priest.

But sometimes, it’s worth it to speak up, and the most immediate example of this is my parents’ vaccine hesitancy.

This was a new development during the pandemic, so my siblings and I thankfully received the majority of our childhood vaccinations—with the exception of the HPV vaccine, which they refused due to religious reasons. Over this past winter break, however, I expressed my decision to receive this vaccine course, and explained the research I’d done into its efficacy and safety.1 My mother immediately began trying to refute my points and spent upwards of twenty minutes attempting to convince me that it isn’t safe or moral, conveniently ignoring the research supporting that contracting HPV is much more dangerous than the vaccine itself. On this topic, I stood my ground—at the end of the day, my parents do recognize my autonomy and respect that I can make my own choices. I received the first dose a few weeks later and left the clinic with my left arm aching dully and a familiar ambivalence carving a hole in my chest. While I knew my choice was medically sound, the thought of my parents’ disappointment still weighed heavily on my shoulders.

However, there are quite a few topics that I am far too afraid to argue with them on, such as abortion rights. Some might call me cowardly for that, and at times, I certainly feel that way. But I know that, despite how arduously I debate or the extent of the research I am able to cite, my parents will never be able to see a view other than the one they cling to. Is it worth it to pull out my roots and burn the ground left behind? Is it worth destroying my relationship with my family to argue a view that I know they will never adopt themselves? As of now, I don’t think it is; my love for them and the life they’ve given me is rooted deeply enough to look past these faults, even as I change into someone they will never fully agree with. I have made the conscious choice to walk a knife’s edge between my past and future, my conservative roots and current worldview, hoping against hope that the guilt festering inside of me will not tip me off the edge.

In Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, the speaker at one point imagines her life as a beautiful fig tree, with infinite fig-tipped branches spreading out above her. She conceptualizes each purple fig as a path she can take in life: in one, she is a world-renowned poet; in another, she has a husband and kids; in yet another she is an Olympic athlete. However, she sits “starving to death,” unable to choose the singular path she wants to take in life because choosing one means turning her back on the rest.2 As she watches, paralyzed with indecision, the figs begin to rot and, one by one, her beautiful potential futures fall, littering the decaying ground around her feet. One of my close friends sent this passage to me when we were seniors in

high school, and it perfectly encapsulated the suffocation I felt when I envisioned my future. Here we were, standing on a precipice, making a set of decisions that would ripple outward forever and determine the course of the rest of our lives.

I brought these concerns to Faith, or maybe she teased them out of me during one of our sessions. Regardless of how the issue came up, I confessed that I couldn’t figure out why I was so internally set on nursing; it didn’t make any logical sense. It seemed so counter to my self-image, to how cruel and abrasive I was, and people always told me that I could do more. What if I was making a decision that I’d regret for the rest of my life? I remember Faith simply leaned back and smiled. She told me that it made perfect sense to her, and maybe the cruelty I held was directed mostly at myself; my self-inflicted sleep deprivation was just one example of that. She told me that, at the end of the day, the decision was mine, but she thought that I absolutely could thrive and find fulfillment in the field of nursing. Honestly, I didn’t entirely believe her, but I was too exhausted to decide on an alternate path. And so, one night that October, I found myself staring at my blank computer screen after submitting my final college application. I couldn’t decide whether I’d chosen a path I’d regret for years to come or whether my perplexing conviction that I wanted to be a nurse was correct. The clock read 2:36 a.m. I took a final sip of my coffee, set my alarm for school the next morning, and crawled into bed.

Now, three years later, I can confidently say that Faith was right. I count myself extremely lucky that I have found a field that I love; I know that a large proportion of other college students are currently paralyzed with the same indecision I once had about my future. It intimidates me, though, that my self-deprecation and anxiety almost coerced me down an alternate path. What would have become of me if I’d chosen a different career field? Who would I be if I had never questioned the faith I was raised with? In all those alternate universes, am I happier?

Emptier? Do those parallel versions of me also surrender to the silky voice inside them that demands they remain awake while darkness consumes the world around them? I fear I will forever be cursed to wonder about those other versions of me, distorted mirror images living parallel lives, and what their fig branches may have brought them.

five semesters of nursing school, preparing for a future that I no longer doubt. The gnarled roots of this tree are deep, dug stubbornly into the soil of my genetics and past, and I am torn between clinging to them in fear of the future and severing them completely in order to climb higher, faster, farther.

It’s more than a little frightening to think of where I may have unknowingly chosen wrong and left a better future behind to rot. While I don’t know if I’ll ever reach the point where I am no longer haunted by the alternate paths I could have taken, I at least am no longer frozen, unable to choose the branch I want. For better or worse, I am here, with a map of choices both made and unmade unraveling behind me. The one small comfort I grip onto is the vastness of the unknowns in front of me, the branches I have yet to climb.

