Features
KAINAN SA DUWAR
Finding Home at a Filipino Restaurant in Amman
Across the traffic circle, through screens of dust and exhaust, I could see that the long line of sandy buildings met …
Politics is a Feeling
A conversation with writer Jenny Zhang
There are mistakes in Jenny Zhang’s titles. The name of her 2012 poetry collection, Dear Jenny, We Are All Find, misspells …
Windows
The Stories We Tell
[CW: intergenerational violence, eating disorders, depression] I was five when I was first shown the window behind which my grandfather sat, …
A Love Letter to Spontaneity
My friend is a chronic soul-searcher. His favorite pastime is to sift through the empty shells of people around him, trying …
Cabbage: A Cultural History
“Cabbage guy,” or the cabbage merchant, is one of the most iconic characters in Avatar the Last Airbender, an animated TV …
Tuning Out Reality
A Farewell to The Real Housewives
I was 10 when I witnessed a physical fight for the first time. It occurred at a country club. Upset by …
Cavell’s Horse, Derrida’s Cat, and Other People
The challenge and reward of interspecies negotiations
My first galvanizing career goal was to become an Olympic equestrian, which was not unusual among my prepubescent peer group. It …
Divine Narration
The ethics and ethos of modern astrology
By no fault but my own, I have retained very little from my sixth-grade science class. Even so, I vaguely remember …
On the Almost Liberating Possibilities of Moshing
A Personal Politics of Mosh Pits
I was first introduced to moshing by the massive bruise on my coworker Dannyboi’s cheek. Dannyboi shuffled into the ice cream …
Nước is Water
Nước is water. Nước is country. The streams and seas of nước that my parents crossed in 1979 to reach a …
Flights of Fantasy
On Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s Undercommons
I’m trying to remember where I was when I first read The Undercommons. I don’t remember where I started it, but …
Buzzed
Haircuts as a catalyst for change
It was a Wednesday afternoon in mid-March of 2013 and I was seated in a chair on the basketball court of …
The Making of a Ghost
Photographs are the closest thing we carry to memory. Though not pure representation, they can bring relief to a story, let …
There's No Place Like the Future
Dorothy’s ruby slippers and queer utopia
Every New Year’s Eve in Key West, the drag queen Sushi perches comfortably inside a glistening ruby high heel, so giant …
Queer Callouses
I got my favorite pair of Docs my sophomore year of high school—Pascals with portions of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych The Garden …
Measuring the Small Animal of My Body
Weight loss in the era of Fitbits
content warning: body image When I was in the third grade, everyone got pedometers from our teacher. They were small and …
Reflections on Hong Kong
This week, Features and News collaborated to invite four students from Hong Kong to reflect on the country's ongoing and escalating …
23 Years in My Body
Reflections on a Civil War
content warning: eating disorder, bulimia, sexual violence i. When I was in 4th grade, I was friends with two girls in …
Paddling to the Source
The canoe in Canadian past and present
On day 19, my trip arrived at Wapekeka First Nation after weeks of sun, the most difficult leg of our journey …
The Perfect Companion
How sexbots yoke intimacy to exploitation
“Goodbye loneliness!” reads the homepage of RealDollX, where anyone can purchase a life-size, silicone, human-looking sex robot for the price of …
When Nezha Fell From the Sky
In my childhood, I watched Nezha. It was an animated series based off the Chinese myth of a boy named Nezha. …
The Power of Poultry
Pampered chickens, Silicon Valley wealth, and agrarian dreams
Ginger is eight years old. She’s survived two dog attacks, confrontations with a deadly ferret, multiple aggressive raccoons, and a hawk. …
Dirty Undies
Seeing and unseeing the thong in pop culture
I bought my first thong when I was 15. It was a cinnamon color with light blue polka dots, framed by …
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Seeing Korean and American in neither Korea nor America
“Each member of this shadowy network resented the others, who were irritating reminders that nothing was more American, whatever that means, …
iWork, uWork, WeWork
How the coworking industry is failing freelancers
I was one of 500,000 coworking Americans in 2017 when I had a summer job at a small coworking space in …
Body Talk
On wounds and the loneliest form of memory
content warning:depictions of blood and wounds When faced with a missing person or examining an unnamed or unclaimed body, the police …
Collecting Sediments
Cappadocia and carving out homes
My mom’s name is Petra. Short for Petronella, it shares the Greek root “petros” with petrified, Peter, and petrol. Petros means …
Beyond #MeToo
Transformative Justice on College Campuses
content warning: sexual violence This week, the Features editors invited Camila Pelsinger B’20, Transformative Justice Student Coordinator, to author a piece …
“It Needs To Be In Our Hands”
An Interview with the Jane Collective’s Heather Booth
In 1965, Heather Booth received a desperate phone call from a friend whose sister needed an abortion. Booth called around and …
To Kancil, With Love
Or, the smallest deer in the world
The first time I saw mouse deer, I was sitting at a table in the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) …
Long Shadows Smoking Guns
I think many people who live in Downtown Providence and on the East Side would be surprised to discover that a …
Days of Our Lives
On soap operas and suffering
Like the plot of any good melodrama, my relationship to The Bold and the Beautiful was a matter of fate, and …
A High Stakes Game of Jenga
Or, how to move a house
The first time Guy Davis ever moved a house, things did not go as planned. He was told it would be …
City Upon a Hill
A study in the geopolitics of elevation
The Berkeley hills bound the city to the east. The ridge stretches up and down the eastern bank of the San …
Waterlog
On swamps, deserts, and sites of old selves
In Southern Appalachia, the forests have been burying themselves for millennia. The trees collapse where the forest floor puddles: thick floods …
Exit Interview with My Grandmother
On 76th between Columbus and Amsterdam, a ninety-two year old woman is reading Sally Rooney
My grandmother serves me small lunches she likes to call gourmet. Ham, whole wheat, mustard, assorted cookies my mother brings my …
Survivors Have Said "Me Too"
Now what should their perpetrators say?
content warning: sexual assault “Hey, I have a really serious question for you that hasn’t been addressed ever,” reads the text …
Among the Iguanas
On life and the pursuit of death in Guantánamo Bay
content warning: descriptions of death and torture In Taíno, an indigenous language of the Caribbean islands, Guantánamo means “land between the …
Scenic Depictions of Slavic Life
Building a language of irony in Latvian counter-culture
“The Slav Squat is not just about squatting down—no, no. It is about technique. About showing your Slav levels,” explains YouTube …