It was six years ago, to this day, that I ventured beyond the plains and into the mountains out west; to this place as dynamic as my twenties have been thus far. Lately, the redundancy of a second pandemic winter has left me restive. Novelty is revitalizing, and feels all the more precious as parts […]
The small hometown izakaya where I worked the summer before college was not as popular as the other Japanese restaurants in the region. The sushi was nice. The takoyaki was satisfying. The ambiance was quaint. But there was one item that set it apart from the competition: kamonabe, the family-sized duck hot pot. Kamonabe was
Large towers shot above the flat dry land around us, offering modest shade from the big open sky. Everything here seemed big: the towers; the city grid; its streets and parking lots. A seemingly quick jaunt across the city center was better traveled by light rail. Short walks became longer than anticipated, and in that
I hopped on the L and dashed around the Loop, chasing any and all sunset city views that I could find. It had been so long since I last walked amongst crowds spilling over crosswalks, and I swooned at this urban Americana booming with life. In quarantine, I had longed to wander a big, bustling
What more will it take for you to bridge the hyphen in Asian-American and see who we are; that we share this troubled home with you? That we belong, too? We adopted language and culture; gave our labor and food, but still, we are your oriental nightmare and Asian fetish. When taunts for being Asian