PERSONAL ESSAYS
PERSONAL ESSAY: Missed Connections

Who was the first classmate you saw in real life this year? Whose flesh was the first to send a jolt through your spine and […]

PERSONAL ESSAY: Character List

A good Korean drama begins and ends with the characters. Despite both of my parents being immigrants from Seoul, the only time Korean is heard […]

PERSONAL ESSAY: I Am Not a Bread Girl

I’ll never forget the way the bread frenzy stirred the world back in March. As the coronavirus swept across America and lockdowns became the new […]

Anna Xu
PERSONAL ESSAY: Kimchi

2019 was the year that I lost myself in an avalanche of intimacy. I didn’t know a heart was capable of expanding so much, of […]

Victor Serapiglia Cioffi
INSIGHT: Everything you need to see

On the night of Oct. 12, a group of Rocklin, California police officers pulled up on a dozen high schoolers playing football in a parking […]

alextaranto
Paradise is Monotonous

  “Between my house and my pulpit,” Prophet Mohammed tells us in one of his more notable utterances in hadith — the Islamic prophetic traditions […]

Celentano Funeral Home

The nicest house on the street where I live happens to be a funeral parlor that offers traditional and Asian funerals. It’s a huge building, […]

valeriepavilonis
Through the Glass

I have an adversarial relationship with clothes. My reactions to “What Not to Wear” and “American Ninja Warrior” are the same — “I could never […]

zihaolin
Act Your Gender

I grew up next door to four boys, all more or less my age. We shared a fence. In the afternoons I’d climb up on […]

zihaolin
New Haven’s Skeletons

The older a place is, the more skeletons it has. Some of them lurk in closets and behind basement walls, but most lie underground. In […]

maddiebender
Sunflower Seeds

Chewing mechanically continues. Lips salty. Crack crack. We’re settled on wooden chairs in a dim cozy kitchen. Chattering until the orange yolk splits the gunmetal […]