The College Hill Independent — Vol 52 Issue 7

01 FISH AT CHETLA

Anant Saraf B/R’27

Caiden Demundo, Sarya Baran Kı lıÇ, Gabi Yuan, & Vanessa Tao

What’s community:

Clapping at the end

Passing money around

Putting myself out there

Doing what he wants

Smiling and not talking

Loud open laughs

Movement!

Clicking the bait

Walking into the theater

Thrifting furniture

Sharing sentences

Being shown

Attending

Ecstatic sexuality

Noisy reading

MANAGING EDITORS

Benjamin Flaumenhaft

Nahye Lee

Kendall Ricks

WEEK IN REVIEW

Maria Gomberg

ARTS

Lucas Friedman-Spring

Martina Herman

Gabriella Miranda

EPHEMERA

Heidi Lin

Sara Parulekar

FEATURES

Sebastian Botero

Chloe Costa Baker

Peter Zettl

LITERARY

Liliana Greyf

Ayla Tosun

Georgia Turman

METRO

Jackie Dean

Elena Jiang

Mikayla Kennedy

METABOLICS

Annelie Delgado

Evan Gray-Williams

Evan Li

SCIENCE + TECH

Jolie Barnard

Selim Kutlu

Lila Rosen

SCHEMA

Paulina Gąsiorowska

Cindy Li

WORLD

Emilie Guan

Sabine Jimenez-Williams

Andrea Li

DEAR INDY

Angela Lian

BULLETIN BOARD

Caiden Demundo

Sarya Baran KılıÇ

MVP

Mala

*Our Beloved Staff

DESIGN EDITORS

Mary-Elizabeth Boatey

Kay Kim

Seoyeon Kweon

DESIGNERS

Isabella Castro

Hongrui Guan

Rose Holdbrook

Esoo Kim

Jennifer Kim

Jordan Kinley

Selim Kutlu

Jennie Kwon

Hyunjo Lee

Soohyun Lee

Chelsea Liu

Kayla Randolph

Ana Ïs Reiss

Lea Seo

Liz Sepulveda

Anna Wang

Caleb Wu

STAFF WRITERS

Layla Ahmed

Tanvi Anand

Cameron Calonzo

Megan Chan

Nan Dickerson

Ray Eggerts

Jacob Hansen

Maxwell Hawkins

Mohamed Amine Jaoudi

Annie Johnson

Nadia Mazonson

Keya Mehra

Naomi Nesmith

Nikolaos

Nikolopouslos

Alya Nimis-Ibrahim

Nora Rowe

Alex Sayette

Samdol Sichoe

Luca Suarez

Santino Suarez

Mahliat Tamrat

Ben Underwood

Ellie Wu

Jodie Yan

ALUMNI COORDINATOR

Peter Zettl

SOCIAL CHAIRS

Raamina Chowdhury

Lila Rosen

Alex Sayette

DEVELOPMENT COORDINATORS

Cindy Li

Peter Zettl

FINANCIAL COORDINATORS

Zak Hashi

Simon Yang

MISSION STATEMENT

ILLUSTRATION EDITORS

Selim Kutlu

Serena Yu

ILLUSTRATORS

Abby Berwick

Rosemary Brantley

Rosalia Gonzalez Pousa

Koji Hellman

Jiwon Lim

Ellie Lin

Megha Nambiar

Ruby Nemeroff

Meri Sanders

Angelina So

Luna Tobar

Naomi Zaro

Cora Zeng

Alena Zhang

Faith Zhao

COPY CHIEF

Eric Ma

COPY EDITORS

Jordan Coutts

Mackenzie Ellis

Kainalu Faucher

Lucie Huang

Indy Nijjar

Camilla Rodriguez

Zeke Tesler

Sasha Watson

WEB EDITORS

Casey Gao

Erin Min

WEB DESIGNERS

Maja Mishevska

Amy Pan

Dominic Park

Joy Zou

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITORS

Olivia Falk

Sylvie Foster

Isabel Hahn

Avery Reinhold

Eurie Seo

SENIOR EDITORS

Jolie Barnard

Nan Dickerson

Paulina Gąsiorowska

Sabine Jimenez-Williams

Angela Lian

Nadia Mazonson

Talia Reiss

Luca Suarez

OUTREACH AND INCLUSION

COORDINATORS

Raamina Chowdhury

Naomi Nesmith

The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Our paper is distributed throughout the East Side, Downtown, and online. The Indy also functions as an open, leftist, consciousness-raising workshop for writers and artists, and from this collaborative space we publish 20 pages of politically-engaged and thoughtful content once a week. We want to create work that is generative for and accountable to the Providence community—a commitment that needs consistent and persistent attention.

While the Indy is predominantly financed by Brown, we independently fundraise to support a stipend program to compensate staff who need financial support, which the University refuses to provide. Beyond making both the spaces we occupy and the creation process more accessible, we must also work to make our writing legible and relevant to our readers.

The Indy strives to disrupt dominant narratives of power. We reject content that perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism and/ or classism. We aim to produce work that is abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist, and we want to generate spaces for radical thought, care, and futures. Though these lists are not exhaustive, we challenge each other to be intentional and self-critical within and beyond the workshop setting, and to find beauty and sustenance in creating and working together.

Week in Regional New England

( TEXT MARIA GOMBERG & NAN DICKERSON

DESIGN SEOYEON KWEON ILLUSTRATION VERA DANE )

COVER LETTER

Maria G. (she/her)

(The Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender, Benevolent Street, Providence, RI 02912// Tel#1 (800) 800-8135

c Dear chairs and committee members of the Brown 2026 campus initiative, I hope that this missive finds you all doing well and staying warm in light of the circumstances.

My name is Maria, and I am a Senior, here, at Brown studying history with a field of focus in memory and the past, and I am very passionate about: “Brown University is observing the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States through ‘Brown 2026,’ a campus-wide initiative to demonstrate the important role of research and teaching universities in fostering open and democratic societies.” Given this profound commitment and investment in “the United States” and “Universities,” I would like to receive a sum of money in the form of a grant or fellowship (please find an itemized budget attached as a Google Sheet below) to finance a tactile, experiential, interdisciplinary, collaborative, public, digital, and affective project exploring the participation of Rhode Island in the American Revolution. I hear it was a hotbed, as some would say. I am here, on paper, today, to answer all your questions.

The American Revolution in Rhode Island is of immense personal significance to me. I have been thinking about it since I was a young girl, engaging in the traditional activity of upper-middle-class Jewish childhood: reading historical fiction about little girls—not unlike myself—experiencing tragedy, unrest, and the growing pains of girlhood across various epochs and geographies. While I admit that my dearest novels were about twentieth-century Europe—amongst them Hannah Solzhenitzina: Gulag Gymnast and Jelena Petrovic Finds her (Slovenian) Independence—I found much empowerment in knowing that little girls experienced war, right here on the American continent. Thus, I first learned of the existence of the state of Rhode Island—or I should rather say Colony? The groundbreaking children’s historical fiction book, Dear America: Finding Hope: The Patriotic Diary of Hope Angell-Arnold, a Revolutionary Girl Not Unlike Yourself, introduces Hope, who is a normal girl living in a beautiful home on Benefit Street with her parents and servants. On a bright summer’s day, Hope loses control of her horse (an allegory for the zeal of independence, no less), who goes rogue and takes her to Warwick, where she is privy to the sinking of the Gaspee.1 Although she may have lost her horse, in the process, she finds her purpose, and proceeds to spend the rest of her life—admittedly short—advising the masses on the boycott of British goods. The reading of this book was transformative and really informed my formation as a woman. It is as a woman that I apply for this grant.

This book isn’t just a good story; it’s a gripping adventure through the progression of a series of fictionalized events. Although this book isn’t real—someone most likely composed the breathtaking story themselves—nestled within that vibrant reality was a shining kernel of possibility. Additionally, its intricate tapestry encouraged me to delve into the possibility of reading or even feeling the American Revolution through a feminist and critical lens. Although this book isn’t real, it is most likely fictionalized, and it has introduced me to the possibility of experiencing the American Revolution Now. This got me thinking about my experience as a girl who has always wanted to work at a museum of regional American history in a mid-sized U.S. city. It also made me ask the question: What is more feminist than affect and a soft and supple touch?

This is why, for my Brown 2026 project—tentatively titled “Living” the “Revolution,” in the context of the contemporary comparative “A(me)ricas”—I aim to feel the ways that the American Revolution revolutionized America. My primary purpose is to “empathically unsettle”—see LaCapra—notions of the lived experiences of women of our American past. Finding empathy for loyalists and patriots alike is imperative for the evolution of American Historical memory, a political issue that should be immediately addressed through scholarship, critique, the law, and mass media education. Not to mention, nonetheless, however, that the American Revolution is, in my perspective, ongoing, which means that we can continue to experience it in real time—here at Brown and elsewhere, of course. You might be experiencing it right now. I have already undertaken a ‘revolutionary road trip’ of sorts, where I (with some comrades) undertook an experiential experience of all that this state (and others) has to offer. I hope to retroactively apply some of this grant funding to ameliorate expenses incurred on that trip. I propose the following alternative strategies for experiencing History, at Brown, in Rhode Island, and across this big, beautiful country we call home. I already made a first pass at some of them on the above-mentioned road trip, so you know I’m speaking from experience. My proposal includes the following:

Experiencing history by climbing on as many commemorative monuments and plaques as possible.

Experiencing History by singing “Yankee Doodle” in a crowded theater (we are watching The Drama, it’s a matinee in the mall).

Experiencing history by getting a tick on the battlefield.

Experiencing history by meeting as many of your friends’ second cousins as possible.

Experiencing history by standing outside of the Princeton history department, but not going in because the doors are all swipe access, so you just kind of look at it—longingly, and then keep on keeping on in your pursuit of a master’s degree in International and Public Affairs (security track, ideally).

Experiencing history by Kissing Ken Burns on the lips.

Experiencing History by Eating Salt Water Taffy.

Experiencing History by writing a presidential memoir.

Experiencing history by going to the Constitution Center, but not going in because this is the one day it’s closed. Is the security guard laughing at you because you truly seem that eager to enter the museum, you, a fashionable and well-dressed (within reason, weather not permitting) young, promising woman, with the appearance of friends in tow? Or is he just laughing because the three of you are frizzy and soon-to-be-drenched in the light Philadelphia rainfall? City of “brotherly” love, my ass.

Experiencing History by going to the American Revolution Museum (don’t forget that the ticket is just $25! But there are so many dioramas to see, quite worth the charge).

Experiencing the revolution by buying small replicas of your favorite American Presidents, and gifting them to your friends and family for special occasions.

Experiencing the revolution through art, UwU.

Experiencing the revolution by shopping local and going #vegan.

Experiencing the revolution through carefully curated, didactic public history exhibits—perhaps designed for children, but oh so very much fun. This, in particular, permits the type of sensuous engagement with history that I am interested in participating in. I want wigs full of lice, miniature cities, opportunities to operate a model printing press, freedom trails, themed rides, gift shops, tactile exhibits, opportunities to sink a life sized model of the Turtle—the first submarine to be used in combat during the Revolutionary War—and a live-action immersive AI experience voiced by a B-list celebrity who narrates the crossing of the Delaware. If your hands aren’t sticky by the end of it, are you even really feeling anything at all?

1 For the shamefully uninitiated, the sinking of the Gaspee at the aptly named “Gaspee Point” in Rhode Island, and the ensuing looting by patriotic colonists, was sort of like this humble state’s “‘Boston’ tea party.”

“Mommy! Mommy! I’m worried I might be a nerd, too !”

I am invested in pursuing these or many other, possibly unwritable, though experiential, projects. I have no prospects, no post-grad plans, and limited knowledge of agricultural matters or ‘queer’ craft(s). With your funds, I hope to change all of that, and I hope to turn around what’s left of my life. I hope to have an experiential encounter in a public bathroom at one of the many loving and beloved public historical sites in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and, of course, right here, in Rhode Island. I hope to finally get some clarity on what on Earth they were doing with that Liberty Bell. Did they ring it? I hope to never write a cover letter again. I hope to (dis)cover my true self, true purpose, true light, and true life. I hope to get into law school. I hope to do this all with no adult supervision and high on molly for the better half. To really feel what I am doing. To be in touch with myself.

