Editor's note: This article was written by an author who is in the midst of exploring their gender identity. In order to maintain a sense of privacy, they requested this piece be published anonymously. In addition, they do not intend to take away space meant for non-binary or trans people, or minimize ...
The cyberpunk city is nocturnal—buildings that skewer the layer of clouds in the sky with their billboards. Neon Chinese characters decorate dark alleyways with splotches of artificial color. Hovercrafts and other extreme feats of technology layer over a dilapidated urban landscape. And the main character ...
할머니 paints, but her paintings never really leave the apartment. There must be over 40 canvases scattered around, propped up on the floor in sets of three or four so you can sort through them like vinyl in a record shop. I discover six older ones I’ve never seen before when I follow her to her ...
I used to tell people I hated country music. Growing up in the conservative suburbs of the Deep South, hating country music was a quiet rebellion against a culture that intrinsically did not align with my values. Throughout high school, I walked a wide berth around the Morgan Wallen tours that passed ...
He took to the road before dawn, the moon still visible through the early March mist. The night before, he had patched his torn trousers and fixed a new strap to his hat. He was approaching fifty, gray hairs frosting his head, and applied mugwort to his legs to strengthen them for the journey.
June 6, 2008 was the first time I saw an iPhone. I was sitting in a Jewish deli next to the hospital where my mother was in labor with my brother. At the time, I only knew the flip phones I saw in movies and the Blackberries my parents used, which solely piqued my interest when they let me borrow one ...
The drive back down to Providence crosses between two of my own realities as it crosses state borders. Every single time I embark on the journey back to campus, the hour-long car ride is always accompanied by a torrential downpour. The kind of rain that loudly pounds against the windshield and consumes ...
My childhood best friend Lilah once discovered a copy of Super Mario Bros. on the hallway floor of our middle school and stole it. Neither her conscience nor mine stopped us from taking it to her house after school and immediately plugging it into her pink Nintendo DS. For the next few months, every ...
There was no second of purifying blackness, no raising of curtains or lowering of wires, no mechanized magic at all. Samia strode out to the microphone stand at centerstage, wearing her characteristic wide-eyed fishnets, mid-calf black leather boots, and a tiered white miniskirt that clung to her waist ...
My grandfather, a motion picture exhibitor, used to declare every film he saw the “best picture of the year.” I can still hear the natural inflection of that phrase in his voice revealing his pure, unadulterated delight. My grandmother would walk out of the theatre and tell him she couldn’t believe ...
In the very first episode of Fleabag, a beloved comedy-drama, the titular character and her sister Claire attend a feminist lecture together, in which the speaker asks the audience: “Please raise your hands if you would trade five years of your life for the so-called ‘perfect body.’” The rest ...
Solutions by The State News