The future is infinite, uncharted, and I have the rest of my life to experience what the world has to offer. But while that thought is comforting, it’s also poisonous. The anxiety in me twists this assurance of mine, whispering into my ear that the longer I stay awake, the more I’ll be able to experience and the fuller I’ll be able to live. So right now I am here, alone and clinging to wakefulness in the warm-toned hues of my college house’s living room. It’s just me and my wide-eyed reflection in the hall mirror and the gaping hole inside of me that screams that I can’t go to sleep or I’ll miss out. On what, I don’t know, and it won’t tell me, but I suppose I’ll eventually find it illuminated in my headlights on a deserted country road during the witching hours of the night.

WORKS CITED 1.

2.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, November 1). HPV vaccine safety and effectiveness data. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. www.cdc.gov/hpv/hcp/vaccine-safety-data.html Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Robin Books, 14 Jan. 1963.

If I pause for a moment and look over my shoulder, I can see how each and every choice I’ve made has brought me to this moment—sitting awake far later than I should be, my thoughts materializing impatiently on my laptop screen while the world stands silent around me. I can see the branch of the fig tree that I’m climbing, the steps I’ve made charted in its twisted wood. I can see the hours upon hours of self-inflicted sleeplessness I’ve spent alone and desperate to remain conscious; I can note the moment I made the decision to leave the faith and mindset I was raised with in the branches below me; I can see the past

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Sustainability

Shouldn’t Be

a Women’s Issue

By Eliza Phares

Women are more likely to buy sustainable products, recycle, and be more aware of their environmental outputs than men are.3 The root causes of the ecogender gap are prevailing gender stereotypes, which have been reinforced by brand marketing strategies around climate change and political polarization.4 It’s important to recognize these subtle gender gaps to acknowledge the disproportionate burden that women carry in slowing climate change. By identifying and narrowing this gap, we will not only be able to put a stop to climate change at a much faster pace but also work to close these subtle gender gaps in our society.

M

other nature is a symbol of femininity, nurturing, and growth. It’s the idea that we are all caretakers of the Earth, that we all have the responsibility to grow and take care of our environment. But an emphasis on mother in mother nature has grown to the extreme. Women are now taking on the bulk of climate change prevention efforts.1 This phenomenon is called the eco-gender gap which refers to the fact that women are more likely to believe in climate change and live more environmentally conscious lives than men do.2

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First, to understand this gender gap we need to look at how women are traditionally perceived in society.

Women are expected to possess an innate ability to nurture and care for others because of their role as mothers as well as caretakers of the house.5 Women in heterosexual relationships do about 4.5 more hours of unpaid labor around the house because societal pressures to keep the house clean fall directly on them.6 Women are the ones who will be judged for an unclean space, not their husbands. This extends to women being caretakers of the Earth as women are more likely to take care of their spaces and be socially conscious of their actions.7 We can see this come into play in various sustainability spaces. In basic sustainability measures like recycling, 77 percent of women will recycle as compared to 67 percent of men.8 In academia, the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability graduate program is 64 percent women and 36 percent men.9 These traits are unfortunately exploited by sustainability brand marking. Eco-friendly products are being disproportionately pushed onto women but not on men.10 Items considered traditionally feminine, like menstrual products and cosmetic containers, are being replaced with more sustainable options. Things like Diva Cups and cardboard tampon inserters are making big gains in the sustainability movement, suggesting that women should use these products in place of traditional tampons or pads. This

also translates into things like cleaning products and household items; their eco-friendly alternatives are given patterns and colors that would traditionally appeal to a more female audience. For example, Plastic Freedom, a company that sells sustainable household items like bulk cleaning products and reusable plastic bags reports that 90 percent of their customer base is women.11 While it’s great that more companies are promoting sustainable alternatives, sustainable products should not be solely marketed to women. Companies need to start recognizing the impact that these marketing tactics have and start incorporating more gender-neutral products or creating products that are targeted toward men. Not only will this alleviate pressure on women to buy sustainable products, it will open up a whole new market for sustainable products.

This practice also works in the reverse for men.

Many men are unlikely to do things they perceive as feminine, such as becoming vegan or buying reusable items.12 These extremes are a result of toxic masculinity, which has established the idea that men cannot participate in anything deemed feminine.13 For example, a study by the Journal of Green Consumers found that 20 percent of men wouldn’t use a reusable bag because of the fear of being perceived as gay.14 Furthermore, men are, on average, simply less likely to care about others.15 Sustainability has become a women’s issue because men are not affected by climate change the same way women are.

