Essays

From stacks to streets

Reading resistance in Berkeley

A spectre is haunting Berkeley — the spectre of bookstores dearly departed.

Oakland ZIP code, Berkeley education

How my connection to BUSD shaped my view of Oakland schools

Oakland and Berkeley are 20 minutes apart, but crossing between them always meant stepping into a different kind of classroom.

The bottle and the beetle

An elegy for my living father

My senior year of college has been beset by a strange decision paralysis, bound between fulfilling my parents’ wish that I strike out independently and my more fundamental duty to ensure my dad has a peaceful old age.

Against nostalgia

Remembering the Bay Area’s radical Iranian students

In late January, I attended a solidarity demonstration on campus for those experiencing state repression in Iran.

Subhuman: Why devaluing men devalues us

Before my first meaningful sexual encounter with a boy, I called one of my best friends across the country.

I used ChatGPT to resurrect my dead dad

Part of me was hoping that my dead father might hijack the technology and speak to me through artificial intelligence like the stories I’d read on the medium subreddit.

World of mouth

When I imagine America, all 50 of its united states, I can never manage to fit it into my mouth.