Non-Fiction

Hong Kong is, first and foremost, a land of stark opposites. Sleek sprawling skyscrapers are silhouetted against the verdant mountainous terrain, bustling night markets are dotted between majestic colonial-era architecture, and the roads are either steep and narrow, little cramped side streets that meander between crumbling apartment complexes, or wide and sprawling, one of the many overlapping highways that act as the veins and arteries of the city. In the heart of the city, juxtaposition is the name of the game.

It isn’t even eight in the morning, and yet, this concept is already on full display. I’d wandered into a rundown side street, the street before me dappled in shadows and covered in puddles, damp from the unidentified liquid leaking out of pipes overhead. Sunlight is a limited commodity, with most of it being blocked out by the laundry dangling overhead, bridging between the different apartment complexes, as the pungent odour of stale trash permeates the air. Despite the lack of sunlight, the buildings are sun-bleached and weathered, yellowed to a muted sepia from the many typhoons and decades they’ve welcomed. Clawing at the sky like wild beasts, the buildings are bursting at the seams from housing so many inhabitants.

In the midst of all the chaos, the lone pop of colour comes from a vibrant blue storefront.

A winding queue snakes all the way to the sapphire-coloured door, as a simple, albeit trendy white font spells out the word “Bakehouse”. The clientele is a mishmash of locals and tourists, residents and expats, all eager to get their hands on the treats being sold within the jewel-toned walls. In front of me, a local teenager plays a game on her phone, idly looking up once in a while to check her progress in the queue. Behind me, a group of three middle-aged tourists discuss the best sights in Hong Kong, with thick Australian accents coating their tongues, adding a distinct curl to their vowels. This bakery is known for excellent sourdough loaves, German pretzels and buttery croissants, but I’m only here for one thing. The quintessential Hong Kong egg tart.

When I finally order and pay for my breakfast, it arrives in a paper bag that is the colour of cut sapphire. The handle of the paper bag is a tangerine orange, and so are the cartoonish line doodles emblazoned on the front. It looks whimsical, effortlessly avante garde in a way that my Design and Technology coursework could only aspire to emulate. However, there’s nothing whimsical about the contents of the box at all. The treats encased within are the picture of tradition, of culture, of Hong Kong’s vibrant heritage.

Glistening Macau-style egg tarts await me, filled with luscious egg custard, the slightly burnt edges caramelised to perfection, the perfect snack of childhood nostalgia. The pastry is buttery and crisp, a nod towards its origins, inspired by British custard tarts and Portuguese pastel de nata. When they were first introduced to Hong Kong in the 1940s, these treats could only be found in high-end Western restaurants, a far cry from their status now, as popular snacks in Chinese bakeries and Cha Chaan Tengs, Hong-Kong style diners. Derived from Colonial recipes, adapted to Hong-Konger tastes, it’s a brilliant metaphor for Hong Kong’s position as an eclectic cultural melting pot, the perfect cultural figurehead, disguised within the folds of a deliciously flaky pastry.

A city of stark contrasts has its own magnetic allure, a certain thrill that accompanies expecting the unexpected. With Google Maps in one hand and the FOMO-fuelled exuberance of a tourist in the other, I never know where my next adventure is going to take me, whether it’s the frigid tundra of an air-conditioned mall, or sublimating in the the sweltering heat, as I take a shortcut through a dingy side alley. There’s something to love about having surprises that lie around every corner, a pleasant change of scenery in comparison to the routine monotony of everyday life, back in my own city.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a fair opinion for me to regard Hong Kong’s infrastructural dichotomy purely through rose tinted glasses. With the city in stark contrast comes a whole host of hidden problems, which I may not fully be able to understand the scope and nuances of, from the viewpoint of a temporary visitor. The polar differences between neighbouring districts speak volumes of growing issues, such as socioeconomic inequality and a growing wealth disparity within the society. It would be incredibly tone-deaf and privileged of me to regard these decrepit buildings as nothing more than an eccentric charm to the cityscape, or praise the unconventional appeal of the ‘grunge aesthetic’ of these buildings, without pausing to consider the lives of the people who live within them.

However, there’s no such thing as a flawless city or country. Hong Kong has a predominantly Southern-Chinese population, and its unique characteristics, as well as the specific issues it faces, stem from Colonialist roots and exponential growth as a global entrepot. As a result, many of these influences have led to these effects being translated across generations, but the vestige of colonisation will fade over time.

