Self

Rachel, who's an Asian

“A large part of my aversion to Asian dramas came from generally wanting nothing to do with any kind of Asian culture. Growing up in America, there was always a xenophobic undercurrent to products from my culture: Asian things were weird.”

“A large part of my aversion to Asian dramas came from generally wanting nothing to do with any kind of Asian culture. Growing up in America, there was always a xenophobic undercurrent to products from my culture: Asian things were weird.”

A defense of doing less

“The way I see it, if success in school requires crying on the floor, I don’t want to be successful. Success, I think, is being happy, at any given time. I still think it’s good to work, it’s good to struggle, it’s good to fail.”

“The way I see it, if success in school requires crying on the floor, I don’t want to be successful. Success, I think, is being happy, at any given time. I still think it’s good to work, it’s good to struggle, it’s good to fail.”

Why we should start listening to those ‘minor minorities’

“Watching the anti-Asian violence unfold on the news, I could not help but see my experience with dermatillomania as an allegory for how many Asian Americans, including myself, experience racism. There seems to be a pervasive insecurity that our struggles are unimportant, or simply not worthy of discussion.” 

“Watching the anti-Asian violence unfold on the news, I could not help but see my experience with dermatillomania as an allegory for how many Asian Americans, including myself, experience racism. There seems to be a pervasive insecurity that our struggles are unimportant, or simply not worthy of discussion.” 

It feels like America again

The Prospect associate editor José Pablo Fernández García wrestles with growing up in the age of mass shootings and how a return of such tragedies to the headlines grossly feels like a return to American normalcy.

The Prospect associate editor José Pablo Fernández García wrestles with growing up in the age of mass shootings and how a return of such tragedies to the headlines grossly feels like a return to American normalcy.

I tried over 1/3 of the Eating Clubs: here’s what I learned

Senior Writer Lillian Chen recounts her experiences at Terrace Club, Tower Club, Colonial Club, and Cap & Gown Club, and reflects on how each eating club contributed to her self-discovery.

A family, paper towels & Princeton

This, if anything, is a story of the frustration I felt in those moments in the car, driving. I was frustrated because seeing that family felt like a failure. Indeed, it was a failure of our society to take care of that family’s most basic needs: food and shelter. This frustration was also very familiar to me after the recent months during which I’ve watched this country dramatically fail to respond to the pandemic: little to no effort to contain the virus, little to no effort to support those most affected. 

This, if anything, is a story of the frustration I felt in those moments in the car, driving. I was frustrated because seeing that family felt like a failure. Indeed, it was a failure of our society to take care of that family’s most basic needs: food, shelter. This frustration was also very familiar to me after the recent months during which I’ve watched this country dramatically fail to respond to the pandemic: little to no effort to contain the virus, little to no effort to support the most affected.

Grief in four corners

With the lockdown and strict quarantine earlier this year, my room has become the very essence of me, an extension of myself. I’ve rearranged it countless times in attempts to mitigate the boundary of who I was when I left for college and who I am now since I returned in the spring of 2020. 

Catching fire in darkness: Celebrating Diwali during a pandemic

I love Diwali for all of the light it forges in my house, for the seven lit candles which sit perfectly aligned on my fireplace for 10 days, for the sweets that cover every square inch of my kitchen counter, for all of the shoes I trip over as guests pile into my home. As an Indian American living in New Jersey, my parents have adapted the way Diwali is typically celebrated. 

DISPATCH | Summer At Last

The sun sets later day by day in the southern hemisphere. By an unfortunate combination of Princeton’s academic calendar and the onset of COVID-19, I have lived through three consecutive autumn/winter cycles, so it’s a refreshing change of scenery to finally roll into summer. This also happens to be the first summer that I will spend on a gap year.

COVID-19 cannot take our memory — unless we let it

 We had no affection for the privileges we had in a pre-pandemic life in the moments that we had them: therefore I feel that has been why we have been so eager to return to normalcy.  Nobody ever appreciated and “lived in the now” for the little things that made life flourish, until COVID-19 snatched them away. 

COVID-19 and ‘code red’: understanding the pandemic’s toll on frontline health care workers

Rather than watching the case count on The New York Times or other news outlets, I track the number of cases by the times we are what my family calls “code red,” when we handle clothing with gloves and disinfectant and maintain distance until my mother, an anesthesiologist, has showered.

Seeking solace in solitude

Of course, I miss people. Being alone is hard. But perhaps loneliness isn’t the evil we perceive it to be.

Texting home

Before leaving home, my phone history with my parents was sparse, to say the least. Now that I’m thousands of miles away, of course I’m texting my parents more. But as a high schooler, I would never have guessed just how often I would find myself, in college, reaching for the phone to contact my mom. 

At home, I live in fear. Princeton offers no safe haven.

Since being sent to live with my family in March I have been trying to keep myself alive. I am gay and have been forced to live with my religiously conservative and homophobic family. I fear for my safety. But, the University cannot help me.

Reflections from a first-year: Establishing friendships over Zoom

In a normal semester, students may have been able to sow the first seeds of a budding friendship by turning to a peer in an orientation hall or large lecture class to exchange a few words. Now, side conversations have become relegated to the Zoom chat, where a quick private message about an assignment might just spark the beginnings of a new connection.

Recalling my French travels in two chapters

I blame Whole Foods’ Camembert cheese display for sending me down an agonizing rabbit hole of nostalgia, and making me pine after a pre-COVID-19 existence.

DISPATCH | Living near UChicago

I had decided to sublet an apartment a mere five-minute walk away from the University of Chicago (UChicago) campus for the fall and live with a stranger, rather than stay at home in New York, a decision that often warranted some explaining. The short answer is that I wanted to spend time near my older sister, who’s currently living in Chicago. 

Reflections on Baldwin and Jamaica: ‘for sinners shall be bound in hell a thousand years’

Jamaica always seems to call me home — despite the fact that I haven’t actually been home since I had to flee two years ago.

Visual essay: What is the value of National Coming Out Day?

Through illustration and prose, Wendy Ho reflects on the value of National Coming Out Day in 2020.

Chinatown Diptych: The Origins of a Writer

Growing up, writing was my haven. My friends teased me for carrying a marble notebook wherever I went, pages brimming with mediocre poems my 12-year-old mind thought Shakespearean. Words, I discovered, have the power to forge rivers, oceans, mountains. They immortalize the rise and fall of civilizations, etch our names in rock and dust.