VII
Issue
MAGAZINE 295
N WHAT'S ISIDE
Earth Preface Air Water Fire 05 03 15 23 29 Contributors37
DEAR READERS,
295 Magazine was born at the AACC and continues to regenerate inside of this building on Crown Street.
The theme of this issue is Elemental Expressions, embracing the ways that our identities, relationships and inspirations reflect the natural world around us.
We have separated the pieces by earth, air, fire, and water, each connected by a conceptual, emotional, or physical link.
We are grateful to have collected the works of so many talented Asian American writers and artists at Yale.
Your Communications and Design team,
Lilly Chai YC ‘26
Jennifer Truong YC ’26
Arden Yum YC ‘25
Dorothy Wu GSAS ‘25
EARTH
35mm black and white film shot by Willa Ferrer
The Nail Salon That Raised Me
By Breanna NguyenThere was a tiny room in my parents’ nail salon where I, as a child, stayed during the salon’s operating hours. It had lime-green walls, a small blanket on the floor for naps, and a boxy TV seated atop a folding chair. Before I could attend school, this was where most of my time was spent. I was always allowed to leave the room, but the sound of the nail drill, the strong smell of acetone, and the ongoing chatter of the grown-ups outside were enough to keep me in.
My parents put so much work into making the salon just how they wanted it. A waiting area with three chairs and a stack of magazines greeted each customer at the door. Racks of nail polish bottles hung on the walls. The bottles clacked every time someone picked out their color. Plants and photos of our family were sporadically placed around the salon. A makeshift kitchen was nestled in the back. It had a mini-fridge and prehistoric microwave, one with a dial and no buttons. Rows of pedicure chairs and workstations filled the rest of the space.
Some of my first memories were of my room in the salon. I watched the Discovery Channel on repeat, took my midday naps, and daydreamed to keep myself occupied. Now and then, I would bring toys from home to keep me company. The dolls and stuffed animals I brought were cohabitants of the room, buffers to the loneliness that crept in at times. However, over time I became comfortable being alone.
My parents, refugees from Vietnam in the process of building their new life, were experts at saving money. Whether it was eating at the same cheap Chinese buffet every day, or reusing grocery bags so they’d never had to buy trash bags, my parents made the most out of every cent. They brought me to the salon every day as they went to work to avoid paying for a babysitter or daycare. The walls of the room were the border of the world in which I ruled and I was happy with that.
Devastation came when my parents told me they needed my room to create more space in the salon. I felt betrayed and I remember throwing a tantrum in the middle of the salon until my dad agreed to buy me ice cream.
After this betrayal, I was forced to stay outside the confines of the room. I reluctantly began to interact with a world that wasn’t my own. I was too shy to talk to anyone other than my parents, so I kept to myself and explored every square inch of the salon. I started to learn the particularities that allowed the salon to operate smoothly. I quickly became a master at doing my own nails, cleaning up after clients, and reading the schedule to know exactly who was coming next. My favorite things to do were to arrange the polish colors in rainbow order and to make sure all of the hair products on the front shelf were facing the same way.
After starting elementary school, I continued to spend the after-school hours at the salon. During that time, I would work with my parents until closing time. I couldn’t relate to my classmates who participated in programs or enjoyed time at home after school. I was thrust into a world of nail artistry, meticulous cleanliness, and constant gossip among the ladies at the salon. I immersed myself in conversation with everyone that came in. As hesitant as I was to leave my room at first, I felt like I had discovered a new frontier to investigate and promptly made myself at home.
Eventually, I was old enough to stay home alone and stopped going to the salon every day. My priorities shifted and the salon became nothing more than a place that my parents traveled to and from every day. The memories of my room and the salon as a whole drifted from my mind.
In high school, I returned to the salon to start working with my parents. The room that once felt like my whole universe suddenly felt very small. There were scuff marks on the walls that used to feel new from the constant movement of rolling chairs. The pencil marks on the door frame that tracked my height were painted over. Pieces of the carpet had started coming up from the heavy foot traffic. Everything felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Some things shifted locations and others firmly held their place as they did for the past two decades. I felt at home there, just as much as I felt comfortable in my actual home. I realized that I never forgot about the salon.
