My mother called me today. She called me to say, “I am so proud of you. I hope you are safe.”The invocation of safety was thrown in as a filler for protection which she could no longer provide. She is now 2,000 miles away. The mention of pride still flushes my face and creates a…
Category: Voices
Nostalgia, or Homecoming Pains
For so many Americans, India still evokes an Orientalist tableau–kings and queens dressed in luxurious swaths of cloth, riding on elephants to the Taj Mahal. That vision is fictive, in part because India formed a democracy after a devastating revolutionary war, and in part because the Taj Mahal has only ever been a tomb. A…
Make No Mistake
Home lies in the wrinkles on the corner of my father’s eyes, In the tremor and resonance of his quaking belly in response to his own jokes. It shines and captivates through my mother’s smile, Protests in the deep caramel tone of her arms that nursed me. Minutes and hours of commodified work, Entire revolutions…
Things to Protect Like Your Virginity
DOWN asked an assortment of Catholic Latinas what things should be treated with the respect as sexual virginity. DOWN then asked Catholic Latinx students how they treat those same items. Your car “I give all my friends free rides in my car. At least 3 people are in there at any time. The car rides…
Don’t Worry Just About Yourself
by Tran Dang “You have to worry about yourself first. Don’t worry about anything else,” my mother told me over the phone one evening last November, in response to my attempt to explain the protests that defined the campus. Although my Vietnamese often splinters under the weight of topics with substantial social commentary, my mother…