That being said, I am very committed to becoming immersed in my subject. I will be procuring colonial garb, which I will wear around the clock—even putting on historically accurate undergarments in the nigh]]t. I am going to put my butt on every chair at the John Hopkins House, and my hand up Butts Hill Fort—sight of the Battle of Rhode Island association during the first winter of the war. I am legally changing my name to William Ellery (I would like to go by Ellie for short). I will eat, dance, fuck, scroll, and sleep as the daughters, sisters, nieces, and mothers of the American Revolutionaries did in their own time. The Revolution is Permanent, let the masses tremble, Patria o muerte, Cuba libre, Viva la revolución, С Новым годом, пака пака. They do not know what they do. They know damn well what they are doing. I’m (me personally) doing it all on purpose. I’m doing a revolution!

As instructed, I will make a case for my own expertise in the matter of the American Revolution. Below you will find much evidence of my knowledge of important events, fun facts, and the general gist of what went on. These are things I already know, so I promise that I will learn all the more.

Did you know that there is a replica of the Liberty Bell displayed in the South Vestibule of the Rhode Island Statehouse? Well, I am going to get my hands all up in that bell. Up the crack, and against the sides. Your financial support and generosity will help to pay for the Uber Black to take me there, the aerosol hand sanitizer I will apply right before—and right after—the first caress. I will be using an expensive camera, and would like to be compensated for the stress of its handling, and a small snack or even a casual lunch would be nice.

Did you know that Rhode Island is in America? I did!

Did you know that Rhode Island is not an Is(land) at all, per se, but a series of archipelago-like formations that were later filled in with a sandy mixture of loamy sediment and fibrous structures (origin unknown)? More research is necessary on the topic, but I don’t want to do it. This project is all about feeling, and Environmental History is a fad that will die out in a couple of weeks.

Did you know that there was a battle of Rhode Island in Rhode Island? Well, I am smelling that loyalist blood drying out in the Rhody sun, and I am feeling the wind of victory in my face. Sight, taste, and hearing are also very much engaged.

Did you know that during your precious, precious senior year spring break you can, instead of going to a beach or a related miasmatic structure, embark on a multi-day revolutionary road (Rhode) trip with your friends and/or acquaintances? A proposed itinerary should include: the Pez Visitor center, Woodrow Wilson’s canoe on its dusty shelf on the grounds of the “Flo Gris” (short for Florence Griswold) museum, in-the-know gas station(s), the precise geographic coordinates where George Washington admired a view, the rough location the very same George Washy crossed the Delaware, and the Philadelphia Independence Hall? Help! Help! I’m trapped on a Rhode trip in a fuel-efficient vehicle with a bunch of nerds and/or history concentrators! Help! Help! I’m trapped in a cover letter! And this one is abnormally long. I can’t stop using em dashes!

Shut the fuck up Nan, and get back in the bag.

Did you know that Rhode Island “was home to the first open golf tournament?” Did you know this is the smallest state? Did you know that it all ends so soon, sooner than you could be ready for? Dear reader, can you hear me? How much does a three-person apartment cost in a reasonably interesting American (I’m flexible) city? Did you know that the average American is most likely to respond: “maybe” when asked if they would consider going to the Joseph R. (short for “Revolution”) Biden Jr. Welcome Center and Hospitality Location in Delaware, if they were passing it on the way to a medium-to-large Midwestern family gathering? But did you know that I would always make a stop?

Mommy! Mommy! I’m worried I might be a nerd, too !

Did you know that I am a syndicated expert, a woman, and I deserve to be compensated for my expertise?

If your question had more to do with my actual qualifications, I would argue that my experience as a financial chair at an on-campus club that does events around the themes of community and care leads me to value money. I also have experience doing research using online databases, generating ideas, information, and processing data. I have built a strong foundation in many tasks, and mastered none. I am flexible, ductile, and an asset. On my part, I hope to bring much to not only this project, but to America, and the endurance of the everlasting primacy of the global, imperialist West.

And now that it is 11:59 p.m., I am submitting this grant application, in whichever state it may be. Or should I say Colony? I sincerely hope you haven’t read up until this point. I don’t look forward to anything, and I wish you a happy birthday, America. It’s crazy that I have known you for almost 250 years.

Line Item Budget

MARIA GOMBERG B’26

NAN DICKERSON B’26

“SICK AND TIRED”

BROWN’S FAILURE TO ADDRESS THE STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

( TEXT ANNIE JOHNSON DESIGN KAY KIM ILLUSTRATION LUNA TOBAR )

c On January 5, about two weeks before the start of the spring semester, President Christina Paxson shared her commitment to “ensuring that students, faculty and staff have the resources and support [they] need to help us move forward.” This message was sent in direct response to the mass shooting on December 13 that claimed the lives of two students and injured nine others. In the months following Paxson’s message, the community lost two more undergraduate students. These events have cemented the past winter as one of the darkest periods in the University’s history, yet many students say they are still waiting for the support promised by Paxson to materialize.

“I thought that after the shooting I would be able to get an appointment.”

“I thought that after the shooting I would be able to get an appointment [with Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)],” Ambreen Sidhu B’29 told The College Hill Independent. But Sidhu shared that she was unable to access consistent care. After the shooting, Sidhu struggled with severe burnout that made it difficult for her to complete her schoolwork. Initially, she was hesitant to reach out to CAPS, as she had heard from friends that they had a long waitlist for their individual counseling services. However, in a moment of crisis, she did call the “CAPS on Demand” emergency line for help: “I expressed that I felt like [CAPS] didn’t have availability for me, and that really bothered me,” Sidhu told

the Indy. “They said, ‘Oh, if you call them up [tomorrow] and you tell them [you] used emergency services, they will give you an appointment.’” She went to the CAPS office and was offered a Triage (treatment planning) appointment, where she was questioned about her life and medical history. However, after divulging the details of several traumatic events that she had experienced, she was informed that CAPS had already reached capacity for the semester and would not be able to offer her regular appointments. “The fact that I used the emergency help line did not really bother them, even though I expressed thoughts that might be considered concerning,” said Sidhu. “What is the point of asking me about experiences that are distressing to me unless you’re planning on treating me?”

+++

In the aftermath of campus shootings, research by the National Center for PTSD as well as eClinicalMedicine shows that investment in trauma-recovery programs is crucial to protect the long-term mental health and wellness of the student body, particularly from the burdens of PTSD. Michigan State University (MSU), the University of Iowa, and, most notably, Virginia Tech all invested considerably in their student mental health programs after experiencing mass shootings on their respective campuses. At Virginia Tech, in the weeks after an attack perpetrated by a student dealing with mental health issues in 2007, Virginia Tech’s Cook Counseling Center expanded its hours, delivered presentations on PTSD to hundreds of community members, coordinated referrals for specialized care, and deployed 50 additional mental health professionals for major events like graduation. By the start of the following academic year, the

center had hired four additional full-time counselors along with a case manager and emergency services coordinator.

This expansion of mental health services has taken place at other schools as well. After a gunman killed three students at MSU in 2023, the school expanded its crisis counseling services and later opened a community trauma-support center. In 1991, a University of Iowa doctoral student killed several of his department members; the University quickly deployed a team of mental health workers to campus, who conducted dozens of personalized outreach sessions with students and faculty.

Brown’s response has been different. In an interview with The Brown Daily Herald, Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Matthew Guterl indicated that campus recovery efforts were focused on “building off of what was already here” in regards to student mental health support. In the wake of the tragedy, the University did not hire any additional CAPS counselors (though it did double its Department of Public Safety staff). Instead, students were directed to access existing mental health resources: CAPS’s crisis line, Student Support Services (SSS), TimelyCare, and the controversial telehealth platform BetterHelp, which was ordered to pay a $7.8 million fine to the FTC in 2023 for selling sensitive user data to advertisers.

This approach would be understandable if the systems in place were already effectively meeting student needs. However, Brown’s mental health infrastructure has long been insufficient, even before the tragedy on December 13. In 2022, a poll by the Undergraduate Council of Students (UCS) found that only 10% of respondents (who comprised 36% of the undergraduate student body) were either “somewhat

satisfied” or “very satisfied” with CAPS’s offerings (70% were neutral or non-responsive). Students cited long wait times and a lack of long-term care, two inefficiencies that have plagued the department for decades, among their concerns. There are dozens of articles in The Brown Daily Herald’s archives documenting students’ difficulties accessing CAPS (formerly known as Psych Services), some dating back as far as 2004.

This is indicative of a nationwide crisis: University counseling centers across the country are overwhelmed, both due to an unprecedented surge in demand from students and the dearth of qualified professionals to support them. One 2023 survey found that half of college students meet the criteria for at least one mental health problem, up almost 50% from 2013; meanwhile, a 2021 study found that approximately 70% of college counseling centers faced issues with recruitment, while 60% reported turnover in at least one position, one of the highest rates in the healthcare sector.

Still, understaffed as they may be, an estimated 95% of American colleges offer on-campus mental health services. The idea that American universities should be responsible for their students’ mental wellbeing dates back to 1910, when Princeton debuted its “mental hygiene service,” spearheaded by the psychiatrist and lecturer Stewart Paton. This was the first recorded instance of an official student mental health facility at an American college, and it was inspired by Paton’s observations that students who were well-qualified academically were nonetheless dropping out of the University as a result of emotional hardship. In 1921, Dartmouth College instituted its own student mental health program, and Yale did so in 1924.

Brown’s mental health program, the Department of Psychological Services, was not founded until 1970, and the University did not have a dedicated physical space for it until the 1980s. Students, however, did not report issues with the quality of care: one alumna, Alison Barth B’91, recounted to the Indy in an email that, during her time at the University in the late ’80s and early ’90s, students frequently utilized Psych Services both for individual counseling and for group psychoeducation courses, and she never encountered long wait times at the department.

This period of accessibility, however, did not last long. Beginning in the early 2000s, Psych Services became seemingly perpetually understaffed. In 2014, student advocates from UCS and the mental health advocacy group Active Minds organized to abolish restrictive appointment limits, organize support for sexual assault survivors, and diversify the cultural

backgrounds of CAPS counselors. The situation continued to improve under the leadership of Will Meek, who was appointed Director of CAPS in 2017. Meek added counselor walk-in hours, created an Urgent Care Clinician position, and reduced wait times for initial CAPS appointments from two to three weeks to three to four days, all while increasing the number of yearly appointments by 75% and student visitors by nearly 20%. He reported that his new policies were so successful that “more than two dozen colleges and universities have consulted with CAPS […] on how to transition to a similar model.” He credited his success to the feedback he solicited from students: Throughout his time as director, he regularly met with UCS, as well as mental health advocates from the student groups Project LETS and the B.E.A.R. Project, and encouraged students to email him ideas for the department. Xochi Cartland B’21, the coordinator of Project LETS during Meek’s tenure, said in a News from Brown article, “A lot of the changes that CAPS has made have been in conversation with students. [Meek] very much believes that we are here to hold each other accountable.”

However, after Meek stepped down from his directorship in 2020, the position remained vacant for almost two years. During this time, students suffered from the lack of clear leadership, reporting long wait times, vague scheduling policies, infrequent appointments, and an overall dearth of innovation regarding mental health initiatives. Meanwhile, CAPS’s staff was atrophying: After the start of the pandemic, several counselors retired and moved out of state. By the time Bryant Ford was named the new director in 2022, student trust in CAPS had eroded significantly, as per the results of the aforementioned UCS survey. And now, in the wake of an unfathomable tragedy, the University has yet to offer its students a clear path forward.

+++

Ava Rodriguez B’29 was in the classroom where the attacker opened fire. She hid behind a desk until the police arrived, when she was released into the street alongside her classmates. Since returning to campus for the spring semester, Rodriguez has been outspoken about her disappointment with the lack of targeted mental health support she and others in the room have received from the University. In early February, after classes had commenced, she reached out to SSS to request that a CAPS group be created for her and her classmates; for over two weeks, her email went unanswered.

“I went in person to the office, and was like ‘Hey, why didn’t you answer me?’ and they were like, ‘Oh, the email got lost.’ Then, they scheduled me an

appointment with one of the deans […] and then it got cancelled because of the snow, even though it was gonna be on Zoom. So then they rescheduled me, and then [when] that meeting [came], they cancelled the meeting for unknown reasons and they rescheduled me with a different Student Support dean.”

When Rodriguez was finally able to meet with the department, she told the Indy that her request was disregarded, and she was instead directed to the Ever True Support Group, a weekly CAPS group that is open to all students. Rodriguez expressed concern that she wouldn’t be able to properly grapple with her experience around students who hadn’t experienced the shooting firsthand. “In my mind, if I were to go to that and say ‘Hey, I was in the room,’ nobody else is gonna talk,” she said. “That’s why I think it’s so important to have a specific space for the people who were closely affected.”