I don’t visit Hong Kong often, but when I do, I return to find it being completely different from when I left it, the sight before me usually a far cry from the way it was immortalised in my memories. Perhaps, it’s due to the time spent away, giving me room to grow, resulting in a change in perspective over the years, or perhaps, it’s because Hong Kong is a dynamic city, nimble and quick to constantly reinvent itself. Upon my most recent visit to the city, one thing that was obvious was the way the frenetic, buzzing energy that had died down during the pandemic was slowly but surely returning to the city. Like waking up from a long slumber, life was creeping back in, vibrant hues painting Hong Kong in large, sweeping brush strokes. The returning sensation is a curious, buoyant thing, a spirit that weaves its way around the people of the city, tying them together with an invisible thread.

Although I am half Hong-Konger in ethnicity, I’ve spent my whole life in Singapore, which led to me forging a significantly stronger sense of belonging with the Singaporean facet of my identity. But this trip to Hong Kong surprised me. In spite of the differences, the contrasting architecture, influences and lifestyles, there’s still a deeply rooted feeling of community, bringing together a divided society. After all, the differences lie in the heights of buildings, the depth of pockets, the mother tongues that grace the lips of locals, but these factors aren’t enough to abolish the sense of togetherness within the Hong Kong society, instead only serving to amplify the unwavering sense of belonging.

Even back on Singaporean soil, I can’t help but feel as if I’ve unlocked another part of who I am, a once-forgotten facet of a diverse cultural identity. Even if Cantonese words feel foreign on my tongue, even if I’m more acquainted with the streets of Tanjong Pagar than Tsim Sha Tsui, it can’t change the fact that there’s a hyphen in my passport, there’s another city that I have roots in, distanced but not divided by the South China Sea. Like an egg tart, my identity is a layered, rich thing, paying homage to a plethora of influences, wrapped in one, central shell.

Unlike an egg tart, it took much longer than a trip to a memorable bakery to find it.

 

 

 

 

Nicola Pak is a sixteen- year-old writer based in Singapore, who loves cooking, chemistry and cats. She enjoys writing think pieces, poetry and YA novels about feisty women in STEM.

“Nǚ ér (Daughter),” Mama whispered, splintering the stillness that enveloped us in our Nissan’s murmur.

“Yeah?” I respond indifferently, double-tapping the gingham dress on my glaring screen.

Mama exhaled a sigh laden with exasperation. “I know you’re only in middle school and college seems far away…But don’t you think it’s time to start preparing? Working harder?”

Add to cart.

My finger twitched as Mama’s tone plunged into despair.

“You can’t continue wasting time like this. Time is water in a sponge, you must squeeze it out. You always have time to study more math. Practice more violin. Professor Yun’s daughters do homework in the car while you dawdle here and there–in the morning, after school, right before bedtime. Also, does anyone spend an entire hour eating dinner like you?”

My eyes swerved away from my phone, flitting through the darkness and anchoring on Mama’s face in the rearview mirror. Vibrant specks of gas station and automobile lights frolicked on her glasses like Skittles. A minor itch of irritation bubbled within me before retreating.

This lecture will pass.

“Everyone is striving while you lag behind for temporary happiness. Angelina’s brother spends hours every day completing hundreds of–”

My ears are bleeding.

“You know what?” I barked out of impulse, my voice pricking with bitter shards that slashed through Mama’s ramble.

“All you–all you Chinese people do is compare, compare, and compare! Compare to this kid, compare to that nine-year-old violin concertmaster, compare to these random Harvard siblings with a tiger mom on the internet. What’s wrong with you?” I shrieked. Leaning forward, I dug my nails into the plush foam of the passenger seat.

“You Chinese people,” Mama reiterated slowly in English, the phrase foreign both in language and context. She fell silent, questioning. Interpreting and tasting each word so innocent on its own, yet monstrous when strung together.

“You? What do you mean, you Chinese people? How could you say that to your mother? To yourself? YOUR BLOOD IS JUST AS CHINESE AS MINE!” Mama rivaled screechingly in Chinese, every syllable firing out like quills, tips seeping outrage.

Or was it grief? Disappointment? Shame?

Lashed by Mama’s acidic reprimand, I felt my cheeks bloom into a boiling crimson under the bite of night frost. I sank back into my seat, unsure if I was quivering from anger or embarrassment.

“It’s really all you do, though. Comparing,” I mumbled.

Maintaining her eyes locked on the inky road, Mama replied softly, “Yes, that’s what we do. It’s Chinese culture. It’s your culture. Don’t you consider yourself part of it?”

***

What is Chinese culture? To me…

It’s a ceaseless torrent of indecipherable math problems hurled at me from the instant my hands grasped a pencil–the time when each chubby finger merely resembled a bulbous pea pod. Despite bawling through one progressively more horrid book after another, I was…

Never enough. Never brilliant enough.

It’s an industrious network of children juxtaposed by parents who scrutinize them like jewelers analyzing sapphires. Calculating, establishing product value through a diligent search for scintillating sparkles and glimmers of distorting blemishes. Ambitious jewelers coveting perfection.

