I FEEL GOD IN THIS WAWA TONIGHT [narrative]
By Christina Li | April 1Wed, Aug 20 at 9:17 PM
Wed, Aug 20 at 9:17 PM
Do you know that feeling when you hear a good song and want to write one too? And then you realise you can only write lyrics half as good as those, and not even in the language that you want to. I was born into a nation that teaches its mother tongue as a second language. My mouth is an instruction ...
Renata Litvinova, a famous Russian actress, once called gossip an underrated genre. The novelty of this saying isn’t just about playing devil’s advocate for talking behind people’s backs—it’s also about considering a seamless act of everyday communication as a distinct medium. Categorizing ...
At some point during the first year I lived in the Bay Area, I got a nosebleed so bad my dad let me skip school. I was ten years old, and the blood wouldn’t stop flowing. We could get it to slow down, but never, it seemed, to cease permanently. At first, I was happy for the opportunity to stay home—I ...
possibility
In my creative nonfiction class, we were asked to read Notes of a Native Speaker by Eric Liu. He starts the essay with a laundry list of declarations and negations, saying, “Here are some of the ways you could say I am ‘white.’” It made me wonder which identity everything in my life spun around—which ...
Under the moon, I do not sleep. I gnaw at my fingernails. I fix my sights on an indifferent body. I invent words for myself that will never leave these walls. I recite them, letting each syllable linger a second longer than necessary. I put ink to paper, which is to say I dream with my eyes wide open. ...
I used to be quite good at being alone. I almost preferred it—yearned for it, even. It bewilders me now, the ease with which I once sought solitude. During the world's most ungodly period of isolation (the pandemic), I managed, perversely, to intensify it. While the rest of my family huddled around ...
Recently, two friends and I put on different variations of 24-inch-long wigs and danced around a basement. Mine was dark at the root, metallic blonde, semi-chic, like Gaga in her meat dress. The wigs were heavy and sliding down our foreheads, shedding strands like molting animals onto the oak-stained ...
I have always lived in the same place—the same suburban town, the same quiet house, the same small bedroom.
My roommates point at the window. Look outside, they say. It’s all white, everything is white. The snow is coming down fast. But this is not the first snow we wanted, not how we wanted it. I’m sorry you had to leave. And I’m sorry you had to leave the way you did. But where did you go? You didn’t ...
The scene is Paris, 1912. Following an excursion to Amsterdam for a personal exhibition, artist Henri Le Fauconnier returns to his home galleries. He is among his fellow Salon Cubists again, the spearheaders and rulers of the burgeoning movement that has taken over the public Parisian salons—mainly ...
The stage lights switch on. The pit plays its first notes, and the audience goes quiet.
On the way to the appointment, they talk about their New Year’s plans. It’s December, and A is getting her tattoos removed. M is driving her because she is the only friend A trusts enough to witness the betrayal of her former belief in permanency. M also just likes to drive her places pretty often. ...
Ma won’t make poha for us on Sunday evenings anymore, and even on the rare occasions that she does, she won’t serve those golden-yellow grains alongside a glass full of steaming hot milk. I no longer ride behind your metallic cycle on my pastel one every school morning. I go by car, the one you ...
Baba talks like he will never stop again.
I walk out of my dorm in my polka-dot pajamas and short-sleeved crushed watermelon T-shirt to get myself some food. Halfway to the Ratty, I realize I have made a pathetic decision. I pull my phone out and frantically text the group chat: