Arts & Culture

Annabeth Chase and the Male Gaze

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In first grade, I devoured countless editions of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I stayed up reading about Emily Windsnap’s adventures as half-human, half-mermaid. I pored over Suzanne Collins’ every word and prepared myself to fight in the Hunger Games. By the end of elementary school, I was writing a sequel for James Riley’s Half Upon a Time. I wasn’t actively avoiding Percy or Harry — there were just too many great books to read and not enough time.

Arts & Culture

Refugeography: A Reading With Slam Poet Bao Phi

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Oct. 13, at 12:20 p.m. — The English lounge was packed with people sitting under a shroud of excited silence. They were all there for the Refugeography, Bao Phi’s introductory event to the Cornell community. Bao Phi, a Visiting Critic in the Department of Literatures in English for this academic year, has won the Minnesota Grand Slam twice, made it to the finals for the National Poetry Slam and has written three heavily awarded children’s books. After Bao Phi was introduced on stage, he confessed that this event would be his first time performing in-person since March 2020 — no one would have been able to realize.

Arts & Culture

Curating a Summer Reading List

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If you, like me, are looking forward to some reading this summer, let’s embark on this ill-fated journey together. Will we achieve our reading goals? Almost certainly not. Will we still enjoy the act of resistance that is leisure in a society that values only productivity? We must — or perish.

Arts & Culture

‘In the Lateness of the World’: Witness to a Denouement

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“In the Lateness of the World” is Forché’s most recent book, her first new collection of poetry in seventeen years. In it, she writes on subjects ranging from the global to the personal — from war-scarred history to a visitation to a lighthouse, from dawn over Paros to the death of a friend.