It’s my austere Baba when he chastised me for even the most trivial matters, his wrath erupting at the first twinkle of a betraying tear. Petrified, I squelched sobs ignited by furiously arched eyebrows that magnified his forehead wrinkles–canyons carved by hours of memorizing the Chinese-English dictionary. Hours that acted as the key to Měi Guó (America, The Beautiful Country). Hours that collected into alphabet soup serenading sleepless nights, devouring youthful onyx hair. Seized by my 4-year-old shoulders and marched to face the ever so familiar cream wall, I’d be whacked on my behind before Baba’s storming departure.

It’s drowning in apologetic guilt, yet forever being too proud to utter the three syllables of duì bù qǐ. Pronouncing the last character qǐ–briefly dipping in the middle and jolting up into a risen tone–seems to mimic a defiant question. A statement clumsily declaring, I was wrong, but does that mean you’re right? Saying duì bù qǐ is like forcing a bamboo shoot to squirm out of frozen earth.

Shortly after each timeout, I sat alone on the living room futon that creaked with every hiccup. Sometimes, Baba walked by and ventured closer to sheepishly reveal a cluster of dark chocolate almonds melting in his palm.

A bittersweet apology.

It’s Mama at 9 pm, returning home from a sticky star-studded Texan dusk, a weary smile crinkling her eyes as I flung myself onto her apron and whiffed the canvas cloth saturated in restaurant grease. Clung to her legs as she fingered through the rainbow of homemade bows I shoved into my hair that morning. Licked my lips when she promised to bake red bean rice cake, confectionary magic whisked up during my dreams so that I awoke to glutinous fragrance the next day.

It’s my wài pó (grandma), sweeter than tofu pudding. A wài pó who scrambled to talk with me in every phone call, her local dialect’s perplexing accents cascading out and tickling my ears. Accustomed to only Standard Chinese, I instinctively winced at hearing the unfamiliar tongue–until I grasped a shimmer of recognition.

“Xiǎng Wài Pó le ma (Do you miss Grandma)?”

Wài Pó hushed herself with childlike eagerness, as if my answer to her regularly asked question was a baffling riddle.

“Dāng rán (Of course)!” I’d exclaim in reassurance, hoping Wài Pó could detect my vigorous head nodding. I enjoyed picturing Wài Pó clutching her aged telephone with both small, sun-spotted hands. Once a rich wine red, Wài Pó’s telephone began its life in the 1990s, connecting her and Mama, then a budding entrepreneur in Shanghai. Who knew that Wài Pó would one day sail her love across the Pacific?

“Xiǎng Wài Pó le (She misses her grandma),” Wài Pó would repeat a few times smugly, audibly in glee.

I miss Wài Pó.

I miss my culture.

I miss how, in the three times I met her, she marveled at how much I’d grown, only to still call me a xiǎo bǎobǎo (little treasure baby). I pulled back in shyness when she cuddled her fragile face to mine, giggling moments later as feathery heather gray wisps teased my cheeks.

I miss Wài Pó squeezing every droplet of her affection into the few weeks we’d share in a lifetime. During those days, an ever-changing fruit medley swirled around me as Wài Pó busied herself over skinning apples and rinsing Kyoho grapes she handpicked from nearby fruit stands. Every time Wài Pó caught sight of her outdoor cat, she clambered to hoist it up for me. While I cooed sappily, Wài Pó weathered rounds of swats that swelled into scarlet marks. Sitting on her bamboo mat, as I babbled about Easter egg hunting and slapping mosquitoes under July 4th fireworks, Wài Pó listened intently, immersed in my chaotic Chinese describing America. When I plopped myself at Wài Pó’s wooden table to savor sauteed fern and meatball soup, she observed in delight, her chestnut eyes gently perched on me for the entire meal. Everything tasted better knowing that no one in the world would look at me in the same way Wài Pó did.

Most of all, I miss Wài Pó’s signature platter of Chòu Guì Yú (Stinky Fish), Anhui province’s boasted delicacy that bears a notorious odor symbolical of foot stench. After I endured my first disorienting 15-hour plane ride to China, Wài Pó welcomed me with her Stinky Fish, its malicious stench snaking into and appalling my nostrils. Ironically, the dish was exquisite–adorned with a dynamic array of chilies and ginger slivers, a single grand fish laid cradled in a fiery pool of garnet red sauce. Sandwiching a minuscule morsel of fish between my chopsticks, I nibbled gingerly as the pungent flakes blossomed into a miraculously piquant aroma. Responding to Wài Pó’s expectant peer that flicked between me and her salty peculiar creation, the ends of my lips inched to an awestruck grin.