On March 31, CAPS Director Bryant Ford wrote in an email to the Indy that the Ever True Support Group would “[transition] to a support group specifically for those students who were most impacted by the shooting due to physical proximity to the events” effective immediately. This change was not announced anywhere else, and none of the students who were in the room were contacted. The CAPS website still lists the group as being open to all students.

On April 4, the day of the first meeting of the new Ever True group, two students were in attendance: Rodriguez and myself. The facilitator of the group suggested that we post on Sidechat to raise awareness of the group’s transition. She also shared that we were the first students to attend the group in several weeks. Rodriguez has not attempted to access CAPS’s individual counseling services due to her apprehension about the long waitlists, and mentioned that the students who were in the classroom have not gotten priority. However, she has been seeing an off-campus therapist since winter break.

After the tragedy, hundreds of Providence mental health providers offered their services, pro bono, to the Brown community for the duration of the spring 2026 semester. However, the semester will not last forever, and cost remains the number one barrier to accessing mental health care.

One student, Colton Edelman B’27, attempted to seek care from CAPS after suffering a period of seasonal depression during his sophomore year. After his Triage appointment, he was informed that he would not be offered consistent in-person appointments. “That was basically it,” Edelman told the Indy “I’ve thought about it, but I haven’t sought care since then. I can’t think of a way to pay for it, I don’t have a steady stream of income, I don’t have time for a

job, [and] I don’t have time to search for it in the first place. Just the thought of that kind of tires me out. It’s another mental barrier in my head.”

The commitment to students’ mental health requires systemic change, not throwing money at the problem. Brown invented a new layer of middle management to more efficiently send students into a broken system.”

For many Brown students, access to mental healthcare starts and ends with CAPS. Edelman believes this phenomenon is “not just [because of ] cost [barriers],” but also “time [barriers].” “If you want a good therapist, you should be able to shop around [for one],” he said. “Having to take the time to do that, especially when you’re not inclined to seek care for yourself in the first place, is […] difficult. If someone is struggling, it snowballs.”

Even students who have been able to navigate these institutional barriers have found CAPS’s services to be inadequate. One of these students is K, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of her interview. After experiencing a period of extreme mental distress, K sought support from CAPS emergency services in the spring of 2023. K told her emergency counselor that she was struggling with self-harm and suicidal ideation, behaviors that typically warrant an intervention on behalf of the counselor, be it referring the patient to an intensive treatment program, making a crisis plan to ensure the patient doesn’t have access to dangerous materials, or even simply suggesting alternative coping mechanisms and distress tolerance skills. However, K told the Indy that “there was none of that.”

“It’s a very common and known thing that they don’t do anything unless you have a plan,” she said. “Like, a time and date and a method that you’re going to execute. Which I find really problematic, because a lot of people don’t necessarily make a plan. It’s just a moment of crisis.” Director Ford did not respond to requests for comment about CAPS’s crisis handling protocols.

K continued meeting with a CAPS psychotherapist throughout the course of the spring 2023 semester; the counselor did not offer to teach K any healthy coping mechanisms, nor did she ever develop a

comprehensive treatment plan. Instead, K described her appointments as “a lot of talking”: “There was a lot of ‘What do you do?’ ‘How do you do it?’ ‘Why do you think you do it?’” she said. “There was no ‘how to process things’ [or] ‘how to cope with things in a healthy way.’” After the semester ended, K did not return to CAPS, nor did she attempt to seek out an off-campus provider to continue her treatment.

In an attempt to resolve its accessibility issues, CAPS partnered with the on-demand virtual telehealth platform TimelyCare in 2024. According to its website, TimelyCare partners with nearly 500 universities across the U.S. to connect students with their network of licensed virtual therapists. Brown students are typically granted 12 TimelyCare appointments per year (there are no limits to sessions for spring 2026), financed by their $1,236 annual Health and Wellness fee. Some students, like Edelman and K, are not interested in virtual therapy, preferring to meet with a provider face to face.

However, others, like Sidhu, have tried using TimelyCare, but still faced barriers to entry. After Sidhu booked her first TimelyCare appointment this February, her provider warned her that she would not be able to see her again until April due to overwhelming student demand. Sidhu felt as if she’d encounter the same lack of availability if she switched to another counselor: “I was just like, ‘Either I find another provider, and they tell me the same thing, or I follow through with this provider, which, how do I even know these slots will become regular?’”

Studies consistently show that effective therapy requires continuity of care and strong patient-provider relationships. Yet CAPS seems unable to offer either in a sustained way. “When it’s about consistency and consistently showing up for their students, I just haven’t seen that from this program,” said Edelman.

Ford wrote in an email to the Indy that, after the shooting, CAPS would be “mov[ing] beyond individual psychotherapy as the sole model of care,” seemingly in the opposite direction of what students have been requesting. Instead, Ford shared the department would be prioritizing urgent care, animal-assisted therapy, drop-in sessions, and support groups. He additionally shared that CAPS is “actively working with external partners, such as Family Service of Rhode Island (FSRI), to add capacity for on-campus, one-on-one psychotherapy,” though the details of this partnership are unclear, and no information was provided on when students can expect to see the benefits of this partnership.

SSS did hire six new interim support deans in early March to address what Director of Student Support Services Lisa Loar described to the Indy in

an email as “a notable upturn in requests for support.” However, many students are skeptical about the efficacy of these new positions.

“It sounds like [the interim deans’] purpose is to help students get into the CAPS system,” said Edelman. “But the problem is the availability of therapists and the actual structure of CAPS is a barrier to entry [...] The commitment to students’ mental health requires systemic change, not throwing money at the problem. Brown invented a new layer of middle management to more efficiently send students into a broken system.”

“I feel like now, I’m just sick and tired,” Sidhu said when asked why she did not continue seeking treatment after her experiences with CAPS. “I’m just working on myself at this point […] I really do not want to fault the healthcare professionals at CAPS [because] they’re doing all that they can with the resources that they have. I would just hope that more resources are diverted towards mental health by the University.”

Brown’s persistent failure to address the structural gaps that have long limited its students’ access to stable treatment, even after one of the darkest years in the institution’s history, raises the question: if not now, when?

“After a year with one of the highest number[s] of student deaths here at Brown, if the University wants to offer psychological help it should be real and purposeful,” said Edelman. “How do we hold people accountable? It feels like, sometimes, this institutional knowledge builds and collapses over time […] There’s not consistent organizing of students from year to year.”

Historically, meaningful change at CAPS has come about as a direct result of student feedback. Drop-in hours, 24-hour crisis services, unlimited sessions, flexible leave-taking policies, and a culturally diverse staff were not always facets of the institution; they came about because students demanded them. Perhaps it is unfair to place the burden of advocacy on a group of young people who have already experienced unfathomable trauma. But in the face of institutional apathy, silence has rarely produced change, and once again, students now find themselves forced to demand the care they have already been promised.

ANNIE JOHNSON B’28 is worried about her pro bono therapy running out.

PREFACE:

DRIVING DAY

Every school year, around 50 Brown and RISD students in Brown Formula Racing build a car for the Formula SAE Michigan—an annual college-level engineering competition in which students design, build, and race open-wheel cars. Leading up to their competition in May, Brown Formula Racing members will be up at 6 a.m. several times a week for what they call ‘Driving Days.’

Having reached out to the club in early March, this is a compilation of verbal interviews with Brown Formula Racing team members collected during the morning of their second Driving Day of the season. Wrenches out, team members crawled up, under, and around the car, finetuning in between bursts of test-driving in the Brown Stadium parking lot, around a massive lump of leftover snowstorm.

Interviews have been edited for clarity and brevity.

HAILEY STONE B’28 (BRAKES LEAD)

This year I’m the only brakes lead. Everyone is just one person doing a whole subsystem1, and it’s up to every person to fulfill their role and if they don’t then the car doesn’t work. When it’s done, it’s really, really fulfilling.

Our team right now is 15 really dedicated upperclassmen, and then maybe another 15 or so freshmen. Everything is very hands-on. We get to machine2, we get to weld.

The engine is the most powerful thing. Everything we do is to make the engine work successfully. The suspension’s pretty magical. That’s the main part that connects all four wheels to the chassis and to each other. The chassis3 is the frame, the bigger tubes, and then the suspension4 is all the smaller [tubes] that connect to the wheels. Within the wheels, there’s also uprights5 which connect to the brakes, and wheel spindles6, which connect the uprights to the wheels. And then there’s also these dampers7, which are the big springs you see on the front. There’s also the whole power train8, which makes the engine turn into the wheels.

Last year’s competition, we got 18th, and that’s the best we’ve done since 2001. We have [both] the consistency and the understanding of what we did well last year with pretty much all the same people. We have a chance to place top ten [this year].

CHANDLER ZHU B’26 (1/3 CO-CAPTAIN)

[Driving Days are] the testing stage where we try to break everything we possibly can so we don’t break it at competition. What’s left to do is a full aerodynamic package10. So, right now, there’s no body on it. We’ve got the skeleton, we just need everything else.

Being on the team for as long as we’ve been, we can see what good leadership has been, maybe some shittiness as well. When I was a freshman all the seniors would hang out with each other, and really have new members do anything.

We really try to emphasize that you don’t have to know anything to join the team. We have so many workshops. We’ll teach you how to weld, machine, and do electronics. All of the new members here [on Drive Day] have made something on the car. We try to have ownership over something [on the car]. [It’s] super supposed to be like, “Oh, yeah, I made this part.”

It’s always about taking lessons from previous cars. The car before last [year’s] was 225 kilos, super heavy, but super reliable. So last year, they were like, “we have to make it way lighter” and then [the car] would just always break. Everything was new on it, new exhaust, new suspension. We had a new carbon-fiber suspension that we broke instantly and a super small cooling system. The car barely made it through endurance. We’re taking last year’s concepts, just refining it, making it more reliable.

TRISTAN KEYSER-PARKER B’26 (1/3 CO-CAPTAIN)

The hardest part of being captain is integration. Last year, the pedal box11 lead changed his design a little bit, the chassis lead change that period to a comma. I changed the suspension design. In isolation, each of these changes just took a half inch off of how much space the driver had to sit. In combination, suddenly, the driver had two inches less space to fit in the car and our tallest driver got bruised every time he drove the car.

The basic point of suspension is to keep all the tires in maximum contact with the ground, [generating] the most force on the car to move it around the track. The basic suspension consists of attaching each wheel to a spring and damper. The stiffness of the spring controls how hard [the car] is to push up or down and keeps it in contact with the road. Changing the springs and the dampening settings can change if the car feels super sharp to drive or softer. By tuning the suspension, you can change how it feels to drive.

We adjust the length of the pushrods to make a quarter of the [car’s] weight on each wheel. And then we adjust the [pitches12] inside the wheels. If they end up leaned out, the car handles really terribly. But if you lean them too far in, you lose grip. Similarly, if we adjust the rear toe (where the tires are pointed if you look at the car from top view), it’s another tradeoff between the driver feeling like they have control or less control of the car.

CHASSIS

CHASSIS:

SUSPENSION: System connecting the wheels to the chassis, spring, and

UPRIGHTS: Part of the wheel that connects the wheel to the suspension

SPINDLES: Load-bearing skeleton for the car

DAMPERS: Helps balance how the car contacts the road and how it feels to drive

POWERTRAIN: Includes the engine, the drivetrain, the intake, the exhausts and generates and delivers power to the road

LUKE RHOADS B’28 (INTAKE AND DYNAMOMETER LEAD)

[Driving Day is] very interdisciplinary and we’ll be working on fixing suspension or helping out with [many] different things. Powertrain13 issues during Driving Day are probably related to the drive train and mechanical parts of the system, making sure the chain that delivers the power from the engine to the wheels [is] properly lubricated. Having all of the electronics and infrastructure in place [is important] to be able to see what we did right and what we did wrong.

I design the intake system, which we’re gonna be putting on the car pretty soon. We’re also going to be going to the dynamometer and testing our power train. A dynamometer is basically just a treadmill for the car [to] work against while remaining in place. That’s super important because we [can] isolate powertrain systems and test different configurations. That’s going to give us the best understanding of how we can best optimize [the powertrain].

