Emory Diverge: On Multicultural Voices

We’re only different leaves, drifting…

Category: WONDERINGS

  • To Blush Purple / Habits I Hate

    To Blush Purple / Habits I Hate

    By Tanvi Madugonde

    “Most of us undergraduates know what it was like to experience the ‘awkward middle school’ phase. The scrunchy hair tie stacks that inched their way up to our elbows, the high ponytails and big bows, the mismatched tights, the Children’s Place t-shirts, and the memes that decorated 90% of our apparel. We look back on those memories and reminisce about the ‘good old days,’ when homework assignments were a couple worksheets maximum and TikTok was just beginning to skyrocket.

    I look back at my middle school photos with a different kind of nostalgia. My eyes migrate away from the frumpy outfits and instead towards the body hair that splayed across my limbs, the dark hair decorating my unibrow and upper lip, my grey elbows and knees that seemed extra ‘dirty’ and unclean because they showed up on brown skin instead of pale. These were the photos of a girl who felt more than adolescent abashedness. She was afraid of her melanin, her culture, and the growing pains that separated her as an Indian girl growing up in a sea of lightness in her small northern Arizona town.

    In my pieces “Habits I Hate” and “To Blush Purple,” I explore the feelings of growing with instead of away from my insecurities of belonging to a culture that drew a line between my identity and my peers’. To grow up desi was to grow up different — there was no doubt about it. But now, I can look back at my middle-school self with the kind of love she deserved from her community back then, knowing that to realize my value later in life was better than never realizing at all.”

    To Blush Purple:

    I learned what lipstick was at a second-grade birthday party, where we had a fashion show for all the moms and grandmas, dressed to the nines in feather boas and fedora hats. Except I didn’t want to walk the show after my mom forced me into a frumpy dress that showed off my ashy knees, and walking down the walkway with my ashy knees meant that people would actually see my ashy knees, and more likely than not make comments about my ashy knees. Instead I tried to pretend to be the “stage manager” – helping organize the show, telling the other girls where to put their ribbons and hairbows, adjusting posture and straightening wrinkles – at least then I’d have a better shot at being taken seriously than tripping down a runway. But I still ended up walking the show with a random pink Claire’s lipstick smeared across my lips, coerced into thinking it made me pretty. The other girls said I looked like a fifth grader now, and I believed them. They told me that looking older would help me feel like I matter. I went home proudly and stared into my vanity mirror and looked at my pouted lips for the first time. And that’s when I noticed that the color didn’t suit me. I didn’t look older. The makeup didn’t work, and they lied.

    —

    My best friends in sixth grade told me that I had big eyes but short eyelashes, and unless I got longer eyelashes, I wouldn’t look like a high schooler, and if I didn’t look like a high schooler, boys wouldn’t take me to the school dance, and in the sixth grade, you need a boy to take you to a school dance. Everybody who was somebody had a boy taking them to the school dance. So, I went home crying to my mom about my eyelashes. In sixth grade I learned what mascara was, and I sat there silently at the foot of my white wood vanity, sparsely decorated with rainbow eyeshadow palettes and the occasional lip gloss, watching the mirror as my mom brushed my lashes, down and up, with the mascara wand, making them thicker and smudgier and droopier until I felt like my eyes were sinking, and by the time I got to the dance, all the mascara had turned into dark circles instead. It was a mascara wand, but I couldn’t wave it and fix all of my issues – it was still just plastic. I looked back into my vanity – it was still better than nothing. But why didn’t I feel older yet?

    —

    The pandemic year was the perfect year to begin learning YouTube makeup tutorials, since the only thing I had keeping me occupied at home was my mom’s old makeup sponges and some expired concealer. I could’ve learned how to hide the hyperpigmentation on my upper lip and cover up my unibrow. I could’ve learned how to even my two-toned lips with the right shade of lip tint, except I chose not to do any of that and ended up learning how to apply foundation on the school bathroom floor with a girl who was nice enough to teach me how to properly apply the powder to the back of your palm. “The kind of makeup you can wear underneath that COVID mask,” she told me. She applied the cream to my face in “downward strokes only”, picking up my mom’s old sponge and dabbing away until any trace of blemishes, picked acne scars, and discoloration on my face faded into one smooth coat, swirling the sponge around until her consistent strokes turned into a mousse. And I felt pretty because I thought my dark upper lip was gone, that my unibrow looked separated. I pulled a mask over my ears and walked back into class with my back a little bit taller. And then I went home and realized that the foundation shade I’d hurriedly bought didn’t even match my skin tone. So I sunk back into the suffocating seat of my vanity and placed the two-shades-too-light foundation next to lipsticks and mascaras that also didn’t suit my face. And I picked up a hairbrush, stared into the vanity mirror, and began wrestling my hairline into the middle because I read somewhere that middle parts make you look older. If my makeup couldn’t then maybe my hair could. 

