Features
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 …
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 …