FRESHMEN (NEW MEMBERS)

[Brown Formula Racing] definitely is accessible if you’re okay with the commitment. You don’t have to know everything. There are people who just do one thing on it, [like] computer science and they just do the driver interface. You don’t have to be an engineer, people are very open to teaching.

—EDEN EKONG-REID

B’29

Everything’s voluntary. If I’m coming, it’s because I want to.

—ISABELLA GRATZL B’29

As a woman, this feels very intimidating, working on a car. This club made me feel like that’s something I can do.

—MARIAM SUFI B’29

EXHAUST: System that takes burnt gases away from the machine

DRIVER BRAKES POWER

PEDAL BOX: Controls throttle response or delays in the accelerator

PITCHES: Balances the wheels so that they don’t shudder

DRIVE TRAIN: Transfers power from the engine to the wheels

TRISTAN

We’re aiming to be in the top three in competition. The team has never done that before. We definitely built a faster car this year. How the car is driven matters so much to performance at college level. Just driver training and tuning the car instead of just fixing issues at track time will be a huge performance boost. Formula SAE is [about] doing simple things right. Almost nothing overly complicated is really worth it. They do that stuff in Formula One, but that's because they’re chasing a hundredth of a second per lap. But FSAE is not won by a hundredth of a second per lap. It’s won by seconds. Our whole goal for this year was [to] make [the car] really solid and reliable, improve the aero[dynamics] a lot and make the shifting work, and get the car built well and on time.

We think what we're doing is crazy. We want people to know about it. We’re doing this to represent Brown. The top cars [in FSAE] are roughly the same speed. The question is if we can touch them. Other teams will let you know everything about their cars, but it’s still just incredibly hard to build a top car. But we have a lot of people that are super, super committed. I’m really proud of this team.

HEIDI LIN R’27 runs at 6 mph.

SINGING ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

BLUES FROM THE MALIAN SAHEL TO THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA

c There are echoes that can be heard between various African musical traditions and the Black American sonic corpus. Comparing, for example, classic Delta blues songs and Malian folk music reveals striking similarities: Most have a slow tempo string instrumentation in a pentatonic music scale, accompanied by a solo narrative-recounting singer, with vocal-instrumental interplay alternating between unison and heterophony.¹ A prominent figure in this Malian music scene is the venerable Ali Farka Touré (1939–2006), heralded with pioneering the incorporation of Western instrumentation into traditional musical styles, especially the guitar for which he was famed. He won two Grammys over his illustrious career but remained oriented toward Mali despite his international success. This made him a highly respected musical figure by his fellow African musicians as well as Western musicologists and musical journalists.

Many an ethnomusicologist has ventured into the Sahel (the proverbial Southern ‘coast’ of the Sahara desert in West Africa) seeking out Touré and hoping to find the wellspring from which blues and the African American musical tradition more generally emerge. In some cases, the African influence is quite apparent: Enslaved individuals seeking to recreate the familiar ngoni (in Bambara, also khalam in Wolof, molo in Hausa, and hoddu in Fulani, to name a few cognates for the West African string instrument) would pull a goat hide taut over a dried calabash and stretch thereupon strings made from the agave plant across the surface. This instrument came to be known by many names: banza, banjer, bandore, or banshaw. Today it is commonly known as the banjo, an instrument which played a foundational role in the development of the early blues.

His emphatic and dismissive comments are situated within a wider-ranging interlocution between Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. To Touré, music is inextricably embedded in the social fabric of which he is a part; his comments juxtapose the significance of his music’s connection to home, heritage, and history, while African American music is supposedly disconnected from this “authentic” source. On the other hand, one cannot gloss over the fact that this disconnect was the result of the violent and large-scale capture and displacement of enslaved Africans to the New World, often in ways that aimed to erase the cultural and linguistic connections among newly enslaved people. Against all odds, these communities would reshape memories of cultural music customs and combine them with European melodic modes to form unique practices, which would remain mostly unrecorded until they exploded in both national and international popularity in the 20th century. As a full-fledged tradition, African American music (and other musical styles of Black people of the Americas) now stands on its own, although still engaged in a conversation with its related customs in Africa proper.

( TEXT HISHAM AWARTANI DESIGN JO LEE

ILLUSTRATION RUBY NEMEROFF )

an ignoble venture as music.

The position of the jeliw evinces the fundamental role music plays in West African societies: They are the keepers of history through whom the past is accessed; they facilitate foundational social events; and they uphold the structure of society. This tradition of griots as music-maker-cum-historian-cum-eulogist has also had a formative impact on the modern musical scene in the region: Most musicians are of griot background, and classics of the griot repertoire (such as “Sunjata,” which revolves around the mythologized founder of the Mali empire, Sundiata Keita) have been endlessly covered and reworked.

This Africa-blues connection is emphasized by many West African musicians, with Touré—frequently touted as the ‘Malian John Lee Hooker’— foremost among them. But these same artists will also draw a distinction between the Black American and African musical traditions, often with implications that genres comprising the former, such as blues, are somehow uprooted from their continental antecedents. In the 2000 documentary Ali Farka Touré: Springing from the Roots, Touré muses: “Blues, what is it? What does it mean, blues? [...] The roots and the trunk are here in Africa, the branches and the leaves are in the Western world. Here it is genuine.” Later on, in conversation with the American musicologist Banning Eyre on comparisons between Touré and Hooker, Touré emphasizes the differences between himself and Hooker: Unlike Touré, Hooker “plays tunes whose roots he does not understand. He understands the spirit, but it is never Western. Never It comes from Africa and particularly Mali […] The music comes from history. How did it get here? It was stolen from Africans” (emphasis in the original).

1 For those who do not have a music theory background among them myself: Pentatonic scales consist of five notes, as opposed to the seven-note heptatonic scales standard in the Western musical repertoire. Unison and heterophony describe the relationship between different musical parts: In the former, they are in time, and sounding either the same pitch or the same pitch but separated by octave intervals; in the latter, variations of a single melodic line are layered in different rhythms and tempos.

Examining the Sahel-based social conditions and musical traditions that Touré and his peers operate in and draw from may help elucidate his conservative perspective on music (though a comprehensive overview of African or even West African musical traditions would be impossible in a monographic format, let alone an article in a student newspaper). To the former end, it is of note that the Mandé-speaking groups (among others in the region) of Mali and its neighboring countries operate in a caste-like system. Such categories include nobles (horon), leather workers (garanke), smiths and potters (munu), and griots (jeli). This last group in particular has been cited by ethnomusicologists as the spiritual progenitors of the African American musical tradition. Derived from a French borrowing of Portuguese criado (“servant”), griots (Bambara jeli, plural jeliw) were musicians, storytellers, historians, panegyrists, and general masters of ceremony. They were often in service to or associated with members of the noble caste, recounting the pedigree of nobles’ histories and eulogizing the glory of their deeds (especially their openhandedness to griots). Some jeliw still work in this capacity today, performing at weddings, naming ceremonies, and general festivities, collecting West African CFA francs from jubilant and gaily dressed attendees whose praises they sing.

Some surnames belie this caste background: Keita, Diallo, Traoré, and Touré are regarded as noble families, while Kanté, Diabaté, Sissoko, Koné, Tounkara, and Kouyaté tend to be griots (tangentially, many of these names will be familiar to fans of French football). However, these castes are not deterministic in the modern day. One of the most magnanimous patrons of music in Mali, Foutanga Babani Sissoko (reported to have swindled Dubai Islamic Bank to the tune of $242 million USD by convincing them he was a practitioner of black magic), eschewed his family calling of griot-hood to accrue untold riches instead. Additionally, some of the most famous musicians such as Ali Farka Touré, his son Vieux Farka, and Salif Keita gained both significant domestic and international renown despite coming from horon (noble) backgrounds, which discourage the pursuit of such

Thus, when Touré characterizes connections to history and land as essential for being in contact with the spirit of the music, it is within this context of jeli music making. These musical practices are viewed as fundamental for the structure of social organization, and performance is essential for the sustenance of social life. Additionally, griots come from long lines of hereditary musicality down which lore is passed and traditions maintained, acting as repositories of history and cultural memory. It is somewhat ironic then that Touré implies his proximity to this cultural practice’s hereditary lore as legitimatizing the authenticity of his music over American blues, when he himself is not “properly” of this tradition (coming from a noble caste). Thus even the purported musical source is not stable.

However, it is unclear exactly how much the African American musical tradition owes jeliw. Although there were undoubtedly countless griots among the enslaved forcibly brought to the New World, and the African origins of instruments like the banjo are undeniable, music does not quite follow Darwinian genetic inheritance. Genres are influenced by other genres, instruments change sonic fingerprints with their falling into and out of fashion, and individual innovation leads to the proliferation of musical varieties. Change occurs both vertically and horizontally through time. In this vein, Black American music evolved mostly undocumented for 200 years among enslaved communities, independent from their roots in Africa and influenced by the European styles of white settlers and slaveowners. As a result, drawing explicit genealogical trees that attempt to locate the origins of African American musical modes is difficult, but the parallels in specific practices can be striking: Conceptually, the bluesman and the griot are analogous in their respective functions, especially in terms of their story-telling and lore-relaying capacities. Even if this tradition of African American raconteurs (of which bluesmen are a part) is not a direct descendant of that of the griots, they fulfill similar societal roles of cultural memory preservation—especially with regard to pre-enslavement African tales.

Rather than thinking about this relation in terms of ancestry and descent, it is perhaps more productive to think of this relationship as a cross-Atlantic discourse between Africans and their diaspora through which identity is deprived, created, and renegotiated. The flow of influence in this conversation goes both ways. As with the banjo, instrumentation is where this effect is most apparent; while the kora, ngoni, and balafon continue to be fixtures in the Malian repertory, the Western guitar (both acoustic and electric) has become king. Developing West African music scenes in the 20th century were also heavily

influenced by Black American music genres. Prospective musicians would have been exposed to the classics of the blues, and to a larger extent, rock ’n’ roll, during their formative years. The performance of State Department-driven “jazz ambassadors,” such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington (sent to tour in Africa as a stratagem of Cold War–era cultural diplomacy, showcasing ostensible racial harmony in the U.S.), left a lasting cultural impact in the popular musical imagination, especially among those who would come to make music. In the years following their independence, many African countries’ nascent governments sought to promote their local music scenes by sponsoring the formation of bands who would perform folk melodies with Western influences. One such example is the Rail Band of Mali—thusly named due to the patronage of the national railway administration—who incorporated electric guitars and basses into their music and served as the launchpad for the careers of many Malian musicians.

Rather than thinking about this relation in terms of ancestry and descent, it is perhaps more productive to think of this relationship as a cross-Atlantic discourse between Africans and their diaspora through which identity is deprived, created, and re-negotiated.

The United States is not the only nation with a sizable population of African heritage which drove the development of musical genres by drawing on their continental heritage and experiences in enslavement; this is the case of many countries in the Americas, each making up a voice in the polyphonic discourse around African and Black identity. One such example is Cuba, whose government’s projects mirrored those of the US as they participated in a musical cultural exchange with Mali. Cuban bands would engage in state-sponsored tours of Africa in the 1960s, much like the aforementioned jazz ambassadors, and many Malian musicians were granted scholarships to study music on the Caribbean island nation. Cuban music had also been popular on African radios since at least the 1930s, meaning the sounds of the genre would have been quite familiar to listeners there. The result of this influence was the proliferation of Latin-inspired renditions, which became part of the musical inventories of bands and griots, shaping genres around the entire subcontinent such as Congolese rumba. The Rail Band had their share of Cuban-inspired numbers (including their rendition of the above-mentioned “Sunjata”), and some bands, such as the Senegalese Orchestra Baobab, specialized in Latin music.

Seeking to explore this connection, Ry Cooder (American guitarist, producer, and Captain Beefheart collaborator, who along with Ali Farka Touré recorded their Grammy-winning album Talking Timbuktu) planned to bring a number of Malian musicians to

Cuba to record a collaborative album showcasing a synthesis of and the similarities between the two musical idioms; however an issue procuring visas meant that the Malian musicians could not make it. As a result, Cooder and his associates at the World Circuit label were left scrambling to salvage the situation, and they chose to record an album with the Cuban artists they were already in contact with. The resulting album was Buena Vista Social Club (the band is eponymous with this debut album), the Grammy-winning world music classic. Cooder’s original plans would come to fruition 13 years later with the release of AfroCubism, featuring many members of the Buena Vista Social Club and pillars of the Malian music scene such as Toumani Diabaté and Djelimady Tounkara.

