Features
Criminalizing Childhood
The problem with the juvenile justice system
content warning: juvenile detention, anti-Black violence In May 2020, a Michigan judge sentenced a 15-year-old Black girl named Grace* to juvenile …
Community as Pedagogy
Reimagining higher education and online learning through Black Mountain College
In 1933, a small, inconspicuous community sprung up in the densely wooded southern Appalachians. Its students and visitors would come to …
Forget Me Not
Nationalism, diaspora, and the war in Artsakh
My grandma was having an allergic reaction to the incense. Tears streamed down her face while the rest of us surreptitiously …
Playtime!
The games we play and why we play them
The circle comes together when the mestre sounds the berimbau, producing a buzzing sound unlike any other percussion instrument. Para-na-weyyyyy, para-na-wey …
New Life in Crisis
A conversation with Quatia Osorio: doula, entrepreneur, mother
content warning: medical abuse, anti-Black violence, miscarriage In this time of simultaneous quarantine and racial reckoning, Quatia Osorio—a Providence-based doula—has persisted …
Wrestling with the Establishment
An interview with State senate Candidate Jonathon Acosta
In his Central Falls and Pawtucket community, Jonathon Acosta is known simply as “coach.” Acosta oscillates between his role as an …
California Smoke Dims the Rhode Island Sun
Organizing for climate justice in the long shadows of the wildfires
My first day of work in California was hard. I knew it would be hard when I signed up with Americorps …
Liberté, Egalité, Sororité
Greek power and the tension of abolition
Since its founding in 1870 as the first Greek letter organization for women, Kappa Alpha Theta Fraternity Inc. has expanded to …
What Swans Teach Us About Life
A Lesson on Heartbreak
On a run the other morning, I passed a swan with its head face-down in the water. I stopped on the …
Anchored in Faith
A recollection from time shared between the living and the dead
The first days at the cemetery certainly weren’t the hardest. Those would come later, as the temperatures soared to 90 degrees, …
Searching for Stability
Redefining home in San Francisco
When I think of home, I do not picture the house I grew up in. Instead, I’m eating dried apricots with …
The Future Memory of Food
The kitchen is a site of protest, the garden blooms a resistance
In the warm, yellow light of the afternoon sun, my mother’s and my hands look the same. Poking around to find …
All Hands to the Pump
content warning: mildly graphic descriptions of blood and surgery Plip-plip-plip-BEEP. Plip-plip-plip-BEEP. My mother’s gossiping always seems to land me in bizarre …
Litigating Choice
Second-Wave Feminism, Alan Dershowitz, and the 1986 ‘Brown University sex ring’
content warning: discussions of rape and consent One day in 1983, when my mother was a Brown University sophomore, her roommate …
Dear Dear
Reading ancestors into being
I know my great-great-great-great grandmother’s handwriting well. The stroke of her t comes after the vertical without crossing, leading the eye …
Music, Mischief, and Blisters
Wedding season commences in Sudan
Drumbeats loud enough to ripple through the Nile, caterers pressed to make over 200meals, children running around, ruining their fancy dresses …
The EXTRA! Files
Volume 40 of the College Hill Independent marks, strangely enough, our 30th anniversary. Thirty years of Metro reporting, 600 Weeks Reviewed, …
Should Poetry Be Everywhere?
In defense of the home, being just that and nothing else
There is perhaps no better time for mandatory solitude than right now. We have all become master pretenders, comfortably encased in …
On Huikau
Tensions simmering in the melting pot
I have photos that help me recall the day my Aunty and Uncle took me to the summit of Maunakea around …
When We Are Apart We Are Not Alone
A conversation with Fred Moten and Stefano Harney
In the first issue of the semester, we published areflection on Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons, a book that …
Get it in Writing
Maximalist Journaling in Crisis and Calmness
cw: abuse, gaslighting If someone you are about to date for a long time mentions that they have previously read their …
Gold, Alone
On finding beauty in moments of solitude
I took a photo of the crown before I knew what it meant. It looked like a flimsy grade-school art project, …
Sitting Places
An incomplete list of seats
DINING CHAIR Do you ever sit in someone else’s kitchen while they cook for you? You drink half a glass of …
Human Heart
Jan 28, 1986, 11:38 AM Hundreds of students have gathered in the Concord High School auditorium, eyes glued to the television …
White Terror
Notes on Race and the Politics of Fear in America
content warning: anti-Black violence, police violence +++ I, without a thought of conquest, find myself among a people whose culture controls …
Holding Space for Uncertainty
A Conversation with Writer Maggie Nelson
These are certainly peculiar times. Many of us are spending more hours of the day with ourselves than ever before. We …
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 …