***

I am clay molded by the hands of Chinese culture. Aged hands that tenderly paint me in Wài Pó’s warmth and phoenixes gracing Mama’s Qipao dress. Rough hands that place me in the kiln’s fiery embrace, as algebra forges a hardened callus on my finger and disciplined scoldings crystallize my heart into jade. Unwavering hands that swash on silky glaze and lift me to the stars as Goddess Cháng é bathes me in moonlight, illuminating love, pride, and resilience. I am whole.

So, perhaps I owe a long overdue word with Mama. D-duì b-

Let me try again.

I’m sorry it took me too long to learn that if I cherry-picked my culture, what’s left behind is bland, like naked wontons without the scorch of chili oil.

And, to my beloved Stinky Fish, unleashing your tear-jerking curls of putrid steam, how does forgiveness sound?

 

 

 

Grace Huang is a junior at West High School in Madison, Wisconsin. She loves writing about childhood and the Asian-American experience. Her work has been published in the New York Times and recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the Wisconsin Young Writers Award, and the Ringling College of Art and Design. She has two cats who enjoy hogging the keyboard of her overheated laptop as she types up daydreams.

Singapore
Sunday, October 12, 2023, 6:30 am

 I stand in the kitchen, eyes boring into glossy ultramarine tile. It lines the space between the granite countertop and the stained off-white cabinets, all flung open and boasting their mismatched, eclectic collection of glass and ceramic innards. My thoughts are overwhelmingly slow, my demeanor their languid echo, and I limply cradle a stack of multi-colored bowls in my hands. They belonged to my great-grandmother Agnes, and they were the only thing my mother insisted on inheriting when she died. Her days of ice cream sundaes and red wine in the nursing home finished at last when I was just six, her full set of pastel, nearly cartoonish dishes left one Midwestern storage unit for another until they traveled, years later, each one carefully shrouded and tightly taped in plastic bubble wrap, on big shipping containers across the Pacific Ocean to this kitchen. Now I place them, in stacks of three or more, in their assigned cabinets. My chest feels full, so jam-packed with dread, weighing down my body, my heart, and my deeply worried soul.

The hymn escapes my lips in soft, breathy tremors.

You would sing it before you lost yourself, beginning the round until another voice joined your rich baritone. The sound warmed the space it filled, continuing on and on, unceasing until life drew our attention elsewhere. Cancer throughout your esophagus, intestines, and stomach never stopped you from easing into prayerful song. It had to take away your brain–it had to steal your voice.

I sing it alone, alone in the kitchen of a house on the other side of the world from you as my tears drip onto your late mother’s dishes. The song is a prayer that you will feel peace, peace well deserved after such unrelenting suffering. I pray, too, that you can hear my voice across the oceans and continents that span between us and that maybe, in your heart, you can join the song one last time.

In a tiny Texan town, in a home whose cupboards have simple white dishes, you and Grandma watched live television Mass in the living room just as you always did. Uttering a soft ‘peace be with you,’ she rested a hand on your shoulder, and your heart decided to listen. It was October 11 at 4:30 pm, or October 12 at 6:30 am in my ultramarine-tiled kitchen.

It hit me that you were gone on the long-haul flight to San Francisco. While everyone else drowned out the tedium of the economy cabin with Hollywood’s latest contribution to pop culture, I let out shaky sobs. I was so numb until then, the adrenaline wearing off and my mind having the space to wander and wonder. Wondering who I’m supposed to talk to now, now that you’re gone. Even the flight attendants, the only people in that godforsaken tin can not trying to block everything out, knew well enough to leave me be.

I had been so tired the Sunday morning that Heaven took you. The night before I wrote and rewrote a letter to a boy countless times, choosing each word so delicately for all six pages, meticulously handwritten.

You remember him, don’t you? I wanted so badly for you to like him when I brought him home to meet you, to approve of my first romantic choice. You quizzed him about the possibility of dragons existing (which had been on your mind since it had occurred to you how many mythologies worldwide include the massive, fire-breathing beasts), and you seemed somewhat impressed with his knowledge of history and Arthurian legend.

Restless and having given up on sleep, I found that it takes so many painful words, so many not-so-loving phrases, so many not-so-young reasons and feelings to justify ending two years of young love.

Naive love. Hopeful, caring love. Unexpectedly, painful, difficult love that just got to be too much.

So I sat, crammed between the broad shoulders of the two remaining men in my life, my father and brother, realizing I had lost both of my dearest friends– the one who would talk to me for hours, and the one who would have provided that unending embrace when you (the former) weren’t around anymore.

I landed in California, Denver, then Omaha, remembering every good thing for thirty-some hours. Crying, though, came in bouts of varying lengths and intensities the week after that Sunday, after I arrived at the church to celebrate your life. The priest had never met you, a frail, cynical monsignor from North Dakota.