Much like the griot and the bluesman, the Cuban singer tends to expound upon the travails of daily life and its hardships in narrative recounts. This African-Cuban connection is especially true for genres developed by Black Cubans such as son cubano, rumba, conga, and mozambique. The Buena Vista Social Club itself is named after a sociedad de negros (Black social club), an institution with its roots in fraternities called cabildos de nación, which were organized by enslaved individuals of African descent. Hence while Cuban music as a whole falls within the genre of Latin music, specifically Afro-Cuban styles exist as internally cohesive units that in turn communicate with musicians in Africa itself.

Thus, rather than being exceptional occurrences, these exchanges make up a discursive sonic dialogue of African communities on the continent and in the diaspora—a discussion comprising Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, Bob Marley’s reggae, Tinariwen’s desert blues, Ismael Silva’s samba, Amanaz’s Zamrock, Jorge Ben Jor’s música popular brasileira, Papa Wemba’s rumba, Gilberto Gil’s tropicália, among many others. These inter-genre conversations contribute to a larger discussion of what it means to be African in both the Old World and the New, identities that resist simplifications and blanket assertions.

+++

“Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion. Nah, son, we brought this with us from home. It’s magic, what we do. It’s sacred, and big.”

These words, spoken by the character Delta Slim in Ryan Coogler’s 2025 genre-bending horror/ thriller/Southern Gothic/vampire/musical/gangster/ period drama Sinners, punctuate the performance of the original blues track “I Lied to You.” The juke joint jollification in which this song occurs takes on a surreal air of temporal collapse, where, interspersed among the 1930s clientele are a ngoni-toting griot, a space-age outfitted funk guitarist, a fast-stepping zaouli dancer, a typified 1980s disc jockey, and fluidly prancing Chinese opera performers. The scene is a thematic climax for the film, demonstrating music’s time-piercing capability to transcend the divides between the past and present, life and death, and thus carry with it ancestral memories that the institution of transatlantic chattel slavery sought to stamp out. Here, Coogler draws on a long musical tradition and adds his own flair, confirming the African heritage of Black American music, while injecting it with new life. This multiphonic performance likewise encapsulates

the multiplicities of Black and African identities. Touré himself reflects this diversity of perspective and experience explicitly in his track “Savane” from his posthumous album of the same name, where (with lyrics that could be lifted straight out any of the Delta blues classics) he sings:

J’ai quitté mon pays et ma Louisiane Mais dans d’autres pays, adieu Savane J’ai trouvé le métro n’est pas un petit boulot Mais je suis, je suis un nègre

I left my country and my Louisiana But in other countries, goodbye savanna I’ve found that the metro is not easy work But I am, I am a negro

In his 2002 documentary A Visit to Ali Farka Touré, French documentarian Marc Huraux captures Touré listening to a record, njarka (traditional one-string fiddle) in hand. “C’est Otis,” he remarks with a smile, recognizing the track as Otis Redding’s arrangement of “Try a Little Tenderness,” and stares fixedly at the record. Commenting on this moment, the Africanist and historian Kai Mora remarks that “[a]n examination of the blues illustrates how the tension between African identity and Afro-diasporic identity was, and still is, in constant negotiation with the sonic landscape; rhizomatic, Mobius-strip musical traditions in which beginnings and ends are hard to define continue to ensue. The image of Touré staring at a picture of Otis Redding captures this perpetual dialogue in a moment.” Every work in these musical traditions unfolds its legacy to join an incessant chorus, forever redoubling across continents and through time.

HISHAM AWARTANI B’25+1 is at The Money Store listening to Music from Saharan Cellphones

c Day after day in my diary, nothing but rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. This climate continues with every entry, and my temper wears thin. At first, the rainy days had a soft, calming effect, which I greatly praised in these pages, but today is Saturday, and it’s been crashing down since last Sunday. It was raining continuously the whole time—well, thanks to such an endless downpour, at least the cistern is all taken care of!

Eventually, I found myself thinking strangely childish thoughts. If I could only gaze up at the cobalt-colored sky—even for just half a day—I would quickly discard my leaking umbrella, and open my favorite new parasol with a click over my head.

Along with yearning, hope, and grief, the long rain caused me to feel a considerable depression. I had finally just been released from school due to illness, and now I was downhearted, alone, and pitiful, leaning against a wicker chair like a ragdoll all morning. It seemed like there was nothing I could do besides sit there, idly staring at the wall—

In this state, Ms. Shinjō paid me a visit—to use a common metaphor, seeing her was like finding water in the desert. I was so happy I almost pounced on her by way of a greeting. To my surprise, my dear guest teared up, mistily.

“I wanted to see you…”

“Me too…”

Then, silence—oh, it had been such a long time, and to be able talk with my dear friend…It was better, better after all that it was a rainy day, as in this silence, I found the rain useful for the first time. “Here, look,” laughed the rain deities from the heavens as they skillfully manipulated the fine threads of raindrops just outside the window—their drizzle conscientious and kind.

And so it was that, around the small wicker table, the two of us locked eyes for the first time in a year— one year, yes, it had been one whole year. Soon after graduation, Ms. Shinjō had become an English teacher at X Girls’ School. While I had fallen ill and failed out of school entirely, living an aimless existence, Ms. Shinjō stood at the teacher’s podium, lecturing: “Everybody, if you don’t differentiate the pronunciation of your L’s and your R’s, you will sound ridiculous. Let’s make sure to practice, so that we don’t become the laughingstock of other countries. Look, when you say ‘L’ put the tip of your tongue just behind your front teeth, like this, luh, luh—see, look here…” And so on. It must have been tiresome work—and Ms. Shinjō’s teaching style must have worked wonders. Part of me entertained an impossible wish: If I could, I would have enrolled in X Girls’ School in a heartbeat just to become her student. All of our friends agreed that Ms. Shinjō would be the ideal teacher. And so, naturally, my next greeting was:

“How is it? The life of a teacher?” I asked with a smile.

“I…I already quit…” came the unexpected reply. It may have been my imagination, but her shoulders seemed to droop.

Oh. I almost shot back with the automatic “Were you fired?”—a light and teasing response—but the shape of her eyebrows was too sorrowful, and so I had no reply.

“I’ll hate teachers for the rest of my life,” she said, and the stormclouds of her eyebrows grew heavier.

Acacia

A TRANSLATION OF A STORY FROM NOBUKO YOSHIYA’S FLOWERTALES

( TEXT CHLOE COSTA BAKER DESIGN HONGRUI GUAN ILLUSTRATION KOJI HELLMAN )

Now I didn’t have the courage to ask “Why?” so I looked down.

“It’s because I was a teacher that I’m forced to bear a terrible crime, one I cannot atone for as long as I live, and so I had to come here—”

These words were unexpected, and I quickly glanced back up at Ms. Shinjō’s face. Back in school, when our desks were lined up by the same window, she had been the biggest optimist in the class, with her bright eyes and round cheeks. Even when, every once in a while, she would insist that she was a “pessimist,” the cause of the pessimism was always something ridiculous, like “the butterfly in the dormitory attic ate all the paper-wrapped sweets I brought home yesterday.” Now, there was an unmistakable change in this person I hadn’t seen for some time. The light in her bright eyes was extinguished by the dark shadow of melancholy; her cheeks too had lost their color, becoming thin and hollow, a lonely face.

Ms. Shinjō hid her pale face with both hands, as if she could not stand the phantom of the memory.

“You’ve changed…” I said without meaning to, then realized my own words, and wavered.

“Oh, have I? Of course, the body that carries this crime must have changed. Now, I’m a cursed person.”

I had no words in response to this, and once again looked down. Outside, the light rain continued to fall in a steady drizzle.

“Forgive me for only speaking in riddles, they’re endless, I know—I’ll tell you everything, just listen, please. And be serious.”

In a trembling voice, I said, “Ms. Shinjō, I’ll be serious…”

“Thank you. Well then…” And in the storyteller’s eye, a faint tear suddenly arose.

The dreary sound of the light rain struck the outside of the window.

Ms. Shinjō began her story.

“When I went to X Girls’ School and stood at the teacher’s podium for the first time in my life, for Group Two of the third-year English period, my whole body was shaking with nerves—yes, even me. It was time for the readers to take their turns, and I had planned to teach five or six new vocabulary words, so I started to write their spelling on one side of the blackboard. I can’t say I wrote well because my hand was still shaking—still, somehow at last I wrote one. And when I turned forward to present a professional face, there suddenly came a voice.

“Until then, there had been a certain unspoken curiosity about the new Teacher Shinjō, the classroom deathly quiet, everyone obediently restrained like borrowed cats.1 But it ripped through the silence, that voice—how can I describe that voice?—it was undeniably strange. Well, the voice belonged to a girl of only 15 or 16—at most 17 or 18—and its tone was completely out of place in the room where we gathered. It was akin to a 70- or 80-year-old senior citizen—a creepy voice like that of a hoarse grandpa—and this is what it said: ‘Teacher, the letters are too small, those of us seated in the back cannot read it’—just like that. With complete calmness and composure she alerted me, with those words and that eerie adult voice—I instinctively felt a startle in my chest so I turned toward the voice—and there—even remembering it now—” 1 Japanese idiom, meaning unexpectedly meek and quiet.

“It was as if my chest was pierced,” she continued. “I thought, how could that be the face of a young girl? It was the kind of face you would describe as a young old person. Her eyes were fixed and steady, her lips were tightened, and prudently, in a completely adult manner, she had strutted in front of her desk and turned to face me—that unbelievable girl. But before I could recognize this, I suddenly became indescribably fearful. Though she spoke admirably— without any shyness around strangers, even in front of her new teacher—before I could appreciate her courage to properly and diligently speak up, a feeling of unpleasant dread and anxiety awoke in my chest.

“But this was all because of my own mental imperfections. Now, in spite of my tears and regret, I can never make up for what I did.

“I immediately averted my eyes from that student’s face. While erasing the blackboard, I became flustered. ‘Let’s write this bigger,’ I said, and this time I wrote it much larger. ‘Now can you see it?’ I asked, still turned toward the blackboard, and of course that eerie adult voice with its hidden powers replied, ‘Yes, we can see it fine this time!’ It was the same student, and this time there was a feeling of aggravation in my chest. At the time I could not imagine, even in my wildest dreams, how much of a sin that feeling would become.

“Because it was so awful for me to come into contact with that voice and that face, I made it so I could not see that student’s seat in the far back, left side of the classroom. Avoiding this portion of the left side, I angled my stance so that from the top of the podium I could only naturally see the right side of the classroom in detail. Once I adopted this uneven view, in order to calm myself I decided to intentionally focus my gaze on a single point near the back of the right side. I turned my eyes toward that back corner, and—to my surprise—a truly lovely face floated up unexpectedly like a single white flower blossoming in the weeds. Such an adorable face, I thought, and standing there at the podium, my chest grew suddenly brighter. As my mood became lighter, how I smiled at this beautiful sight—at last I had escaped the discomfort, that helpless heaviness, and I sighed deeply with relief. During that hour-long period, I thought only of that girl’s beautiful face, and I somehow finished teaching my first class.

“I had gone to that school and stood at the teacher’s podium for the first time, and the third-year classroom was what tugged on my feelings the most. My very first impression—as terrible as it was, it deeply captured my mind. The first urges I received in that classroom were from two faces that varied in both extremes, and before I knew it my love and hatred were clearly delineated. That student with the terrible adult-like voice and face—that was a child named

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: YOSHIYA, FLOWERTALES , AND

Nobuko Yoshiya (1896–1973) was one of the most popular and commercially successful writers of 20th-century Japan. Her works have been largely dismissed by Japanese literary critics due to their young, female audience, and so have rarely been translated—this is the first English translation of “Acacia” to be published. Yoshiya was an outspoken feminist who challenged the role of ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’1 (良妻賢母) that was widely imposed on Japanese women since the Meiji Era. At 19, she moved from the Tochigi prefecture to Tokyo and embraced modern, androgynous styles of clothing and cropped hair. She was openly in a relationship with a woman, Monma Chiyo, with whom she lived for over 50 years. In 1957, at age 61, Yoshiya adopted Monma as her daughter, the only way for same-sex couples to be legally recognized as family in the absence of marriage rights.