    — 

    I bought my first blush in tenth grade, a hot pink that I saw influencers use, sold on the idea that it would transform the apples of my cheeks into a translucent pink glow. I must have used it for three months until a friend was kind enough to tell me it “couldn’t be farther from the right shade.” So I begged my mom, pleading to let me go back to Sephora and spend another $40 on something that probably wasn’t even going to work again. After spending too many hours looking up “blush for brown skin”, I trudged into an aisle with a deep purple liquid that resembled wine rather than makeup, holding up the tube skeptically as the worker helping me smiled sadly, almost as if she’d seen this before. I didn’t think it’d work, that the internet lied to me again and that I needed to just give up. I went home, back to the sunken seat of my vanity, staring at piles of gently used products that I’d felt too guilty to dispose of because of the money they cost, but couldn’t use because it kept going wrong. I placed two hesitant drops of the purple near the corners of my eyes, rubbing them in with my eyes wide as I stared back at the face looking at me from the vanity, finally seeing something that made sense. 

    —

    My father was about to turn 50, and my mom mistakenly put me in charge of party planning, so I spent a day driving to Target to pick up supplies, driving home to drop off the supplies, then driving back to Target because I picked up the wrong supplies. Thirty minutes prior to the party was all I was allotted to finally get ready. But that was all the time I needed. I sat at the edge of my vanity seat, stared into the glowing mirror, and squeezed out two pumps of a deep tan foundation, aerating the mixture for thirty seconds before application onto my face in “downward strokes only.” I slid the black eye pencil across and over my waterline, highlighting my short eyelashes and applying mascara, down and up, until they looked long enough to reach my brow bone. Grabbed a beige setting powder to brighten my under eyes, highlighting the apples of my cheeks with a golden powdery highlighter. I stretched my lips thin as I sketched the arch of my cupid’s bow with a chocolate colored lip liner, filling in the empty space with a nude lipstick. I held my breath as I rubbed my plum shade blush into my cheeks, not stopping until I looked rosy and a little sunburnt, but just the right amount. I sprayed the setting mist over my face, eyes clenched tight and opened to see my face, just my face, but emboldened. And I prepared myself for the flurry of conversation I’d hear when cutting cake.

    “You look so much older!”

    So this time it worked.

    Habits I Hate:

    I hate that some people reach the ripe age of 17 years old and still think it’s socially acceptable to pick their nose, even though I made a three-course meal out of it when I was five years old. 

    “It’s honestly hard for me to watch a nail-biter. I don’t know how the idea of gauging  your teeth into your nail bed to rip out excess can seem a tempting stress-coping mechanism for anyone,” I typed, with my cuticles ripped to shreds, blood spouting in at least three different places as I set aside a pair of blue plastic gloves to wear later in the shower. Shower gloves because my fingertips are so torn to shreds that hot water seeping into the narrow crevices would send hot spikes of pain and karma into each finger. The one thing I hate most about myself are my hands. Well, my hands and my nose. But mostly my hands, with their rough, flaky palms and chewed fingernail tips that make for extremely uncomfortable handshakes. My mother always warned me from a young age that if I continued to have a go at my hands the way I still do, I’d be at risk of infecting them. Sepsis. My mother’s hands are perfect – the kind you’d see modelling the latest bracelets in a jewelry commercial. Despite the hours she spends fighting her way through crowded Costco aisles or Indian markets, making hand-made meals crafted from scratch every night, her hands appear as if their most difficult task is typing away softly at her keyboard. I don’t cook. I’ve never been in a Costco for more than a couple minutes for their churros. My hands look like the washed palms of a dirty coal miner’s.