You would have hated his homily, absolutely hated it. He made a point to avoid saying your name, referring to “this person” that we all loved. His opening line was “Seeing so many people here tells me what a positive impact this person made on the world, but that doesn’t matter.” He never said it outright, but the whole message was ‘This is going to happen to all of you, too, so make sure you haven’t sinned that bad!’ I don’t know about you, but that’s the first time I’ve been angry in church.

The singers changed the key of “On Eagle’s Wings,” a sin in and of itself, and Grandma insisted on a closed casket because she didn’t want people to see you looking so sick. She made the man from the funeral home close it while I stood there trying to say goodbye, your friends and family trickling into the pews. I had never cried tears that heavy before, my eyes bearing the weight of being the last on Earth to ever see you.

So many people lined up to deliver their carefully worded condolences, Grandma shoving off the rain of sympathy as if it were false accusations. She smiled as she continued to neglect any loss in the presence of other living souls. She loved you so deeply, but God forbid she lets that show. I can’t imagine the loneliness, the horrible emptiness she must feel after fifty-five years. For all I know, the only way she can express it is to hide in the hotel bathrooms, sobbing to her reflection while we wait outside the door, no longer allowed to ask if she’s okay.

To be frank, I don’t know if I’m okay anymore. I spent the week leading up to the big events (my 18th birthday, and the flights back home) being hit with sudden and overpowering grief, leaving dinner tables to hide in bathrooms and cry. Maybe Grandma and I do have something in common after all.

We spent the rest of the week in small-town Ceresco, staying with the other grandparents, taken aback when my uncle arrived unannounced, three obnoxious dogs in two, and a new girlfriend on his arm. We took this in stride because, well, what choice did we have?

Once all of the insignificant days had passed, each one taking its sweet time, I found myself in a dimly lit Italian restaurant eating lasagna with much too thick noodles. Grandma sat next to me (probably because all of the established grown-ups kept asking her practical, overwhelming questions about how she was going to get rid of your things), and the exuberant voices of my Dad’s side of the family echoed around us while we sat, decidedly quiet. It being my 18th birthday, people wanted to celebrate. When Grandma handed me my gift, a lovely pair of elegant crystal earrings, she waited a few moments before she spoke, almost apprehensive.

“Grandpa picked these out for you, Isabelle,” she cleared her throat, tears welling, “and he wanted nothing more than to be here.”

At that moment, in the dark yet lively corner of Lincoln’s finest Italian establishment, her hardened facade cracked– we both wanted nothing more than to have you around. The ten other people at the table hardly noticed, their excited chatter concealing the oh-so-familiar sound of sadness, but in that moment we didn’t need to hide away to express our grief. We had the safety of going unnoticed, and perhaps we saw a little bit of ourselves reflected in the other. It’s unfortunate to say I went unnoticed at my birthday dinner, but at least we were celebrating a day in advance.

They’re beautiful, by the way, the earrings. Thank you.

I woke up on my birthday, dreading the arduous journey home that was soon to begin as I scavenged for breakfast. I caught the view from the kitchen window, abandoned all else, and ran out into the street.

It was snowing. Gentle, intricate flurries cascaded down from the sky–no, from Heaven–, melting not but a second after they hit the Earth. In the middle of the dark pavement, I sat, knees tucked into my chest, and let it fall on me, reveling in the best present I will ever receive. I laughed a girlish giggle, I forgot about the boy, the boy who was so much like you in some ways, and I stayed in that spot on the old, cracked pavement until I had no choice but to let reality be itself again.

It’s been about a month now since you passed, and I’ve since returned to the house whose cabinets hold the ceramic pastel dishes, the house that has nearly ten thousand miles that span between it and where you used to be. Of the countless reasons that you will never be forgotten, among them now is that I cannot stand in my kitchen without remembering how you would sing–without knowing that God must be in such good company.

 

 

 

 

Isabelle Bible was born in Durham, North Carolina in 2005, and moved to Humble, Texas shortly after. She lived there for nearly sixteen years before coming to Singapore with her parents, two younger brothers, and three dogs. Aside from writing, she loves music, cooking for friends and family, laughing much too loudly, hot cups of coffee, and going on long walks with her dogs.

Talking about the Kerala chai requires a geographical explanation of the land that is even titled as God’s own country, where the emerald green landscapes meet the bright blue embrace of the Arabian sea. But amongst all this charm, it’s the evenings at home that truly transport you to a dimension of artistry, emotions, and sweetness beyond compare.

