Through the Looking Glass: Screaming (Woman of) Color
Here’s the thing: being a woman of color was never something I thought about really being until I came to Dartmouth.
Here’s the thing: being a woman of color was never something I thought about really being until I came to Dartmouth.
In Tomas Tranströmmer’s poem “The Blue House” (1997), a man stands in the woods outside of his home and sees with new eyes. It is as though he were dead and suddenly flooded with sight. Before him, the house transforms into a child’s drawing. The timber is heavy with sorrow and joy. The garden is a new world awash with weeds. The walls and ceilings tell a story different than he remembers. At the end of the poem, everything falls away except for a single image: a battered ship setting sail on raging seas. Each of our lives is trailed by a phantom life, he asserts, “a sister vessel which plows an entirely different route.”
Why did Cecilia Robinson '16 play 50 games of water pong in Thayer during her sophomore fall?
I was “that kid” who loved politics as a child. I received my first civic education around my grandparents’ dining room table, discussing local and national politics with my parents, grandparents and cousins, which required me to keep up with the news if I wanted to be able to participate in the discussions. I remember staying up long past my bedtime to watch the returns of the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore and asking my mother what would happen if the election was a tie, a question that was probably a tactic to delay sleep, but one that is humorous and ironic in retrospect. In third grade, I developed an interest in labor history and in middle school, the feminist movement, attempting to understand history to understand the world around me. In short, even as a child, you could call me a political nerd.
I am a foreigner. Yes, I may be a citizen and may have been born in the United States, but I am still foreign all the same. I don’t fit the cultural norms of an American society that has constantly tried to shape the person I am, to shape me into a passively obedient, productive member of American capitalism. Yet, for most of my life I have tried. I have tried being quiet, being obedient. I have tried dating women. I have tried maintaining a low profile. And I have tried presenting in a masculine way. None of it helped. I was still a fish out of water, a person floundering in a society not made for them.
My freshman fall in 2012, Dartmouth seemed like an unreal experience to me. Even though I knew that the utopia Dartmouth presented to me was not for people like me, I wanted to believe in the dream. It was easier to tell my friends and family back home that Dartmouth was great than to tell them I would rather sleep on the floor next to my mother, grandmother and brother in our studio apartment again than to have my own room and my own bed while living in a space where I felt hyper-invisible and unwanted. I wanted to tell them that I felt more broken and hopeless at this institution then I ever had before. But, I didn’t want to disappoint them because I knew my story, a story of a Black girl from the Southside of Chicago who had gone to Dartmouth, is one that they took immense pride in. So, even though I knew Dartmouth’s utopia didn’t include people like me, I thought that I was going to have the opportunity to make it include people like me. I was wrong.
Sarah Khatry '17 reflects on her experience being in Paris during the terrorist attacks this past November.
Ever wonder about the person behind Pigeons of Boston? Aaron Pellowski '15 returns to The Mirror to fill you in.
After three years, I feel like I have networks — plural — of people to turn to and be with, and that’s a beautiful thing. Surprisingly, though, it’s not togetherness that’s fueled my happiness — it’s separation. It’s the D-Plan.
I love routine. I have always loved routine. I have 12 color-coded Google calendars that I update nearly every day.
When you come to college you get a blank-slate. You come here shiny and new. You have a chance to completely reinvent yourself.
Personally, during the spring term of 2015, I felt like I was drowning most of the time. After having spent the two previous terms away from Hanover, I was eager to return to a campus that I considered my second home.
I never thought I would be involved in religious life anywhere — much less in college.
\n I avoid going home because I can’t avoid mealtimes. The scene plays out almost exactly the same way each time.
Ashley was a green light I never expected.
\n Like many of us here, I rage every Saturday. Once 6 p.m. rolls around, I grab dinner with a couple of my friends and then head off for a series of escapades, often stretching into the wee hours of the night.
My anxiety pertains to the particularly discriminatory horror I feel for my being gay and others’ awareness of it.
“Where are you from?” is such a simple question — but I dread it. \n You see, after living in England, South Africa, Poland, Sri Lanka and France, in addition to attending boarding school in Wales, the answer doesn’t seem that obvious to me.
The change, I am thrilled to say, has been my most profound quality of life improvement since investing in Spotify premium.
Working on climate issues is by far the most physically and psychologically exhausting and spiritually exasperating thing I could ever see myself doing. It offers very little rewards, almost consistently beating you down. And yet it’s filled with the most emotional, inspiring, empowering experiences I’ve ever had.