It was hard growing up punk on a budget. Punk then emo because my middle school pubescent rage turned into awkward angst once I started high school. It’s a strange sentiment because ideally, being part of the punk subculture was never supposed to be something one could or couldn’t afford. After emigrating to the states,…
Category: Voices
Your Hair is not 4C if…
Your Hair is not 4C if you can cleanly run your hands through your hair Your Hair is not 4C if people don’t try to create a different hair category for you like “4z hair”. Your Hair is not 4C if you haven’t cried at a failed hairstyle attempt Your Hair is not 4C if…
Where I Come from We Eat Sitting Down
I don’t usually talk to taxi drivers. The man whose taxi I got in this morning surprised me with a conversation I would never forget. It’s not a superiority thing or anything of that nature, but growing up in an immigrant family in the US, if you couldn’t do something that you could’ve done on…
On My 18th Birthday
Today I turn 18. As always, this birthday has prompted self-reflection, perhaps even more so as I sit quarantined in Saybrook College at Yale. I cannot help but wonder what life would have been like if this pandemic had never happened. It is quite likely I would have ended up at a different university. I…
Hair
I run my hands through the thin, terse waves of unnatural brown Dyed forcefully in a small act of rebellion Against what I can’t remember now, And I can feel the calmness of when My hair jet black and thick, was plait Left-over-middle-over-right Falling down my back, each bump from the root to the tip …