The evenings are always different. It can be a warm, golden embrace that caresses the lush green landscape, or sometimes after the morning rains that quenched the thirst of the earth, the evenings bring a refreshing change to the sky once heavy with clouds, now wearing a duet between the royal purples and the most ethereal blues.

Our home is nestled amidst a lush sanctuary of trees, both big and small. The big trees with their sprawling canopy and the delicate flowering plants that hug the fence co-exist in the harmonious surrender to nature’s rhythm. The mango trees in our front yard are in full bloom, their branches heavy with fragrant blossoms, a perfume that lingers on the senses. It is as if the very essence of Kerala’s summer has been captured in those blossoms.

Snacks play an important role in the illustrations of evenings in Kerala. They are not just culinary creations; they are incorporations of generations of culinary understandings, wisdom, love and tradition.

Imagine biting into a crispy golden brown yet yellow sphere that crackles like autumn leaves underfoot. This is the magic of the lentil-stuffed sukhiyan. As you take the first indulgent bite, your taste buds are met with a sweet surprise – a luscious, fragrant filling of cooked green-gram in jaggery and grated coconut, infused with love and the flavors of cardamom. As the effort I put into explaining sukhiyan would explain my love for them, there are also other snacks like neyyappam, and vattayappam. And how not to mention wonders created with plantains,— and impossible not to mention a malayali’s relationship with tapioca, with love – kappa. The creativity and ability of Kerala home cooks to turn a humble root into boiled or crispy , savory chips and much more.

Sitting on the porch, as we sip our chai with some homemade snacks, the warmth of the cup in my hands mirrors the warmth in my heart.

Neighbors pass by with their cows, heading back home after a day of grazing. An everyday sight that adds rustic charm to our village, we exchange pleasantries, wits and stories, connecting in a way that only happens in tight-knit communities. The rhythmic clinking of cowbells accompanies our conversations, blending seamlessly with the philharmonic evenings.

My grandmother, a living storehouse of wisdom and love, joins me. Watching the world go by, her wrinkled hands, adorned with simple undecorated gold bangles that chime like music effortlessly find their way through my hair, massaging my scalp with a fondness that words cannot express. Her touch is a balm to my soul, an unspoken reassurance that I hold dear. A very simple gesture that spoke of a lifetime of care and affection. Our conversations about life, her advice, stories, her patiently listening to me, her beautiful smile filled with innocence and all that love, together makes all those moments very special.

As the stars begin to twinkle in the velvet sky, nature quiets down, the only sounds are the crickets. It’s a moment of serenity, a reminder of the beauty of simplicity. Whispering “good night” to the rustling leaves, I carry the evening’s magic with me to my dreams.

 

 

An aspiring healer with a passion for words and a stethoscope around her neck., Diya Maria is a Tennessee- based nursing student. A devoted reader and an art enthusiast, she tries to bring unique perspectives to the pages that resonate with the heartbeat of readers everywhere.

Dear Nani,

I’m writing to you from the mountain top in Sewanee. I’m participating in a creative writing conference here. I think I told you this, but you probably forgot. You always love reading my pieces, so I’m sending you a few stories with this letter. I’ve enlarged the font, so you can read them. I know you’re forgetting so much, so let me tell you what I remember.

I remember bowls of Annie’s mac-and-cheese with peas and purified water from a pitcher. I loved that mac-and-cheese, and I also loved the bowls. You always used the same one, ceramic white and laced with green tulips on the lip. One time, I asked my mom to make the mac-and-cheese, just the way you did, but it didn’t taste quite the same. When I asked why the water was purified, not the normal water I had at home, you said “Only the best for my favorite granddaughter!” I remember smiling.

Even when Nana spent hours in his room, lying on the gray comforter and staring at the chipped ceiling with glazed eyes, you were moving around, grabbing balled up socks and playing cards trapped under the legs of kitchen chairs, bony fingers hammering nails into the wall to hang up my school pictures and family photos, light bouncing off smiling faces.

I remember watching Young Sheldon in your living room in the evenings. Usually for the first twenty minutes of each episode, you would be bustling around in the small kitchen, pulling out chocolate-almond Dove bars and pouring us glasses of fizzing Coke, but I loved when you would join Rahul and me on the couch, the embroidered burgundy blanket draped across our laps. I’m pretty sure I looked at you more than the television screen, how a smile broke across your face whenever Missy and Sheldon teased each other, reminded you of me and Rahul, I think. You were so pretty when you laughed, your head thrown back, slightly crooked smile and dimpled cheeks, dark eyes creased. I don’t remember you ever scolding us, even when bits of chocolate broke off the bar and fell onto the carpet, lost in the plush crimson. I always fell asleep before the episode ended, my soft snore pushing into the quiet room.