Women are more likely to live in poverty, having the responsibilities of finding household power, clean water, and food.16 This conversation can be summed up by looking at how capitalism and the patriarchy are intertwined. These concepts mutually reinforce each other, both perpetuating economic inequities and gender-based oppression. If men are not willing to change or sacrifice anything in the name of environmentalism, no progress will be made.

Additionally, white conservative men are choosing to turn away from believing in climate change and practicing eco-friendly behaviors because of the young women who lead the climate change movement.17 This is largely due to political polarization, where these conservative men either have to side with women who believe in climate change or with other conservative men who are shooting these women down.18 Greta Thunbeg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two of the leading voices in fighting climate change, make some men

scared. Seeing young women in power makes men uncomfortable because they do not identify with them. These women threaten traditional gender power dynamics and appear especially threatening to older men who are seeing a massive change in their lifetimes regarding who can hold political power.19 Sustainability should not be a gendered issue—it is a human issue. We are all collectively responsible for the well-being of our Earth, our home. We need to call on brands and politicians to show them how climate change is disproportionately becoming a women’s issue. We need to call on these far-right politicians to stop using misogyny to justify not believing in climate change. We need to work on destigmatizing climate change and calling on our leaders to make sustainability an undisputed part of everyday life.

Works Cited 1. Stokes, Scarlett. “What Is the Eco-Gender Gap?” SfS, February 12, 2024. https:// www.sustainabilityforstudents.com/post/what-is-the-eco-gender-gap.https://www. menshealth.com/sex-women/a28612288/green-habits-recycling-sexuality-genderstudy/.

2. Stokes, “What Is the Eco-Gender Gap?” 3. Hunt, Elle. “The Eco Gender Gap: Why Is Saving the Planet Seen as Women’s Work?”

The Guardian, February 6, 2020, sec. Environment https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/2020/feb/06/eco-gender-gap-why-saving-planet-seen-womens-work.

4. Hunt, “The Eco Gender Gap.” 5. Miller, Claire Cain. “Why Unpaid Labor Is More Likely to Hurt Women’s Mental Health Than Men’s.” The New York Times, September 30, 2022, sec. The Upshot. https:// www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/upshot/women-mental-health-labor.html.

6. Miller, “Why Unpaid Labor Is More Likely to Hurt Women’s Mental Health Than Men’s.”

7. Everly. “The Eco Gender Gap: Why Men Live Less Sustainably,” July 22, 2022. https:// tryeverly.com/en-us/blogs/news/the-eco-gender-gap-why-men-live-less-sustainably.

8. “The Eco Gender Gap. 9. “Demographics | University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability.”

Accessed February 25, 2024. https://seas.umich.edu/about/demographics.

10. Hunt, “The Eco Gender Gap.” 11. Hunt, “The Eco Gender Gap.” 12. Hunt, “The Eco Gender Gap.” 13. Men’s Health. “People Tend to See ‘Green’ Habits as Being Less Masculine,” August 5, 2019.

14. Hunt, “The Eco Gender Gap.” 15. “Are Men More Helpful, Altruistic, or Chivalrous Than Women? | Psychology Today.”

Accessed February 25, 2024. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sexualpersonalities/201603/are-men-more-helpful-altruistic-or-chivalrous-women.

16. Nations, United. “Women...In The Shadow of Climate Change.” United Nations. United Nations. Accessed February 25, 2024. https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/ womenin-shadow-climate-change.

17. Brockes, Emma. “When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Met Greta Thunberg: ‘Hope Is Contagious.’” The Guardian, June 29, 2019, sec. US news. https://www.theguardian. com/environment/2019/jun/29/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-met-greta-thunberg-hopecontagious-climate.

18. Brockes, “When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Met Greta Thunberg.”

19. ClimateWire, Julia Pyper. “Why Conservative White Males Are More Likely to Be Climate Skeptics.” Scientific American. Accessed February 25, 2024. https://www. scientificamerican.com/article/why-conservative-white-maes-are-more-likely-climateskeptics/.

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When the Roots Ask You to Stay

T

By Isabella Oh

he night before I left for college, the night before I packed up my life and moved halfway across the country, I hid myself under my mother’s covers and whispered the deep dark secrets of my heart. My whispers faded into the soft ether of plush blankets that smelled like home and the soft glow of street lamps. Between the inhales and exhales of me and my mother, the roots of the willow tree in the front yard stretched and groaned and climbed and snuck their way into the room. This willow tree was the backdrop of my childhood—I remember swinging on its limbs on spring days and pulling its branches to make fairy houses in the fall. And now it reunites with me, to intertwine itself with the covers and to meet me in the enveloping darkness.

