Prose
Muhammad Ammar
This piece aims to quite literally walk you through a ghazal -- Gulon Mein Rang Bhare (Filling the Flowers with Colour) -- penned by Pakistani Marxist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz in 1954 while he was in Rawalpindi's Montgomery prison for his communist beliefs. Walking with you is Ali Sethi, a young classical singer who breathes life into the poetry with his soulful modern rendition of Faiz's ghazal. A journey in itself, every paragraph of the writing corresponds to a couplet from the ghazal, juxtaposing Faiz's Urdu poetry with Ammar's English narration. For these reasons, it might make sense to read the ghazal's translation beforehand to be able to connect the poetry to the prose. Although the Urdu used may be understood through context, there is also a glossary at the end with translations for all the Urdu vocabulary used in the passage.
Shira Ben-David
It is a response to a Visual Art Lecture Series in Bennington.
Ellina Efimenko
"The root: Нәнәй" that talks about languages in my family.
Zanna Huth
There was a time in my childhood when my life revolved around rabid bats, they filled our attic with chemicals and ate away at the rotting wood. That was the year we said goodbye to many when our finger count went too high, and our hands grew smaller with grief. The rabid bats would knock on my window, throw rocks like lovers, and call me down when it was time to eat.
Gregory Wahome
During my first two terms at the college, I noticed how much less of myself I truly was. Almost 12,000 kilometers separate me and my home and it feels like even more. When I speak to friends and family back home, over the phone, my diction, demeanor and mood changes. I feel more like me. Being black in America is not understood well enough from the view of Africans and other black people from outside of the country and my short essay was an attempt for me to consolidate these thoughts.
Poetry
Dabin Jeong
These projects are created to address a contemporary Korean perspective on the influence of Japanese colonization and her own immigration experience.
Dabin Jeong
These projects are created to address a contemporary Korean perspective on the influence of Japanese colonization and her own immigration experience.
Lydia Duff
These poems are taken from the Chu Ci, commonly translated as the Songs of Chu, an anthology of poems from the Warring States period attributed mainly to Qu Yuan and Song Yu. More specifically, these poems are selected from the Jiu Ge, or Nine Songs, the second of seventeen sections in the Chu Ci. Originally recorded in Classical Chinese, they were meant to be performed (chanted and sung, with accompanying music and dance) and in many cases there appear to be multiple "voices" in the same poem.
Iva Sopta
This poem was written during a very vulnerable time, when I was essentially drowning in imposter syndrome and fear of not belonging here. And as an introverted person who is very defensive, I had created this safety bubble around myself in the hopes of not getting hurt by the American (un)intentional xenophobia. I tried to protect myself from the exotification and fetishization of foreigners, and I failed. As if it weren’t enough that my existence was juxtaposed by America’s inability to balance between love and hate for the unfamiliar, I was forced to adapt in order not to evoke either of these emotions toward me. I think of this poem as a reminder to myself of what I had done to protect what’s left of me, what’s left of my home inside of me – my parents, my friends, my culture, myself… How easy it is for me to shed the skin I was born with so that I can survive in the American idyll. The essential idea behind it is that my sense of self hasn’t changed, but the way people perceive me had to for the sake of my sanity.It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Visual Art
Ayesha Bashir
This series of miniature paintings explores the role of objects in fostering nostalgia. The instinct to protect cherished objects is nothing new in our consumerist age. ‘Memory objects’ are conceptualized as belongings that elicit deliberate or involuntary memories of one’s culture and history. For me, these objects represent Pakistani culture in relation to its colonial past.
Xiao (Smile) Ma
This set of photos: This is the first set of analog film I ever took, mostly I do digital photography. This set of pictures are taken with the intentional nostalgia behind my mind, it was purposefully used to challenge myself in my ability to capture time, space, and this specific setting. It was my intention to stop time and to capture the breeze.
Film
Jonathan Lee
Seeds of Control is a three channel video work centering around the themes of diaspora, Korean history, and ecology. The piece is about how landscapes and nature are clearly shaped through politics. In this specific context I explore how trees and forests are used as political instruments to oppress marginalized peoples in Korea throughout different power structures whilst investigating its cyclical form of hierarchical power. When one group leaves power and another enters, often the same tactics are used again and again. The ruling power's decision on how to manage forests and nature reflects one of these tactics.
Podcast
Alyssa Pong
Stevie Martinez-Farias and Kenia Torres-Dominguez
This podcast was a project curated by 2 queer identifying Latinx individuals who wanted to tackle discussion topics about sense of belonging, queerness, & culture. Our motive was to create a platform in which people who identify as sexual minorities to feel seen and have a space to relate to in a conversational and casual setting
"YUAN: A study in curry, class, and community" is my attempt, as a fourth generation Malaysian, at reconnecting with the land I live on and the people I share a home (and heritage) with. In doing so, I journeyed through my country's colonial history and indigenous peoples (Orang Asli), talked about traditional cooking ware and multiculturalism, and discovered the intersection between food, class, and language.
What emerged from this was an archival zine accompanied by various audio clips documenting interviews with my grandparents about their childhood, sounds from the kitchen, and dinner time talk. Learning to navigate this embodied experience allowed me to both preserve collective memory and identity, as well as create space for innovation and growth.