Category: Reflections

Peer Review

Since the beginning of time, editors at The Nassau Weekly have taken their pens to each other’s Common Application essays…

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Loved as a Sinner, Hated for My Sin

An open letter to non-open and non-affirming Christians.

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Gibraltar, an odd dream

For one last time during my two-month stay in Spain, I arrived at the Estepona bus station and sat on the metal bench outside with holes that always leave a circle mark on the back of my thighs. As I … Read More

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The Onsen

The word “modest” does not describe a modesty towel very well. I’m standing in a small dressing room with a few old ladies, grasping this flimsy and slightly sheer material, and marveling at the dimensions that barely match the size of a hand towel. I quickly take off my yukata, stuff it into a cubby, and drape the small cloth over the front of my body.

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Lover of Mine

“I always loved her. I just didn’t always think highly enough of myself to justify this love.”

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The Mountain of Olives

Jerusalem’s ancestral rhythms.

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On Screens & Esteem

One day this summer, sitting in a blank white apartment that was not mine, I felt a strange weariness. This apartment was full of more books than I will probably ever read and I had fellowships to apply to and emails to write and the whole Internet in front of me and all of New York City clamoring outside.

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Matters

2 AM, Tuesday, halfway done with my senior year of college. I was anxiously contemplating what I would do tomorrow, and then this summer, and then next year, and then for the rest of my life. Then came panic, and, shortly following that, a flashback.

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Sunset in Sachsenhausen

I had not heard of Sachsenhausen before my trip to Berlin. Located in Oranienburg, just outside the city, it was the first iteration of Nazi design—the early concentration camp was shaped as a triangle to enable the guards to have … Read More

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Mister Death’s Blue-Eyed Boy

Finding faith at Princeton.

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Winter in April: On Chen Chen, Defecation, and Asian Bodies

“Mostly, though, we all laughed together because so much more makes us similar than what makes us different—albeit critically different. And I would say, too, wonderfully different.”

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Kat Kulke

Yet while my parents could censor my wardrobe, they were powerless to change my name. At home, of course, I was Catherine. But at school, I could negotiate on my own terms.

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