With both of my siblings already in college, my childhood home slept in comfortable silence when these roots asked me to stay. They told me it’s crazy for someone as young as eighteen to leave home like this when there’s still so much to grow and to deepen. The penciled lines on the doorframe marking how tall I’d become have tapered off. The baby pictures on the mantel have gotten fuzzy with dust. So when I told them there’s nothing else this place could give me, I really believed it. My roots could withstand it, the sway and bend of the new experiences to come.

I believe this like I believe the sky is blue because the roots that I carry with me are those that I’ve fought hard for through the growing pains. I’ve won against the growing pains of wanting to grow up, to be understood, to have all the answers. My roots stretched and pushed past dirt and grime every time I made a new friend on the playground, biked down the big hill in the neighborhood, drove

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on the freeway, or successfully snuck out of the house. All of these moments and every moment in between them forced a reckoning between the person I am becoming and the person I want to be.

So when my roots asked me to stay, I told them no.

I told them they have nothing to worry about and that I have everything under control. I snapped twigs and ripped leaves to revel in the fact that the past eighteen years have been more than enough to allow me to develop and grow into the person I am now. I packed my things, said my goodbyes, and left. The trees look different here, as there are no more low-hanging willow trees, just stocky oaks that hide their roots from me. I’m quickly swept up into this whirlwind of new friends, new experiences, and a new life. I spend weekends dancing under neon lights that blur my vision and all my limbs ache but I’m so in love with life that I do not feel it. I feel drowsiness like never before weighing down my eyelids at 4 a.m. as I try to form coherent sentences in vacant libraries. College was my first taste of independence and it’s become a new favorite food. Or more like an addiction to the feeling that I can do whatever I want, that I’m on no one’s schedule but my own.

But sometimes… I miss it. When I wake up to blaring alarms and make myself breakfast that never tastes like it did in high school, only to go to a class where the content is far past my comprehension… I miss it. Or when I go out with my friends and everyone is having a good time and then all of a sudden the room is spinning and I feel the full weight of the actions I will not remember tomorrow morning… I miss it. I miss the familiar smell of your childhood home that you cannot place. I miss the contour of your parents when you hug them and it makes you truly confront the fact that you’re made up of two halves of their whole. I miss the days where I felt like no one understood me, because now I feel like I don’t understand anything. I miss being young and wishing I was older because now I just wish everything would slow down. It’s strange to grieve who you once were; it’s like looking at tree rings and being in disbelief at how much something can grow. At face value, all people see is the full force of the developed self when it’s actually the culmination of every single version of who you once were to who you are now.

And that grief comes with a paralyzing feeling when I return home for break. I get a sinking pit in my stomach whenever I let it slip that where I consider my home is no longer the house with the willow tree in the front yard. I grapple with and lament the recognition that leaves grow, fall, and regrow as I snuggle close with my mother under the covers. And although seasons change, comfort grows in the fact that the tree rings of my past are the composition of my now. Even if they’re hidden, they’re never truly gone. It is my roots that ground me and allow my branches to stretch and extend to places undreamed of by who I once was. So when the roots sneak in once again, and ask me to stay, I hold them close, and tell them

I never left.

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36

Speaking American

By Isabel Hopson

C

l an I please get one large pizza, half chicken half sausage?

Of course, baby. For Hopson?

I’d mastered the pre-movie night call before I turned eleven. Many find my dad’s accent hard to understand and so I was instructed to take over. When I ordered, there was no repeating myself, there was no misunderstanding and, most importantly, there was no daughter listening intently, bracing herself for the subsequent anger that was destined for whoever was closest.

Her dogs had been waiting to go out since 3:00 and it was now 4:15. The call had gone late, at no fault of her own. She knew that some clients would have a few more questions about the process than others. It took double the time to explain their own taxes to her wife, so it could’ve been worse. Finally standing up, she called each of the dogs and put on their harnesses one at a time. The horrible bleakness of the day had one upside: weather. It was 50 degrees in January, a feat rare especially in the Midwest. The dogs shook themselves awake and were quickly pulling her out the door. She soon forgot she still had her nice heels on as the rays of sunlight called her down the street. One dog sniffed a fence and the other a tree. One ran up to a little boy and the other an old woman. Everyone was out, everyone together. A family walked towards her. Please! I finished my homework and you do know Sophia!

From school! As they walked closer, one of her dogs tugged towards the littlest girl. As the dad responded in Spanish, she saw the little girl look up. She put on her most heartfelt smile, softened her eyes and let herself get pulled towards them. ¡Hola! The family looked at her, looked at each other, looked back at her, and nodded politely. She walked away with her chest puffed and her back to their fading smiles.

Wharton Professor Laura Huang found that, in the U.S., non-native-accented job applicants are 16% less likely to get a job than their native-accented counterparts.1 One in five Americans speak a language other than English at home.2 People rarely say my friend Anjali’s name correctly. Ahn-jali. Sometimes the American accent is just a guise of

ignorance. Un-jali.