Flower Tales (花物語, Hana monogatari) is a serialized collection published between 1916 and 1924, early in Yoshiya’s career. It comprises 52 stories—including “Acacia”—each with a different flower as its title and central motif. Like many of Yoshiya’s works, these stories center on romantic bonds between young women in school settings, infused with descriptive, ‘flowery’ language and melancholy sentiment. They often feature tragic tropes such as unrequited love, heartbreak, illness, and death. The Japanese literature scholar Michiko Suzuki has identified Yoshiya’s “stuttering” writing style, which heavily employs dashes, ellipses, exclamation marks, and emphatic apostrophes. This translation attempts to reflect the expressive punctuation and rich emotional language of the original text whenever possible.

Flower Tales is a foundational text in the Japanese genres of Shōjo (少女, ‘young girl’) and S (エス, esu, for the English word ‘sister’) Literature. In early 20th-century Japan, real-world romantic intimacy between schoolgirls was becoming a topic of public debate. This scrutiny of the erotic lives of girls and young women was largely due to the increase in secondary and postsecondary educational institutions for women—brought about by the Girls’ High School Order of 1899 and establishment of the first women’s college in 1901—resulting in new homosocial environments in which girls were temporarily free from the expectations of the home. In the following decades, experts in sexology, a field newly imported from the West, pathologized female-female desire as ‘inverted.’ A sensationalized lover’s suicide of two young women in 1911 further fueled the anxieties that schoolgirl romances were a gateway to something dangerous. However, some advanced the view that these relationships played an important developmental role, albeit as part of a trajectory toward heterosexual homemaking. Yoshiya herself strongly decried the notion that schoolgirl romance was dirty or unnatural, writing that such bonds were “beautiful and tender” and taught young women how to love.

1 First coined in 1875 by Masanao Nakamura, a Japanese educator and leading philosopher of the Meiji Period (1868–1912).

Tanashima Ikuko. I shunned that student, even in the classroom—no matter how many times Miss Tanashima raised her hand to answer one of my questions, I never once called on her. And not only did I never call on her, I endeavored never to even turn and look in her direction. Oh, what a terrible psychological sin I so calmly committed, when I think of it now I shiver. It’s so terrible, terrible.”

Ms. Shinjō was so tormented by this recollection that she laid her body down. “Oh, and I was such a fool, treating Miss Tanashima as if she did not exist in that classroom, and at the same time treating without malice the lovely student named Oka Mitsuru, the possessor of that beautiful face. Every day—how do I put this?—that strange—that almost funny—um— that unbelievable—um—how to say—um—well of course it was strange—please don’t laugh, I beg you.”

Ms. Shinjō made a pained face. “So then, where was I? Whenever I saw Miss Oka’s face, my spirits became bright. On the second or third day, when the girl missed class due to illness, I stood at the podium in front of that group and found that my motivation had already dwindled—there was no big excitement anymore—and I became absentminded and careless. During the period of that girl’s absence, whether at school or in my apartment, I felt so incredibly lonely—oh, please don’t laugh—I’m begging you—it’s so embarrassing, I’m going to cry.”

Ms. Shinjō was suddenly brought to tears. “Such a strange dichotomy: Together in one group, both a detestable, hated girl and a beloved, irresistibly adorable student, and I stood at the podium with an earnest expression—all while committing so many crimes in my heart—a devil—that’s what I was, at the time.” +++

Ms. Shinjō came to this point in the story and let out a deep breath. The faint sun-shadow of the rain fell softly and solemnly across every corner of the room. The sound of the light drizzle outside quietly drew near.

“A devil—that I had become a devil was something I realized later. To discriminate against a student who occupied a seat in that classroom, who harbored unique ideas within the group—what an unspeakably

terrible, cruel act. Humans are truly weak, and that version of me was no different. Whenever the bell rang I would go to that classroom—enter that classroom that exerted such a major change on my fate. The instant I stood at the podium—why?—I assumed a position so that I could not see the face of that Tanashima girl. So, needless to say, even when that Tanashima girl tried to raise her hand, I made an unknowing expression and kept on. Oh, what a terrible thing I did. I think of it now and I am disgusted by my own awfulness. That is to say, I inflicted on Tanashima such cruel and unusual psychological suffering. Oh…”

On Ms. Shinjō’s face was an expression like a criminal peering out from the window of her jail cell, troubled by the sins she committed in the past. The atmosphere of the room had become gloomy and gray.

“And how about the fact that I calmly called on that Oka girl two or three times within the hour? Of course, by the second consecutive time I called on Miss Oka, many coughs occurred throughout the room. ‘Ahem’ here, ‘Ahem’ there, as if an unexpected flu outbreak had invaded the classroom…”

Ms. Shinjō gave a lonely laugh that was somehow just as pitiful as her tears.

“That’s how it was at the time. I would leave that place for good exactly one month after the start of spring—yes, it all began in May. It was a slightly cloudy day, and on that day I was giving the group a dictation test. The classroom was dead silent save for the racing of pens on paper, the students straining their ears for my raised voice so as not to miss a single word. I slowly walked between the students’ desks as I read from the page of my open book. As I did, I happened to come close to Miss Oka’s desk, and—um—unintentionally—that is, naturally, automatically, my feet stopped.”

Normally I’d say something mocking such as “Oh, how convenient to call it a natural attraction,” and part of me did want to tease her. But in these circumstances, with the lonely rain…I didn’t have a reply, and simply received her story. Avoiding each other’s gaze, we made quite a miserable host-guest pair.

“For some reason, my walking had halted of its own accord, and so I stopped and stood. I was now motionless, facing Miss Oka’s desk. My gaze caught on those meticulous, beautiful fingers that gripped

an ivory pen holder as it flew over the smooth paper. Those plump cheeks were slightly flushed and red from the effort of recalling each spelling, one after the other. What was even more lovely: As she leaned forward, face turned toward the paper, the back of her hairline was exposed, and the thin nape of her neck overlapped with her snow-white collar. There, at the end of a slender stream of long hair that flowed softly down her indigo silk back like billowing smoke, was a lustrous pale-brown ribbon that pleasantly bound it up and lightly touched the back of the chair. Below that, her hips in a maroon pleated skirt with a floating white silk lace pattern…I was so captivated that, in this spellbound state, I messed up the passage of the dictation test…”

What a shockingly bad teacher! I thought my eyes would reveal this thought as they glared at Ms. Shinjō’s face but—in that instant—I saw the downhearted state of a person who had so honestly confessed everything, and I could not bring myself to criticize her so strongly. Oh, suppose if I were in her circumstances, in her position—as soon as I thought this, I suddenly felt as though my own heart had been pierced.

Ms. Shinjō continued. “So then—while I was still motionless, gazing fixedly at that beautiful girl— another student quickly recalled the dictation test word that I had messed up reading. It was none other than that Tanashima girl. Oh, Tanashima! The girl was known in the staff room as a remarkably intelligent student. As a reader, she could recite any page from memory without stumbling over a single word or phrase. So that day, the phrase on the dictation page that I had mispronounced in my carelessness was soon reflected in that girl’s sharp mind. And in the midst of the quiet classroom, there suddenly issued a grinding voice—Tanashima’s voice, needless to say. A terrible and unpleasant voice—as soon as I heard it, I shivered as if my spine had turned to ice.

“‘Teacher, would you read it again, correctly this time?’

“Well, what a statement! Read it again, correctly this time. Those sharp words were sometimes issued toward students by teachers from up at the podium, but for a student to use those words toward a teacher? But in this moment Tanashima had clearly, obviously said them to me. When I heard those words—now it

was not mere discomfort—I trembled. The insubordination and poorly disguised hatred wrapped up in that sharp tone was clear. Until now I had been trying hard not to look at Tanashima’s face, but now I couldn’t help but glance at the row of desks on the left side.

“I immediately lost my composure. My feet froze to the floor. From her seat at the desk that Tanashima girl’s eyes burned like coals in my direction. Her pupils were fixed straight ahead, firmly set in her tanned face. Under thick eyebrows, those big eyes reflected a passionate and tempestuous temper. It was a face that didn’t have an ounce of charm, it was so adult-like and wise. The rare passion in those eyes—it was impossible to see a normal young girl in them. No, those pupils were trying to wage war, loaded with violent power like a samurai riding a horse into battle, and for the first time, the war was directed at me.

“I started to shiver. In fact, I was barely able to return to the podium. I lost myself in the lesson and dazedly concluded it. Finally, on the verge of collapse as I escaped from off the podium, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. But the more I thought about it, the more terrified I was of that Tanashima girl. I spent the day restless, feeling as if I were under attack, and later that evening returned to my lodgings.” +++

“Once I returned to my apartment I was preoccupied with various things; I had not forgotten the incident in class that day, but I tried my best to disregard it. That night, rough winds gusted from the entrance, and on top of that a severe rain began to fall in horizontal torrents. When this unexpected windstorm arose, I was at my desk in my room, flipping through a magazine. The tumultuous rain struck the outer storm door in the corridor and shook the tree in the garden, and in the midst of the roaring wind came the unexpected sound of a tempestuous human voice. Wondering who it could be, I became uneasy. I considered calling to the inn lady for help, but she struck me as a bit timid. I tried to shake off the eerie feeling, but the tempestuous human voice only grew nearer and louder, until it was right outside the screen of the window above my desk.

“‘Teacher…Teacher Shinjō…Teacher Shinjō…’ said the voice. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought it called for me! Surely it was impossible that on this stormy night, someone had come to my lodgings and was calling my name outside of my window. But I got more and more unnerved, and to my horror, the voice outside that called my name drew nearer and nearer like a fire catching and spreading: ‘Teacher…Teacher Shinjō…it’s your student, please open up, open up,’ it said, a broken, breathless, crying voice that mixed with the sound of the windstorm. It no longer struck me as just eerie. I finally made a decision and as the storm door trembled and shook, I pushed it open.

“‘Who is it, who’s there?’ I asked into the darkness, and through the sound of the rain and wind came the reply, at the same time as a person’s face appeared below the window: ‘Teacher…It’s me, it’s me. It’s Tanashima Ikuko…’

“My surprise and horror when that voice hit my ear, well, how to describe it?…With a pallid, depressed, pitiful expression, Miss Tanashima stood like a dripping wet statue outside the window, letting herself be struck by the downpour. Dumbfounded with surprise and fear, I was unable to say a word; I just stood there, bolt upright, staring out the window. Again, that distinctly pathetic voice reverberated through the wind and rain, tinged with sadness:

“‘Teacher, Teacher, I came tonight to apologize for my previous rudeness. Teacher, please forgive me, please forgive me. Until now I detested you, I hated you with all my heart. It’s such an outrageous and terrible thing! Oh, please forgive me, Teacher. I don’t need to repeat how much I’ve rebelled against you or how much I’ve fully accepted your hatred of me…That, we both understand. But Teacher, I cannot

bear the terrible hatred anymore, so Teacher, please forgive me, Teacher I—I, why must I become someone who opposes her teacher and accepts such hatred? Teacher, please tell me this now and please forgive me. Teacher, I—I—um—Miss Oka—Miss Oka—I have even come to dislike Miss Oka, when I realized how much you—you love her. That I received your hatred, but my dear Miss Oka received your love, this favoritism sadly tore us apart. Do you know how much I have cried over it until today? You’re still not saying anything. Teacher, I as your student will no longer be consumed with the terrible sin of having detested and hated my teacher. Tonight I will leave this place, and return to—to my hometown. Teacher, before we part, will you just say one word of forgiveness? Teacher, please forgive me, Teacher—I, Tanashima Ikuko, am a pitiful girl, please… Teacher…forgive me…’

“And in the darkness, the tempestuous, tearful voice broke off, or so I thought. The human shadow had already passed far away. Was it all a dream? I couldn’t be sure, but in the violent windstorm I stood still and stared, dumbfounded. Oh, it was not a dream but reality—a truly sad reality, a sad truth…”

“The next morning, when I took attendance with a pale face, I found that Tanashima Ikuko had unmistakably erased herself from the school registry. Apparently, she had returned to her far-off hometown in Tokachi. Oh, when I learned this, my regret was endless and my suffering was boundless. I suffered with it for about a month, and when I could no longer bear it, I embarked on a long journey to the plains of Tokachi on the island of Hokkaido, where that deeply passionate, outwardly strong yet inwardly soft child had departed, in search of her.

