I slept on every ride to Chinese school, and every ride back. It was part of a weekly routine, a well-remembered Saturday morning sequence. Tumbling into the car and watching the rolling hills pass the window, the burnt-black trees on the roadside after the wildfires. Drifting in and out, feeling the freeway pass beneath the…
There is something strangely sad about watching cars drive away, especially ones you know well. It is that feeling of an almost-loss, like you are teetering at the edge of the realization that the car is too far away to call back. Soon, it will turn the corner and you will no longer be able…
TW: body image, weight You are afraid of numbers. Specific numbers—numbers in context, numbers with meaning. A strange fear, one endowed with a weight given by labels and measurements, given teeth by what they represent. Made larger, more threatening, by what they mean. You are scared of size. It is curious the way clothing morphes…
In the light of early adulthood, students leave childhood dreams behind and reach for more practical career paths. Often due to societal and familial pressures, many in the APIDA community gravitate towards jobs with greater stability and prestige rather than those closer to their creative passions. Chelsea Tran, a first-year college student, had early aspirations…
My mother propagates plants next to the kitchen sink, slipping cuttings into plastic bottles, laying seeds down in shallow dishes. They soak, stagnant, in their isolated pools of water. In between cycles of dishwashing, my mother watches them. She waters them. She sets them towards the sun, these things she has cut and brought here…