    I tic. A new dirty habit I’ve discovered tends to happen in moments of peak stress (probably why people often ask if I have Tourrette’s during college application season). I, admittedly, do not have Tourrette’s. But my disgusting little tic will never go away, like the devil on my shoulder constantly reminding me there are reasons for stress. I get asked why I blink weird. I can’t explain why. I can’t explain why my right eye flutters open and shut without my command or notice. Why it may seem like I’m violently winking at people when really the nerves in my eye itch to stray from the perfect machinery of the rest of my face, choosing erraticness over normalcy. I can’t explain that when I try to stop the tics, it feels like someone’s holding me underwater as I fight my way to the surface but never reappear. I can’t explain that when I don’t tic, I begin to breathe strangely, rasping and heaving and wheezing. I try to avoid looking people in the eye, because when I do, I hyperfixate on every little movement my face makes, suddenly wary of the wrinkles in the middle of my eyebrows, of whether my mouth is open too wide, of whether they can see the tics I’m trying to drown, to submerge so that I can get through one conversation without feeling defective.

    I hate hearing my family eat at the dinner table. Each gargantuan sip taken from their drinks, each slurp and lick of their utensils sounding like a broken symphony of noise erupting from the inside of everyone’s cheeks, making my heart race and my forehead sweat, making me want to curl inside of myself like a reversible cushion. Dinner time is my least favorite meal of the day.

    I hate acne scars. I pick off each pimple and watch the blood sneak out with every new blemish that barges past my skin barrier.

    There’s a scab on my left earlobe that hasn’t disappeared for the past nine months, probably because my fingers need something to distract themselves with when they’re not tearing each other apart while my right eye starts twitching out of control.

    I already have thin eyelashes, so rubbing my eyes until they keep falling out isn’t a beauty-standard-supportive habit.

    Not to forget is the way I suck my stomach inwards during every family trip to India, because I don’t need more distantly related family members asking if I’ve gained weight or lost it.

    I hate the way I scratch at my nose, pick at my ripped fingers, blink my right eye unharmonically, and chew the snacks by my side. I hate how my blemishes protrude ready for bleeding, my ear scab itches, my eyelashes fall, and my stomach sucks in while I think of things to include in this essay.

  • “Why Not?” 

    “Why Not?” 

    Rethinking the American Dream, by Fay Sukparangsee

    Fay Sukparangsee, born and raised in Thailand, is a senior studying psychology and linguistics. She’s in the Thai Club, Matriculate, and Residence Life. In her free time, she enjoys hanging out with friends, being outdoors, and taking car naps.  

    Introduction

    Why did you choose to come to the U.S.? A question many would ask me upon finding out I am, in fact, not from any of the 50 states of America. Why not? I thought. “Well, I went to an American international school, where over half the students were American, so they naturally returned to the States for college. And given that nearly all the teachers and college counselors were American, it felt like a rite of passage,” I’d typically answer. 

    But was that really why, though? What about Canada? Europe? The Netherlands? That was a popular option for Europe. Or the Scandinavian, Mediterranean countries, or even Australia? Way closer to home. But despite the abundant options, I had little hesitation. It came down to one deciding criterion: What is the most competitive and prestigious school I would have a decent chance of getting into with my current standing? To put it even more bluntly, which top-ranking school am I most worthy of getting into? 

    It feels pretentious, to say the least. But that was the brutally honest truth. Unlike any other country, clawing my way into a top, elite, and competitive university in the U.S. was my ticket to success, financial freedom, stability, and happiness, surely. I wanted to feel chosen. To feel special enough. Worthy enough to belong with the brightest and best students from all over the world. I worked hard enough to be here; success would be promised in some form. Right? 

    Except, was the path of success one I really wanted, or was it simply the American Dream disguised by the intellectual pursuit of education? The pursuit of prestige, I believed, would shield me from uncertainty and assure me the promise of success. But regardless of the meaning or value attached to the American Dream, there was one glaring shortcoming. We are humans living in a society, always unpredictable and ever-changing. Constrained by societal structures, social stratification, and systems that perpetuate power in the hands of the few elites, the American Dream is not a means to an end but a means with no ends. 

    The American Dream can be viewed as a cultural ethos by some people, or as nationalist propaganda by others. Many people have different interpretations of what this dream may be. For some, it is moving to America to establish a good living, but for others, it is to leave and never return again.        

