• Reconnecting with My Mother Tongue

  by Anonymous

  “What are your classes this year?” my mom asked in Mandarin, a few weeks before 9th grade started.  I showed her my schedule and told her I had biology, one of my favorite science classes. “What is that?”  “It’s.. It’s like a class where you study animals,” I explained in a mix of Mandarin and English.

• Listening to Love

  by Anonymous

  I realized I was unique when I was 4. Everyone else in pre-school had two ears, while I had a left ear and a tiny bump on the right side. I didn’t understand why my mom carefully brushed my long hair to hide the little bump.

• ‘Grief Is Like the Ocean’

  by Anonymous

  My father died of cancer in June of 2020, a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic. At first he was diagnosed with a chronic, but not fatal, inflammatory arthritis that affects the spine and large joints. But after his condition continued to deteriorate, a trip back to the hospital revealed that he had metastatic brain cancer.

• Reintroducing Myself to the World

  by Marlin Xie

  As the first semester of my sophomore year of high school came to an end, I stared into my bathroom mirror, and a speck of doubt began to devour every thought I had about who I was. A fog swallowed my mind, and I realized I couldn’t recognize my reflection.

• In Four, Hold Seven, Out Eight

  by Ava Wong

  As I stood in front of my 9th grade math classmates, I wished to be anywhere else. My teacher had cold-called on me to answer the question on the board. As I stood there my heart pounded, and it was so hard to breathe that it felt like a mountain had fallen on top of me.

• Rejecting My Role Model

  by Anonymous

  I was a daddy’s girl. In elementary school, whenever someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “I want to be like my dad.” He worked hard, and he was my role model.  He didn’t tell me or my siblings about his childhood.