No one else remembered his old babysitter so he decided to ask his dad.

Dad, you remember her, right? The illegal? The woman he was referring to had immigrated from Jamaica and, yes, had an accent. Of course! I can’t believe ICE came. Neither of them had ever called a white, undocumented immigrant “an illegal.” To them, “undocumented” versus “illegal” was a debate about political correctness. To them, the impact of rhetoric was overstated. To them, the use of the word “illegal” wasn’t a personal attack but a statement of accuracy. To the woman, this was all crystal clear when ICE pulled her out of their home kicking and screaming, but neither of them said a word.

There are currently an estimated 440,000 undocumented immigrants from Europe, Canada, and Oceania in the United States. There are only an estimated 327,000 from Caribbean nations.3 My parents moved from London to Chicago in 2002. I’d tried to give myself an accent when I was little because I wanted to be like my dad. I comically ate beans on toast and yelled “bugger!,” much to my family’s dismay. To this day I explain that he’s not the posh elitist people imagine, but a small man with a broken nose and crooked teeth from the projects of South London. It’s easy to become passionate about your culture, which passes from generation to generation naturally. If any form of living culture is absent, one must find the root of its suppression.

Holding the backpack strap on his shoulder, he watched his feet pass over each splotchy floor tile as he turned the corner. Hey! His eyes darted quickly across the lockers, eventually landing on two kids in his geometry class. Dude. The two of us ran into each other at the most hilarious comedy show this weekend.

This Chinese guy spoke in a fake accent the whole time. We’ve been trying to do it the whole day but you really just had to be there. He let out an anxious laugh.

Having gone to the school his whole life, he told himself what their parents told them: they didn’t mean any harm. Nah that’s crazy, even I can’t do the accent!

He did, after all, want friends. For real?

I figured you could cause of your mom and stuff. I lowkey got good at it, listen…

Halfway through his friend’s imitation, the bell rang.

Today, there are 918 million native Mandarin speakers and only 375 million native English speakers. Including non-native speakers, however, there are about 1.118 billion Mandarin speakers and a whopping 1.452 billion English speakers.4 This means over one billion people around the globe learn English outside of their native language. It is not simply the most popular; it is the most powerful.

My dad is not a U.S. citizen. He was briefly anxious about stricter immigration laws in 2017, but the thought was fleeting and dissipated when his updated green card arrived. I was not pestered daily or the butt of a bad joke. Most privileged of all, I didn’t even consider his lack of citizenship until I was 15 years old. The Englishman might not have been welcomed to America, but he was protected by his whiteness.

According to the Linguistic Society of America, “People have trouble with sounds that don’t exist in the language that they first learned as a young child.”5 There is, though, a caveat to this.

American children are taught to listen for the same sound non-native speakers are taught to avoid: otherness.

Works Cited 1. “The Glass Ceiling Facing Nonnative English Speakers.” Knowledge at Wharton, knowledge. wharton.upenn.edu/article/glass-ceiling-facingnonnative-english-speakers/.

2. Bureau, US Census. “Language Spoken at Home.”

Census.Gov, 8 Mar. 2022, www.census.gov/acs/ www/about/why-we-ask-each-question/language/.

3. “Profile of the Unauthorized Population - US.” Migrationpolicy.Org, 1 Jan. 2024, www. migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrantpopulation/state/US. 4. Blank, Federico, et al. “Most Spoken Languages in the World in 2024.” Lingua.Edu, 12 Jan. 2024, lingua.edu/the-most-spoken-languages-in-theworld/.

5. Why Do Some People Have an Accent? | Linguistic Society of America, www.linguisticsociety.org/ content/why-do-some-people-have-accent.

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Our mothers are dying, and we are not doing enough to stop it

By Ruhi Gulati There is a health crisis in America that has been occurring for ages. A crisis that emerged from the poor reproductive and postpartum health infrastructure that fails the large community of mothers. A crisis rooted in systemic inequality, disproportionately affecting those of certain racial and socioeconomic statuses. Currently, the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate out of all high-income countries globally at 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, as compared to the European Union’s maternal mortality rate of 8 out of 100,000, with countries like Italy and Sweden having rates as low as 3 deaths per 100,000 live births.1 However, one demographic in particular has been neglected

by American health care. Independent of income status, the maternal mortality rate for Black women is 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births— 2.6 times the mortality rate for white women.2 This is not a biological issue but rather a social one, resulting in death rates that are almost entirely preventable.