After I moved away for college, I had a hard time accepting that the salon would go on without me. Each time I come back, something is different about the salon and I have to ask my parents, “When did you do that?”
There’s a new sign that reads “Welcome to paradise,” which is what my dad says to greet every customer. A TV antenna that captures local channels (for free!) was hung right outside the back door. A communal phone charger has been added at the front counter.
Every day, I still ask my parents how the salon is doing and how business is going. “Same as always,” they say, and we move on.
Grove Street Cemetery by Eunice Kiang
Khao Mun Gai: The Complexity of a Humble Dish
Sirikanya Chiraroekmongkon, MD
The aroma of rice soaked in chicken broth hits you. It makes you stop in your tracks. It draws you in, enticing just enough to make you want to turn your head and sneak a peek. But you know that once you look, you’re done for. You’d have to take a break from the chaos of everyday life, and resign yourself to float slowly into the makeshift home-restaurant of Thailand.
Part I
The home-restaurant has an open wall that your body seamlessly glides through, carried by strength of the aroma. There’s no door. There’s no air conditioning. There is respite from the glaring sun. You sit. Relief washes over you as your boIom feels the coolness of the metal stool. A long-awaited break from the 90F temperature, classified as “winter” in Thailand. Not knowing where best to place your arms, you place them onto the matching metal table. There’s that coolness again. This time it is against your forearms and even reaches your elbows. Your boIom and forearms find respite, and your nerve endings dance in delight.
These metal tables and stools are found only in home-restaurants. The homerestaurants are places where a meal cost less than $2 and the poorest Thais can partake daily.
The tables and stools are not considered a technological innovation. They don’t have the fame of an iPhone 15 from the West. They’re not noticed by neither Thais nor the millions of foreigners. Yet here they are, quietly and effectively cooling you in this heat for decades.
To warm your body, your mom taught you to protect the core area, like your chest and belly. She taught you this because she wants to protect you from all harm. But she knows she can’t protect you from all harm. So, she taught you how to protect yourself.
To cool your body, you learned to cool the extremities closest to the core. Not the core itself because it is neither practical nor affordable to always have air conditioning. Not your furthest extremity like fingertips or toes because then they’ll turn white and blue. Your nerve endings would be oscillating to a frenzied song.
Your mom has taught you well.
Part II
A medium size oval-shaped plate, pink in color, sits in front of you. It’s light, weighing less than the four slices of cucumbers. It is the same as a bundle of chili in its monetary worth. Home-restaurants have these plates.
Millions of tourists each year, and these plates are not on their TikTok or Instagram. They seem ordinary. Plain. Even to Thais.
But you know the truth. You have traveled far and wide and have eaten out of fine china. This is no ordinary plate. It does not falter.
It does not crack under pressure. It does not rebel against the temperature of the meal. Instead, it contains. It holds and contains the harshest of the temperature while balancing the delicacy of the meal’s flavors. It has done this for generations.
Your mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother taught you to see the unremarkable. Sometimes, it is the ordinary that is strong and enduring. You hold this lesson close to your heart. You hope to have the strength and grace of the women before you, unremarkable on the outside and strong and enduring on the inside.
With time passing by, color quietly fades in different areas. But it is understandable. The plate has already endured more than humanly possible. It’s now your time to start painting the journey.
Part III
“Anyone can make Khao Mun Gai,” your mother thinks.
“I can make Khao Mun Gai,” she declares.
She opens her business as a home-restaurant while being a single mom of small children.
Her Khao Mun Gai lasted only a year.
“Not delicious,” the Thai neighbors reply.
Every time you visit your grandmother, you visit the Khao Mun Gai home-restaurant. It’s almost unfair to the home-restaurants nearby.
This dish nourishes your soul.
Chicken, oily jasmine rice, cucumber garnish, chicken and winter melon broth, and chili soy ginger sauce.
The components seem simple. There is also a lack of strong punching taste that’s renowned in Western Thai food. Foreigners don’t chase aFer Khao Mun Gai. They chase aFer Pad Thai, a sweet and sour dish.
A Thai person knows.
The demand is insatiable. Khao Mun Gai home-restaurants exist almost every 5 blocks. Umami, sweet, biIer, sour, and salty.
It is a subtle dish that is a perfect balance of all 5 taste sensations.