    The American “Dream”

    Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker, who seems to be living the “American Dream,” describes his experience at Wall Street. He depicts the hypocrisy of many banking institutions, alluring prospective candidates into the line of work due to the financial incentives. However, you would be denounced the moment you admitted to the financial motivation, as these institutions insist the work they do possesses greater meaning beyond money. But it is quite apparent that, apart from workers selling their souls to these corporations, these institutions are selling the American Dream. Wall Street convinces people their work is deserving of outrageous amounts of money in hopes of retaining their loyalty, even when the work becomes dreadfully exploitative and meaningless. He quickly learns that working on Wall Street is like a game of Liars’ Poker, a game of bluffing –  who can lie and deceive best. So he eventually left the work, realizing that it was not the game he wanted to play. 

    Lewis’s background is very integral and fascinating to this story because he came from an upper-middle-class family, so really, he could choose to pursue any career without concern for financial stability. I mean, his “distant cousin” married a German baron, so he was “invited to dine at St. James’s Palace”, which is an enough indicator of his socioeconomic privilege. In fact, the author majored in Art History at Princeton University, initially having no plans to go into investment banking, but became swept up in the common mentality of financial stability. Eventually, he decided to pursue a career on Wall Street. I mean, who could blame him, though, because leading up to graduation, “some of my [his] classmates were visibly sympathetic toward me [him], as if I were [he was] a cripple or had unwittingly taken a vow of poverty” (Lewis, 30). This quote hilariously and accurately captures the universal experience of many college students who are not on a pre-professional track or with a major deemed lucrative. His decision to still choose to pursue the path of prestige speaks volumes about how powerful the American Dream is– even for those who seem to be already living in it. 

    Lewis’s father’s generation believed that “the amount of money one earns is a rough guide to one’s contribution to the welfare and prosperity of our society.” Even today, pursuing less “prestigious” jobs comes with the backlash of being “selfish.” There is guilt around not earning enough to pay off our family’s investment in our college education or to fund a good life post-graduation. Existing in elite institutions, we have been made to believe that a salary below 80K is like living below the poverty line. It’s ridiculous as that doesn’t even factor in the living costs of different places. However, many of us have no experience in financing our lives independently. As a result, we chase prestigious careers as our values and beliefs become tied to this promise of financial stability, often at the stake of our mental and emotional stability from our diminishing autonomy, similar to Lewis’s story. 

    The American Nightmare

    On the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, Smarsh describes her upbringing as a working-class white woman. She explains America’s meritocracy myth that shames poor people for making poor decisions that keep them in poverty, while entirely neglecting the social inequality the system perpetuates. She recounts growing up believing it was a personal failure to be poor, rather than the perpetuation of wealth inequality and the genetic lottery of being born into generational poverty. 

    “Poor whiteness is a peculiar offense in that society imbues whiteness with power– not just by making it the racial norm next to which the rest are ‘others’ but by using it as shorthand for economic stability. So while white people of all classes hate or fear people of color for their otherness, better-off whites hate poor whites because they are physically the same– a homeless white person uncomfortably close to a look in the mirror”). 

    This passage really stood out to me because she talks about how even though she is white, her socioeconomic status bars her from accessing the same privileges other middle and upper-class whites have. In fact, she is feared by her own people. Despite systemic privilege that typically equates whiteness with power and money, she possesses neither, rendering her helpless in the capitalist system.

    The system perpetuates shame amongst working-class individuals utilizing welfare benefits. Such benefits were framed as “something so detestable” that they “refused to apply when they qualified.” This echoes the meritocracy sentiment deeply ingrained by the American Dream: the notion that your fate is decided entirely by your individual effort and decisions. It assumes that free will exists in a society where exploitative privatized entities from insurance companies, big pharma, banking institutions, and many more own more shares in the market than any family can over multiple lifetimes. The hypocrisy of individualism is astounding because, though capitalism teaches us to be individualistic and independent, it relies on us specializing in narrow fields so we are solely dependent on the system to survive. That is the positive feedback loop that keeps the system alive.   

    The American Reality

    Both Lewis and Smarsh, coming from different ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, explicitly express through their writing how they never felt like they’d ever achieved the American Dream. So it begs the question. Who is this Dream even for? Both authors, through their personal anecdotes, reconcile with the reality of the American Dream as a myth that promotes nationalistic ideals to justify social immobility that perpetuates wealth disparity in American society. 

    This country was never built upon any just grounds. We stand on the stolen lands of the Indigenous Americans, whom white colonizers attempted to erase. Then, the colonists claimed the land as their own, as well as the labor of enslaved people and immigrants who have built this country into what it is known for today– research, innovation, education, and countless contributions from the very people this presidency is so determined to deport. But despite all the scathing criticism I’ve expressed, there remains an allure to this country (at least for now) that brings people from around the world here. 

