• There’s never just one way

  by Maddy Goldstein

  When I was in kindergarten, my mom read my favorite book to my class, How My Parents Learned to Eat. It’s the story of a Japanese woman and an American man who learned to use each other’s traditional utensils when they met: a fork and a knife for the Japanese woman and chopsticks for the American man.

• A Basic Recipe

  by Jenny Zheng

  During previous summers, it felt like my mom was irked by my very presence at home. So at the beginning of quarantine, I was constantly arguing with my parents. After huge fights, once our anger dissipated, one of them might plop a bowl of chestnuts on my desk and throw in a line about their nutritional value.

• Can I Do More?

  by Rose Bell-McKinley

  In mid-March, when COVID-19 hit New York City and all the schools closed, I felt helpless. I watched the nightly news, listened to the radio during breakfast, and was bombarded throughout the day with alerts on my phone about all the different ways the pandemic was ruining people’s lives.