if I could go back in time, I would attend Mina’s wedding in December 2013, I would have paid the 500 cfa to ride on the back of a bedouin camel in Northern Togo on New Year’s Day in 2012, and I would have been more curious about my night guard Alphonse’s life. None of these choices would have changed my life in any significant way, but because they constitute moments of self-absorption and egocentrism I can never get back. 

Jauhar really takes us on a journey into his mind and doubts. I really did not think he was going to make it through the year. The whole process was a rollercoaster and I loved his fallibility and his insight into the profession.

This series of Bluesky Poems reflects on teaching "Farewell to Manzanar."

A memoir immersed in his college years at UC Berkeley in twilight of the 1990s, Hua Hsu’s Stay True provides a time capsule back to my own youth as he explores the significance of his college friendships in this ode to his friend Ken who was killed in a carjacking in July 1998. While Hse dives into his own unique story as a son of Taiwanese immigrant parents, this true story of his college journey evokes a California culture that captures the angsty explorations of the Xennia