    Culture. America’s biggest and most influential export. Made up of different communities of people from all around the globe, cultural diversity, I believe, is this country’s most valuable asset and allure. One seldom seen anywhere else. Diversity of thought breeds revelations and innovations. And though the American Dream is an intangible and unattainable myth, I believe diversity is the tangible answer in creating more equitable opportunities for all. 

    Conclusion

    Personally, I now no longer have desires to pursue prestigious paths in business like consulting, whether because I realized Calculus 1 was beyond my academic bandwidth, or that I found no interest or meaning in the classes whatsoever. After diving deeper into the meaning of prestige in careers, I realize that at the expense of high-paying, prestigious jobs comes with the lack of autonomy. For some, myself included, it’s at the cost of happiness and well-being. Spending 60-hour work weeks, dreading every minute to be over just to get to the two-day weekend, and to do everything all over again, to me, is the definition of hell on earth. There might never be a perfect job that is equally financially, socially, and personally meaningful. Thus, we must make those sacrifices when choosing careers. But what I hope is that the sacrifices we make are not what others push us into, but are the ones we make on our own– through our real, lived experiences. I would rather regret taking a path doing something I truly loved, than to have taken the “safer” path, unfulfilled, and never having tried at all. 

    Ultimately, I don’t know where my career will lead me, but I certainly hope I never lose sight of my ethics or values in the pursuit of it. Though work can have different meanings for different people, I want to spend a third of my life– working– doing something with a purpose I know in my heart. So that the next time someone asks me why I choose to do what I do, I can tell them, “Why not?”

    Bibliography

    Lewis, Michael. Liar’s Poker. Hodder, 2006.

    Smarsh, Sarah. Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. Scribner, 2018.

  • How International Students at Emory are Navigating Changing Times

    How International Students at Emory are Navigating Changing Times

    Names are masked to protect international students under the current U.S. administration.

    Currently, Emory has 3,300 international students and scholars from over 100 countries, and each year, 15-18% of Emory’s incoming first-year class is international. These experiences are reflected in the personal stories of Emory’s international students, each navigating their own path amid uncertainty.

    For a senior from Bengaluru, India, the advanced technology and research-driven institutions in the United States remain unmatched, but she recognizes the uncertainties that come when facing a new future. These apprehensions stem in part from the policies of the first Donald Trump administration, which tightened student visa regulations by enforcing stricter terms and increasing scrutiny of Optional Practical Training and H-1B programs. Nevertheless, they remain steadfast in their commitment to studying in the United States.

    “The U.S. has the best medical programs, and it is where I want to be trained,” she said.

    A pre-BBA freshman from South Korea noted that their first job in finance and subsequent work experience in the United States would be a significant factor in their life post-graduation.

    “If I go back to my own country or go to somewhere else in the world, that becomes a clear record of my net worth in terms of salary or experience because the U.S. office pays you the highest, especially in finance fields,” she said.

    Nevertheless, they recognizes the potential obstacles in her path. Many international students’ employment opportunities depend on whether or not they receive a work visa. While she plans to work in the United States on an immigration visa and perhaps apply for a green card, she fears that stricter immigration policies from the current Trump administration will hinder her ability to continue her life in the United States.  

    “I know a lot of the upperclassmen in my high school had to go back to their country or go back to Korea, which is where I come from,” she said. “Because after graduation from college, they weren’t able to find companies that could sponsor them a visa because of how strict it got, and it just became more costly for the companies to do so.” 

    For them, fears surface in conversations with friends about their employment options and future plans. Often surrounded by non-international students, they feel added pressure.“Every time, I am the only one who doesn’t have a green card, even,” she said. “So while they need to worry about other things, like what they want to do or where they want to get employed, the first factor for me to factor out all the time is, obviously, if it even offers visa sponsorship.”

    For a junior on the pre-medical track from Bangladesh, the limited pool of medical schools for international applicants creates an additional layer of complexity and stress.

    “Anyone from America can apply to any med school, but international students can only apply to 40 or 45 med schools,” he explained. “In a lot of universities, they do not take international students at all. You can’t even apply there.”

