Think About This
September 15, 2020
Growing up with a fully Japanese grandmother and a half-Japanese mother, I have often seen them take hits from racists over their skin color, eye shape, face shape, and my grandmother’s accent. I have heard a cacophony of racist names thrown with precision at my family, and yes, chink thrown at me. I even, once, was called a “dumb Asian,” and I just laughed at the reverse stereotyping he had tried to pull on me.
I do not ‘look’ as Asian as my grandmother, mother, and younger
September 15, 2020
Truthfully and begrudgingly, this season, the existential swamp that is 2020, has brought about more questions than I care to count. Who of us hasn’t looked into the mirror and asked: am I doing any of this right? What will be my life’s greatest work? Am I doing it right now? (Just me?)
Here is my rebel yell: Blue Jay. I hope you will yell with me.
This poem was born out of memory, existential inquisition, longing; each
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
April 20, 2020
…
When I think of ellipses, I think of more to come. Or depending on its placement, sometimes it means there was something before. I’m not sure where my placement of ellipses goes in this piece—or what it represents. I’m not sure where my placement in this world is at the moment.
And for some reason I keep trying to force that knowledge upon myself. I keep trying to make myself sit down and write about my past four years at the University of Virginia, so I can lead you
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
April 20, 2020
Magazines have a habit of piling up at my house. I suppose I could cancel the subscriptions, but I'm a child of the 80s and, while I value finding articles on my phone and laptop, I’m not ready to give up print magazines. My budding feminist sensibilities were formed by reading my mother's
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
April 11, 2020
Easter always begins the same way for my family. My mother and aunt compete to see who can call my grandpa first on Easter morning to say, “The Lord has risen,” to which my grandpa will respond, “Indeed.” Last year my mom woke at the break of dawn to beat my aunt, but generally my aunt wins. Then my grandpa will call my cousins, brother, and me to relay the same message. As a whole, we’ve always been “indeeders,” rather than “the Lord has risen-ers.” This year is so bizarre because nearly
April 01, 2020
Since my second week of undergraduate classes at the University of Virginia in 2013, I have found a companion in my planner. My beautiful, color-coordinated, perfectly designed planner. I mean, I vividly remember breaking down in ugly tears the day I spilled my coffee on it during my Fourth year, and thinking “how will I survive without my plans?” My social life, my academic needs, my career trajectory and everything else that mattered, including “free time”, was scheduled inside those pages
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
March 04, 2020
I remember the first time I found out dads could cry. I was in the backseat of my mom's old Honda Accord tracing over the various pen marks on the headliner of her car, and it was February. I hated how the sun somehow always managed to be on my side of the car behind the passenger seat, but I wouldn't trade with my brother, Berkley. I would take the side with the heat against the sticky leather because he had the side with the weird, greenish gum stain on the seat, and it made me nauseated
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
February 14, 2020
I spent 20 days alone while abroad this summer, during which time I had ample opportunity to think about reading; I spent more time thinking about reading than actually reading. I read a lot, between 75 and 100 books per year. I also perform reading a lot, posting almost as many pictures of books on Snapchat and Instagram for no discernible reason. My obsession with books peaked in my first and second years of college, during which time I authorized that vacuum of a non-narrative (
November 14, 2019
The silver metallic ink may have faded a bit, but the words are still clearly visible: “For Abby ~ Travellin’ Music.” The precisely formed letters immediately evoke visions of sentences diagrammed on whiteboards, answer keys created together and shared, a teaching partnership of mutual encouragement and competition. Decades later, I wonder if either of us would have gone so far without those shared years. I suspect we would have—we were (are) both driven—but my journey would have lacked a
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
October 24, 2019
A few weeks ago, I was kneading bread and thinking about capitalism.
I spent fall break with my family and, over the course of a full day, took over the kitchen of my parents’ house to finally perfect my execution of the babka, an Eastern European sweetbread that has recently become InstaFamous. With clinical precision, I measured out cups of flour, feeling a stupid thrill go through me after I poured a packet of