Add in the spice and it’s otherworldly.
If the broth is off, the biIer balance is missing. If the sauce is overpowering, the meal becomes too sweet, sour, or salty. If the rice isn’t cooked in perfect broth and oil, the umami falls short. Even the lack of four slices of cucumber is detrimental to its internal balance. And a Thai person knows balance is essential to life.
IRA
eightymilesbySharonAhn
엄마, i’d like to come home now i’m tired and missing the way how you love so fiercely though your body’s weak 아빠, could you pick me up now i’m crying and missing the way how it feels in your embrace and here i thought i wanted space eighty miles if i leave in an hour i’ll be there by nightfall and when i arrive could i stay for a while ‘cause right now i feel so small but it’s getting late i don’t want you to fret it’s just these days it feels like i’m letting you down
all i wanted to do was to make you proud there’re so many things that i still want to say but over the phone all that slips out is “i’m okay” eighty miles if i leave in an hour i’ll be there by nightfall and when i arrive could i stay for a while eighty miles if i leave in an hour i’ll be there by nightfall and when i go back i promise to call (as soon as i can) (i’ll see you again) can i come home?
‘cause i miss you so
eighty miles performed by Sharon Ahn
Author’s words: "eighty miles" is a song I wrote about navigating a relationship with immigrant parents after leaving for college as an "independent" "adult” which, despite all its complexities as an experience, can sometimes feel as simple as just missing home.
Cloudy Memories are the Ones You Remember the Best by
I put on the type of baby lotion my mom used to put on me when I was a kid and the smell of it gives me comfort
Han YangI lie down on the bed with my hair wet, my body naked, my eyes closed I imagine to be born into this world crawling, screaming, shaking and exploding
People are talking in tones I don't recognize wind is blowing in directions that confuse me the room was decorated by hands that were never mine
There were times when my past was irretrievable and my future was a blob
There were times when I felt like a human-flavored candy, an endothermic coat, a non-spontaneous female mammal
There were times when I had to to get used to my own existence with every trip I had taken, farther and farther
But the smell of the baby lotion tonight reminded me of those moments that remind me of whom I am: sticking my chopsticks upright into the rice, putting on a white hairband, yelling out loud when I hit my pinky toe on the leg of the table Hypnagogia is the transitioning state between wakefulness and sleep
And when I fell out of myself into some distant dreamland, I fell into the memories I remember the best
I.
Buddha, My Father, and Me
by Kenny phanOn Tết, the new year, Ba would take me to see Siddartha Gautama.
His stony eyes would look down on us both. I kneel & I pray, if just for the humor in it. We were always on borrowed time, but Ba counts up instead of down.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Up.
Pressure raises my forehead off of the velvet carpet, from the back of my hands to the crook of my back
until I’m standing & feel the weight in my feet. That's what he—Ba, Siddartha, the statue, Hạnh—taught me, to feel it in my feet.
I close my eyes & rock clasped hands to their rhythm.
“Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật.” one two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Ba kneels. I follow.
II.
During Tết, Vietnamese Buddhists receive tangerines for good luck.
Supposedly, it represents gold.
Ma holds my elbow, & together we reach into the wooden bin to take three tangerines— luck for mother, father, and son. I hand the third one to Ba, & it disappears into a hidden shirt pocket. Later, silently, Ba slips me the fruit. It apparates from his hand to mine, like a magic trick. This was his sorcery: now I was twice lucky.
III.
We’re outside now, & face another Buddha. I’m grown, so I light the sticks of incense. They fall into my mother and father’s hands, like magic. I hold mine tight, rock it to the rhythm.
“Pray for good luck!” Ba says, his smile betraying the humor in it.
onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten.
I kneel, & I pray Ba never counts down.
State of Being By Bridgitte Thao
No matter how many stars
Dot the striped blue sky
No matter how many nations
Stretch their arms to you and I
There is a loneliness to calling no country “Mine.”
Without any flag to dangle from my wrist
Without any anthem to spring from my lips
There is something Swirling in my soul amiss.
For all the love in the world cannot make me sing
For all the fight I have in me there is no more dreaming. There I go—unfinished.
