Catapult

“It is a strange sort of alienation, when you make the life-changing decision to return home, only to suspect that you no longer belong.”

“When I think about the time before I ever uttered the words ‘I am a lesbian,’ I don’t think about a closet. I think about a costume trunk.”

“I am always an immigrant, never an expatriate. As an immigrant, to even visit a country, you must prove not just your legality, but your worth.”

“Science provides me with a vocabulary of illness, confirming what my body already knows: that it will never be the same.”

In The Karate Kid franchise, writes Beth Nguyen, “Mr. Miyagi is the perpetual foreigner who exists to serve the whiteness that surrounds him.”

“I am forced to live in a parallel world to the one I wanted to live in, where I could have been a physicist without also constantly being asked to speak on or attempt to compensate for the persistent racism of institutions.”

“I knew my body wasn’t ‘right’; it didn’t look like the bodies of the K-pop idols and Korean actresses I grew up admiring.”

“I do not wish to have not been a parent. But I think it is normal to imagine new existences when the world is crumbling.”

“All of my most cherished conversations on [Kathleen] Collins have been with Black women. My introduction to her came via the work of the first female editor I worked with. Her stunning meditation on both Collins and her daughter opened my eyes to a woman whose late arrival to my canon was one I couldn’t understand. As often as I’ve come back to her writings, I’ve also come back to this introductory essay which touched on art, secrets, love, and illness.”

On the 30th anniversary of her Navy captain father’s political execution, Naz Riahi recalls her love for him, and reveals a persistent grief that is always with her.