This piece that I’m writing now came from an “I remember” prompt. When our teacher assigned it to us a few days ago, the other kids in my class rolled their eyes. It’s a generic prompt, an easy one. But I couldn’t wait to jump in, to close my eyes and picture your egg-shell white plaster walls, your large fluorescent light bulbs, the small manicured lawn out front. I do a lot with memory in my writing. It’s funny how memory works, how I can remember which photos are taped on your fridge but lying in bed some nights, staring up at the glowing stars taped on my ceiling, I forget the sound of your laugh. I have a bit of an obsession with memory in my writing, maybe because there’s so much of it. There’s always more to remember. And I’m watching you and learning how easy it is to forget.

I remember you would carry me to the bed, your fingers pressing gently into my ribs, until you no longer picked me up. I learned this one evening as I lay sprawled on the couch, my brother’s voice muted. I waited for you to scoop me up, for your cool hands on my waist, but instead you gently shook my leg and told me I was too heavy for you to lift. When I looked up at you, lines creased your cheeks, your dimples. I went to my red-and-white trundle bed that night with a lump in my throat and fell asleep to Rahul’s voice talking on the phone in the room next to mine, where he slept. I woke up in the morning to find clumps of dark brown hair in the bathroom trash can, thick locks among cherry Dum-Dum wrappers and Old Navy t-shirt receipts. That was how I found out. I ran, crying, to the kitchen, where I found you. You set down your whisk and pushed the bowl of egg yolks to the side to sit down with me, groaning as you lowered yourself onto the cool linoleum tiles. Our backs against the refrigerator, you pressed your hand firmly onto mine. Later that afternoon, I curled up in the sagging bean bag in the corner of the room, my face in the fuzz. When you survived the chemotherapy, and the doctors removed the lump in your breast, I thought you were immortal. Then aging kicked in, and I could see every day that you weren’t.

I remember Wii tennis, standing on the crimson carpet, flinging the remote around to hit the ball flying toward us on the screen. We almost hit each other so many times, a light breeze from a remote whizzing too close to skin. I got a bruise from when I slammed my arm mid-swing into the side of the brown sectional couch. You were never too good at playing. You’d have to sit down on the couch a few points into the game, out of breath, your shoulders pressed against the fabric back of the couch, and you’d lose some leverage on your swing. So, I played easy on you. Some points, I even pretended to not see the ball and swung a few seconds too late. You would always grin when you won, spinning around on the carpet, your arms flying around your waist in celebration.

At our meeting yesterday, my teacher told me to remove some of the details. They’re unnecessary, she said. I nodded, smiled politely. I didn’t know how to tell her that the kitchen isn’t just bright, but sunlight falls through the window in showers. The carpet isn’t red; it is maroon with flecks of gold and auburn if you kneel down and stare at it long enough. The speakers aren’t low quality; the voices crackle like static into the family room. I understand what my teacher is saying, but I am attached to these details I’ve grown up with. The carpet is not red.

Whenever I walked to the bathroom, I would stop at the portrait of your brother, clean-shaven face, dimpled cheeks, military uniform ironed and smooth. He died in a plane, you had told me once, after I’d asked a few times. When I probed further, you suggested a game of carrom and walked out of the room before I could respond. I have a lot of questions. What did you want to be or do in your life? Did you get it? Were you loved in the way you wanted to be?

 

 

Tara Prakash is an eleventh grader at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. Her work has been recognized in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards (where she won a National Gold Medal and a National Silver Medal), YoungArts, the New York Times, Blue Marble Review, Bow Seat’s Ocean Awareness Contest, The Daphne Review, and other literary journals and platforms. As a 2023 mentee in the Adroit Summer Mentorship Program, a participant in the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and the founder of a nonprofit, Write to Right, which teaches writing to underserved communities, Tara loves writing poetry, flash fiction pieces, and creative nonfiction essays.

Dear R. F. Kuang,

I didn’t know who you were when I was in middle school. If I did, you would have been the person seventh grade me wanted to be when she grew up.

I had less access to iPhones and computers than my peers growing up, a decision by my parents that I credit with creating a love for reading and writing in the absence of the constant distraction that is social media. I entertained myself using the pages of books, both those authored by adults (J.K. Rowling and Rick Riordan, but also older, more arcane authors that made seventh grade me really think she was something of an intellectual) and by myself (I wrote constantly, in spiral notebooks and cloth-bound ones, carried them everywhere because a handful of graphite-smeared pages really did contain the boundaries of my world). My stories were long and winding, their plots propelled by contrived coincidences more than cohesive conflicts, their characters so blatantly derived from my favorite fictional protagonists it was as if I’d pulled them from the published page.

