to you, and to me

A commentary on Gradual Impact by Alison Bechdel and Sappho 19. Written by: Ayasha Nordiawan Through their works, Alison Bechdel and Sappho explore and present their take on romantic love and the complexities that come along with that concept. While both of them seem to be approaching it from contrasting perspectives, there is clearly a…

Intertextuality in Text

Written by: Jeslyn Allison Jerota Stories. We love them. They have long been our symbol of childhood. In fact, one of my favorite childhood memories is waiting for my dad to come home and put me to bed by reading me fairytales and legends. Filipino parents love to tell the tale of Little Red Riding…

Contemporary “A Doll’s House”

Written by: Libby Ye Reading Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” was an ordeal because of Nora’s seemingly hyperbolized yet accurate resemblance to a typical woman’s persona in nineteenth-century Norway – a subservient doll-wife stifled by her husband Torvald and a conservatively patriarchal society. Nora is unable to prioritize the duties to herself, and her desires and…

Joy Found in Jo March

Written by: Medina Ayasha Nordiawan Following the release of the new movie starring Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan, and Timothee Chalamet in the theatres, the Little Women book, released in 1869, was all over the top shelves in the bookstore. I happened to be there, during one of my usual bookstore visits, and I decided to…

On the Road by/with Kerouac

Written by: Jingying Wang In a way, Kerouac’s On the Road is liberating. It takes that certain raw, impulsive urge for absolute freedom, hedonism and individualistic experiences that has certainly been present every generation of teenagers and normalizes it in a self-contained world, coated, or perhaps protected, by Kerouac’s erudite perspicuity. It is a world…

Vonnegut in a Nutshell

Submitted by: Mira Maheshwari For my IOP this semester, I decided to explore Slaughterhouse Five by interpreting it through the power of semiotics. I was inspired by Vonnegut’s (author of Slaughterhouse five) post-modernist approach to explore the narrative boundaries of his novel and how they can be visually fragmented on paper.  To summarise my creative…

The Dollhouse After Nora

Art by Wing Chan Written by Jingying Wang Nora ends up walking out on Torvald in A Doll’s House, slamming the door, seeking individuality and independence, renouncing societal norms and oppression. Her symbolic departure shocked the nineteenth century European audience, and eventually the world. Our society — “the dollhouse” occupied by us all — was…

A Quiet Place Exemplifies Our Modern Horror

Submitted by: Jingying Wang A Quiet Place is the perfect metaphor of the animalistic, primally brutal pillars of modern society. It is sly in that it pretends to be a movie about the fundamentals of humanity – family, love, and survival – and it is true that these themes are usually the case when a…

Anil’s Ghost: An Arthouse Actualization of UWC Ideals

Written by: Jingying Wang Keywords: third culture kid, forensic science, anthropology, Sri Lanka, identity, archaeology, modern warfare, human rights, quest, futility If you want to choose a story to start the new semester with, you should choose the one where the Western-educated Sri Lankan forensic scientist embarks on a salvational but fruitless human rights mission…