    Despite holding an F1 visa, a non-immigrant student visa, they often fear their immigration status will be affected. “The moment I step into America, it is kind of scary when you’re standing in the line of immigration and you’re like, ‘Oh, even if there’s a 0.0001% chance of me not being able to go through immigration,’” he said. “Even though I’ve been to America many, many times since I was eight years old or something, and half of my family lives here, even then, every time I do step into America from wherever I go, I do feel this fear that there might be a very, very small chance that I might not be let in.”

    Similar fears and uncertainty will likely continue into future undergraduate application cycles, as another student has already noted the impact such sentiments have had on his family in their hometown of Kolkata, India.

    “My younger cousins, for example, who wanted to apply to the U.S. are now looking at other options,” he said. “They’re looking at the U.K. They’re looking at Singapore as potential places to study, because they have such inviting government systems over there, and people are so much more welcoming as compared to the U.S.”

    According to them, the International Students and Scholar Services (ISSS) at Emory is a great resource for navigating anxiety and uncertainty. However, they note a lack of energy or effort from ISSS to contact students about these concerns.

    “If you set up a meeting with your ISSS advisor and ask them anything about the situation, or just chat in general, they’d be very happy to provide you with information,” he said. “But there’s not enough initiative from the ISSS on this topic. They’re not reaching out to us and they’re not giving us information firsthand.”

    Changes to the visa application process and federal immigration policies have concerned many of these hopeful Emory professionals. Another student has begun questioning the “practicality” of their legal career. Originally from Bogota, Colombia, they believe that the Trump administration’s anticipated stricter visa process policies have complicated their plans of attending law school.

    “Maybe that process will take a little more time, and that might affect my planning into maybe taking a gap year or something like that,” they said. “But so far, I still think this is the place where I want to go into the career of law which is what I’m passionate about. So my plans remain unchanged in that sense.”

    For them, Emory is a testament to the powerful positive force of individuals and institutions. Despite rising uncertainty, their experience at Emory gives them hope for the future. According to them, institutions like Emory “want to bring the best people from all around the world and give them an opportunity to show what they know.”

    “Even as the policies evolve, though, I think that there’s a big difference between the policies of a government and then the actual people,” they said.

    Yet for many international students, uncertainty overshadows opportunity. The senior from Bengaluru acknowledges the diminishing research opportunities but hesitates to dwell on the news, finding it overwhelming and largely beyond their control. For the pre-med student, the harsher reality lies in the heightened obstacles international students of color may face in obtaining U.S. citizenship or securing a long-term future. For the aspiring lawyer, the dangers of political rhetoric and “scapegoating” immigrants raise concerns about broader societal perceptions.

    Another student fears these concerns may have added implications for the class of 2028 but also acknowledges how these issues weigh heavily on their shoulders.

    “But now, because of the new party, which has come into power, and the new president, it’s just a little unnerving, and it’s a little scary, I would say, for an international student like me, because you just don’t know what’s going to happen next,” they said. “So with every passing day, the chances of me staying here forever are getting slim.”

    These opinions reflect a deep-seated fear that I experience too, a sense of unexplainable dread I experience whenever I think about internships, jobs, and the application for a higher degree. It’s a feeling beyond hopelessness, where the question of being in a country is one of assigning value to my existence, not just my degree. However, letting this feeling dictate my actions also implies letting the paralysis take over and enabling myself to spiral with the news of deportations around me. I choose to carry on, not impervious to the circumstances that may limit my capability in the future, but also not letting them control my actions in the present. 

    Edited by Ash Zeng, Amiee Zhao

    Layout by Scarleth Cantarero

  • The Name Book

    The Name Book

    By Joseph Tang

    Using blackouts, cut-out words, and collages, Joseph Tang transforms fragments into a narrative that amplifies stories and voices that have never been heard. Listen closely. These are the stories of the colonized, pinned down, oppressed, erased-those whose names are covered by “the map.” This piece gives voice to the unnamed, reclaiming the silenced histories and identities that have been overshadowed by systems of power and erasure. Through this art, the unseen and unheard find a space to exist and resonate.

    Edited by Mike Yuan, Jinci Shang

  • Understanding Rise and Fall of Regional Regimes

    By Mike Yuan

  • Solo Travel Unleashes Me from Identity

    Solo Travel Unleashes Me from Identity

    By Amiee Zhao

    Amiee will graduate from Emory College of Arts and Sciences in 2026. She is double majoring in English and Politics, Philosophy, Law. Outside of Diverge, she also works at the Emory Writing Center. She is a writer, cultural critique, and a Cantonese music lover.

