"I hope Sea Change makes readers feel a little bit less alone, if that’s something they’re struggling with...but also that hope, resilience, and community are stronger than our despair."
"Nothing is Ever Really Lost:" A Deep Dive Into Grief, Love, and Writing With Debut Author Gina Chung
3.28.2023
1.24.2023
"In my early twenties, it had never occurred to me that the women who gained their power from beauty were indebted to the men whose desire granted them that power in the first place. Those men were the ones in control, not the women the world fawned over."
For many young women, the saying “beauty is pain” is an all-too-familiar refrain. It is as much an accepted aphorism for our lives as a pithy justification for what our bodies endure and what we do to our bodies in service of the male gaze. I hear the phrase reverberating from the social media posts that swear by the transformational power of a green juice or slimming diet; out of the articles that claim an exercise fad is the key to self-care; and among the girls in my own life when we discuss what to wear and how to act. When I poke and pluck and prod at my body, trying to mold it into something that seems pretty until I can’t tell whether I am doing it for myself anymore, “beauty is pain” is the earworm that I cannot get out of my head.
1.04.2023
Two hours before the clock strikes midnight, I am alone in my bedroom, cross-legged on the floor. On the carpet lie 200 pieces of me.
8.07.2022
I am a mixed-race Asian-American, the daughter of a white American soldier and a Korean immigrant. This summer, I am working in Korea for two months, realizing a dream that I have held for over two years. The Korea Diaries is a blog series that documents my experiences here. For more background, you can view my introductory post.
7.29.2022
I am a mixed-race Asian-American, the daughter of a white American soldier and a Korean immigrant. This summer, I am working in Korea for two months, realizing a dream that I have held for over two years. The Korea Diaries is a blog series that documents my experiences here. For more background, you can view my introductory post.
“사랑과 미움이 같은 말이면 I love you, Seoul”If love and hate are the same words, I love you, Seoul.
7.13.2022
On my last night in 시흥 (Siheung), I went to the water. It was a long walk from the 시흥캠퍼스 연수원, the building where I was living at the time. The humidity was unsympathetic; its thickness was intense and palpable. The sun was no kinder, and I melted under its harsh gaze. Sweat dripped down every inch of my body (I could see physical droplets on my shins. My shins! I didn’t even know that shins could sweat). Still, I continued walking. During my first week in Korea, the water had become one of my closest confidants. When I felt overwhelmed, I sought refuge in the strength of its waves and the comfort of its consistency. I couldn’t leave Siheung without saying goodbye.
7.03.2022
"I knew that if the spark of life kept burning there would be fuel; if I could live I would always find a way, and a way that was best for me.”
In high school, my biology teacher used to encourage my class to make the most of our found time. Found time, she explained, is the opportunities that the universe grants us to appreciate life’s beauty. It is often serendipitous but can exist at any moment that we choose to live in the present. You must be purposeful about holding on to it because you never know when you might have it again. On that Friday, my teacher encouraged us to seize our found time over the weekend by spending an hour or two at a local fair instead of burying ourselves in exam preparations for a test we had the upcoming week. (I am sorry to say that in this instance I did not use my found time; I did, in fact, spend that entire weekend at home.)
2.01.2022
In this day and age, the definition of “family” is so different. Embrace whatever family you have, whether it is by blood, adoption, or found family.
1.23.2022
“I no longer believed that equanimity was either tenable or desirable. It corroded everything inside. I had never met a person with greater equanimity than the former president. But this applied to all of them—to the prosecution and the defense, to the judges and even the other interpreters. They were able to work. They had the right temperament for the job. But at what internal cost?”
1.13.2022
“She’d spend her time preparing for her future, living in books until the exciting part of her life would begin. Things would matter then. In fact, everything would be different.”
Mary H. K. Choi, Emergency Contact
As we settle into the new year, I continue to find comfort and inspiration in books. While looking back on my reads from the year past, I identified five books that stood out to me for their insight, daring, or entertainment. As promised, here are my top five books of 2021.