Endpaper
Goodbye, Beloved
To me, Sethe was the literary embodiment of womanhood — the queenly woman with blood on her hands and a tree scarred into her back. She was the personification of repression and “rememory,” the manifestation of a traumatic past into the present.
To Be Tamed
“The Little Prince” makes me homesick for all the places I’ve been and all the places I have yet to see.
sam junior year room
Every square inch of Sam's walls, and even parts of her ceiling, are covered in decorations this year.
sam senior hs room
In senior year, Sam's lived with her best friend. They decorated the room by combining their ephemera collections, and the room reached its peak as a vibrantly cozy haven.
room cover photo
My collage brings to mind precious experiences that I’d have otherwise forgotten. It’s like a library of my life, which challenges the ephemerality that my memories can easily take on.
Nesting in Ephemera
I sliced up some magazines, printed out a few photos from my camera roll with a sticker printer I’d just received for my birthday, and stuck it all above my bed. The mere presence of color, and the memories each small picture held, felt like a balm — something consistent and bright and mine to return to. With a couple scraps of paper, I’d planted roots.
Anywhere I Go
When you lose the trappings of the familiar, you have no reminder of who you have been, or who you are supposed to be. So being in new places, at least at first, is both terrifying and exhilarating: You get to move a little more freely, losing the weight that expectations and environmental cues hold.
Salt Lake City Temple
It was strange, returning to that personal mecca. It was here that I had made pilgrimages throughout high school and college, where I had implored God for strength and guidance. Now, even as someone unable to enter beyond its foyer, I found myself praying.
In Defense Of Running Late
By procrastinating my own future, I’ve saved myself from making the most fatal mistake: embarking on adulthood without really considering what I want from it.
On Solid Ground
I had witnessed the magic some people found in this sport. I learned something entirely new that day; I hadn’t learned something so new in a long time.
frisbee sunrise
I left my room at 6:30 a.m. my first morning with my hair tied up, loose strands pinned back, cleats dangling from my gloved hands. The wind seared red into my cheeks as I made my way over the Charles River, and I wondered when the sun would rise.
Direct Flash
I can’t shake the fact that my love for Los Angeles Apparel opposes my self-professed feminist politics. When I add another tennis skirt to my shopping cart, I line the pockets of a man who built his career on the degradation of women.
Putting Society’s Ableism into Perspective
I remember how much I struggled to find the right words to write — staring at the computer screen for hours, refusing to write the word “disabled.”
Kyle's Muse
It sounds strange to say that I look up to someone who’s a foot and a half shorter than me, but Grandma Ruth has always been my muse.
The Threads That Bind
I often marvel at how it must feel to move throughout the world with such lived experience — how a person can bear witness to so much history and still take to the streets every day in a plush faux-mink coat with the fervent zeal of a person eager to inhale the equally familiar and foreign sights, smells, and sounds of New York City.
Kyle's Grandma Ruth
Kyle's grandma, Ruth, worked as a sewing instructor at the Henry Street Settlement — a social service organization in Manhattan’s Lower East Side — for over 50 years.
Courtesy Photo Andy 1
The author and his grandmother, roughly January 2002. Shot on film and shipped to America.