Arts & Culture
A Search for the Secret Sauce I Hoped Would Connect Me to My Heritage
I sought a cherished symbol from my own childhood, not a standardized emblem of all Indonesian culture, which I can’t and shouldn’t pretend is all mine to take.
What Springsteen’s Music Means to This Child of Working-Class Immigrants
I relate to what Springsteen sings because he reveals much of the American Dream as an intoxicating illusion.
Twinkdom Has an Expiration Date, But Spinsterhood is Forever
For me, homosexuality is an invitation to opt out, to abstain from the trappings of heteronormativity, a gift of eternal boyhood.
As a Woman of Color, I’m Told I Can’t Show Anger—So I Let Courtney Love Do it for Me
Because it’s still more acceptable for white women than it is for women of color to show anger, I scream-sing along to Courtney Love’s rage.
My Family’s Secret Recipe for Immortality
Though my mother’s no longer here to meet my son, he’ll taste his grandmother’s cooking though our family’s Sunday gravy, the one I make every week to keep her spirit alive.
“I should hate forever to be a burden to you”: Lessons in Love from Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West
I don’t want to take time away from your book, she said, but the book could wait. My writing was always there. She might not be.
How Watching Asian American Dads Onscreen Helps Me Face My Own
Our fathers may never know us the way we wish they would. And if we learned that ignorance is bliss, it’s because we learned it from them.
How This Woman Celebrates Black History and Food in Salvador, Brazil
Miraci is being the one thing blackness has always been forced to be even when unwilling—political.
Don’t Hug Me
Trans people have rights because we’re human—not because we’re special. So why does having those rights recognized require a flood of trans tears?
Finding My Voice as a Filipino Through the Kundiman and Karaoke
It’s hard to negotiate how much of me is Filipino or American, but I realize this is only a question asked of me by people who seek clarity in their own definition of “American” identity.