“I finally tracked down that girl’s home, a small farm in the middle of the plains. I had resolved that when I finally reached her house, I would call out the name of the person who had not left my heart for a single day, and kneel at her feet to atone for the sins I carried on my back. When I arrived at the farm and called on that person I sought, Ikuko’s mother was the first to greet me, and I had to hear these sad, heartbreaking words: ‘Ikuko has gone mad, the poor child.’ Her mother broke down crying in front of me, and in her I caught a glimpse of the girl’s begging, haggard form. Oh, that passionate child’s heart had finally been driven to madness!

“I collapsed. It was all over, and the day I would atone for my sins would never come; I would continue to bear them for all eternity. Even if we had to meet in a fleeting, soulless form, from the bottom of my heart I earnestly desired to shed tears in front of the person I had wronged.

“Dusk approached the borders of the farm— the roadside trees stood grouped together, casting shade—leaves that resembled wisteria grew thickly on the branches. Also on those branches were tiny thorns, and in the dusk’s gentle breeze the leaves trembled with fragrant petals—the delicate, pathetic sadness of the milk-white flowers and their gentle scent.

“Acacia, acacia…My friend who came from Dalian, China had often nostalgically praised those very flowers, the flowers that bloomed in the shade of that meadow. They clustered tightly around the shadow of that lonely, lonely person, that pitiful girl whose soul was snatched away in the prime of her life, a fleeting shape of that girl’s miserable reality.

“Ikuko, please see my tears; this is what I murmured in my heart. I was not able to face her directly, not with my weak soul. Even bowing down before her mother and confessing to my sins was something my weak, weak self simply could not do. So finally, I once again crossed the wide plain alone and headed home. Dusk came, and in the middle of the plains, I stood alone and turned my thoughts toward the past. Before the setting sun, at the edge of the dusky meadow in a whitish dreamy haze, was a

cluster of acacia petals…In the evening breeze, these tiny milk-white flowers had fallen and scattered like a lonely person’s tears. I could almost imagine that in the shade of the tree, like a soulless cicada shell, stood the thin, withered body of a pitiful, pathetic girl. I was a criminal who felt utterly out of place under this vast sky.

“This journey was the turning point of my life. I returned to school and immediately requested to resign, but until there was a replacement, I spent my days in bitter suffering. Finally a replacement teacher was found, and I retired from the teaching position, turned away from the school, and became who you see today, a person with no prospects or purpose. If I can, I will once again cross over to Hokkaido to become the caregiver of that poor child and carry that out for the rest of my life.

“As for that girl named Oka Mitsuru, every day her lovely form reveals itself at the schoolhouse window, completely unaware of the sad truth that has come to light. I pray that for her entire life, that girl will never come to know the truth. The weight of the crime of having harmed even one child I taught is intolerable enough; if I were to wound another child’s soul, it would be truly unbearable. As it is, this anguish and regret is something I have to bear for my entire life. Oh, when that acacia blooms again—I want to once again return to that meadow’s edge and atone for my sins!”

Ms. Shinjō finished telling her story, and her tearstained eyes lightly closed.

How tragic is the fate of a child born with such passion! Even now, does she still stand in the shade of the acacia tree, watching over the surroundings of her lost soul? In her now-empty heart, she cannot know the extent of the sorrow and regret in the tears of the teacher toward whom she once harbored a mutual hatred. Alas, alas, acacia flower, acacia flower on the thorny branch, softly trembling milk-white petals, stirring the heart of that sweet, sad young girl with its tender scent!

CHLOE COSTA BAKER B’27 sees your tears.

c When Chinese people give their birthday wishes to the elderly, one of the most common phrases is 长命百岁 (chángmìngbǎisuì)—“Live long, for a hundred years!” If health is measured by longevity, then I am proud to say my 姥姥 (lǎolao, grandmother) is a living success at the age of 90.

When I visited her this past winter break, she insisted that I learn a set of 动作 (dòngzuò, movements) from her to be healthy. After months of intermittent (less graciously put, inconsistent) personal testing, I can say with confidence that these movements make me feel better. And who am I to gatekeep? Today, I am sharing my grandmother’s four awesome movements with you, dear reader, and I hope they will help you chángmìngbǎisuì

Opening:

Stand with both feet firmly planted on the ground, shoulder width apart. Use diaphragmatic breathing throughout the exercise: focus on drawing breaths by expanding and contracting your stomach, rather than your chest. Take deep, slow, breaths, and hold your breaths in between inhaling and exhaling. Breathing sets the pace of your movements, which should feel deliberate, never rushed.

These movements are contingent on both moving your body and picturing the following image in your mind. Do one without the other, and you will not receive its full effects. To help picture the image in your mind, you may close your eyes. You have a small sphere of energy, like light, in your lower abdomen. This is your qi See fig. 1. As you breathe in and out, you are feeding and growing this ball; its light pulses.

You can see your spine. Picture key points at the tailbone, hip, mid-back, chest, and neck. See fig. 2

气 (qi) literally translates to ‘air’ and ‘breath,’ but my grandmother refers to qi in the context of 气功 (qigong)—a health-focused self-cultivation practice combining breathwork, movement, and mental visualization popularized in China in the 1980s.

The “qi” in qigong refers to the traditional Chinese concept of an imperceptible and vital energy

that animates all living matter. Life is thus formed by qi, the body as a coalescence of vital energy. Like what my grandmother describes, qi is often represented as spheres, streaks, and masses of light. It concentrates in living organisms as a bright intensity, and permeates the world as a diffuse glow.

“Gong” literally translates to both ‘work’ and ‘skill,’ which in the context of qigong describes both the effort of moving and cultivating qi, and the mastery of circulating the qi that forms your body, and the unformed qi of the world your body occupies.

For as long as Chinese philosophy has located life in qi, scholars and practitioners have been theorizing and honing it. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), for example, characterizes qi as possessing different qualities using schematics like 阴阳 (yin-yang) and 五行 (wǔxíng, the five phases). Practitioners diagnose the composition of qualities within objects and individuals using these schematics, then employ practices like meditation, medication, alchemy, and divination, to counter and balance these qualities. This holistic equilibrium is the goal of all TCM practice.

While the theory and practice of qigong are traceable within TCM, the emphasis on balance and stillness was not entirely true of the qigong of the 1980s. Popular qigong, as my grandmother knew it, was forged in the Maoist reinvention of the Chinese state.

The Maoist idea of the new Chinese state is a revolutionary body capable of perpetually fighting feudal and imperial oppression. This ‘revolutionary body’ is substantiated by people acting together in a uniform mass. As part of this theory, Mao is deeply interested in using the quantitative physical movement of bodies for the qualitative political advancement of the new Chinese state.

In the Soviet dialectical materialism that preceded Mao, the revolutionary struggle is one against the certain past. In addition, Mao insisted that not only are there contradictions between the people and the external enemy (敌我矛盾, díwǒ máodùn), there are also contradictions among the people (人民内部 矛盾, rénmín nèibù máodùn). To destroy the enemy from within and move away from the ideologies of the past, each individual subject must gain the capacity to notice and resolve their own internal contradictions. The ‘revolutionary body’ must fight the uncertain future. This commitment to perpetually resolving contradictions transforms revolution (革命, gémìng) into continuous revolution (继续革命, jìxù gémìng)— the foundation of the Cultural Revolution from 1966–1976.

Throughout the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) systematically eradicated traditional Chinese ideas by encouraging relentless internal criticism of them. To become part of the ‘revolutionary body’ of the new Chinese state,

Move one:

Move your spine back and forth in a rolling motion like a caterpillar. With practice, this movement should become smooth, constant, and gently paced. As your spine rolls, focus on one key point at a time, moving up from the tailbone, to the hip, to the mid-back, to the chest, then to the neck, then down to the tailbone in reverse order. You can use your shoulders and arms to guide you, but it is important you are leading the movement with your spine, not with your shoulders or limbs. See fig. 3

Using the same motions and focus strategies as move one, move your spine side to side. Similar to move one, you may sway your arms to the motion, but don’t be swayed by your arms.

See fig. 4

one must root out the ideologies of the past from within oneself—creating a blank slate for a new national culture and identity.

Yet, following the death of Mao in 1976, the movement toward reconstruction was filled with trepidation. How should the ‘revolutionary body’ move forward without capitulating to the Chinese traditionalism of the past or the Western imperialism of the present?

Closing:

Qigong answers this uncertainty by offering a new collectivizing activity. Carefully curating its TCM vocabulary, qigong reintroduced the cultivation of qi as personal patriotism, merging personal health with political praxis. Synchronized public practices of qigong in communities across the country became sites for a new nationalistic healthcare. Qigong masters—who were often also medical doctors— instructed qigong in public squares, demonstrating breathing techniques and movements in free, open events that blurred the line between medical lecture and political rally.

Responding to the Maoist call for physical movement, the practices within qigong also became more active, in contrast to the focus on stillness in traditional meditation. Qigong became the foundation for a resurgence of martial arts, and famous qigong masters often demonstrated 特异功能 (tèyìgōngnéng, special powers)—intense, controlled movements of qi that manifested as psychokinesis, extrasensory perception, and healing powers. According to my aunt and mother, there was even a time when my grandmother possessed special powers of her own: a halo

收功 (shōu gōng, closing the exercise) is very important. If you don’t close, all the work is wasted. Breathe in, and as you do, raise both arms from the side of your body upward above your head. You are bringing all the good qi from the universe toward you. Hold your breath, and as you do, place both arms over your lower abdomen. The qi you have brought inward is now nourishing and merging with your own qi. Exhale, and as you do, lower both arms. The excess good qi from the universe is exiting your body, carrying away all the bad qi from within you. This breath cycle should be completed in one smooth and continuous motion. Repeat this breath cycle a few times. See fig. 7 5 6

around her head as she practiced qigong in the living room, the appearance of her levitating from her bed in her sleep. Friends and neighbors would occasionally ask her to heal them or ease their pain.

Because qi, within its own cosmology, is imperceptible and ethereal, qigong requires a process of substantiation that makes qi legible and understandable. Most qigong practitioners described qi as a ‘feeling’—meaning its reality depends on the projection of the practitioners’ belief onto their own bodily sensations. This theory is perhaps best described by the saying 信则灵 (xìn zé líng)—“If you believe, it works”—which creates a paradoxical foundation for the work of qigong: you must believe in qi to ‘feel’ qi in your practice; you must ‘feel’ qi through your practice to believe in qi. As you move your spine and feel the tension being released from each intervertebral disc, the image of your qi, pulsing, is realized by the feeling of relief.

Though post–Cultural Revolution China was eager to embrace qigong, this paradoxical ‘feeling’ at its foundation was incompatible with the vision for a new national identity that rejected mysticism. To serve the materialist foundation of the new Chinese state, qigong practitioners and government researchers rigorously searched for scientific language and proof to justify the material existence of qi—infrared radiation, magnetic signals, and biogenic fields.

However, qigong, and all of its effects, are presently irrational—science does not yet have the capacity to explain someone who might repair a broken

Immediately after finishing these breath cycles, rub your hands together to quickly distribute the residual energy. Use your hands to spread the energy across your face in a circular motion. You are clearing your face of pores and blemishes. Run your hands through your hair. You are stimulating hair growth. See fig. 8 7

Move three:

Rotate your spine from the tailbone up to the neck. Coordinate your breath so that when you reach the end of the rotation, you can hold your breath briefly. Use the same focus strategy as move one and move two. See fig. 5

bone or heal themself of cancer. Scientific attempts to explain such phenomena cannot align qigong to China’s need for material proof. Instead, they only warp scientific language into qigong’s own paradoxical logic.

However, for the CCP, the political mission of qigong necessitates this pretense. If qigong has proved itself successful in mobilizing people for continuous revolution, then there must be a scientific, materialist understanding of qigong yet to be discovered.

This instruction posits comfort as the invitation for change, and I find this gesture almost out of place with everything else that has preceded it. It asks the practitioner to recognize what is pleasurable, and make a voluntary shift toward new movement. It is not moving to negate or moving to resolve, it is simply moving toward uncertainty.

I love watching my grandmother move like this. She lived through the Imperial Japanese invasion, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. I’m relieved, I’m inspired, how from a life of hardship she can still find from within herself a movement of grace and ease. Though her hair has greyed, her skin freckled from years of labor in the sun and a childhood plagued by smallpox, she is radiant. She is joyous. And she is still moving.