One reason for high rates of maternal mortality is postpartum complications that include preeclampsia, postpartum hemorrhage, and blood clots.3 Complications may also arise from pre-existing health chronic conditions such as

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autoimmune diseases and conditions like obesity and diabetes that affect blood vessels, heart, and lungs.4 Another explanation for the high maternal death rates, especially among women of color, are social determinants of health.5 Factors including poverty and race can create barriers to access, affordability, and transportation to necessary reproductive healthcare. In a study designed to examine the association between insurance gaps and race-ethnicity at preconception, delivery, and postpartum, researchers found that for each perinatal time point, minority women experienced higher rates of uninsurance than white women.

Moreover, 63.3 percent of births to white women were paid by private insurance compared with births to Black women (27.7%), Indigenous women (19.7%), and Hispanic women (28.4%), suggesting that lack of health insurance coverage can help explain the poor maternal health in the U.S.6 There is a clear gap between the people who need coverage and those who qualify for Medicaid, America's primary federally funded health coverage program for people of low-income status. Medicaid covers almost half of the births in the U.S., yet still, a large demographic of women are not receiving adequate

perinatal services.

A Jacob’s Institute research study on maternal mortality rates in states that adopted Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act compared to states that did not adopt expansion showed that expansion states were significantly associated with seven fewer total maternal deaths per 100,000 live births relative to non-expansion states.7 Furthermore, when stratifying by race, the effect is greatest among Black mothers, with Medicaid expansion significantly associated with 16.27 fewer maternal deaths.8 Thus, by expanding Medicaid on a federal level, the U.S. can immensely improve maternal health care for women regardless of race.

However, although expanding Medicaid on a federal basis is an excellent first step toward eradicating maternal mortality, many more provisions should be considered. First, there should be a federal mandate requiring Medicaid coverage to be expanded to one year after pregnancy completion rather than the current deadline of 60 days postpartum in some states.

About 18 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are late maternal deaths, occurring between 43 days and one year after the end of pregnancy, and over half of these deaths are considered preventable.9 The Jacob’s Institute research study found that the differences in lower maternal mortality ratios are greater when maternal mortality estimates include late maternal deaths, suggesting that sustained insurance coverage after childbirth could be crucial in decreasing maternal mortality.10 Second, federal Medicaid expansion should include coverage for chronic disease management for women over 35 as increased access before pregnancy could significantly improve underlying health risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease that often contribute to pregnancy complications.11 Third, federal Medicaid expansion should include access to preconceptive services as increased coverage has been proven to contribute to decreased maternal mortality.12 Currently, there are disproportionate restrictions on abortions for marginalized groups of people largely due to the Hyde Amendment, which limits the usage of federal funds for abortions to cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment.

Forty-nine percent of abortion patients have an income below the poverty line, and more than half of abortions in the U.S. were among women of color before the overturning of Roe v.

Wade.13 Therefore, expanding Medicaid coverage to include a larger array of preconception services likely involves repealing the Hyde Amendment but would remove a large barrier to reproductive care for minority communities.

Finally, while all of these federal provisions to Medicaid would improve maternal health care immensely, there is still an issue at large: the physical manifestations of systemic racism. U.S. healthcare has a history of racist practices targeting the sexual and reproductive health of people of color, including forced sterilization, medical experimentation, and the systematic reduction of lay midwifery on top of interpersonal racism and discrimination by individual providers, such as dismissive treatment and assumption of stereotypes.14 A solution provided by a panel of authors for the Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy, and Childbirth that has also been voiced by various representatives of the Black community

across the country is the inclusion of doulas along with educational and advocacy organizations.15 By allocating more federal funding for diverse community-based organizations that focus on training providers on implicit bias and providing more physical and emotional support for child-bearing women through doulas, the U.S. healthcare system can rebuild to be more inclusive and eradicate systemic inequalities threatening basic healthcare to millions of people. For instance, Diversity Uplifts, an organization improving the well-being of women and families and providing solutions to increase competence and cultural humility among the systems that serve them, has connected over 530 Black families to doulas since 2019 and has seen a 21% cesarean rate and 0% preterm births among them, much lower than the national average of 36% cesareans and 14.2% preterm births.16 Not only will increasing the amount of federal funding to these organizations help rebuild the American health infrastructure, but it will also help promote jobs and tie in members of minority communities in the solution to decreasing the maternal mortality rate for all women.

There is no reason why the current U.S. healthcare system should fail such a large community of citizens. The fact that so many women are dying from low coverage and access, inadequate healthcare practices, and systemic inequities mean maternal mortality is no longer a personal tragedy but rather a public health issue that needs to be addressed by the American government. If we continue on this trajectory, we will leave generations of children, especially of minority families, motherless. Yet, the government has the power to change this path and tend to the roots of our society, mothers. America, our mothers are dying; what will we do to stop it?

