Category: Reflections
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I Ran Nineteen Years of Myself Through the Matrix
I ran nineteen years of my own essays through a script that measures sentence length, reading grade, and how often I interrupt myself. What the numbers caught, and what they could not.
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The Long Count
Nithya Raman is closing the gap one counted ballot at a time. On the slow, invisible labor of the women still waiting to be seen, and the work that outlasts the wait.
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What the Lens Sees
Two hundred and twenty-four professional photos arrive at eleven at night. I pick twenty. None of them, finally, for the woman walking between rooms, mid-thought.
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Nithya Raman, Okra, and the Brown Woman’s Second Act
I wrote about Rini Sampath in April. Nithya Raman is the next part of the question. The first act has a script. The second act has none.
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What a Vote Earns Here
Five names I knew. Knew like people. Not names on a yard sign at the end of someone’s driveway. The primary is the ballot you make, before the ballot you have to choose from.
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Through the Door
My daughter was in the shower. The sentence that arrived before I was fully awake was: this is my child, but I don’t know her. A reflective essay on the week my daughters began to feel like strangers, and what my own mother said when I asked her the same question.
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Nobody Asked Us
I wrote Hindsight because I needed to understand something. Not to resolve it. Not to arrive at an answer I could hand to a reader neatly wrapped. I needed to understand what it costs a woman to build a life on a story she was never given in full.
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Puthandu, Pennsylvania
Tamil New Year arrives on April 14. In Tamil Nadu it is a school holiday, a temple morning, a meal that takes the whole household from sunrise to noon. Here it is a Tuesday.
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Rini Sampath and the Weight of Hyphenation
Rini Sampath’s historic candidacy for DC mayor reveals the complex weight of diaspora representation.
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Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof
The courtroom seats filled early this morning. The president sat in the gallery, a first, as if the question of who belongs required his physical presence to adjudicate. Outside, cameras. Inside, two hours of oral argument over five words in the Fourteenth Amendment: subject to the jurisdiction thereof. My three daughters were born in the…