Zara Khan

I’ve been thinking how deep of a privilege it is to spend four years immersed in books, unearthing our curiosities and imagined potentials about the world.

Pain has been such a big part of my life for the past decade it’s impossible for me to think of what it means to be a woman without it. 

It’s a question I ask myself whenever I’m doing something I enjoy — do I actually like this or has some twist of circumstance or sociality caused me to?

There’s irony in the fact that a dynasty that built itself off of the subjugation of bodies of color could, in the end, be possibly ended by two Black women.

A freshman who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from campus referred to the self-sequester as a “witch hunt.”

In the minutes, hours, weeks and months following her death, I’ve struggled to articulate how deeply affected and freshly cut I am by her newfound absence.

Ever since my grandma was put on a ventilator this past August, I’ve been keeping a list of things on my phone to tell her once she comes home. Naive and hopeful, the list initially consisted of a few clipped bullets, hastily written whenever I thought of her.

So, this coming Tuesday, vote. Vote because our ability and opportunity to do so, like much of American history, is being challenged once again.

The first time I read Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person,” spellbindingly scrolling down my phone in the last row of a monotonous film lecture, I felt like somebody had captured my most intimate thoughts, thoughts I hadn’t even fully processed, and beautifully expressed them in one heartbreaking, disgusting, cringe-inducing short story.