Works Cited 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Roser, Max, and Hannah Ritchie. “Maternal Mortality.” Our World in Data, 12 November 2013 Hoyert, Donna L. “Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2021.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16 March 2023 Winny, Annalies. “Solving the Black Maternal Health Crisis | Johns Hopkins | Bloomberg School of Public Health.” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 12 May 2023 Berg, Judith A., and Nancy Fugate Woods. “Overturning Roe v. Wade: consequences for midlife women’s health and well-being.” NCBI, 6 January 2023 Daw, Jamie R. “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Perinatal Insurance Coverage.”

NCBI, 12 March 2020 Daw, Jamie R. Daw, Jamie R. Daw, Jamie R. Eliason, Erica L. “Adoption of Medicaid Expansion Is Associated with Lower Maternal Mortality.” Women’s Health Issues, vol. 30, no. 3, 2020, pp. 147-152 Daw, Jamie R. Winny, Annalies.

Eliason, Erica L. Berg, Judith A., and Nancy Fugate Woods.

Berg, Judith A., and Nancy Fugate Woods.

Bonaparte, Alicia D., and Julia Chinyere Oparah, editors. Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy, and Childbirth. Taylor & Francis Limited, 2023.

Diversity Uplifts, Inc. Nonprofit Homepage, https://www.diversityuplifts.org/.

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The Nature of the Body

By Asa Sparks For a long time, ugly was synonymous with my body. I can think back to the times as a young girl when my body came into my awareness, when it became a concrete reality, not just an abstraction of myself. It took on a life of its own separate from myself. I, the me I considered myself to be, was just stuck there, transported around in a foreign vessel.

I’m not sure if this is a typical experience of girlhood. I mean, I grew out of girlhood to become a person, not a woman. Is it reasonable to wonder if my girlhood is informed by my lack of womanhood?

How would one even define girlhood? For me, it was hiding between other girls that made me feel safe (or at least not in danger), it was consciously deciding a boy to have a crush on every year, and it was facing down the ugliness of the body growing around me like a fungus.

Most kids who are AFAB1 get periods—it’s a fairly universal sign of “growing up” and facing new changes and challenges. I got my first period when I was 8 years old. For context, the average “girl” gets her period at 12 years old. I was adequately prepared, all things considered. My mother had noticed the signs and gotten confirmation from my doctor. He conjectured that my premature maturation was due to hormones in the food I was eating, particularly milk, which I was a fiend for. We were placated with the assumption that my food had poisoned me, and so with the help of the American Girl The Body Book for Younger Girls, my mother did her best to explain everything I’d need to know: how to shave, how to keep myself clean, and what implements to use when I started bleeding every month. She tried to help me understand the scientific know-how about why my body was doing what it was doing, but her explanations were incomplete and did little to help me understand.

But the one thing I remember with a startling clarity was my mother warning not to mention my period to any of my friends. They wouldn’t know what it was, and I shouldn’t be the one to spill the beans. So I carried this secret with me into school and held onto it tightly.

Tahquamenon Falls is a rusty color, the Niagara Falls of Michigan. My family hiked up stairs and hills and dirt to admire it. My legs ached and strained. What was so cool about some water anyway? Tourists stopped to take pictures, oohing and aahing as the tour guide regaled us with facts. Its most pronounced feature, its color, was explained as a natural phenomenon.

To me, it just looked dirty, bloody. And yet, as I leaned across the railing, she caressed my face with a cool mist and whispered her secrets. I still refused to listen.

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Now, I wonder why it was such a big deal. This dirty little secret.

I was ashamed, knowing of no one with whom I could share my experiences. Even my mom, who’d gotten her period late and had a hysterectomy just years prior, struggled to relate. Still, it was common knowledge that everyone peed and pooped. We were children, for heaven’s sake; we said things like “turd” to express disappointment and were openly lectured about the disgusting state of the boys’ restroom.

I had the unfortunate dishonor of seeing a student projectile vomit in class once. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and living beings expelled waste from their bodies. It was a fact of life. That year, we learned that clouds released rain once they were full of water, and the year after we dissected owl pellets to assemble mouse skeletons. The circle of life was not unfamiliar or hidden—it was experienced every day, it was part of the curriculum. That curriculum just didn’t include me, I suppose.

Bones always interested me. We didn’t talk about bodies in science for the first few years, but when we finally did, it was about skeletons.

Of course, I had seen bones on crime shows before. But one day under the hot sun, I stumbled across a set in my own backyard. I pressed myself against the fence, hoping Mom wouldn’t see, but there embedded in the grass beside me laid a raccoon skeleton. Kneeling before it, I asked her name, listened to her story with my ear to the earth, and studied the missing bones with dancing fingers. Bones were always more palatable to me than flesh.

