As I write, my Twitter account floods with notifications: protesters marching for Black lives in New York City are trapped on the Manhattan Bridge by NYPD on both sides, live-tweeting for help. I think of my friend’s Facebook Live stream of demonstrations in Washington DC, which captured the pandemonium of police and the National Guard … Read more
At its core, Mindy Kaling’s long-awaited Netflix series, “Never Have I Ever,” purports to be a story of loss. Its very name alludes to forgone experiences, as it follows the story of Devi Vishwakumar, a 15-year-old Indian American girl grieving over the loss of her father. That emotional loss is accompanied by a physical loss … Read more
I watched my younger siblings scamper off, closing their bedroom doors behind them, before returning my gaze to the rubble at my feet —pseudo-cash, old-timey red tokens, and black chips with blue roses scattered without order or care on the living room floor. We had been playing Monopoly Socialism. I felt glum. An hour ago, I … Read more
“The man could feel his eyes filling with tears. Before him stood a spaceship, a gigantic metallic disk that seemed to be made of two immense plates joined at the edges.” These first words of Argentine Eduardo Goligorsky’s “The Last Refuge” could open any American or European science fiction story. However, the rest of the … Read more
To the uninitiated, a banjo might not be a harbinger of progress. America’s mountain music evokes a largely bygone era of agricultural subsistence, local autonomy, and a supposedly simpler way of life. Yet bluegrass, the slick younger cousin of string band, old-time, and a myriad of other musical influences, emerged just eighty years ago, and … Read more
“Where are my single Zoomers at???” It would have felt less cringe-worthy to read if the sentiment, put so eloquently by a fellow quarantined college student in a Facebook group, “Zoom Memes for Self Quaranteens,” wasn’t so painstakingly relatable. In the time of quarantine, I’ve found myself craving intimacy more than I ever have on … Read more
“We need to shift from a government that focuses primarily on working for you, to a government that works with you. Working with you, for you.” That was how Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat articulated the changing philosophy of governance of the ruling People’s Action Party, speaking in a widely-reported 45-minute speech outlining … Read more
“Everybody’s posting online and I’m like, I want to go. Take me with you. Put me in your suitcase,” said Tate and Camden, two young travelers preparing to embark on a 21-day adventure across Europe. The duo agreed to share their plans with the HPR as they paced around the boarding area at O’Hare Airport … Read more
“Everything is political.” This statement is both an acknowledgement of the inherently political nature of existence in a hierarchical world and a direct quote from every person interviewed for this article. “Everything is relational, and everything has a power relation,” Amy Elizabeth Alterman, a PhD candidate in Culture and Performance at UCLA, explained in an … Read more
Over 20 years ago, Peter Schmuck of the Baltimore Sun stepped off a plane in Havana to a frosty reception. While he was there to report on a goodwill baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban national team on March 28, 1999, the Cubans were having none of it. As he recalled in … Read more