essays

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My Body Can’t Be Trusted

My Body Can’t Be Trusted

I was six years old when I got an insulin pump. My body was so small that we used a pink dog collar to secure the pump to my waist. I remember how heavy the piece of machinery felt hanging from the collar. I did a show-and-tell in my kindergarten class, even though I...

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Of Lights

Of Lights

Hours before the New Year, a blackout fell upon the neighborhood. Electricity outages, of course, are expected in Karachi. With the ongoing gas shortage, electricity was even more coveted. If “the light” went, so would the electric stovetop, the fan, the air...

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Damages

Damages

Cleanse, tone, apply serum, moisturizer, rosehip oil—these were the five steps of my mother’s skincare routine. If you do this every day, you’ll look good as you age, she said.One, then two wrinkles bloomed between her eyebrows, like deep furrows farmers plow in the...

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Anything, Everything and Nothing

Anything, Everything and Nothing

Circle and Star Motif via Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design MuseumEvery day I was excited to enter my first-grade classroom. Finally, free from the shadows of my cousins and the chaos of our mothers seemingly building the parenthood plane as they flew it. That...

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Coming Full Circle: Appreciating Black Educators

Coming Full Circle: Appreciating Black Educators

Key Blue, Joseph Schillinger My fractured Jamaican and Caribbean identity has long been both an open wound and an inspiration. So, when my 10th-grade AP Global History teacher assigned us a research paper to write on the topic of our choosing, I focused on the figure...

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