According to my grandmother, inadequately closing movements of qi can lead to 走火 入魔 (zǒuhuǒrùmó)—‘wandering of qi’—a

Pull down on both ears, especially downward on the lobe with some force. You are soothing out the body by stimulating all of the 穴位 (xuèwèi, pressure points) on the ear. See fig. 9

Move four:

Once you’re comfortable in moves one through three, incorporate move four into the exercise— free movement. Your spine is now rolling and rotating in every direction like an improvisational dance. Let your spine guide your limbs See fig. 6 4

psychophysical phenomenon of forgetting oneself or appearing possessed by spirits. Zǒuhuǒrùmó can also occur during the practice of qigong if one loses control of their qi, or one’s qi is ‘shaken’ by a great presence of qi in one’s vicinity (for example, at public lectures in the presence of a great qigong master). It requires great influence to break someone out of the ‘spell’ of zǒuhuǒrùmó, and sometimes, if the possession of a spirit is too strong, the spell might never be broken.

The fear of losing one’s self to internal disorganization, perhaps, brings to light new contradictions within the ‘revolutionary body.’

Qi is the most fundamental concept of traditional Chinese cosmology. Qigong is rooted in the mysticism inherent to TCM. When the post–Cultural Revolution subject searches for the ‘feeling’ of qi within their body, what surfaces, like a possessive spirit, is the muscle memory of a traditional belief they can no longer name. When they reach into their gut to ‘feel’ what is right, they will find an instinct instilled through generations of cultural practice— the traditionally founded values they sought to eradicate. Even through the violent reformation and forging of modernity, the material of ‘the revolutionary body’ cannot forget what it used to be.

The gesture of opening one’s arms to the world and letting go of a part of oneself creates a movement through which the transition between the public and the interior can be navigated. By introducing the cultivation of one’s own qi in

service of the public political project, qigong brings a political interiority dissolved by ‘the revolutionary body’ back into consciousness. The opening of a political interior also acknowledges the metabolization of history—the digestion of contradictions—that must take place during great change.

My grandmother never said so explicitly, but I’m fairly certain the applications of residual energy are adaptable. She has taught me these movements on a few different occasions, and described completely different benefits in each instruction.

In my understanding, distributing residual energy is a declaration of qigong’s personal utility: How do you intend these movements to change you? My grandmother imbued within her instruction the uses she wished I would derive from qigong—what she needed to enact personal and political transformation.

My grandmother’s qigong, to me, is a movement with the capacity to connect the certainty of the sensations within my body to the uncertainty of the changes my body will enact in the world.

I practice my grandmother’s qigong because I want to move. I need to move. Moving is the question, the answer, the paradox, the resolution. We must move so we can remember. We must move so we can forget. We must move, towards, away, and everywhere. We have to move.

Plug, hold, then release your index finger from both ears simultaneously. Repeat this motion a few times. You are clarifying your hearing and brightening your sight. See fig. 10

I painted this after this guy a friend of mine knew randomly called me some 4chan racial slur on one of my posts, and I wanted to create some semblance of accountability and consequences. So I collaged together his comment, a photo of him found from his Instagram tagged, and then painted him getting pissed on by the first penis that comes up when you google the phrase “penis peeing”! After continuing to stew in my bitterness for a while, I added some crying babies and gems as a way to kind of camp up a painting I made fully out of spite, because honestly looking at him and the anonymous penis in my studio was making me a little nauseous. I titled the piece Spitepainting, and it lead to a few misunderstandings/arguments on where the image of the penis was sourced from (wikipedia!!!) and why I tried to kitsch up a painting about a topic so rough. But I don’t know, I feel like it is a way to reclaim a semblance of accountability and I should be allowed to do it in a way that’s fun for me! And one of this painting’s target audience was bigoted straight men I guess, so it did the job.

BLESSING INDIESGUISE

FEELING DOWN? GET UP GIRL!

c I am working on being more positive. With all the doom and gloom recently (a record-breakingly bad winter, the political and economic state of the world, my cat’s kidney stones), it’s been a bit difficult. But one can only be so negative until it starts to affect one negatively. They say that every complaint takes an hour and seven minutes off your lifespan. It’s true. Look it up. This doesn’t really affect me because of my immortality and stuff but it is still scary to think about. I think instead of shortening my lifespan, my complaining is giving me forehead wrinkles and an ”affectless aura” (my friend’s kimono’d mom said this about me but not to my face). And the other day someone guessed that I was 25 which was a real wake-up call. So now I am trying to complain less. This week’s Crit inspired me to start a 24-hour no-complaining challenge and I instantly failed upon leaving Conmag because the person in front of me was going down the stairs too slow and then I promptly failed again by texting my friend ”this is impossible I hate my disgusting chungus life.” I will try again tomorrow.

According to the calendar, spring is here and if you close your eyes really tight and avoid looking out the window most of the time you can pretend that that’s true. This is a season of renewal and rebirth and JOY. That’s right. Complaining is over. Pessimism is over. Negative self-talk is over. Boom done. Spring is the season of childlike whimsy and millennial optimism. I also said that about 2026 but I kept forgetting about it for the first few months or so. I am implementing this ethos by surrounding myself with more positive people and also staring into the mirror every morning while white knuckling the sides of the sink counter and telling myself that I have an abundance mindset. It is working really well. Since I am always looking out for my beloved readers, I feel obligated to advise you to do the same.

Part of my Practice is spinning bad things so my brain thinks they are good. My chiropractor who is also my life guru calls this 'reframing.' Ever heard of it? They once told me, ”Instead of stressing about a traffic jam, for instance, appreciate the fact that you can afford a car and get to spend a few extra minutes listening to music or the news, accepting that there is absolutely nothing you can do about the traffic.” As you know I don’t have a car. If you are like me and don’t have a car these are some other examples to help you on your 'reframing' journey:

• You went through a breakup? You are free.

• Your flight got delayed seven hours? Maybe you’ll meet the love of your life in the airport.

• The line to get into the line for ”TSA” is a mile long and you’ve been there for two hours already? It’s fine because your flight got delayed and also maybe you’ll meet the love of your life in that line.

• You lost your transatlantic boat tickets in a game of poker to some beautiful American boy and his extremely Italian friend? Well you won’t believe what happens to that boat.

• You developed a weird rash and ow ow ow it hurts and also itches? You get to go to the dermatologist which means you get to lie down in a quiet room while someone pays close attention to you for 15 whole minutes and it’s the most intimacy you’ve experienced since...well...

• You lost your phone? Congratulations you are now unanchored from and therefore unburdened by the weight of the world in your pocket.

• Your hater cut holes into the boobs of your tank top in the locker room in an effort to publicly humiliate you? You actually just set the next big fashion trend and guess what it’s also feminist somehow.

• Your ice cream cone fell, cartoonishly, on the ground? I’m sorry.

Something else you could try doing is keep a daily gratitude journal. I have been doing this for four days straight and it’s changing my whole entire life. I have to be transparent about the fact that my bed has made the list almost every day since starting, but it’s the effort that counts, and I really am grateful for my bed so it would feel dishonest to not include it. Once again, I urge you to follow my inspiring example and do the same. Struggling to think of anything to write? Don’t even worry baby. I asked some friends, frenemies, and readers what they’re grateful for and here’s what they said. I hope it gets your gratitude gears a-turning.

• ”My friends and family”

• ”My nemesis, for keeping me sharp”

• ”The missed connections page in Volume 51 Issue 2, through which I met my now-husband”

• ”The RIPTA, the #1 public transport system in the world”

• ”Indie; her unfailing wisdom and breathtaking good looks” (most popular response btw)

• ”The songbirds that come to my window every morning and sing to me and eat seeds out of my hand”

• ”The way reality is, at bottom, just a series of mutually agreed-upon interpretations, and how that means nothing is actually bad unless you decide it is, and how once you understand that you are completely free”

• ”Having two girlfriends”

Me? I’m grateful for the city of Providence, my beautiful baby blues, and of course, you, my sweet sweet readers.

BARAN KILIÇ

& SARYA

( TEXT CAIDEN

Aguardente Review #2

After a panic-stricken, mid-blizzard, cross-campus run, my friend and I found ourselves at Aguardente on a Tuesday half an hour before they closed. We were welcomed by a blast of spiced air, indie rock, a couple of familiar students, and a cozy table in the loft. The waitress, funny and charismatic, laughed along with our jokes and recommended a creamy, tangy goat cheese dip and of course the savory, steaming-hot seafood paella. Every bite made the night. We dug ravenously through every dish—smoky, tangy flavors pairing with creamy dips and sauces—and glanced at each other with fear when the waitress suggested dessert: “Vanessa, I think I’m genuinely going to die if I eat one more bite, even if we share,” my friend groaned. We ordered two desserts: one soft and jiggly flan and a slice of decadent, buttery tres leches cake. We finished off both and drew two little pigs and a happy thankyou note in the journal that Aguardente lets its customers sign. On our way back, the Providence sky twinkled with stars as we lumbered through the snow-lined streets.

DESIGN MARY-ELIZABETH BOATEY ) Betsey Williams Cottage Open House April 10, 10 a.m.–3 p.m. Roger Williams Park Museum of Natural History & Planetarium, 1000 Elmwood Ave Free DSA Karaoke Night April 10, 6–10 p.m. Red Ink Community Library 130 Cypress St Free 70s-Themed Prom April 10, 7–9 p.m. The Guild, 461 Main St Pawtucket, RI 02860 $39.19 Wood Shop Basics: Build a Shelf April 11, 2:30–4:30 p.m. PVD Things, 12 Library Court $10–50 suggested donation Sapphic Sip & Paint April 12, 2:30–5:30 p.m. Public Shop & Gallery 50 Agnes St $30 Providence Resistance Chorus Gathering April 14, 7–9 p.m. First Unitarian Church 1 Benevolent St Free Persephone’s Parlor: A Witchy Social Gathering April 15, 4–7 p.m. Myrtle, 134 Waterman Ave East Providence, RI 02914 Free Salsa Class Series April 15, 6–7 p.m. Roger Williams Gateway Center, 1197 Broad St Free Songs in the Round April 16, 6–8 p.m. arc{hive} book + snackery, 4 Market St, Warren, RI 02885 Free Karaoke Night April 16, 9 p.m.–midnight The Red Door, 49 Peck St Free Stitch n Bitch: Yarn Crafts April 17, 3–4 p.m. Red Ink Community Library 130 Cypress St Free Food Truck Friday April 17, 5–8 p.m. Roger Williams Park, Carousel Village 1000 Elmwood Ave Free Halfway to Halloween Market April 17, 5:30–9:30 p.m. Farm Fresh RI Market Hall 10 Sims Ave Free Jazz Night April 17, 6 p.m. Riffraff Bookstore + Bar, 60 Valley St #107A Free Poetry Grand Slam Finals April 17, doors at 7 p.m.,

VANESSA TAO B’28 still has room for a third dessert.

Sudoku Puzzle

Aguardente Review #1

In trying to replicate my groundbreaking tapas experience at Palo, my friends and I celebrated the start of junior year by trying out Aguardente. The waiter led us outside to their patio, and I immediately noted the petite string lights woven together with artificial ivy vines and multicolored flags, detailing their thoughtful intention to create a homey ambience. We weren’t seated at a standard table, but rather at a round one slightly too low for the three cushion chairs surrounding it. Without asking, she graciously listed her top recommendations, telling us not to leave without trying the lamb chops and seafood paella. We listened, ordering those two along with many mocktails (the blackberry jam in the mora picante was a standout) and the aguacate relleno, which was my personal favorite dish of the night, because of the cilantro crema drizzled on top. As the waiter had promised, the lamb tore easily from the bone—the charred taste balancing nicely with a tangier, yet peppery spice, while the texture of the squid in particular played nicely with the caramelized rice. In the reservation comments, we had written that it was my friend’s 21st birthday (her birthday is during winter break), and they brought us a thick slice of tres leches cake—a lit candle included. As we finished our meal, the sun was mid-set, and with the pen left over from the bill, we wrote a thank-you note for the thoughtful service and delicate but homey tasting food, garnished with a drawing of three stick-figures sharing one slice of cake.

B’27 is debating the ideal cream cheese frosting–to–cake ratio.

MUTUAL AID

Help a Father of Three Rebuild His Life and Business

GoFundMe: The AMOR community is raising funds for a local family to assist their father in supporting himself and rebuilding his business now that he has been deported to Bolivia. F is a loving husband, father of three, and an avid photographer and videographer whose life has been upended by ICE.]

[From the AMOR

Bulletin Submission Form Do you have an event or mutual aid fund you’d like to promote? Or perhaps you have a burning (but short!) opinion bite you’re dying to share? Well, you can now submit it to Bulletin!