The smell of burning incense, lavishly decorated dishes and a living room filled with silent prayers — these were the things that made up my childhood, my culture, my family. Yet for the longest time,...
Warm water poured over my head in the sink of a small motel in Vermillion, South Dakota. My mom rinsed suds from the smooth sleeves of hair streaking across my forehead. She sang lullabies to me while...
On lazy Saturdays in fifth grade, I spent entire afternoons outside exploring the neighborhood and digging around my garden. At that age, freedom from responsibility meant that I had a seemingly infinite...
My bookshelf is my art gallery; every time I pass by, I am transported to the Louvre in Paris.
Each book on my bookshelf is a piece of art that I can pull out and appreciate. Be it feeling the deckled...
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”
These were questions that had been posed to me on numerous occasions, yet my response was the same every...
I thought I wanted to be a romantic — or even a communist — after indulging in the passionate, Marxist-inspired writing of Sally Rooney. Or possibly a philosopher, after burning through Jean-Paul Sartre’s...
A conversation between different versions of myself, split between the characters ME and her inner voices, RISKY, CAUTION and WHY, who all respond to FRIEND. ME is the main character, trying to find balance...
My ordinary morning routine starts in a dreary, colorless bedroom, where I wake up facing blank walls and bare floors aside from the occasional dusty Lego set. I sift through my clothes either in my beaten...
Queen to G3. I sat with my arms crossed on a table too tall for me, the black and white queens and kings looming ahead. One move to checkmate. He would be forced to capture with his pawn. Pawn to G6. The...
Surviving is not the same as living.
As a child, your firsts are always celebrated. Your first word, first steps, first day of school. But no one truly knows when it may be the last time doing such...
It’s 10 a.m., and a deathly silence permeates the air at the tarnished wooden dinner table. A half-eaten Trader Joe's Mochi Cake lies messily wrapped in aluminum foil, beside a nearly empty bottle of...
