Category: Reflections

Loved as a Sinner, Hated for My Sin

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

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J’ai Deux Amours

My parents put in uncommon efforts to raise my brother and me completely bilingual. Our mother (a Frenchwoman from Normandy) spoke only French to us, ever, our father (a New Yorker by way of Romania and Tunisia) only English. To build a wall of separation within us between French and English, they pretended not to understand when we addressed them in the wrong language.

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Ruminations on a Homeland

On leaving home (and finding it).

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Corecore and the Logic of Montage

“This genre’s title, corecore, makes a totalizing claim on the thousands of balkanized subgenres and subaesthetics that fleet past the user: only a certain set of objects and clips can be dazecore or college dormcore, but corecore encompasses all such ‘cores,’ all these oddly particular aesthetics.”

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To See Something And Say Something

“To ask people to tell what’s suspicious and unusual is to expose innocent individuals to a system that constantly profiles and projects fear, to always assume the worst.”

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Going It Alone

“We aren’t like the stars, so isolated, separated by light years.”

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Pitching Princeton

A few months ago, a prospective student from my high school (let’s call her “Susan”) visited Princeton. I did not know her—her interests, her talents, her social proclivities—and yet I found myself on the verge of launching into a speech about how Princeton is the best school—probably in the world—and how she would in all likelihood be denying herself the possibility of self-transcendence if she applied elsewhere early action.

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Reality Check

If there were a billboard advertising you, what would it say?” The final question of the Residential College Adviser application was the one I thought about the most, and I was actually rather proud of my answer. While the application was … Read More

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Nothing Like Mom’s Cooking: Reflections from Professor Mommy’s Daughter

A reflection on the nourishment our mothers provide, both physical and emotional.

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Reconciling Art and Artist

When I visited the Woody Allen papers before winter break, the allegations against Mr. Allen of sexual abuse had not yet resurfaced. Those accusations, presented by his daughter Dylan Farrow in the New York Times on February 1, have reignited an age-old debate about the relationship between an artist’s personal life and the content of his artwork.

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Bickering Ivy

I always assumed that I would join an eating club, but put no effort into understanding the process of joining. As such, I found myself in a foreign country, learning that I had not only missed the first round of sign-ins, but that bicker started immediately after break.

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“Fronteriza”

“Some families even hold their hands up to the chicken wire to touch each other’s fingertips.”

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