While some stay up late refreshing their internet browsers for just-released concert tickets, merch drops, or even current affairs, the only thing enticing enough to convince me to stay up past my 10 p.m. bedtime was, of all things…a Labubu.
Seemingly, Paris is quiet at 1 p.m. on a Monday—at least in the Marais. I am sitting outside of a café, hoping for a mysterious, protagonistic moment with my journal and my whole milk latte (something only acceptable in France). The wind sends shivers down my spine, ripples through the pages of my ...
“That wasn't on my 2025 Bingo card.”
When we were kids, my cousin Lucas liked to build stuff. A computer, once, I think, and definitely a 3D printer. His house was filled with all these gadgets that seemed like they had been beamed straight out of a sci-fi movie. He was three years older than me and the coolest person I knew. My younger ...
For my high school graduation, the presenter read every single person’s name out loud. During rehearsals, they invited people to correct any pronunciation of names in preparation for the actual ceremony. I ignored their announcements, spacing out in boredom and wishing they would finish faster so ...
You probably already know what a simile is. I have this distinct memory of sitting in a classroom, age nine or ten, tipping from side to side in one of those blue plastic chairs and listening to my teacher explain literary devices. Metaphor. Hyperbole. Onomatopoeia. I do wonder if there’s a better ...
I have never seen a yellow-rumped warbler in real life, though I feel like I have because of the hundreds of photos I’ve looked at. They are small, stout creatures with a pronounced beak. The black feathers surrounding their eyes make them appear more like deer than birds. They carry daisy-yellow ...
Recently, there has been a curious, serendipitous pattern in my media space. In a week, I encountered three works united by a common idea—the Law of Talion, which may be more familiar to you as the principle: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” These pieces included the Spanish story “Ley ...
After yet another late arrival, I wrote this in my notebook:
My childhood in California can be memorialized as a hodgepodge of rainbow pool towels, water guns, cherry popsicles, plastic cups, and sticky fingers: a pandemonium of juvenile chaos that could only be found at a pool party. Speakers blasted my dad’s encyclopedic Shazam playlist while I splashed my ...
“Where are you guys from? Oh yeah, our rail system’s shit.”
This summer, I reread Sally Rooney’s sophomore novel, Normal People, for the first time in four years. The first time I read it, I finished it in one sitting and fell in love, but didn’t completely understand why. Was I supposed to love the main characters? Hate them? Root for them? I reread the ...
Fall enters Providence with a quiet gravity. The city’s color palette shifts as the trees along Benefit Street turn. While the foliage may be beautiful, these warm colors are the manifestation of a fleeting moment. As chlorophyll drains from each leaf, other pigments—anthocyanins and carotenoids—creep ...
I rarely speak my native language at Brown. When I come back to my dorm and think in English—out of habit—I feel pathetic. It’s not because I don’t enjoy speaking it—it's this shift that reminds me of the performativity that underlies daily conversations. I sit on the floor and catch myself ...
In 2018, my mother was cancelled by a Twitter mob. “Katie Roiphe can suck my dick,” one user wrote. Others called her “human scum,” a “ghoul,” and a “harridan.” Enraged by the hypothetical contents of her not-yet-published Harper’s Magazine article, they preemptively took to their ...
Solutions by The State News