Author’s words:
Imagine a culture with a 4,000-year-old history, multiple involvements in global wars, and several thriving diasporic communities across four continents--yet no recognized flag to symbolize its people. Being Hmong has always been an identity I hold with pride, but it often feels as if I'm fighting all the forces of nature to be seen and recognized as a person of Hmong descent simply because we lack universally accepted markers of our identity.
WATER
MY MOTHER GIVES ME A BATH, AGE 20
By Suraj SingareddyIn this bathroom, the floors are returning to dirt. I look down the barrel of the toilet, two feet away. I am a boy consumed by a throat and its slick descent.
The pink plastic stool’s starburst pattern imprints itself onto my behind. My ankles cross and tuck behind each other. I look at the bucket in front of me. It faces the tap. It waits to catch.
There are no barriers in this bathroom — nothing separating the washing off of filth and its expulsion. There is just one floor and the things which lay on top of it.
Amma comes up next to me. She tells me to undress and turn this way for my shame. I am 20 years old now, but she has convinced me that she can still help. I curve around the spout as I take my underwear off. Meanwhile, she checks the geezer’s functioning. She ruffles the water’s surface with three fingers, drowns the mug, and sends it skyward.
She is a doctor daughter of doctor parents, but she believes that water can clean this thing on the back of my neck — this rash that burrows closer to my skull. It sits in my blind spot, raising bumps in its wake — little piles of the things carved out.
It’s my fingers doing the carving, but it leads the way. Underneath all the digging, there is the promise of soil.
My mother tips the mug over. My hair caves to the water’s weight and plasters itself behind its fall. Steam has a smell, too. A breath onto which I can imagine the world.
I stop breathing and imagine that I am a limestone statue eroded down to just a nose and smiling lips peeking out from beyond a water pane.
My mother plunges the mug again and pulls it out. She takes soapnut — squeezed and cracked essence in a cupped palm — and spreads it on my hair.
Close your eyes, she says. The stinging smells like bananas, and my eyes fragment already. My lips look to crack open and guzzle the scent — bathe in its volume until bounded and burst and held like washing water again.
Gold Fish
stop motion animation by Eunice Kiang
IREF
Chinese Dinner
By Katelyn WangChinese Dinner (11” x 14” color pencil drawing, acrylic on paper) explores the beauty of my cultural meal. All the foods presented convey a deep sense of home to me, and they represent an aspect of identity that abounds from a place of love.
BAT
By Sohi Patelcould i tear through mother’s silk with ease, if you took my sorry hand and squeezed it like this?
our harvests fell to crown fires and peasant melancholy. i have sampled heartache like fig kulfi; the homeland is barren, but you caress your gold detector anyways. unearthing nothing but empty plastic chairs, halfburied and moaning in dunes—we set them up around the temple and pretend it is a caravanserai where the bodies we used to love may visit us. the undead teens steal persian rugs and smoke anjunadeep.
rumor has it mother feeds off of warm blood. the way she draws death from men’s lips with one stroke, akin to a single camel hair—i admit, it still hurts when she chews through my fingers. i have grown cold like crystals of amber, appetiteless through scarab light. it’s like, worker bees live to serve and i have such little time. tormented, left arm limp, you feel these
are trials. so i will drape your body over the sun. calcinate it against the sky, though licks of flame eat slowly—they often pick at their potatoes, lone lightbulbs swinging against the universe’s dingy, cig-stained ceiling. while our eyes reflect new worlds. we have three radio stations. my grandfather is unmaking himself.
dial back and forth, find tasteful static, look out across the expanse, hear yourself die. it hurts.
Self-Image
By Eunice Kiang
“Through this painting, I want to show how self-confidence can give us great power to achieve anything. The eagle on top is made of ice, so supposedly, it’s flightless and weak to the fire around it. However, in its reflection below, it sees itself as a mighty, real eagle, a symbol of strength. Even if real eagles can get burnt too, the ice eagle’s belief in itself gives it the power to make miracles and fearlessly fly through the flames.”
By Eunice Kiang
Life
ONTRIBUTORSC
Contributor’s Bios
Sharon Ahn
Sharon Ahn is a (super... super) senior in Murray who grew up in a Koreatown in New Jersey. As a music major, Sharon also releases music under the alias "noremi" which is a bilingual pun combining the Korean word for song, "노래" (norae), and the solfège "do-remi."