Regardless of the timing being off, at least I knew that everything I was going through was supposed to happen, that in a few years, everyone would have “caught up” with me. But, of course, there was more. I was confirmed to have scoliosis just like my mom, and so she whisked me away to a specialist. There, I was fitted for a back brace, a thick plastic apparatus that wrapped up and down my torso in uncomfortable ways. And, although padded with hourglassshaped foam, the velcro straps had to be pulled to provide the proper amount of tension, squishing me in the process. The fantasy of being a Victorian maiden in a corset quickly got old. My mom said I was lucky; when she wore hers in high school it was incredibly obvious and ugly, but mine was hidden, unnoticeable. I even got to choose a design to be printed on the outer plastic. For my first one, I chose a colorful galaxy.

Stars are lucky. We admire their beauty even though they’re millions of miles away. Because they’re so far away, we don’t mess them up.

This isn’t true of the Earth, however. Even while we admire her soil and formations, we poke and prod, collecting samples and measuring.

How do we make prettier rocks or more efficient soil? How can we train the Earth to be what we need, to be better? Stars are lucky because they disappear during the day, fading from the sky with an echo of laughter. They hide because they know what would happen to them if they were found.

The brace was unnoticeable to others, but it was not unnoticeable to me. It was impossible to forget its existence while it made its home on my body 23 hours a day. I noticed it less and less as the days wore on, but it was uncomfortable; I couldn’t stuff myself as full during meals anymore. But the worst part was when it got hot or when I wanted to play at recess or during gym. I’d sweat underneath the foam, fully drenching the undershirt I wore with it. It would stick to the skin of my torso and stay glued on, even once I cooled down. I felt gross, even though no one could feel the sweat-soaked cloth except me.

But at least this I could talk about. It was an awkward subject to broach for a kid, especially since no one could really tell I was wearing it. So I made a game out of it. I’d get some kids to gather around and watch the looks on their faces when I knocked against my side. I’d squish the open foam around my stomach and then knock the hollow plastic again just to confuse them even more. It was always funny for me and those who already knew about it. I was special in those moments, able to do something no one else could. But once after doing my routine, a kid gagged and told me it was gross. Fortunately, that wasn’t a typical reaction to my trick. However, sometimes I’d take it up a notch, bending over to have my friends trace the top exposed part of my spine and feel its curve. That, on the other hand, usually got more mixed results. Friends and classmates either flinched away from feeling and refused to look at the curving bone or were engrossed with the abnormality, continually asking to see and touch.

It wasn’t unusual for it to be a combination of both. Kids have a weird fascination with things they don’t understand. It’s in their nature to be curious, and so I became a curiosity.

It was around this time that I felt my mind split from my body. I was a cyborg, held together by man-made technology because my body was wrong, deformed. But it was necessary to keep my body from hurting me. Some days I felt like Wolverine, but other days I just felt abnormal, freakish. My body had grown out of control, twisted, and strange; thorny vines struggling against bonsai wires. Inside a briar thicket, a young girl lived just out of reach from her peers.

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When a tree grows sideways, curving over and up out of pathways, hikers stop and admire. I hear my grandfather’s voice in those moments, staring in wonder at the beauty of the natural world. Amazed at how nature will adapt to its environment, reaching out for sunlight, avoiding man-made obstacles, persevering after being pushed to an angle by a strong wind. People love the unique ways in which nature exists, seemingly separate from humans yet always in direct conversation with them.

“You are perfect,” we say.

“We are simply here,” the world responds, “just like you.”

“But you are better,” we insist. “You are untouched, unchanged, God’s unblemished creation.”

“We are not untouched or unchanged,” the Great Mother Oak corrects. “My saplings extend far and wide and not all survive. But you saw my little one’s unsupported trunk, watched as it nearly broke in a storm, and you engineered a solution. You used your tools and created supports for that child until it was strong enough to grow on its own.

That tree was touched and changed by you, but it was not blemished. It is not unnatural to care, to grow, and be changed by the world around you.”

I don’t feel ugly anymore. But I’m lucky like that. I grew into my body, becoming its inhabitant and protector instead of its prisoner and enemy. I got too old for the back brace to be effective and so it came off. I’ve chosen a different path than womanhood. It’s not easier, but there are certain constraints I’m no longer bound by.

Regardless, my body will always be denoted “woman” and “abnormal,” despite my feelings on the matter. And with that comes certain connotations that I cannot ignore.

But, I refuse to let that plague my mind and consume my attention. Instead, I will sit on the grass beneath a canopy of branches, plant my feet in the dirt, brush my hands along the roots and bark, and listen while the trickling of water, the chittering of creatures, the whistling of wind, and the rustling of leaves sing me a harmony of home.

Works Cited 1. Acronym for “assigned female at birth”; refers to the sex first ascribed to an individual based on perceived characteristics, typically in a medical context.

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