I am biracial. Unfortunately, I am also monolinguistic. Unless I explicitly tell them so, people think I am wholly American. If you stare at me for long enough, I suppose you could pick up on the odd texture of my hair, the darker shade of my skin or maybe the wide, round eyes characteristic of my mother’s family.
I came fairly close to drowning, and somehow, none of them had noticed. There you go: my very first flirtation with the idea that even the people who claim to care won’t always be there. I, along with everybody else on Earth, have the ability to become essentially invisible. It’s not Harry Potter’s enviable invisibility cloak; it’s one of the most lasting forms of pain out there.
That a subtle numerological code in C.S. Lewis’s “The Magician’s Nephew” gave precise instructions on how to enter Narnia.
That Queen Latifah had relinquished her throne to follow her passion for acting.
That I would find an intact velociraptor skeleton if I dug enough holes in the background.
That Anon was an incredibly prolific author who, like Madonna, Michelangelo and Bono, had decided to go by only one name.
I am writing this from one of two coffee shops, not including the six Dunkin’ Donuts, in my small outside-of-Boston hometown. Like so many CC students, my hometown is 45 minutes outside of the city, so my freshman year I said I’m from “Boston” until I was challenged frequently enough with, “From, like, Boston-Boston, or from outside of Boston?”
The local food movement has grown immensely popular in the past 10 years and offers an alternative to the industrial agricultural system. While the movement is quite successful, it is not without its flaws. Instead of looking at the movement solely through outsider books, I will explore its successes and shortcomings through interviews with six small farmers as well as journal articles written by leading scholars in the movement.
“Almost all of my family is in Colorado, but Aaron has no one there. What if he feels alone? I’m worried that it could cause distance between us, but he doesn’t seem concerned about it. I don’t think that he’s taken the time to consider all of the potential complications. He just wants to go for it…”
With three billion Internet users worldwide, humanity is at its most interconnected point. Try to distance yourself from this world, and you will ultimately be disappointed in your efforts. For most people, every financial transaction, Internet search or e-mail is recorded, stored and sometimes screened. Trying to escape this mass-recording is possible but not practical. Not using the Internet, the largest repository of knowledge ever compiled, would be a disservice, a denial to yourself of so much free knowledge. So what to do?
Brown smoke curdled and ran up our front windshield. Outside, the ink-black shadows of night swallowed the Mexican desert scape, and only the stars and the moon bared themselves with some familiar likeness. And beneath all this, a 2006 Toyota Sienna, our “Golden Bullet,” smoked and suffered on an unknown highway. The van stunk of feet and booze.
We swung a left off the CO-94 E and onto Curtis Road, and the white signs began to surface: “Personal Protection,” “Home Defense Weapons” and “Be Prepared” leapt out of the hill banking the left shoulder of the road. In 70-foot long letters spelled out by black rubber tires in the hillside: “Dragon Man’s.”
When asked of my ethnicity, I always boldly fill in the bubble next to Hispanic. I’m Cuban. Half Cuban. I’m a first-generation half Cuban-American. I fiercely cling to that, railing against my exterior appearance of generic, white brunette girl with curly hair and glasses. I have been drinking coffee and moving my hips to Afro-Cuban beats ever since I can remember.
You know when this particular song comes on, it’s going to be stuck in your head for the rest of the damn day. First, there’s a bit of iconic whistling in D major, rhythmically backboned by folksy tambourine. Then, Jade Castrinos croons, “Alabama, Arkansas,” and you’re rapidly swept headlong into an Americana-streaked exchange between two lovers.
Found on an old, defunct Cipher Twitter account.
It’s December and I am returning home from a semester abroad. After dropping my bags and greeting an ecstatic dog, I go to my childhood room to check up on my parents’ nascent business; in my sister andmy absence, they are separating our rooms from the rest of the house and converting them into short-term rental units.