Sirikanya Chiraroekmongkon
Sirikanya Chiraroekmongkon is a fourthyear psychiatry resident and a public psychiatry fellow at Yale. An immigrant to the United States at age 10, she now seeks to reclaim her identity as Thai and American. She is interested in anti-racism and decolonization, especially in Asian American mental health.
Willa Ferrer
Willa Ferrer is a senior in Pauli Murray College majoring in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. She plays for the Yale Softball team and works as a student athlete mentor. In her time at Yale, she has served on Kasama and YUPP's boards. For Willa, photography has become a means of documenting the emotion that exist all around her.
Eunice Kiang
Eunice Kiang is a senior in Berkeley College majoring in Computing and the Arts. She is passionate about using the combination of technology, storytelling, and art, such as design and animation, to encourage self-reflection and compassion. Moreover, she is deeply inspired by her Korean and Hong Kong heritage, interweaving its histories and cultures into her artwork as well as working on the AACC's Communication and Design team for 2 years to promote solidarity and positivity.
Breanna Nguyen
Breanna is a junior in Stiles majoring Cognitive Science. At Yale, she is part of Yale Powerlifting and various research groups. She comes from a small town in rural North Carolina and often reflects on the relationship between her Vietnamese-American identity and her home.
Sohi Patel
Sohi is a first year in Davenport College majoring in EECS and Economics. She is the founder of Cychates, a human augmentation technology collective, and Gravel Robotics, an acquired microrobotics startup. Sohi's parents grew up in Gujarat, moved to NYC a week after getting married, and raised her in Houston. She uses poetry to navigate her own life and better understand the lives of her loved ones.
Kenny Phan
Kenny is a first-year in Silliman College majoring in Astrophysics. At Yale, he is involved with the Vietnamese Student Association and the Yale Undergraduate Quantum Computing group. Born in Seattle, he is interested in exploring the social and psychological effects of assimilation and poverty. A first-generation low-income student, he hopes to utilize the arts in addressing social issues.
Suraj Singareddy
Suraj Singareddy is a junior in TD majoring in English. He's one of the poetry editors at the Cortex Collective and does podcasts at the Yale Daily News. He has two winter coats — one for style, one for function — and always carries a mic on hand.
Luc Ta
Luc is a junior in Hopper College studying Mathematics and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. While born and raised in Tigard, Oregon, Luc comes from a family of Cham and Vietnamese refugees, a lived experience that continues to inform his music, poetry, and academic studies. He is a self-taught composer is interested in queering Baroque and Classical forms with the vernaculars of jazz, video game music, and the musics of Vietnam and its diaspora. On campus, Luc can be found holding real analysis office hours, arranging songs for the Yale Precision Marching Band, or scootering to Havenly.
Bridgitte Thao
Bridgitte Thao is a first-year in Berkeley College and a prospective Ethics, Politics, and Economics major. She is a part of Yale's Southeast Asian Movement and the Yale Center for British Art's student guide program. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Bridgitte first began writing poetry to explore her identity as a woman of Hmong and Chinese descent. Her works have grown to encompass themes of diaspora, bodily autonomy, and self-identity. In her free time, she enjoys streaming R&B music, reading fantasy novels, and brainstorming new outfits.
Katelyn Wang
Katelyn Wang is a first-year in Ezra Stiles double majoring in Political Science and Economics. At Yale, she is involved with Dwight Hall and Yale Visual Arts, where she spearheads community initiatives across New Haven to use art as a medium for creative empowerment. Back in San Diego, she works for the Convoy Asian Cultural District to shape the political, social, and economic landscape of one of the largest Pan-Asian business districts in the United States. As an Activist Artist, she can't wait to share more stories with you!
Han Yang
Han Yang is a first-year PhD student in the BBS-MCGD (Molecular Cell Biology, Genetics and Development) program. Coming to the U.S. at the age of 17, her experiences with English as a second language and as an outsider to the traditional world of poetry have both shaped and liberated her style. Her poetry takes an experimental tone and is interwoven with bold imagery and lucid contemplations. Her most recent work was published in Milkweed, Haverford College’s literary magazine, and Moonstone Arts Center's "New Voices" anthology. Han is involved with several mentorship programs on campus, including the PATHS and WISAY mentoring program.