I wrote about Adventure and Magic and War and Love (as much as any twelve-year-old raised in a privileged suburban bubble can write about Adventure or Magic or War or Love), and I think if I knew what your books were about–which is to say, Adventure and Magic and War and Love (and also lessons on colonialism and imperialism and real life war crimes communicated through the lens of historical fantasy, except seventh grade me didn’t really know what any of those words mean and would have been distracted by the rawness of your characters and the shininess of your fantastical world over your stories’ real life implications, so I will overlook these issues for now)–if I knew what your books were about, I would have loved them, and my stories would have started to emulate them as they did everything I loved. My writing would have taken the shape of yours, my characters morphing their physical appearance and quirks and flaws to resemble your own protagonists, the system of magic I constructed in my fantasy world a mirror image of the type of magic used in your bestselling novels.

You became a published author when you were barely twenty, and in seventh grade, a published author was exactly what I wanted to be. I am certain that if I knew you then, I would have wanted to become you.

The problem is that I haven’t been a seventh grader for nearly half a decade. I’ve outgrown my graphite pencils and college-ruled composition notebooks, exchanged them for a laptop and Google Drive stuffed full of ideas for stories or poems with an eternal audience of one: me. Instead of spending free time writing at a desk, pencil flying to transcribe characters and plots and worlds from mind to finger to page, I take breaks from homework on social media, relying on a kaleidoscopic plethora of Instagram Reels to stimulate my exhausted brain.

I spend so much time on school and sports and extracurriculars I convince myself that I don’t have the capacity to pursue intellectual activities for fun, so my downtime is dedicated to consuming media over producing it. And with the loss of creative pursuits I’ve lost my desire to become an author, because growing up means realizing that if you are someone who doesn’t have the self-discipline to do homework for more than an hour without checking social media, a job with a work schedule that’s entirely self-imposed might not be the job for you.

Besides, no one wants to become an author when Chat GPT will soon be able to write better than a human can. No one wants to pursue an overpriced liberal arts degree in English or Comparative Literature when the job market seems saturated with opportunities only for people who study business or STEM. I once told my aunt, who graduated from Cornell with a master’s in engineering, that I wanted to study anthropology in college because I am interested in the connections between humans and histories and cultures. She laughed and told me to pursue a degree in engineering if I really wanted to be successful.

I think that growing up means learning which things are impossible under the constraints of time and the anxiety of living a real life. It is impossible to be a creative and successful person in a world that squeezes profit only from people who maximize their fields of study, their money, their time in the pursuit of the most obviously practical skills. To be successful in life is to pursue an occupation you might find unfulfilling, one you can only tolerate, something lucrative enough that you live comfortably but so inevitably exhausting that when you get home from work each day you have neither the desire nor the motivation to pursue the production of anything artistic.

To be creative in life is to spend your time writing silly little stories and silly little papers while your friends take college level courses in physics and calculus, is to acquire an overpriced degree from an overpriced institution only to fail to foster a worthwhile career, is to come back home and live in your mother’s basement at the ripe old age of twenty-seven or thirty. You cannot be both.

This is what I might believe, Ms. Kuang, if I did not know about you. How are you only twenty-seven years old and a published author of five New York Times bestselling books, a recipient of multiple degrees in East Asian Studies and Chinese Literature from institutions like Cambridge and Oxford and Yale? You are successful and important and studied something that really mattered to you, and every day you wake up and use your degree to do the things that seem to really matter to you (write about things that are important to Asian Americans and East Asians and simply The World, about British imperialism and the Opium Wars and cultural appropriation in the publishing industry, but write in such a way that you are crafting a beautiful narrative even before you are educating your audience).

I am not naive: I know the shiny, perfect, academic bubble of a life you project on your Instagram account and Squarespace website are as fabricated as anything else on social media in 2024, and for all I know you might hate what you do and wish you were an engineer, an ophthalmologist, a woman in STEM. But I do not think this is the case; I think the facts speak for themselves. Your ability to derive success and profit from a degree with no obviously practical application, your budding literary empire that operates and thrives under the constraints of capitalism, speak for themselves.

I don’t think I necessarily still want to be an author. I do think I want to study anthropology, or history, or philosophy, to pursue education for the purpose of learning something I care about and to believe I can still build success at the end of it all. I think it doesn’t really matter what you pursue but how you take advantage of your opportunities, and studying something that’s not obviously practical doesn’t mean you will be useless for the rest of your life.

 

Dear R. F. Kuang,

I think you are still who I want to be when I grow up.

 

 

Juliet Rotondo is a high school junior from Rye High School in Rye, New York. Her writing is recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and featured in her school’s literary magazine and newspaper; she is on the editorial staff of her school’s literary magazine, newspaper, and Polyphony Lit. She loves using art and writing as creative mediums to connect her lived experiences with universal ones.