"You keep stopping." Ms. Youshiura, my piano teacher of 3 years, nodded towards my fingers, which had stuttered to a halt after messing up the third movement of Clementi's Sonatina Op. 36 in C Major--for the fifth time. Taking in another shuddery wet breath (I was on the verge of tears by this point), I … Continue reading play it through
The city was no exotic landmark for any of us homegrown New York surburbanites, but we still all scrambled for bus seats as we headed to New York City for our high school Fashion Design field trip. We were seniors, caught in that giddy sort of post-exams state, knowing graduation and all that lay beyond … Continue reading blacklisted
After my second time watching Black Panther, my friend and I (both black women in our 20s) could not stop texting each other, overwhelmed by the urgency to unpack the film in all its layers. While we dived into a number of topics (the brilliance of all the kickass black women being one of them), … Continue reading watch your tone as you mourn the body
These days, it's easy to be a "citizen of the world." Within a minute, I scan storm updates for the Caribbean on Twitter, get an email alert from one of my French advisees, and dig into a burrito from the joint next door as I sit in a dress made in El Salvador. Without breaking … Continue reading going global
New recipe. New job. New shoes. New movement. New haircut. New leader. New year. We love beginnings--I love them. There's a giddiness to that first step, leap, and bound. Possibilities ahead, the disappointments of the past cast behind, and you plan and dream for that dewy, shining land stretched before you, waiting to be conquered. … Continue reading do it again, do it again
Read part I here... In middle school, there was this expensive Japanese procedure that promised to straighten your hair--permanently. It was trending among some of the girls in my class, and I remember when the girl who sat next to me in Social Studies had it done. Her hair flipped over her shoulder, glossy and … Continue reading being ethnic: part II
I cheered when Diana Prince climbed the trench ladder and walked onto the battlefield. Incoming bullets smashed her steel wrist-plates and flew apart as her arms raised to meet them, and in that moment I think a lot of women felt a jolt of validation as we watched her charge forth across No Man's Land. … Continue reading #metoo
I saw a spider once. I was 14, absently pushing the lawnmower forward across my front yard, and then I froze. A web hung only inches from my face, suspended between the spiked branches of a fir tree. And there it was--the spider. The size of a glass bead, it watched me with a dozen … Continue reading storm progression
I wrote these words two months ago, but the events of the past weeks in regards to Philando Castile and Charleena Lyles drew me to revisit them today and finally post this... I take a seat at the diversity training the way I usually do: leaned forward and legs crossed. I nod at a few … Continue reading fragile
What are you? Human--unless aliens a la Star Trek secretly inhabit my body (sometimes I do wonder...). I also happen to be, as you see, brown of skin with curls that I am currently avoiding the impulse to drag my fingers through. I am also a loquacious nerd with an affinity for Thai curry, but somehow … Continue reading being ethnic: part I