    I need to be sure where I am, who I am. It feels easy to shrink and be small on my day-to-day scuttles to work hard and speak in an unfamiliar language, almost waiting to be misunderstood. When 50 eyes focused on me as I struggled to battle my anxiety and piece together my broken words, I felt myself sliding down a river because the only branch I was holding snapped, as people gradually lost patience and turned away from me. Yet, I started leaning into the freedom of swimming instead of holding on.

    So I have always been exploring a safe port of identification, a name that could solidify my ephemeral existence in the world. They call this grasping of certainty “identity” now. I see identity on the streets, in campus groups, in the political climate where people find a sense of belonging through the pigeonholes of identities they fit themselves in. Their voices are thus organized, instead of being thrown off into misunderstandings, through shared experiences, even experiences consolidated into unanimity.

    But my voice didn’t belong to any of these existing identities. Joining affinity groups of Asians, internationals, LGBTQ+ people, etc. forced me to tweak who I was. I found my experiences vastly different from the centralized narratives in those groups. My understanding of myself always exceeded or undermet the definitions with my personal feelings. Could I be an international student? But unlike most others, I didn’t go to an international school. Could I be asexual? But I didn’t resonate with asexual friends around me. “Just change yourself a little bit,” that central voice of the groups said, “and look at all the perks of fitting in that you would win.” Yet, I hated tweaking my voice, my experience, my concrete feelings stuffed between the gaps of rocks.

    What if I don’t belong anywhere? What if I’m an identity-less wanderer? On my first trip alone in Vancouver, I printed my footsteps one after another on the long slope back to my hostel — the only route I knew despite protests from my sore legs — I felt, for the first time in the long months of displacement in college, at ease. As the sun was setting, stars climbed up amidst the minute changes in sky-wraught color from peachy, coral, to rouge, lavender, and finally, magenta violet. I found my weird sense of peace in worries about my phone battery and about rumors of dangers at night as I struggled to capture the moment of change in the sky. But then I thought of the similarly nervous tourists I met at the train station this morning, a pair of couples, whom I met again at the end of the day at another train station across the country, looking nervous but relieved as we found each other. I passed countless faces as I journeyed, exchanging conversations, with words or wordless, only in the moments when we were alone and defeated by the maze of this world, the challenges and sceneries of solo travel. With each footstep I printed in my muscles, I found liberation from “identity” in my experience itself, the exhaustion, anticipation, loneliness, and mercurial connections I made along the way.

    I thought that if I couldn’t belong anywhere, I might as well just choose to belong everywhere, confronting the fixed idea of identity with unfamiliarity. Previous research has been done on the meaning of solo travel to East Asian women, who use traveling alone as self-discovery as they strip themselves free from traditional social expectations imposed on them. For me, solo travel goes further. It allows me to keep a distance from any identity at all. Traveling alone, I am able to experience life as a local as I slip in and out of residential areas looking for cheap hostels. Yet, meanwhile, I am also a wandering stranger, starting casual conversations with them while leaving the town permanently the second day. It feels liberating, somehow, when I know that I don’t have to maintain a long-term connection with the people I encounter because I don’t need to develop a personality, a face, in front of them.

    In moments of situating myself in unfamiliarity, I’ve found how human relationships can be stripped off identity tags and a desperate need for belonging. I don’t need to strive to fit in in the places I travel, and the passers-by don’t evaluate me in relation to themselves as I’m outside of their social web. They give me directions and walk off, or we complain about the late buses together and continue separately to our destinations. At times, I stare into the blank walls of my Airbnb, pondering if I’d feel safer with people surrounding me. Yet, with others, I could almost visualize myself sitting in the corner, peaking at the center of the crowd through gaps between the bodies. Perhaps, it is just easier to feel lonely when I’m supposed to feel lonely, that is, when I travel alone. The daily 10k steps, language barriers, and excitement from exploration also keep me from struggling with belonging.

    Instead of self-discovery, solo travel, for me. brings more self-experience. It doesn’t point to a future of discovering a better self, neither does it point to the categorical pigeonhole of people that supposedly organizes the present better. It takes me down to earth, feeling every bit of awe, pain, and connection that constitutes my life. The only real thing I am certain of feeling is my steps, my tears, and the savorings of my tongue and eyes.